Hello friends, this is the alphalist podcast, I am your host Toby. The goal of the alphalist podcast is to empower CTOs with the info and insight they need to make the best decisions for their company. We do this by hosting top-fought leaders and picking their brains for insights into technical leadership and tech trends. If you believe in the power of accumulated knowledge to
accelerate growth, make sure to subscribe to this podcast. Plus, if you're an experienced CTO, you will laugh the discussion happening in our slack space where over 600 CTOs are sharing insights or visit one of our events. Just go to alphalist.com to apply. I want to shout out to Pentalog for sponsoring this episode. Pentalog is a worldwide consulting group and IT consulting and just to thank them properly for sponsoring I have with me Cornel
and Cornel is the chief platform officer working at Pentalog. Cornel, what do you do every day? So as chief love roost, Pentalog I'm in charge with products and technology aspects of the group. Group that was acquired by Globans, so some activities are shifting. But my day to day now, I'm involved in the integration in the group and I'm more and more involved in technology office for the Friendsport Folio. And you come up with very cool topics such as the definition of
the ideal CTO and you try to help CTOs to become better CTOs. What do we have to know about that? So first of all, we didn't want to do that. We had to because in a sense, in our journey to better satisfy our customers because we essentially offered teams for our customers. We had to be careful of the way we work with these CTOs or CIOs and what they live behind because when they leave their companies, we are still there and the new CTO, the new CIO is going to be either very
happy, either not that happy. So we had to create structures and new philosophy, methods, tools that help these people in a sense do a better job. Okay, I can imagine what kind of tools that those are, where can we understand more about them, like how can we consume that? So we already have lots of content about the CTO role on our site, pentalo.com. You can search there, search for CTO and there are videos and you will find ideal CTO, CTO strategy,
CTO tactics, better CTO decision-making, technical, that and so forth. So many episodes like this, there are currently two seasons and there are also CTO talks where we take our vision and we stress it with real world life experiences. We invite CTOs and we say, hey, this is our vision. We ask you the same questions and just tell us if you do it, if you like it, if you consider it, well,
how you do it in your own the trenches. So you have this two aspects, the idealistic view, what seems to be idealistic, the metaphor of the ideal CTO and then there are real implementations from the trenches and all the answers are always different, so very interesting. Okay, and from your perspective, what is the most important thing that most CTOs could do better? Knowing what good means, so this is, it might sound not at obvious, but we rarely know what good
means in this industry. Every domain is large enough, cybersecurity, data, DevOps, development of course, product management in business, e-commerce, lots of domains. So what does it mean to be good with your product in cybersecurity? And that's very hard to know. Now we have methodologies, frameworks and things like this, but it's very difficult to put that in your context for the product. So that's one of the aspects. Knowing what good means, knowing what almost good
means, very good or insufficient. On our own language, we developed a set of tools that our customers leverage out of the box just by working with our teams. We call them opportunity models. I don't know if that's the moment to talk more about it, but yeah, that's the differentiator. No one in the industry seems to have this and very, very appreciated.
Okay, that sounds really cool. And I think like the next step for every CTO listening, who wants to become better is to check out pantalog.com search for CTO or just come to one of our joint events where pantalog is also there and Cornell will be there and to talk in person, which is always like the best form of communication these days. So Cornell, thanks a lot and hope to see you soon. Thank you. See you soon. Welcome to the Alphalus podcast. I'm your host,
Toby. And today with me is Bob Mester, who's, let's say a popular guy in the product world. He is a teacher, builder, entrepreneur, co-founder of the WeWired group, a design firm in Detroit, Michigan. And he developed and launched over 3,500 products, really. And sold everything from design to services to software in house consumer electronics, like everything. What didn't you sell? What didn't you do? Yeah. What's very interesting is there was a couple
of categories I hadn't worked in like insurance. And in the last couple of years, I've been able to work in kind of just about every category. So I'm not sure I can think of a category I have not worked in, to be honest. I'm sure somebody can find one, but at some point I don't know of one. And you also, you're the co-author of the jobs to be done framework?
