Notes

In product development, not every problem deserves to be solved.

There’s the shiny new thing — a capability someone saw at a conference that suddenly feels like a strategic priority. There’s the problem the team created for itself by patching the wrong thing last quarter. There’s the sudden spike in complaints that looks alarming but disappears on its own in two weeks. And then there’s the genuine, real customer pain that — if you’re honest — won’t actually move the business.

The hard part isn’t identifying these. Most experienced teams can spot them.

The hard part is having the conversation that says: we’re not doing this one.

WYSIATI - What you see is all there is.

“This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”

“People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media.”

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”

Notes

• Small habits compound over time. Just 1% better will result in 36 times better after one year.
• Visualise as a plane shifting a few degrees, will result in a very different destination
• Positive compounding: productivity, knowledge, relationships
• Negative compounding: stress, negative thoughts, outrage
• There is a critical threshold for habits to appear
• Forget goals (results..can be shortsighted, forced, success or fail), focus on systems (process that leads to results…reliable, long term, commitment)
• Identity-based habits - when offered a cigarette “no thanks, I am trying to quit” vs “no thanks, I am not a smoker”
• Pointing-and-calling raises level of awareness
• Habit scorecard to raise self-awareness
• Implementation intention I will BEHAVIOUR at TIME in LOCATION (specific commitment beforehand)
• Habit stacking and the Diderot Effect - spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behaviour.
• Environment matters. Cues in your environment affect your behaviour.
• Habits can be easier to change in a new environment as it helps you escape the triggers that nudge you toward your current habit.
• Once habits are formed, they are difficult to break. Making it invisible helps, avoiding is better than resisting
• Dopamine is not just pleasure but motivation, learning, memory, punishment, aversion and anticipation.
• “You’re more likely to find a behaviour attractive if you get to do one of your favourite things at the same time” - temptation bundling
• …
• Humans are wired for instant gratifications and inability to think about long term effects of habits. As a result, it is important to build instant gratification into habits to build for a long term goal. E.g. cooking at home instead of eating out and putting aside the saved money for a trip

Notes

1. Communicating - low-context or high-context
2. Evaluating - direct negative feedback or indirect negative feedback
3. Persuading - principles-first or applications-first
4. Leading - egalitarian or hierachical
5. Deciding - consensual or top-down
6. Trusting - task-based or relationship-based
7. Disagreeing - confrontational or Avoids confrontation
8. Scheduling - linear or flexible

My Tendencies

Communicating - Low (1) <-> High Context (10)

“Simple, verbose, and clear OR rich deep meaning in interactions”

• Japan - 10
• Self - 4 - In the past, maybe this is lower…but I think this has gradually changed and I am somwhere in the middle now.

Evaluating Direct Negative Feedback (1) <-> Indirect negative feedback (10)

“When giving negative feedback, does one give it directly or prefer being indirect and discreet?”

• Japan - 10
• Self - 3

Pursuading Principles First (1) <-> Application First(10)

“Detailed holistic explanations OR specific cases and examples?”

• Japan - 1
• Self - 5

Leading - Egalitarian(1) <-> Hierachical(10)

“Are people in groups egalitarian or prefer hierarchy?”

• Japan - 10
• Self - 4

Deciding Consensual(1) <-> Top down(10)

“Are decisions made in consensus or made top-down?”

• Japan - 1
• Self - 3

Trusting Task based (1) <-> Relationship (10)

“Do people base trust on how well they know each other or how well they work together?”

• Japan - 10
• Self - 4 - I am not entirely sure about this one..!

Disagreeing Confrontational (1) <-> Avoids Confrontation (10)

“Are disagreements tackled directly, or do people prefer to avoid confrontations?”

• Japan - 10
• Self - 7

Scheduling - Linear Time (1) <-> Flexible Time(10)

“Do people see time as absolute linear points or consider it a flexible range?”

• Japan - 1
• Self - 2

Most teams save prototyping for near the end. By then, the direction is set and there’s too much invested to change course. The prototype becomes a formality — built to confirm, not to question.

That’s a waste.

Prototyping works best when you still don’t know the answer. A rough prototype early in a project does something no meeting or document can: it makes assumptions visible. You stop arguing about what might work and start watching what actually does.

And it doesn’t need to be digital. Walking a colleague through a sketch is a prototype. A scripted conversation simulating a new onboarding flow is a prototype. A paper journey taped to a whiteboard is a prototype.

The medium isn’t the point. The point is getting something in front of a real person before your team has become too attached to defend it.

Build earlier. Build rougher. Learn faster.