Breathe, Focus, Attack

by Ian Schechter

  And speaking of video games, Nintendo tried all sorts of business ideas before they settled on making games. The company had previous lives as a producer of instant rice, a taxi service, a hotel chain, and a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, among others.

  When you put an MVP out into the world, listen to what the world tells you. People will tell you what they want, even if they themselves don’t know it yet. Once you learn to hear them, nothing can stop you.

  MVPs for Health

  This book isn’t just about business, and you can extend the logic of MVPs into other pursuits with a little imagination.

  There’s an endlessly quoted statistic floating free out there, a depressing assertion that 95% of people who attempt diets fail. The typical follow-up is that many succeed in losing some weight during the first six months or so of implementing a diet program, but that virtually all gain it back—and then some—within at least a couple of years. Too many people read this and think, I hear you loud and clear: it’s obviously not worth trying. So, they don’t, and in choosing not to they too relegate themselves to the 95% who don’t take that first step.

  Here’s the thing, though. For one, that statistic is not based on much of anything. It has become medical lore, and nobody’s entirely sure where it came from. The best hypothesis comes from Dr. Kelly D. Brownell at Yale’s Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, who believes that the statistic first appeared in a 1959 study of only 100 people, and that the claim spread like wildfire from there. 8 So, it all boiled down to one little study with one tiny sample size, and dozens of other studies since then have taken issue with it. Regardless, this pessimistic contention about the lasting effects of dietary changes nudges people towards inaction. People figure that only a few bright and shining few, the special successful outliers, will be the ones who maintain a healthy change in their routine. And perhaps that familiar voice in the back of their heads already tells them: you’re not special.

  Half of the equation of people’s failure to stick to healthier eating routines might be their assumption that they’ll fail—which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy—but the other half is a lack of good data. A longterm plan for better health involves significant lifestyle changes that can be maintained over time . You have to be able to live with the changes you make. You have to find ways to live a healthier lifestyle that enrich your life, not ones that you instinctively view as suffering and sacrificing. Being healthier should make your life better, not worse. You should feel better. People do it wrong, so they fail in the long run. You probably know people like this, who usually talk about changes in diet routines as temporary programs. “I’m doing keto,” they’ll say, or “I’m on the South Beach diet.” Or whatever. The very language of it suggests a temporary strategy that they’re employing. The minute they’ve reached whatever their goal is, they revert to their normal routine, and so they also return to their normal results.

  This is where the magic of the MVP comes into play. For those of us that aren’t perhaps naturally inclined towards healthy habits, the MVP keeps us from failing outright by allowing us to lose battles without ceding the war.

  An example: Ralph’s an adult now, and his New Year’s Resolution is to hit the gym at least three days a week and to not buy takeout on weeknights. He hopes this will improve his general health and level of fitness, as well as saving him some money by cooking at home. He signs up for a gym membership at the fancy new gym in town and loads up on groceries.

  For the first few days, he’s pumped. It feels good to be making good changes. He doesn’t have time to hit the gym in the evening, especially if he’s cooking, so he wakes up an hour early and goes before work. He imagines a version of himself that’s fitter, strong, faster, generally more alert and vital.

  Barely a week in, things begin to change. The gym he’d signed up for had attracted him with its new facilities and flashy marketing, but going in the morning means he’s hitting horrible morning traffic. To get to work on time, he’ll have to start getting up even earlier, or perhaps going at night. And the waking up earlier becomes its own problem: he’s really hating it, and he feels exhausted all day. By the time he gets home, the last thing he wants to do is cook. He’s starting to dread dinner. Within a couple of weeks, Frank is miserable and he’s done. He starts slipping. He drops those gym days from 3 to 2. He gets fast food on the way home from work a couple of times. By the end of the month, he has abandoned his plan altogether.

  Since Frank shot for the moon, his failure stings all the more. Whether he realizes it or not, part of his brain has an idea of what healthy routines should look like, and that same part of his brain has also now learned that he can’t maintain them.

  What if he’d implemented a Minimum Viable Health Plan? His problem was that his strategies were not sustainable for him and his lifestyle. What if he’d taken it a step at a time to see what worked, and then let his strategy evolve from there? Perhaps in the MVP version of his health strategy, instead of the gym membership he tries biking to work one day a week? If that turns out to not be sustainable, no sweat: he can try something else without feeling like he’s failed completely. But what if he really likes it? What if he feels awake and energized the rest of the work day? Before you know it, Frank could be riding a bike to work 5 days a week, and he might even love it. Just like that, a part of his life has evolved in a healthy way that makes him happier—not a way that makes him feel like he’s putting himself through an ordeal.

  Maybe he tries cooking for a week, but he realizes it’s taking too long, he doesn’t like the outcome, and he’s not really saving as much money as he thought he would. Well, the MVP methodology tells him he should pivot—he should just not worry about the cooking and try something else. So instead he looks for takeout options that are healthier than the places he ordered out from before. He finds a few places he enjoys, and he starts subbing out those healthy options for the unhealthy ones that were his habit before .