Yeah. I co-architected it with Clay Christensen and some other people. And basically in the early 90s, we basically came up with the idea and used it as a method in a tool and Clay helped turn it into kind of a theory in around 2010 to 2016 when he wrote the book, Competing Against Luck. And you're good friends with the basecamp guys and also consulting them, etc. So like a lot of
overlaps. And the funniest overlap is just that I, I yesterday had a podcast recording with Melissa Perry who wrote, escaping the build trap and your book is called, one of your books is called Learning to Build. Yeah. Well, I think the reason is that there's a pendulum, right? There's a lot of people who don't, my book is really about how I learned how to build. I was, you know, I'm dyslexic and
and I was told to be a construction worker or a bag of handler at the airport. And ultimately I was befriended and basically mentored by some really amazing people who poured their knowledge into me to learn how to build. So I've worked on like I said, over 3,500 different products and services, everything from the Patriot, missile guidance system to Pokemon Mac and cheese and just about everything in between. And so, and to be honest, it's my curiosity that really has been driven to me,
but what really helped me was learning methods and tools of how to build. And so it's, I think there is a build trap for sure. I think people, they don't learn enough around it. And so I don't think there, I think they're very complimentary ideas as opposed to actually opposite ideas.
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think like Melissa's book is about something, something totally different and about a problem that many CTOs are facing that they like continue or start building and instead of thinking about it first and thinking about the problem space, which is really
important and which is also something that you guys teach, right? That's right. That's really what jobs we've done is about is being able to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and understand your consumer and your customer, which are sometimes two completely different people, right? The buyer and the user are very different. And so being able to understand kind of their lives
and understand what's important to them as opposed to trying to convince them about things. And what I learned is as an engineering school, so I have an undergrad in electrical engineering and then a mechanical and chemical masters. And so I've been loving to build forever. But what I realized is that the lie I was told when I went through engineering school was build it and they will come.
It's just a lie. It doesn't happen. Well, it's, I guess it sometimes works, but in most cases, what happens is I build something and then I got to go find of the eight billion people in the world who needs it, right? Where what I do is I actually do it the exact opposite way. I go find people with very specific problems that they need to have solved and then I go develop product for that. And so it's a very different, it's almost like a reverse lens of it and said, boy, what can I build?
It's like, who needs something and then what can I build? It's essentially like, product discovery, right? Really understanding like the first customer group who are they persona and then? Well, it's more than that because here's the thing is that at some point, products are actually services. They have to work through space and time. And so what
we have to do is it's not about a persona. It's not just about who, right? That's what I have a problem with personas is they just tell me who, but it doesn't tell me about when, where, and why. And most of the time what they do is they tell me about their usual behavior, but typically for people to do something new, they have to change their behavior. So how do these people handle change as opposed to what do they do on a regular basis? So you start to realize personas are actually not
rich enough for me to actually design better product. That's why jobs we've done was kind of created is I kept getting a lot of information of who, but then I'd have to guess a whole bunch of other information that wasn't right. I was wrong. And how do you get from the understanding the problem space, understanding your target group to the actual change? To the change? Yeah. Yeah. So what's so interesting is this is that if you really study what causes somebody to buy
something new. So this is not about what causes somebody to buy the same thing over and over again. It's like, what causes somebody to say, today's the day I need a new mattress. Today's the day I need a new CRM. It's not random. It's very much caused. And you can actually start to see patterns of things that people have to have happened to them to enable them to say, I need something new. And so part of it is the first thing I would say is the struggling moment is the seed for all
innovation. If your customers not struggling with something, then they can't even see something new. So we have to be able to figure out what are they struggling with. So that's where we start. And then what happens is we basically then understand how do they go about figuring out how to buy something new, which is very different than how they use something on an ongoing basis today.
And so it's a very different process. And so I actually went and learned criminal and intelligence interrogation methods to interview because most people lie to themselves about why they do stuff. Right? It's crazy. And so you start to realize you have to understand that kind of stuff.
You have to actually, so the way I talk about it is most people get afraid when I talk about interviewing them, but it feels like therapy because most people haven't connected the dots of what happened in their lives to say today's the day I needed a new coat rack. What was so interesting is I did an interview a couple of weeks ago and it took somebody 18 months to basically think about and finally purchase a coat rack from Amazon for $137. 18 months.
