Stupid Matters

Emotionally competent teams don’t wear blinders; they have the emotional capacity to face potentially difficult information and actively seek opinions on their task processes, progress, and performance from the outside. 

– Vanessa Druskat & Steven Wolff in Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups

Business schools, business books, and managers themselves usually focus on managing organizations and people. But if you focus on managing progress, the management of people – and even if entire organizations – becomes much more feasible. You won’t have to figure out how to x-ray the inner work lives of subordinates; if you facilitate their steady progress in meaningful work, make that progress salient to them, and treat them well, they will experience the emotions, motivations, and perceptions necessary for great performance. Their superior work will contribute to organizational success. And here’s the beauty of it: They will love their jobs.

– Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer in The Power of Small Wins (2011)

‪Anyone can be good, but only those willing to be vulnerable can be great. ‬

Great products are not comprised of features. They are the elegant stitching of experiences.

Design is achieving the right balance between familiarity and novelty.

– John Maeda, from an internal product discussion at Automattic

Who’s not tired of annoying doorstops?

One consistent problem with the feature approach comes when the team tries to wedge more features into an already crowded and complex product. They run the chance of making the product even more difficult to use because the new features don’t dovetail nicely with what already exists.

Jared M. Spool in “Themes: A Small Change to Product Roadmaps with Large Effects”