  MVPs for Creative Projects

  There’s a particular kind of creator who never finishes projects. I come across them all the time, especially among aspiring authors. They’ve been working on a book for years, rewriting and revising endlessly, perhaps even romanticizing the effort. Many famous authors were compulsive reworkers, after all: you’ll recall from before that Mark Twain spent a decade on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The difference is that, ultimately, guys like Mark Twain knew when to let the baby bird out of the nest, to let the work out into the world to either fly or crash.

  Musicians are not immune. Think Guns and Roses, who famously announced a studio album called Chinese Democracy in the 90s but allowed it to languish in “development Hell” for years, until it became a running joke. By 2000, it was the most expensive album of all time, with the band having racked up $18 million in expenditures by re-recording over and over again, firing personnel, etc. The pressure must’ve been enormous. After sinking that much time and money into an album and spending years and years hyping its eventual release, it would pretty much need to be the best album ever to live up expectations, right? It didn’t drop until 2008, about 20 years after its initial announcement, and the reception was good, but it was not enough to catapult the band into a new era to compete with their earlier work.

  There’s something comforting about having a project, and there’s a sense of safety that comes with keeping it private. If you never push the work out into the world, you can never fail. But taking that step, despite how scary it might be, makes all the difference.

  Breathe: Assumptions are Made to be Wrong

  When you have an idea for a project or a goal, assumptions come with the territory. Often, they’ll be wrong. They won’t be wrong because you’re stupid or because your thinking is wrong—they’ll be wrong because you don’t have all the data yet. Testing your assumptions and recognizing when they need adjusting is how you get that data. So don’t be overly precious or sensitive about your ideas. Often, the real genius idea is somewhere within
the idea as you see it in its infancy. Don’t be worried if your ideas aren’t immediately taking off. And don’t be worried if you have big ideas but few resources to implement them—just think of an MVP you can reach with the resources you do have.

  Focus: Reign in Those Ideas

  There are people who move through life in an average way, and there are people with the capacity for real greatness who never quite launch. For the latter, often the problem is a wealth of ideas and a lack of focus, time, or energy. If you find yourself involved in dozens of ventures at once, you’ll never finish any of them. Likewise, if you’re focused on dozens of ideas pertaining to one project in particular, you’ll be developing that project forever. Instead, try to think about what steps you need to take to move your project to an MVP state. All the inspiration in the world won’t do you any good unless you learn to hone that inspiration and transform it into practical action.

  Attack: Create a Roadmap

  Good business plans have detailed plans of action spread out over months or years—activities to do and goals to meet for Quarter 1, Quarter 2, etc. For your purposes that form of organization may be an awkward fit, but regardless you’ll benefit from thinking of progress in terms of phases and steps. Whatever your current Big Goal is, let’s break it down.

  Phase One: Prework

  Your Phase One goal is to set up the tools you need before you can actually start implementing your MVP. That includes assembling a team, if any, any initial materials or data needed, etc. It’s your pre-work. Don’t get bogged down here .

  Phase One Action Steps:

  ___________________________________

  ___________________________________

  ___________________________________

  ___________________________________

  Phase Two: The MVP

  What do you need to get to the MVP? If you’re selling a physical product, for example, that might just be a prototype, or even mock-ups of the product. It may be a minimally functional version of a website or service. Either way, boil it down to the minimum number of steps needed to get your idea into the world in a way where others can interact with it.

  Phase Two Action Steps:

  ____________________________________

  ____________________________________

  ___________________________________ _

  Phase 3: Acting on Feedback

  You can’t know ahead of time what the specifics here will be, but plan on implementing initial changes early based on what kind of response you get from your MVP. For example, let’s imagine you’re selling clothing online via an e-commerce website, and in your first week everyone buy’s Women’s Clothing but nobody buys Men’s Clothing. In that case, perhaps you’d want to just focus on the Women’s market going forward. So an example action step ahead of time might be something like, “Remove products expected to underperform” or “Expand product line in relation to top sellers during opening week.”

  Phase Three Action Steps:

  ______________________________________

  ______________________________________

  ______________________________________

  ______________________________________

  Beyond these three phases, it’s all up to you. But always plan on having a roadmap ahead of you—this will keep you on task and keep you honest. You’ll know when you’re failing to knock items off of your checklist or when you’re performing ahead of schedule. Always have a plan!

  * * *

  8 . “95% Regain Lost Weight. Or Do they?” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/25/health/95-regain-lost-weight-or-do-they.html

  Chapter Seven :

  Radical Candor

  “Radical Candor” is a bunch of things . It’s a management philosophy, most importantly. But it’s also a brand, a company, a book 9 , and a podcast, all of which support and promote the ideas of Radical Candor. At this point, it’s something of a movement, and the woman at the forefront is its creator, Kim Scott. Scott’s resume is nothing to scoff at. She was a manager at Google, then made faculty at Apple University. She’s been a CEO coach for Twitter and Dropbox. The reason she’s highly sought after by many of the world’s most successful companies is that her methods work, and successful people love things that are successful.