And you start to go, well, why do you take so long? Well, part of it is things had to happen to them to make them ready to buy it. And that's the part of the part. Point is, as we understand that, we understand the causation, we then can understand how to design and develop better product. So if you ask my wife, I'm always ready to buy everything straight away. Is that a personal problem? No, so what I can tell you is one of the reasons why is because you have very little anxiety force.
You don't actually, you're not worried about the consequence of buying something and not working, but you're actually very thirsty to make progress and to the point where you're actually buying things that won't work. It doesn't bother you, but it bothers your wife tremendously. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right? And so part of it is the framework helps us explain your behavior. That's the whole point is that I can explain people's behavior. The other interesting part is people
say, well, there's an impulse buys. And when you start to really study them, there is no such thing as an impulse buy. They just didn't plan to buy it. So consumers call it impulse, but when you actually look at what's happened to them and what they're hoping for. So that's the other part of this is it's not just about the problem. And it's not just about the outcome. It's about the two of them together. It's the context and the outcome together that determines the value, the progress
they're trying to make. And that's where we start. And if we can actually understand where people want to make progress and then insert products into those moments, it's way easier to develop. It's actually way more accepted and it grows way faster. So do you think people actually, like if you have that group of people that thinks about buying something, do you think those people are actually searching for the problem they have? So here's the thing is that what I will
tell you is I never talk to people who, for example, I built houses, right? I would never talk to people who wanted to buy a house because at some point they would tell me they wanted everything and they wanted everything for free. They had no chance to value it. So what I did is I went and interviewed people who bought houses. What did they make trade-offs on? They all wanted this but they actually bought something else. And by understanding how they went through the buying process,
then I could actually help the people who hadn't bought yet. But most people go and talk to the people who want to buy a house and then they build that and nobody, nobody ends up buying it. Because we're talking about the future and we're talking about nobody knows what we're going to have for lunch next Thursday. Though I could do a survey that said 37% of the people want a chicken sandwich to say, oh, we should have a chicken sandwich for lunch. But the rail is like, we're just
still guessing. But if I talk to people who bought a house, it's now a fact. They already bought the house. What in the world had to happen to them to say today's today that they would leave one house and move to a new house? It's not random. And so this is where I'm applying my curiosity as an engineer to behavior and understanding behavior. And what you start to realize is people are irrational. But in context, right? But typically when we see something irrational, it means we don't have
the whole story. Most people behave rationally. But it's because they see the world in a different way. And so what happens is, you know, context makes the irrational rational. And so typically, when you hear somebody do something that's irrational, you need to actually then understand, you don't understand their context well enough. And you're missing something from their story. And that's the key to being able to understand, understand what products we should be building.
Because a lot of times they'll say contradictory things. And ultimately, it represents a trade-off they have to make. And we need to understand those trade-offs. And, well, maybe one example, like also a person who won again, like downstairs in my company, I just have a box with a new espresso machine that I just bought. My wife hates me for that, I think. I had one for 13 years. I love it. It's fairly expensive. And I already had a fairly expensive
one, which was 10 years old. So you could say written off. And maybe it was an irrational purchase. I'm not sure. But like, if you ask me today, what was important for me to buy it? It was actually like, yes, I wanted a new one. Plus, I wanted a more silent one. And I wanted an energy saving one, which because I think it's just like, yep. And so this is where I was saying, this is the lies you're
telling yourself of how you justify it to other people. But that's not really. So the thing is, and now that you're on the other side, so through time and space, you're on the other side of buying it, you then make up the story of why you bought it. And what we try to do is understand,
let's go back in time and understand what you knew when and why you did it. And what you start to realize is it's about certain things coming together of, for example, the old espresso machine, either getting louder or being too loud because all of a sudden there's more Zoom calls. Right. And so all of a sudden, it's like, you know, I can hear the, you know, I don't, I could interview you about this if you want, but it will take about 40 minutes. But it's about really
interrogating you to say what in the world was going on? Because the old espresso machine worked, right? It was just very loud. But yeah, in the mornings, I wake up earlier than my kids at, let's say, 530 or something. And I tend to wake up my kids with, like, through making an espresso in the kitchen. So I think that's reality, yeah, or more of reality. So that so ultimately, so ultimately when you bought it the first time you didn't have children, you weren't thinking
about kids, you didn't care about how loud it was. And now the fact is is the loud espresso machine wakes up the rest of the house and you didn't buy it for better coffee. You bought it so you could actually not make up the house while you got espresso. Let's say on the way to purchase, I also learned much more about like making perfect espresso. And then I also know that the the one I get out of that new machine is much better. It's better. It's better. So now, so now you're piling out.
