- Multiple teams tackling the same problem with different approaches (done for Mac OS X and iPhone)
- Let the best approach win
2. Nat Friedman's take:
"The cultural prohibition on micromanagement is harmful. Great individuals should be fully empowered to exercise their judgment. The goal is not to avoid mistakes; the goal is to achieve uncorrelated levels of excellence in some dimension. The downsides are worth it"
3. Stay connected to the customer
- Have a separate early adopter version of your product even when your company is big
- Checking customer notes on X (Brian Chesky does this)
- Reading external cold emails from customers to the CEO, and replying to some (Steve Jobs and Bezos did this)
4. Stay connected to the reality of the company
- Anyone internally can email the CEO and suggest ideas, critique things
5. Have redundancy
- For any areas of the company that are critical, run two separate versions for as long as possible
- Humans have two of basically everything critical (except the brain, likely due to energy constraints): reproductive organs, hands, legs, eyes, ears, nostrils, why don't companies
Because the judgment of tens of thousands of individuals on the importance of their particular issues and the framing of said issues in a way the CEO can understand does not correlate with their disposition towards emailing the CEO.
1. Steve Jobs approach:
- Multiple teams tackling the same problem with different approaches (done for Mac OS X and iPhone)
- Let the best approach win
2. Nat Friedman's take:
3. Stay connected to the customer- Have a separate early adopter version of your product even when your company is big
- Founders taking customer calls (Eric Yuan, Zoom)
- Checking customer notes on X (Brian Chesky does this)
- Reading external cold emails from customers to the CEO, and replying to some (Steve Jobs and Bezos did this)
4. Stay connected to the reality of the company
- Anyone internally can email the CEO and suggest ideas, critique things
5. Have redundancy
- For any areas of the company that are critical, run two separate versions for as long as possible
- Humans have two of basically everything critical (except the brain, likely due to energy constraints): reproductive organs, hands, legs, eyes, ears, nostrils, why don't companies