  Scott strives to create “bullshit-free zones” in which feedback is constantly given and received, but in a way in which all team members feel supported and empowered. She puts horrible bosses in the crosshairs. And some of the horrible bosses she most reviles are the nice ones.

  Why do you need to know about Radical Candor? For one, because a lot of you are reading this with business progression in mind. But even for those of you who don’t see managing teams in your future, Radical Candor’s lessons about successful and direct communication translate across all areas of life, assuming you interact with other human beings. The most important summation of the Radical Candor philosophy is this: Care Personally, Criticize Directly. Remember that phrase. Make it a mantra.

  Care Personally, Criticize Directly

  The best thing you can do for your employees is help them be successful. There’s no real debate to be had about this—time and time again, studies reinforce the idea that people value fairness and effectiveness over niceness. Incidentally, this is also true in academic settings. Students rate professors higher who they feel are fair , not necessarily ones who they think are nice . The reason for this is simple: in these roles, you are not there to be the other person’s friend. In an employer-employee relationship, for example, you’re both there to get a job done. That’s the reason you go to work in the morning. You’ve got work to do, and you receive some form of compensation for that work. That doesn’t mean you can’t be friends, and if you can, that’s some nice icing on the cake. But you need to be a boss first, and you need to help them succeed. If they fail and you haven’t tried to stop it, that’s on you. Scott describes a situation where a member of her team at Google was universally liked and respected, but he was basically terrible at his job. His name was Bob. She tried to steer him in the right direction through vaguely praising him when he did things well, but of course that didn’t result in any performance changes. We’ve probably all had Bobs in our lives, great people who didn’t do great work. Eventually, other members of the team were becoming increasingly agitated at the way Bob’s incompetence was affecting their own work. Scott invited Bob out for coffee, and then she fired him. The first words out of his mouth? “Why didn’t you tell me?” Then, a moment later: “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I thought you all cared about me!”

  She’d failed him. In fact, the whole team had failed him. All along, Bob had no way of knowing he wasn’t pulling his weight, so he didn’t change. Why would he? Instead, he got blindsided by losing his job. In Radical Candor terminology, this is referred to as “ruinous empathy.” When you care so much about hurting someone’s feelings that you fail to tell them what they need to hear, that’s ruinous empathy. That’s not being a good boss or a good friend.

  Instead, the Radical Candor way is to provide truthful, direct feedback, and to provide it often. Sometimes it’s going to hurt. (This is sometimes playfully called “front-stabbing.”) But feedback doesn’t have to be negative! Good managers (and employees, for that matter!) should give positive feedback even more than negative. Positive feedback tells people what you value. It’s only affective if it’s specific. “You’re doing a great job lately” is useless and serves only to make someone feel nice. It’s a pat on the head. “It was really helpful how you used visual aids to help make your pitch to the client” is much more specific and gives the employee actionable information, something they can do more often. Likewise, being specific with negative feedback takes the edge off of it. Imagine telling a graphic designer, “this design could use a different color scheme—something brighter” as opposed to “this work isn’t very good.” The former offers some direction, while the latter feels like an indictment of t
he designer’s judgment.

  While Kim Scott was at Google, she often brought her Golden Retriever puppy, Belvedere, to work. Belvedere was loveable but not well-trained, well known for being sweet but a little spoiled. One day, when Kim was walking Belvedere, the pair stopped at a red light. Instead of sitting, the dog suddenly leapt into the road, right in the front of an oncoming taxi. Kim yanked the leash back, and Belvedere narrowly escaped being hit. A passerby approached Kim and said, “I can tell that you really love that dog,” but then added, “But if you don’t teach her to sit, you’re going to get her killed.” Then he looked at Belvedere and in a deep, forceful tone, said “SIT!” The dog sat. The man said, “See? It’s not mean, it’s clear.” 10 Scott’s ruinous empathy towards Belvedere—her love so strong she just couldn’t say no to her—wasn’t doing her any favors. Instead, what Belvedere really need was clear, strong education in addition to care and support .

  Another important note: feedback is always more useful in the moment. Right after something happens, pulling an employee aside for a brief moment of feedback will always work better than saving up that feedback for a later date. That’s how a shocking number of companies do things, especially large corporations that are clumsily trying to implement feedback systems but leaving out the human dynamic. The employee will sit down with the boss a few times a year, and the boss will recite a laundry list of pros and cons about the employee’s performance, and it can all feel very overwhelming and unpleasant. Creating a culture of frequent and casual feedback fosters an openness and a sense of striving for communal goals.

  How to Give a Damn

  Most importantly, when everyone on the team knows they’re cared about and knows that everything’s in service of your larger goals, that feedback doesn’t feel personal. It’s not the employer attacking the employee—it’s both of you attacking the problem.