Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

Then Sunday night I’d email the whole list out to my management team. Each item had a name attached to it. Everyone could look at the top of the list to see what I’d be focused on that week, what they were a...

It wasn’t micromanagement. It was holding people accountable.

Part of your job is not to go completely nuts at work and take it out on your team.

There’s a reason Steve Jobs famously always walked between meetings, during meetings. It helped him think, stay creative, to rummage, but it also forced him to take some time to just . . . walk. To take a break from sitting in meetings, even if it was just for a few minutes.

2–3 times a week—Block out parts of your schedule during your workday so you have time to think and reflect.

Meditate. Read the news on some subject you don’t work on. Whatever. It can even be tangential to your work, but it should not be actual work.

started getting into yoga at Philips and I’ve kept it up for more than twenty-five years—it’s been hugely helpful. You have to quiet everything around you and focus to do yoga poses properly. You become conscious of your body so you instantly know if you’re off.

there’s no perfect assistant who will be able to read your mind immediately.

One of the core features of the Nest Protect smoke and CO alarm was called Wave to Hush. The idea was that if you burned breakfast, you wouldn’t need to frantically wave towels or brooms at your smoke alarm to shut it up—you could just stand under it and calmly wave your arm a couple of times.

Don’t make things worse by losing your mind and ignoring the things you need to keep your head on straight.

Command and control doesn’t mean decree and ignore.

The only thing you can do is calmly say, “Yes. I’m worried. Just like you. This is scary. But we’ll get through it. We’ve faced other challenges in the past together and succeeded. Here’s the plan.”

That’s what I said over and over at Nest. It became like a mantra: We’ll get through this. We’ve done it before. Here’s the plan. We’ll get through this. We’ve done it before. Here’s the plan.

There is always a temptation to obfuscate or couch everything in legalese—to say “mistakes were made” but never admit they were yours. This will not work. People will figure it out. And they will be pissed.

No evading, blaming, or making excuses. Just accept responsibility and be a grown-up.

It’s your responsibility as a leader not to try to deal with a disaster on your own.

Don’t imagine that by working for a week straight and not sleeping you can solve the problem yourself and nobody ever has to know. Get advice. Take deep breaths. Make a plan.

The silver lining is that once the crisis is past—assuming you survived it, of course—you’ll have a team that’s gone through hell and back and is stronger for it.

That story needs to enter into the DNA of your company so you can always return to it.

There will be more disasters in your future. There will be many moments when everything falls apart. But if you can keep telling that story, no crisis to come will ever feel quite as bleak as the very first one you conquered.

we were hiring people who had that same sense of purpose, who wouldn’t be dazzled by glitz or glamour or in-office pool tables.

Different people think differently and every new perspective, background, and experience you bring into the business improves the business.

Hiring a diverse and talented team is so incredibly crucial to your success

In an interview I’m always most interested in three basic things: who they are, what they’ve done, and why they did it.

I also ask, “Why did you leave your last job?” Not the most original question, but the answer matters. I’m looking for a crisp, clear story.

Every two to four weeks, we’d gather a crew of 15–25 new hires and existing employees and have an informal lunch. We tried to cross-pollinate different people from different groups, a good mix from around the company. No managers, no executives, no keynote presentations.

Sometimes life is the process of elimination. Sometimes getting fired can be a good thing.

Just as people make a commitment to your company when they join it, you make a commitment to them.

Breakpoints typically come at moments when things are going great—business is booming or at least product development is humming along.

The first steps are to help them understand what they truly love about their jobs, the company, and the culture.

The best is a combination of the two—someone who understands both worlds—a mentor/coach who can help people see the bigger picture about what the business may need as well as what they need personally.

Culture is the hardest thing to pinpoint and the hardest to preserve.

Culture arises organically but then needs to be codified to be maintained.

So write down your company values and post them on your physical and virtual walls.

Everyone should know what matters at your company—what defines your culture. If you don’t explicitly know your values, you can’t pass them on, maintain them, evolve them, or hire for them.

breakpoints always seem to catch people off-guard.

Generally companies have to trim off all the new growth beyond the breakpoint and start over again and do it right.

Everything that needs to be created needs to be designed—not just products and marketing, but processes, experiences, organizations, forms, materials.

Life is full of tiny and enormous inconveniences that you no longer notice because your brain has simply accepted them as unchangeable reality and filtered them out.

Should you wear jeans? A button-down? Is the company culture formal or informal? What do you want to project about yourself? Making that decision is a design process. Getting to the best outcome requires design thinking, even if it’s unconscious.

you shouldn’t outsource a problem before you try to solve it yourself, especially if solving that problem is core to the future of your business.

If it’s a critical function, your team needs to build the muscle to understand the process and do it themselves.

Not everyone can be a great designer, but everyone can think like one. Designing isn’t something in your DNA that you’re simply born with—it’s something you learn.

To be a great designer you can’t lock yourself in a room—you have to connect with your team, with your customer and their environment, and other teams who may have innovative ideas to bring to the table.

You have to look at a problem from all angles.

pretty much nobody thought about it as a problem with a solution. Everyone just assumed it was part of life—if you wanted to listen to your music, you’d need to bring your CDs.

Steve Jobs called it “staying a beginner.” He was constantly telling us to look at what we were making with fresh eyes.

While good marketing is anchored in human connection and empathy, creating and implementing your marketing programs can and should be a rigorous and analytical process.

connection and empathy

As you build, you should continue to use marketing to evolve the story

The creative team can help you make the product narrative tangible.