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Hi, Iâm Greg đ! I publish this newsletter on finding data products and interesting data observations with the goal of finding patterns and future product insights. (Also, itâs fun.) If you need a background on how we got here, check out What is Data Operations?
This weekâs toy:Â a blast from the past: the return of something that looks a lot like Hypercard. Whoâd have thought that Apple built things in the 1980s that would be very similar to the component-driven app editing of today? They were clearly way ahead of their time. Watch what theyâre doing today if you want to imagine the future. Edition No. 73 of this newsletter is here - itâs December 20, 2021.
The Big Idea
A short long-form essay about data things
âď¸ Build Rules Before Applications
Go ahead. Search in Google right now, something like âHow do I <do a popular business process> in <prominent CRM system>. Thereâs a lot to find about how to build whatever you want in that CRM system (you know the name), and not very much on how to solve the underlying process so that you can implement it in almost any system.
Except that your job as a Sales Operations (or Revenue Operations, or Marketing Operations, or Customer Operations) is not to be an expert at any one system. Itâs to be an expert in solving problems. Learning how to use and configure the system(s) you need to solve business problems is table stakes for your real role: being a trusted partner to the business.
What does that mean, exactly? It means understanding the unit costs of the business, the input metrics and output metrics that people care about, and then organizing your daily efforts into a thesis that helps other people know what you care about and why. You will be more valuable to yourself and to your business when you think more about the business process than how to implement it in any one system. The latter is necessary but not sufficient.
Your Co-workers are Not đ§ Mind Readers
Youâve probably had this thought before. âWhy doesnât my team support me? Iâm working so hard to get things done and Iâve made great progress. If they only knew everything that I was doing, surely they would be impressed.â Think along with me for a moment. If you havenât told your teammates what youâre doing, and you havenât written it down, and you havenât spent much time with them in person, the chances that they know what you think are near zero.
Dr. John Gottman, in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, found in long-term committed relationships, approximately 69% of the problems in a relationship are unsolvable. That doesnât mean there will always be negative emotion in every interaction, but what it does signify is that is very hard to be truly understood in relationships. If you only agree with your spouse or partner about 1/3 of the time, itâs pretty clear you need to overcommunicate with your work team. Time to get to work.
Building Better Rules
With this disconnect in mind, how do you build a series of rules to define your business logic so that when you purchase <prominent CRM system>, you adapt your preferred business rules to that system instead of the other way around?
To paraphrase Stephen Covey, âstart with the end in mind.â
For the project at hand:
What is the list of things to be done?
How are you going to know that someone (or some process) is doing them?
What will tell you that a thing is done?
A set of rules is a mental model for how you are approaching a task, what your goals are, and when you will complete it. Your co-workers donât know how you are going to solve the problem, what problem youâre solving, and how youâre going to do it. So write it down.
A 30 minute Hack for Better Rules
Required tools
An Egg Timer Ⲡ(âHey Siri, create a 30 minute timerâ works too)
An open Google Docs document (if you prefer, pen and paper is fine)
Sitting in one place and writing what you think other people need to know (this one is the hardest, and I guarantee you will feel better after you do this)
PROCEDURE:
Write one or two paragraphs on the project. What is the simplest, most jargon-free way to describe what needs to be done? Next, explain the stages of the project as a numbered list of tasks. This is what needs to happen in order. Once you know whatâs going to happen, and a rough order of tasks, itâs easier to answer the more challenging parts of this brief.
What could possibly go wrong? This might take the form of asking the open questions that havenât been answered yet. It might be whatever is in your head that you are worried about and havenât solved. Write it down so that other people will see what you are thinking.
Finally, make sure to point out a general timeline with resources, indicating if you think you are stuck or where you need help. After youâve done this, take an editing pass and remove some words so this is easier to read.
Your Co-workers are Not have become đ§ Mind Readers
Amazing. With the simple step of recording your thoughts on what the project is, what needs to be done, and how youâre planning to approach it, youâve made your team into a bunch of mind readers. Well, not yet. What youâve done is made it easy for them to have a discussion with you on how you are approaching the rules and where they agree and disagree.
Now, youâre ready to implement your business process in that well-known CRM (or any other operations system). Stating your inputs, the desired outputs, and the philosophy of how you want to get there makes it much more likely that you will retain your original business design even if that SaaS considers the problem differently than your idea. Is it perfect? Nope. But it does solve the initial problem that no one knows what you are thinking.
Whatâs the takeaway? Writing a simple process moves the discussion around a project from âno one knows what Iâm thinkingâ to âletâs have a discussion about *some problem* - hereâs what Iâm thinking - whenâs good to chat?â Stating the assumptions also makes it easier for team members to get oriented quickly and to share relevant feedback in a low-emotion format.
A Thread from This Week
A Twitter thread to dive into a topic
From one of the chief researchers of COVID19 at Fred Hutchison in Seattle, hereâs a thread from @trvrb on what might happen with the latest COVID variant:
Links for Reading and Sharing
These are links that caught my đ
1/ đĽłđđ - Which were the most-used smileys in 2021? If you break down the category, it looks like this:
Jennifer Daniel helpfully shares the data on the most used emoji reactions in 2021. Smileys are far and away the most used of all emoji, and it hasnât changed that much since 2019.
2/Â Digital goods people might want -Â A constant in software has often been: build the digital version of what people want and do already. Linda Zhang has some excellent suggestions on how to create digital scarcity for concertgoers. Collectibles, Zhang argues, are a way to reinforce the value of in-person experiences and are more âstickyâ than the value offered by NFTs or digital collectibles with no real-world counterpart.
3/Â Remove friction from products -Â what if you could make authoring a website as easy as writing some notes on a piece of paper. The Paper Website project is exactly about that effort: how to digitize notes and make into digital documents.
Most good products start with a silly idea. Itâs neat to think about making web documentation a lot easier and starting with handwriting.
On the Reading/Watching List
Some things to watch or read, in no particular order
Watching: A game demo from the team that built the Matrix Awakens. Iâm not an avid gamer these days, and whatâs interesting to me is the fidelity of what can be done in a real-time game demo. This is not quite game play, but is a clear roadmap to something that is not real-time and also doesnât look like any games weâve ever seen before (except for the heads-up display to tell your brain where to focus).
Reading: Whatâs next for books, particularly in non-fiction writing? Andy Matuschek makes the case that we need to update the âBookâ and to rethink it. Books, Matuschek argues, donât do a good enough job of catching and keeping the readerâs attention. Because you donât learn by reading alone, if the goal of reading is to produce learning that you apply, books donât do it without some help. What if the actual solution is books plus some other reinforcement (e.g. a book group of sorts, and sourced by people who are in your domain area) there are interesting possibilities for multi-player learning.
What to do next
Hit reply if youâve got links to share, data stories, or want to say hello.
Iâm grateful you read this far. Thank you. If you found this useful, consider sharing with a friend.
Want more essays? Read on Data Operations or other writings at gregmeyer.com.
The next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a âtoy.â -Â Chris Dixon