Eeke de Milliano: evaluation

Transcript context

…Let's get into it. But, I was just listening to this awesome podcast with Russ Roberts, who's a professor. He hosts EconTalk. I don't know if you listen to it. And he was in interviewing this guy, Ian Leslie, who's this great writer and has just written this article that's... Basically, something along the lines of what it means to be human in the age of AI. And I thought he just articulated this idea well. Which is, we're all really so impressed when we see ChatGPT-3 spit out this piece of writing that feels very human-like. But what we're kind of forgetting is that, over the last 10, 20, 30 years, we're actually asking humans to be a lot more robot-like. In that, we're really asking everyone to standardize in a lot of ways. And we're making people a lot more formulaic. If you think about how we teach people to write, it's like, "Well, there's five paragraphs. And there's your opening paragraph. And you state your topic." So anyway, I think the point is, the more formulaic, the more sort of mass produced you're trying to make something. The more you kind of quench people's creativity, and the further away you get from the really, really high highs. And that, to me, is the cost of process, and rules, and templates. So if you're going to introduce it, be really, really sure that you're okay with that cost. And give folks escape hatches. So I've started referring to this as the MVP, the minimum viable process. So if I give folks a template, I'm like, "Look, use the template. But if you want to break out of it, please absolutely do." And I've started writing this at the top of templates now. It's like, "If this doesn't work for what you're trying to explain, don't use it. But just know that this is the minimum viable thing. We're setting the bar here, but go higher if you can, please." So anyway, that's my sort of long drive on process. With all that said, I do think that companies, there's just a set of documents that are really, really viable. That every sort of level of the organization should have throughout its lifecycle. And then, I think how sort of involved it is, or how long term it is really depends on how big you are. But those documents, to me, are the charter. So, "What is your mission, your vision and your strategy?" The goals, "What are you aiming to do and how are you going to measure success?" And then the roadmap, "What is the thing that you're shipping?" And I think the whole company needs these, the whole function. So in product, you need all three of these. And then, within each team you need all three of these. And I've kind of noticed two things about this framework for myself. One, I've actually noticed that teams often work their way from the bottom-up, versus top-down. They start with a roadmap. They're like, "What are all the things we're going to ship?" Especially early on. And then they kind of work their way into a charter. But I think it's really, really worth it to start from the top-down. y're like, "What are all the things we're going to ship?" Especially early on. And then they kind of work their way into a charter. But I think it's really, really worth it to start from the top-down. And then, the second thing that I've noticed is that your time horizon really shifts as you get more mature. So if you're very early on, you don't have PMF, you should have a charter, but your charter should be like three months in the future. Because you can't look that much further. And if you're a company that's humming and going, your charter is probably... The horizon's maybe a decade.…

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