So part of this, but this is where you could say it, at the moment you bought it, it might have been of impulse, but you had been researching it for a long time. And you had been thinking about it for a long time. Roughly two years, potentially, yeah. Yes. Exactly. And so this is where we have to look at the entire journey because at some point in time, I've got to be able to understand how
how to get in your way and help you along the way with the process. And at the same time, how do I understand the trade-offs you're willing to make in order again, what are you willing to pay more for? What are you willing to pay less for? Ultimately, to say today's the day I'm going to buy a new espresso machine. It's not random. It's just not. And so these are the these are the things as a
technical person for me to understand these situations. It does three things. One is it gives me common language that when we talk about what the customers means, marketing, sales, and product, all have the same definition of what customers mean by the language, which is critical. Right? That's the first thing. The second thing is now we actually start to translate those those what they want into what are the outcomes that they want and what are the metrics we need to
put around it to know that they're making that progress. So it's not just about the output of creating a good coffee. It's about making sure I create a good coffee with a decibel level that's below this amount. Right? Because that's part of the the job that you're trying to get done, which is I want a good great coffee and with little noise. And I'm willing to pay more for it.
Right? So and then third is the trade-offs that the customers willing to make get translated into the product as opposed to us making the trade-offs because we run out of time. Right? We end up making trade-offs on the product only because we run out of time. And if we actually match them to the trade-offs, the customers actually will be willing to make and to be honest, not like I'm willing to have a little bit less perfect coffee for a lot more less noise.
And shorter heat up time. So this is where I obviously... Well, heat up time. So all of a sudden, there's trade-offs you're willing to make up. And that's what we're trying to figure out is how do we actually look at those things and understand what of those trade-offs we could make because we frame the problem differently as engineers. To me, what's interesting is most people think that we hire engineers because they're supposed to
have the answer. But we don't have the answer. We have to actually find the answer. We have to be good at finding answers. And that's really what we want to make sure that our engineers have is the right context so they can actually search in the right areas so we don't have to fix the product all the time. Okay. Let's stay with my example. Where does the total addressable market come into play?
Like, let's say you're in this press-a-machine company from Italy and you want to produce the perfect espresso machine and now you're here from a few folks and through your interview and technique, what the problem is really and then you try to solve that problem. How do you
make sure you have a proper time? Yeah. So I think TAM is actually more set up from the supply side and the way they calculate TAM, I mean, I've just actually came from a private equity conference where they talked about TAM and SAM and all these different things and the reality is the way I think about it is what's the serviceable market, right? Not the total addressable market but the
serviceable market and that means how many people are really struggling? So I could actually count the number of households that could have espresso machines and say these are all the possible people could have espresso. But ultimately, what are the things that have to happen to them to pull
espresso into their lives? That actually makes it more real in terms of that number and so you start to realize that at some point not everybody needs a new payroll system but people who have had these kinds of things happen to them need new payroll systems and so I can actually talk more about the the true serviceable market as opposed to the total addressable market. Tired of stifting through countless resumes and struggling to find the right tech talent?
