A good mentor won’t hand you the answers, but they will try to help you see your problem from a new perspective. They’ll loan you some of their hard-fought advice so you can discover your own solution. (Location 447)
Tags: blue
The best way to find a job you’ll love and a career that will eventually make you successful is to follow what you’re naturally interested in, then take risks when choosing where to work. Follow your curiosity rather than a business school playbook about how to make money. Assume that for much of your twenties your choices will not work out and the companies you join or start will likely fail. Early adulthood is about watching your dreams go up in flames and learning as much as you can from the ashes. Do, fail, learn. The rest will follow. (Location 624)
The critical thing is to have a goal. To strive for something big and hard and important to you. Then every step you take toward that goal, even if it’s a stumble, moves you forward. (Location 654)
Examining the product in great detail and caring deeply about the quality of what your team is producing is not micromanagement. (Location 1181)
As a manager, you should be focused on making sure the team is producing the best possible product. (Location 1185)
When you get deep into the team’s process of doing work rather than the actual work that results from it, that’s when you dive headfirst into micromanagement. (Location 1186)
It helps to agree on the process early. To define it up front—here’s our product development process, here’s our design process, our marketing process, our sales process. Here’s our schedule and how we work and how we work together. Everyone—manager and team—signs off on it and then the manager has to let go. They let the team work. (Location 1189)
So as a manager, you have to find what connects with your team. How can you share your passion with them, motivate them? The answer, as usual, comes down to communication. You have to tell the team why. Why am I this passionate? Why is this mission meaningful? Why is this small detail so important that I’m flipping out right now when nobody else seems to think it matters? Nobody wants to follow someone who throws themselves at windmills for no reason. To get people to join you, to truly become a team, to fill them with the same energy and drive that’s bubbling within you, you need to tell them the why. (Location 1243)
“Most managers are afraid that the people who work for them are going to be better than them. But you need to think of being a manager more like being a mentor or a parent. What loving parent wants their child NOT to succeed? You want your kids to be more successful than you, right?” (Location 1259)
rabidly (Location 1333)
Tags: orange
Mission-driven “assholes”: The people who are crazy passionate—and a little crazy. They speak most frankly, trampling the politics of the modern office, and steamroll right over the delicate social order of “how things are done around here.” Much like true assholes, they are neither easygoing nor easy to work with. Unlike true assholes, they care. They give a damn. They listen. They work incredibly hard and push their team to be better—often against their will. They are unrelenting when they know they’re right, but are open to changing their minds and will praise other people’s efforts (Location 1454)
if they’re genuinely great. A good way to know if you’re working with a mission-driven "asshole" is to listen to the mythos around them—there are always a few choice stories floating around about some crazy thing they’ve done, and the people who’ve worked with them closely are always telling everyone that they’re not that bad, really. Most tellingly, the team ultimately trusts them, respects what they do, and looks back at the experience of working with them fondly, because they pushed the team to do the best work of their lives. (Location 1461)
So ask. Don’t be afraid to push. They’ll respect you more if you stand up for what you believe in. Mission-driven “assholes” want to be better at their jobs and fulfill that all-important mission—they want to make sure the company is heading in the right direction. (Location 1482)
The best thing for the product would always win out eventually because the product was all that mattered. Steve was always focused on the work. Always. (Location 1495)
I need to repeat that: hating your job is never worth whatever raise, title, or perks they throw at you to stay. (Location 1611)
Networking is something you should be doing constantly—even when you’re happily employed. (Location 1626)
A good product story has three elements: » It appeals to people’s rational and emotional sides. » It takes complicated concepts and makes them simple. » It reminds people of the problem that’s being solved—it focuses on the “why.” (Location 1962)
He used a technique I later came to call the virus of doubt. It’s a way to get into people’s heads, remind them about a daily frustration, get them annoyed about it all over again. If you can infect them with the virus of doubt—“Maybe my experience isn’t as good as I thought, maybe it could be better”—then you prime them for your solution. You get them angry about how it works now so they can get excited about a new way of doing things. (Location 1993)
Your product’s story is its design, its features, images and videos, quotes from customers, tips from reviewers, conversations with support agents. It’s the sum of what people see and feel about this thing that you’ve created. (Location 2011)
Why does this thing need to exist? Why does it matter? Why will people need it? Why will they love it? (Location 2016)
To find that “why,” you need to understand the core of the problem you’re trying to solve, the real issue your customers face on a regular basis. (Location 2017)
A good story is an act of empathy. It recognizes the needs of its audience. And it blends facts and feelings so the customer gets enough of both. (Location 2036)
First you need enough insights and concrete information that your argument doesn’t feel too floaty and insubstantial. It doesn’t have to be definitive data, but there has to be enough to feel meaty, to convince people that you’re anchored in real facts. But you can overdo it—if your story is only informational, then it’s entirely possible that people will agree with you but decide it’s not compelling enough to act on just yet. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. (Location 2037)
Walk through how a real person will experience this product—their day, their family, their work, the change they’ll experience. (Location 2042)
Disruption should be important for you personally—who doesn’t want to do something exciting and meaningful?—but it’s also important for the health of your business. If you’ve truly made something disruptive, your competition probably won’t be able to replicate it quickly. (Location 2099)
Tags: orange