Shreyas Doshi: evaluation

Transcript context

…problem but it's not an execution problem are there signs that tell you okay we're like dates are slipping people are surprised like of execution problems you have like are there signs that maybe it's one of these other factors Or is your experience like it's almost always one of these other things? So there are some problems that are truly execution problems. So an example of that is say you have infrastructure issues, right? Like your infrastructure is just like old and it can no longer sustain all the usage that you're getting. That will cause execution problems where you'll move slower or you will have outages or high latencies or whatever the case is. Yeah. That's an execution problem. Another such example of what is really an execution problem is you have a skills gap. You have, say, engineers who are not particularly skilled in a certain technology or a certain type of skill that happen to be working in that area. Well, that is going to create execution issues. Or you have a PM who is more of a zero to one person, but now you made them responsible for this scale, mature initiative. So that's a skill gap and that can cause execution problems. So there are very concrete instances where there is a real execution problem. It's just that in high performing institutions, organizations that are growing really fast we ignore the other factors that might be at play right and so now what tells me if something is seemingly an execution problem but not actually an execution problem a surefire way of identifying those is when you put on a band-aid and the band-aid falls So like there are many organizations that are constantly just solving the same problem over and over again, right? Like, oh, we can never get along. Like we can never like get these two teams to work together, right? Like this team is always slow, right? And so you put the bandaid, but the bandaid doesn't work. So an organizational memories tend to be surprisingly short. So we forget three months ago, we put this bandaid and it's no longer working. We just approach it as, oh, let's create a new solution. So voila, there's a new meeting, right? And so that's where that honesty is important and memory is important. And no, no, no, this is a bandaid we put, but the problem still exists. So it's probably not an execution issue. I love that visual of a bandaid falling off. That's okay. So this is a good segue to our fifth and final big idea. Maybe the most mind bending of all your ideas that I want to talk about. And it's about prioritization. And you make this really interesting point that instead of thinking about the highest ROI work you should be doing, which is how I've always thought about it, how I think most PMs think about prioritization. Your point is you should think about it from a minimizing opportunity cost perspective versus ROI perspective. And so I'm excited to hear your take on this and where this idea came from.…

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