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If you want to try it out, visit link.alphalist.com-slashwork. And how can I apply it? Obviously, you're like your pro, you did it like 30 times, with 3500 times, sorry. I've done it a few more. I've done so many interviews. How can anyone apply it? I think the first thing is to actually take a moment to take a step back to understand the core question that if you could understand the answer to it, it would answer
and unlock a lot of the other questions. Again, what causes somebody to say, today's the day they need a new CRM? If I can answer that, I might be able to answer a lot more questions. And so first of all, what we do is we actually spend time trying to frame the question the right way, that it's large enough and that it's almost like what I talk about is, doesn't have any hypotheses. It's more about like this, I know, for example, people bought a new
mattress, but I have no idea why. Let me actually then hear their stories and build hypotheses from it. So I call it hypothesis building research as opposed to hypothesis proving research. Most of the research I was taught was the scientific method of creating a hypothesis and then testing it. But the reality is, what do you do when you're not smart enough to even form a hypothesis? And so part of it is framing the right question. The other part is then basically studying.
And the only key framework I would talk about is this framework called the forces of progress and that there has to be, there's four forces that are involved in helping people change. There's a push of the situation, something about the current situation that causes them to say what they're doing is not going to work. And we need to understand that. And then there's an outcome, basically a pull of the new solution, which is the thing that the outcome that they're hoping for,
that they can't do today, that would actually help them make progress. And those are the two fuel forces. And then there's two frictional forces. One is the anxiety of the new of, you know, how do you use it? How am I going to pay for it? What do I do with the old one? All the anxieties about putting something new in. And then there's another force of the habit of the present, which is
the stuff that they already have in place. And ultimately, are hard to change. And so you start to realize if the push and the pull are not greater than the habit and the anxiety, you can't actually change. And so by studying these people and studying people who've bought houses or have bought CRMs or have bought different your product and understanding when did they know what? Because it's not about just when they bought it. It's like when did they have the first thought?
When did they passively look? How did they actively look? What decisions did they make and what trade-offs did they have to make? Ultimately, how did they decide? By understanding that journey and the forces that play, that's how you end up doing. And so I know it sounds a little complicated, but the reality is ultimately you're trying to understand what causes people to say today's the day they need something new. So it actually reminds me a bit of the Eda model, I guess, you know it,
right? Awareness and trust desire and action from marketing. Yeah, okay. You're a year essentially. Yep. But you have to think it through. Well, and this is where this is, yeah, so it's, I would say it's their parallel kind of concepts, because mine is like at some point, we have to be, there are people are problem aware and solution unaware. And then they become problem aware, and they actually have a refinement of the problem. So it's almost like a P2 problem 2, and then
they have a solution set. And then ultimately they have to make trade-offs to pick one because not everyone is exactly alike, and they're not, they have to match it to their situation. So they have to match the context and outcome to the product. And so ultimately it's about putting all those things together. So I think of it as set theory. And what are the sets of things that have to happen? And what are the sets of things the product has to have to map together? And what are
the other building blocks of of of jobs to be done? Is that like the essential one or? Yeah, so the essential one is the forces, and the other one is called the timeline, which is the passive looking, first thought passive looking active looking deciding first use and ongoing use. And that's about how people go from one habit to another habit. And it's ultimately,
how do we actually understand how people want to buy? So instead of deciding what our sales process is, what we've been doing is helping people think about it is how do people buy, and how do we map the sales process to how people want to buy as opposed to how do we want to sell? It's an engineer's approach to the whole thing. You know, I thought it's like, you got to
remember, I'm an engineer trying to make sense of marketing and sales. So yeah, I can also imagine that this worked out quite well for Jason Fried and Ryan Singer, etc. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think they are a great example because they are a bootstrapped Saz, really like founder operated, is that a client group that you often have or like a peer group you obviously?
We've done, we do everything from bootstrap to basically, you know, kind of angel, angel led, I do tech stars and my combinator, so I do some of that kind of stuff as well. But then we will help people in series A, series B, and then sometimes we help big corporations as well. Right? So it's, it's, and in most cases, this is, this is that applied in many, many different, you know, almost every different vertical that you can imagine we've applied it in. I mean,
what was the most unexpected application of the framework you have seen? Yeah, so I think it was, it was a few years ago and I was doing some work for Clay and we were, we were looking at, he was a, he was a, he's Mormon and one of the things we were doing is what caused people to
join the Mormon church and leave the Mormon church? And what you started to realize is some of the competitors to organize religion were things like soul cycle and crossfit and that people would you, you know, they basically said, well, you know, I went there because, you know, I wanted, I needed to build a stronger sense of myself. I wanted to help others like all of a sudden you started to realize that on Sundays, they'd instead of going to church, they could have cost it.
