Tomer Cohen: evaluation

Transcript context

…On the clarity of thought. What I find people to be attached to, especially when you build an environment with a lot of alpha types is that they get attached to being right or wrong and that really creates a lot of lingering in the system, a lot of confusion and they're still stuck to their ideas. And for me, I get attached to clarity and focus. I think that's much more important. That's why I think when I say I don't mind being wrong, it really comes from a humble place. I would rather go forward with everybody in the same direction than necessarily try to hedge all the time, which will give me no chance of success. The way we start, we do this in our product gens right now, is we actually spend some significant time on what is the problem we're trying to solve for, but not high level, not like, hey, we want to launch this product, we want to launch a video product. It's exactly what type of video you're trying to launch for which audience, what is your unique criteria, what are you trying, what is very nuanced about what you're trying to solve for? Ideally, once the time you see the problem, you know exactly the problem you're trying, you actually can imagine that mountain. It's not just a mountain, you can see exactly the road, you can see exactly the end of the base camp. But then when you move to solution, I love solutions that are based on first principles. That they have, there's a principle thinking about it, there's opinions about it. If you talk to folks who work with me, they'll tell you, I push a lot for what is actually your opinion, what is your potentially controversial opinion and the best principles have teeth. So saying that we should build a simple product for me is useless. Who doesn't want to build a simple product? But saying that I'm willing to sacrifice or trade off this, that's where I get excited. I'm like, okay, that's a very strong opinion. Let's go into that. Why were you willing to trade off those type of vectors to make it happen? And one thing that I saw also in clarity of thought was this, is I came to the US in 2008, I came from Israel. Our hobby in Israel is to argue. So we argue a lot, it's our love language in many ways. And I come to the US and I notice people say a lot like I don't exactly understand or I'm not exactly clear on this, and it took me a long time to realize they're actually disagreeing. They're just masking it with a layer of misunderstanding and a good mentor of mine said, "Hey, just push back. Are you disagreeing or misunderstanding? If you're misunderstanding, let's spend the night. Let's get to a point where you can articulate my point of view in your words and I can do the same, but if we're disagreeing, let's stop. Why are we spending? Why wasting time just arguing it through?" So those became really powerful. articulate my point of view in your words and I can do the same, but if we're disagreeing, let's stop. Why are we spending? Why wasting time just arguing it through? " So those became really powerful. That's on the clarity of thought, clarity of execution is even more important because many organizations actually reach a decision, they don't act on it, which it's one of those shocking things. They decide this is a top priority, but it doesn't make its way into the organization. And I'll give you an example. Somebody will say, "Hey, my top priority for my business is this initiative." And then I'll say, "But most of your engineers are working on this migration." And they'll say, "Yeah, we have to finish that." I'm like, "So why don't you say the migration is my number one priority?" It's like, "Yeah." It's like, but that's exactly what you're doing. You have to make sure that what you're sharing as a priority is actually manifested in your resourcing. Then I'm like, "Hey, this is your top talent. Why is your top talent working on some moonshots that are not in your number one priority?" And they're like, "Yeah." This is where you start finding that really it doesn't really translate into execution as well and you can solve so much by just making that sure that focus is there. So the big lesson here is to push for clarity and push out anything that is unclear, confusion either in thought and also in execution. One of the folks that I talked to that worked with you about this phrase, Josh Redfern, he said that this phrase became really liberating for him, which is really interesting to hear because it forces you to make a call and to be aligned and make sure everyone is on the same page. I guess thoughts on just why this concept is so liberating.…

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