More letter, less envelope
Francesco, a fellow tech nerd, shared an interesting interview with Jason Fried.
The interview sometimes felt a bit too staged, and I don't know if he actually behaves the way he described, but I appreciated some points.
Fried didn't invent these concepts, but he made me think.
Small is beautiful
In a business you must earn more than your spend. You can’t control the context where your Business works, but you can control how much you spend.
Talking about the digital field, I think that using AI we are going to see more small companies with higher margins, thanks to automation reducing operational costs. Creating a small org from the beginning will be even more strategic.
I believe that we are at the beginning of a turning point, and we will need to figure out how to take this, unclear to me, path.
Not to mention the social consequences we may have to face, such as job displacement and widening salary gaps, a complex issue whose full impact is yet to be seen.
Reducing the size of a company, simplifying its structure, flattening it, can reduce friction, empower teams, remove communication layers.
Organizational streamlining should also be reflected in product simplification; ultimately, you ship your organization.
The envelope and the letter
Focusing on the letter means focusing on the substance,
“the envelope is just the thinnest little thing that needs to be there to hold the letter”.
I think that it’s not easy to stay focused on a digital product, because software is less bounded by limits, it can easily grow in functionalities and complexity, getting worse if they don’t add real final value for the users.
Building a product, there’s a time when we must ask ourselves if what we built is enough.
A very hard question.
Short-term Planning
You can plan everything, create a specific roadmap, but you don't have a crystal ball.
A long-term plan can help you clarify your thoughts, write down your goals, acting as a strategic tool, to review periodically.
But you must also short-term plan for your tactical needs.
You have to face how the context of your product is changing, to adapt it, to redefine a better road, especially in such a fast-changing field, where new technologies and competitors can shuffle the cards quickly.
Here I save my thoughts and reflections on mainly digital topics. They derive from what I read, watch and listen to, which I try to reorganise.
Data marketer, product management, python and agile methodologies. This space is my single source of truth.
Here I share #thoughts and #buildinpublic, waiting for the A.I. to conquer the world.
Personal opinions and considerations.