Lane Shackleton

Do they know their cathedral? Do they have a cathedral? And then he explained the cathedral story... you want your teams to feel like they're building a cathedral and not laying bricks.

Everybody needs to see a different facet of the cathedral. So very often people will do a great writeup on vision or strategy or whatever it is and the result is people can't quite see their version of what this broader arc is or this broader cathedral is.

Ensure that you're not for a given time period planning for more than 10% of that execution period. And I think this is a really easy mistake to make... you end up just planning way too much and oftentimes you really don't know what's ahead until you've launched or learned something.

It's critical to disconnect strategy discussions from OKR discussions. And it sounds really obvious, but it's I think a very common mistake. And I think a really simple question to ask yourself is do we have a separate strategy process or strategy ritual that is distinct from OKR setting and metric setting and goal setting?

Moments that stretch you or moments that you feel uncomfortable in or you find yourself saying, 'Oh shit. I shouldn't be here,' or, 'I'm under qualified to be here,' those are the moments you should be seeking out. Those are the moments that stretch you and give you a new foundation.

How many oh shit moments have you had in the last six months, year, two years, and what are they? I think if you ask yourself that question and the answer is, 'It's been a really long time since I've been stretched in some meaningful way or I've felt like I'm under qualified to be there,' then it may be worth digging into.

Ensure that you're not for a given time period planning for more than 10% of that execution period. And I think this is a really easy mistake to make... you end up just planning way too much and oftentimes you really don't know what's ahead until you've launched or learned something.

The core job of a product person in general is to turn ambiguity into clarity. And if you think about the job of a product leader or a product manager, everything is ambiguous all the time. It's like what's my role on this team? What problem are we solving? Who's the target customer? What prototype is going to solve this particular problem?

Most people can be way more concise with their communication. Even internally, people don't care. You should assume that people don't care. Or if you're talking to customers, writing a blog post for customers, you should assume that they don't care. When you start with that assumption, you really force yourself to be a little bit sharper in your communication style.