You start to realize that they compete with each other, right? And so in some cases, you start to realize like, okay, like, well, that's very interesting, but at some point when somebody wants to get married or somebody passes away, like CrossFit can't help you. And so you start to realize that religion has basically done a lot of different things for a long time and the, and it's almost like specialized things have been coming in to actually steal the attention to other
places. It's very interesting, but it was, I didn't even think of applying it. So in front of every church of Scientology, you find, you find a CrossFit ad these days then. That's right. Maybe you should. That's right. Okay. That's right. That's interesting. What's like implementing it actually? Like, would it be like, would you recommend to read the book or? Yeah. So, so I think there's there's a there's a there's a there's a learning to build is just
about the five skills. What I did is I kind of looked at, you know, I'd work with so many people and I had such great mentors and I had learned so many different things that I kind of took like the the top one percent or five percent of the people that I work with who are just amazing innovators and say, what did they know that these other people didn't know? And so it's really distilling that down. And so it kind of goes through what are those skills and one of them is called uncovering
demand where we talk about it. But there's another book I wrote called Demand Side Sales and that that actually has the entire process of understanding how people buy and how to translate it to both sales marketing and product. And that might be a little bit better one to look at. But the the real thing is is to pick, you know, to be honest, if you've already if your product already exists, right, it's like talk to the last, you know, 10 people or find the widest group of 10 people
who recently bought your product and talk to them about why they bought. And every time they mention the product, you go like, well, why was that important? Every time they mention a feature it's like, well, what could you do that you can't do before and ask them about how because it's about taking step back to see their life and how your product fits into their life, right? The other part is by doing this in a cross functional way, the technical people here at the marketing people
here at the sales people here at and though they they'll they'll they'll twist it. What happens is out of this comes a very common language of when people say this, they mean that. So for example, when people say, oh, I want it to be easy, it turns out there's 22 dimensions of easy, easy to easy to buy, easy to store, easy to open, easy to install, easy to uninstall, easy like what does
easy mean? And you start to realize like, well, we can't do all versions of easy. And so it helps everybody realize that we just don't say easy, faster, cheaper and we don't and then say leave it at that. And so it's getting down to the right level of granularity. So we understand the requirements we have to go build or the trade-offs we have to go make. Understood. Sorry, I feel like I'm rambling and going a little too deep. No, no, no, no, no, that's great. That's great. So hopefully,
hopefully, I'm because I this is, I mean, this is the best way to do this. What about quantitative, there is qualitative. I mean, it's mostly qualitative. What do you feel about? So what's very The most interesting is I do like quantitative, but the reality is what I realize is that we don't actually understand the variables well enough to actually go do quantitative first.
And so part of this is actually discovering and identifying the right variables, the right contextual variables, the right outcome variables to actually help us describe what is the situation people find themselves in and what are the outcomes they really want. It's not the features and benefits, features and benefits are about the product, right? At some point in time, it's when the product meets the customer in this situation, then you can have features and benefits.
I want to know their context and outcome before they meet the product, right? Yeah, so this would actually be the second step that when they meet the product, then like it's just an additional layer, right? Then we can do quantitative. That's right. So the way I describe it is I try to do qualitative to understand where the edge of language exists and then where I need to create prototypes to actually have interaction and create quantitative data.
And so the qualitative is I still need the words because the words are how people actually have to find and select. So if I don't connect it to the words, I'm kind of screwed. So I need to start with the words and then connect it back to experiences. And how do you apply it in an iterative way? Is it something you do one off? Did Jason call you at a certain day and say, hey, can you help me? Or do you do?
So the first thing is I built this is kind of a frustration of every time I'd want to go do research, it became this big exercise of trying to do something and it took anywhere from four months to 12 months and it was like anywhere from a half a million, you know, 200,000 to 500,000 to a million dollars to do any kind of research that I wanted to do through the typical marketing research channel. That would have relevance to me.
And so I just built something that said, how do I just do a few interviews so I can understand what's going on? So we can do this in about three weeks, right? So we typically do it when we have bigger questions on what we call the demand side. And so you don't need to do it that often and you don't need to do many because it's not about statistical significance, it's about identifying the variables and you can see them.
