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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tony Fadell
Read between
April 24 - May 12, 2024
So when you’re looking at the array of potential careers before you, the correct place to start is this: “What do I want to learn?”
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.
“The only failure in your twenties is inaction. The rest is trial and error.”
If you’re not solving a real problem, you can’t start a revolution.
You always have something to offer if you’re curious and engaged.
If you’re doing what you loved in your old job, then you’re probably doing the wrong thing.
As a manager, you should be focused on making sure the team is producing the best possible product. The outcome is your business. How the team reaches that outcome is the team’s business. 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.
You should have a weekly crib sheet that helps you keep your priorities and the questions you need to ask top of mind.
Write down a list of what you’re worried about for each project and person so you can immediately see when the list is getting too long and you need to either dive deeper or back off.
The other place where you’ll get useful data is in 1:1s with team members. It’s all too easy to turn 1:1s into friendly chats that go nowhere, so just as you need to have a process for your team meetings, your weekly meetings with individuals should have an agenda, a clear purpose, and should be beneficial to both sides. You should get the info you need about product development and your team members should get insight into how they’re doing. Try to see the situation from their point of view—talk about their fears and your own concerns out loud, reframe your thoughts so they can hear the
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Customers will always be more comfortable with what exists already, even if it’s terrible.
Your job in this moment is to craft a narrative that convinces leadership that your gut is trustworthy, that you’ve found all the data that could be gleaned, that you have a track record of good decisions, that you grasp the decision makers’ fears and are mitigating those risks, that you truly understand your customers and their needs and—most importantly—that what you’re proposing will have a positive impact on the business. If you tell that story well, if you bring people along with you on that journey, then they will follow your vision, even if there’s no hard data to back you up.
People won’t remember how you started. They’ll remember how you left.
once you’re committed to a mission, to an idea—that’s the thing you should stick to.
If you flit from project to project, company to company, you’ll never have the vital experience of starting and finishing something meaningful.
Your story about why you left needs to be honest and fair and your story for your next job needs to be inspiring: this is what I want to learn, this is the kind of team I want to work with, this is part of the mission that truly excites me.
You should be able to map out and visualize exactly how a customer discovers, considers, installs, uses, fixes, and even returns your product. It all matters.
To do that right, you have to prototype the whole experience—give every part the weight and reality of a physical object. Regardless of whether your product is made of atoms or bits or both, the process is the same. Draw pictures. Make models. Pin mood boards. Sketch out the bones of the process in rough wireframes. Write imaginary press releases. Create detailed mock-ups that show how a customer would travel from an ad to the website to the app and what information they would see at each touchpoint. Write up the reactions you’d want to get from early adopters, the headlines you’d want to see
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Every product should have a story, a narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer’s problems. 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.”
The story of your product, your company, and your vision should drive everything you do.
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.
Why does this thing need to exist? Why does it matter? Why will people need it? Why will they love it?
you have to appeal to their emotions—connect with something they care about. Their worries, their fears. Or show them a compelling vision of the future: give a human example. Walk through how a real person will experience this product—their day, their family, their work, the change they’ll experience.
That’s another thing I learned from Steve Jobs. He’d always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful.
To maintain the core of your product there are usually one or two things that have to stay still while everything else spins and changes around them.
You cannot be afraid to disrupt the thing that made you successful in the first place.
Know what you want to make, why you’re making it, who it’s for, and why people will buy it.
If you want to start a company, if you want to start anything, to create something new, then you need to be ready to push for greatness.
If you do think you’re ready to take money, then what exactly do you plan to use that money for? Do you need to build a prototype? Recruit a team? Research an idea? Get a patent? Petition local government? Fuel a partnership? Create a marketing campaign? What’s the minimum amount necessary to meet your needs now, and how much will you require later as those needs change?
No matter what you’re building, you can never forget who you’re building it for. You can only have one customer. Choose wisely.
So what will you do every few days or every week or two? Every 8–12 weeks? Every 6–12 months?
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.
times a week—Exercise. Get up. Go biking or running or weight lifting or cross-training or just take a walk.
Eat well—You are an extreme athlete, but your sport is work. So fuel yourself. Don’t eat too much, don’t eat too late, cut down on refined sugars, smoking, alcohol. Just try to keep yourself from physically feeling like garbage.
It’s your responsibility as a leader not to try to deal with a disaster on your own.
A near-perfect team is made up of smart, passionate, imperfect people who complement one another.
I usually start with the most important questions: “What are you curious about? What do you want to learn?”
I also ask, “Why did you leave your last job?”
And why do they want to join this company?
Another good interview technique is to simulate work—instead of asking them how they work, just work with them. Pick a problem and try to solve it together. Choose a subject that both of you are familiar with but neither is an expert in—if
Everything that needs to be created needs to be designed—not just products and marketing, but processes, experiences, organizations, forms, materials. At its core, designing simply means thinking through a problem and finding an elegant solution. Anyone can do that. Everyone should.
Being a good designer is more a way of thinking than a way of drawing. It’s not just about making things pretty—it’s about making them work better.
2. Avoid habituation: Everyone gets used to things. 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.
Who is your customer and where will they encounter this name? What are you trying to get your customer to think or feel about your product? What brand attributes or product features are most important to highlight with this name? Is this product part of a family of products or is it stand-alone? What will the next version be called? Should the name be evocative of a feeling or idea or a straightforward description? Once you come up with a list, begin to use the names in context. How does it work in a sentence? How do you use it in print? How do you use it graphically?
Naming
Think like a user who has never tried this product before; dig into their mindset, their pain and challenges, their hopes and desires.
You can’t solve interesting problems if you don’t notice they’re there.
The best marketing is just telling the truth. The ultimate job of marketing is to find the very best way to tell the true story of your product.
“The best marketing is just telling the truth.”
If the messaging rings true, then the marketing is better. You don’t have to rely on bells and whistles, stunts, and dancing polar bears—you simply explain in the best way possible what you’re making and why you’re making it.
