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downshift 🫴🪵🔥
@downshift.eth
besides company-building, i think project management might be the highest-leverage skill it’s upstream of being really good at prompting, programming, product, writing etc.
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manansh
@manansh
where does product strategy fit in this for you?
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downshift 🫴🪵🔥
@downshift.eth
great question...i think a great product strategy is probably downstream of great research and data etc.? (which themselves required great project management) and ~upstream of product management + engineering my thesis is basically that good project management is required to manage a lot of information and game pieces effectively, so it's a catalyst for doing other things really well + on a larger/more ambitious, complex scale
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manansh
@manansh
Yes! I agree. I think good research and good intuitions about why you need a product strategy to begin with is probably a really good place to start. And then once you have a river worth building a dam around, well, then it's time for project management. Right?
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downshift 🫴🪵🔥
@downshift.eth
totally agree. “intuitions” is what sticks out to me here…maybe under-discussed in business, and very hard to pin down (imo) how does one develop good intuitions? how do you know if they are good?
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manansh
@manansh
I think it's really interesting why people don't really talk about intuitions. Honestly, I think it's because they're hard to verify. In the sense that if someone has an intuition, you can't really know if it's true unless you follow it. And that requires a lot of trust, which creates a lot of fear within teams. So it's really like, how willing are you to trust a feeling you or someone else has? So to me, it is less about developing good intuitions and more about trusting the intuitions you already have to the extent that they actually start becoming useful. I feel that everyone already has intuitions about things otherwise they wouldn't be thinking about a specific problem or business to begin with. It's just a matter of -> are they willing to trust it enough to run an experiment and see what happens? How do you think about this?
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downshift 🫴🪵🔥
@downshift.eth
you are spot-on about trust; i think the only way this works with a team is if the founder/leader is a great storyteller, and/or has a track record of success (unfortunately, both are lossy indicators...) i think intuition is largely subconscious (gut feel) and primarily develops around individuals' passions (most folks won't get the necessary reps or the long-term retention required unless they deeply care about the topic[s] at hand). the reasoning can be hard to explain; folks who lack deep intuitions will superficially copy those who do without knowing necessarily why (works sometimes, often not — see: tiny startups copying Google's tech choices when that makes no sense at small scales) at the end of the day, it's all risk-taking/placing bets. sometimes research is better than gut, sometimes research is hard/impossible and you have to rely on the intangibles to make decisions. folks with great senses are best served doing their own projects or founding/leading
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manansh
@manansh
Yes, a charismatic leader has this ability to create a movement that creates enough "gravity" to attract people and to keep them within orbit, which is why I think conviction + storytelling is so powerful. And I agree, Intuition, to a large extent, is completely subconscious but I feel that it not only develops around passions but also develops around certain neuroses or fears as well. I think it's a combination of the two. (my hypothesis is that a lot of founders become founders as a way to feel loved) I feel that intuitive people have very good discernment (I really like your point about copying). And if you can discern, you'll know when you're copying vs walking your own path +1 on risk-taking and placing bets. I view it as collecting stepping stones on your journey to finding treasure. And people who have the mental fortitude and composure to collect stepping stones eventually come across something interesting or great.
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