As Nike (sort of) says, Just F***ing Do it
The one consistent piece of feedback I’ve always gotten throughout my career is “think 20% less, just do it.”
While I have been able to make marginal improvements over time (I might be told to think 19.78% less now…), it’s something I actively fight against in my daily work life.
We are at a very interesting time in our company - more on this in a later post - where we are effectively running a start-up within the broader business. This little start-up is a small nucleus of insanely smart, proven Tech, Product & Ops leaders that have been brought in to create an entirely new category within the property sector. Our mandate is both large (Blackstone is our key strategic investor…) and undefined.
Perfect for an overthinker like myself.
On the one hand, we have a proven, stable, highly regulated and consistently profitable business with hundreds of employees around the world - they keep the lights on. On the other hand, we have an enormous white space at our fingertips, led by a strong thesis but filled with an infinite number of unknown unknowns. Today, we are one of the primary cost centers of business but if built correctly, we will unlock massive value for our customers, employees and investors.
My team is in charge of ‘Growth’: we oversee market expansion, new product development and all GTM strategies for the white space universe in which we are living. Like more traditional growth roles in the tech industry, we are leading all discovery work from a product-led (vs sales led) angle and helping to steer the direction of travel as it relates to our end state.
Each day, my team and I oscillate between peeling back the historical layers that underpin our core business and defining the who/what/what/how of our future state. I personally flip between tactical topics and big picture thinking, all the while trying to build scalable frameworks and glean actionable insights that will get us just a bit closer to solving the puzzle in front of us.
If you don’t take a minute to raise your head to see the forest through the trees, you will literally drown in details (trust me on this, I had to learn the hard way) and forget there is a bigger mission at play. If you only think about the future state, you will miss critical details that are necessary to building solutions that can scale and actually solve real customer pain points.
Writing this now, it’s a perfect encapsulation of organized chaos. Figuring out how to balance those two things simultaneously is hard to master (if ‘masterable’, at all…) but can also be absolutely paralysing.
This is where you need to remember to Think Less. Especially if you are any combination of curious, high achieving, perfectionist, or Type A, this is where you will fall victim to over-intellectualising. Why do we do this and what’s the counter argument?
We need to have a full picture of the pros and cons before making an informed decision - if the blueprint isn’t clear, we view the decision taken as sloppy. Said another way, we will be embarrassed if we present a plan that is half-baked.
Educated guesses are how all the best inventions were made. Get comfortable with not knowing everything. To steal one of the greatest quotes of all time, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
We place an outsized amount of value on knowledge: the more you know, the [smarter, better, richer] you will be.
Knowledge is power but only if actioned. Don’t let timely, clever, insightful findings collect dust in your brain.
We make things more complicated because it’s a subconscious way to create a challenge to overcome (you can thank the thousands of dollars I have spent on therapy for that little nugget of gold)
Not everything has to be hard. Don’t overcomplicate something just to create more work, or propel the illusion that complexity = value. Simplicity is actually the hardest thing in the world.
So how do we actively combat this? Be clinical.
Start with the what not the how: don’t boil the ocean by mapping out everything thing that needs to happen to get to your final goal. Identify the end state (the what) and work backwards (the how).
Define the known unknowns and get as smart as you can in calling out the areas where you simply don’t have conviction. Get comfortable with calculated risk.
Identify which doors are one-way (permanent decisions) and two-way (reversible decision) doors. Move fast towards all two-way options.
Note to self: I need to do an entirely separate post on this.
Figure out what the top three most important questions are to answer and the top three risks you need to unearth. Put all your energy towards that and figure out the rest later.
Just start. That’s it.
The big difference in the world isn’t the people who do a lot versus a little, it’s those that do something versus nothing.
