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Daily Reading from June 28, 2008

28 Jun 2008

Links to what I’ve been reading recently.

Your Clientâ€™s Point of View Should Dictate How You Communicate — "Just got off the phone today, after trying to book a driving test for my son. My question was a fairly tentative one, asking how I can book a time. “I’ll need the number from your Driver’s Exam Receipt,” was ..."
Working With History in Bash — "Yesterday we talked about favorite bash features (on the ##textmate IRC channel). I figured it was worth posting mine to this blog, they mostly revolve around history, hence the title. Setup My shell history collects a lot of complex command ..."
20 Wrenches In The Software Startup Machinery
One good reason to vote against Obama — "The Supreme court narrowly (5-4) upheld our right to bear arms in a ruling today. As Ben Winograd explained so eloquently, “It doesn’t take a mathematician to recognize the narrow margin in this case. Replace any one of the five ..."
Special OPS — "Owners didn’t pay you to walk. Managers didn’t always look beyond size. Reporters didn’t get what REALLY won the game. Every day, in the paper, you saw batting averages, and RBIs, and stuff that Joe understood were secondary, selfish stats, ..."
ICANN threatens to change the rules of the domain name game — "You may be used to typing in top-level domains (TLDs) like .com, .net or .edu when heading to websites, but the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) hopes to change that with a decision to open new TLDs ..."
Starbucks Dumping CDs — "Shared by adam First the burning stations went, now the music entirely. We hear that by September, the chain will have dumped almost all of its in-store music retail offerings. "
Bill Gates and the Greatest Tech Hack Ever — Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per ...

Recently Written

Your OKR Cascade is Breaking Your Strategy

Aug 1: Most companies cascade OKRs down their org chart thinking it creates alignment. Instead, it fragments strategy and marginalizes supporting teams. Here's what works better than the waterfall approach.

Your Prioritization Problem Is a Strategy Problem

Jul 23: Most teams struggle with prioritization because they're trying to optimize for everything at once. The real problem isn't having too many options—it's not having a clear strategy to choose between them. Without strategy, every decision feels equally important. With strategy, most decisions become obvious.

Behind schedule

Jul 21: Your team is 6 weeks late and still missing features. The solution isn't working harder—it's accepting that your deadlines were fake all along. Ship what you have. Cut ruthlessly. Stop letting "one more day" turn into one more month.

VC’s Future Lies In Building Winners

Jun 21: AI and megafunds are about to kill the traditional venture model, forcing smaller VCs to stop hunting for hidden gems and start rolling up their sleeves to fix broken companies instead.

Should individual people have OKRs?

May 14: A good OKR describes and measures an outcome, but it can be challenging to create an outcome-focused OKR for an individual.

10 OKR traps and how to avoid them

May 8: I’ve helped lots of teams implement OKRs or fix a broken OKR process. Here are the 10 most common problems I see, and what to do instead.

AI is Smart, But Wisdom Requires Judgement

May 3: AI can process data at lightning speed, but wisdom comes from human judgment—picking the best imperfect option when facts alone don’t point the way.

Decoding Product Leadership Titles

Mar 18: Not all product leadership titles mean what they sound like. ‘Head of Product’ can mean anything from a senior PM to a true VP. Here’s how to tell the difference.

Daily Reading from June 28, 2008

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