The adage "time is money" prioritizes a regenerative resource over an irreplaceable one. The statement, and the underlying mindset, ignore opportunity costs. We can always acquire more money, but we can never recapture time. How well is your company spending time?
We constantly face the challenge of balancing predictability and adaptability. Our evolutionary instinct drives us to seek predictability, but the inherent uncertainty of the world demands adaptability. Both predictability and adaptability have their place, but one must happen before the other is possible.
When we focus on solutions, we place our trust in someone's judgment — that they know what the fix should be. Frequently, this is someone that's on the front lines, an executive, or a small group tasked with defining requirements.
If you've been anywhere near product development, you've either heard or muttered (probably both!) "What's the MVP of this?", "We need this feature in the MVP.", or "We can't go live without that!" This is mis-guided and we owe it to ourselves and our customers to reclaim the MVP approach to making our world better.
HMW isn't about having arguments, nor is it about advocating positions you don't hold. It is, however, an approach to thinking through how you would solve a problem if the situation was different, if the fundamental assumptions driving it were changed.
Every business is a Startup. You're either growing or dying. Embracing a Startup mindset is the only salvation for established organizations. For those of us that have made the leap from small companies to the corporate world, reminding us that we don't work in a Startup anymore is a threat to the longevity of your organization.
In one week - and for just $498.38 - I was able to decide that an idea I'd been mulling over for the past 3 years was not a viable business endeavor. Why share a failure? Because success stories abound, but I learn more from what didn't work than from what did. What follows is a post mortem of SendBetter.Email, a video tutorial series.