The patterns start to emerge very, very quickly, you know, with seven to seven, ten if you will, but by 10 to 12, we usually cover 80% of the variables we need that we can see them, what's going on. And then we can build quantitative around that. Understood. What do you think about like cross-functional collaboration? Who does it typically, like, who does the interview, so that the product manager or who does it? So in really good organizations, they actually, all of them can do them.
All different parts of the organization can actually be part of the interview. And so sometimes it might be product in marketing, sometimes it might be sales and customer success. But usually it's either, so in smaller organization, this usually starts in product, right? But in some organizations, this might start in marketing.
And ultimately it starts in one of those two areas and then from there, it's kind of, but it usually has to be cross-functional because it's really about building the alignment of the language and a common understanding of what people mean. That literally, most disconnects and most rework happen in the process because we've misinterpreted what people said, right? And so that's really one of the bigger benefits of all this is the alignment.
And if product takes usually twice as long as you think, it's typically because we're not clear in the language. I was asking that because many people with an engineering background actually try to like, guess the problem really and jump to the solution straight away. And maybe don't even like take product seriously. It would be honest. Yep. Oh, the product came up with that. Yeah, what way is it from? Yeah, yeah.
So what's really interesting is so again, as starting as an engineer and realizing like, again, I think for me, the greatest gift I got is that I was dyslexic because to be honest, when as a dyslexic, I know I'm going to get it start with a D, not an A, right? And so ultimately, I know I have to work for it. And so the thing is is most, most people who get A's and the way they taught us in engineering school was we already know the answers.
Our job is to have the answers is to come up with the answers. But the real is when you start to look at it, most of our first answers are always usually wrong. And the way we learned in engineering school is people gave us the problems. But now as we redefine the problems, we actually have to have, you think about it very, very differently. For me, this is what my whole thing is is I kept being wrong about how I assumed the answer or the solution was.
And I did it enough that I realized that I had to listen to what the customer, and the customer wasn't telling me what they meant and what they said. Like what the words they used and what I interpreted was was that where it was broken down. So I actually had to really spend the time to understand what they meant by things because it was so easy for me to jump in logic to say, oh, if they say, boy, I'm struggling because it's too slow. So they want it faster.
The reality is I'm struggling too slow and what they want is they want more. More and faster are not the same. Yeah. Right? And so this is where engineers, we are very fast thinkers. But what happens is sometimes the customer is not as fast as we are and we end up over engineering the product as opposed to actually making, you know, making something they want. Hello, it's me, Toby. Can you hear me? I was just making sure the sound is sipgade worthy.
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Well, keep listening as it gets better. As an Alphalist City or podcast listener, you get 500 euros worth of free credits when you sign up at link.alphalist.com slash zipgade and use the code zipgade alpha in the form there. Yeah, that's that's why I was asking like, like, assuming something to early. Yes, it's not a good idea. Well, if you think about it, 70% of our lifecycle costs are fixed in the first 10% of how we develop and set up a new platform.
And yet we spend all the money usually on the backend. Absolutely. And we don't spend that time up front thinking. And so the more we can spend that time up front thinking about the right things in the boundaries and understanding kind of the limitations, we then will actually have a better understanding of what to build and what to build. And that's actually time spent together because it's important for all of us that's my understanding and my learning. So yeah, thanks a lot.
Very, very helpful. What do you think about other methods like like Marti Kang's book inspired, I guess you read it, et cetera? Like, what do you think other approaches? I think this is, so the thing is, most people ask me like, you know, what do you have an innovation process? And what I say is that the innovation process is really dependent, to be honest, the industry, the company itself and the set of products that you're actually competing with.
And that there's no one way to look at a generalized process, at least from my perspective, right? And so ultimately it's about skills. And what skills do people need to have? And so I think of like what Marty taught, well, everybody has these different set of skills. And what I think companies have to do is they have to be able to figure out how to assemble the set of skills that build the culture they want. The skills create the culture, right? Or the lack of skills also create the culture.
Absolutely. Okay. So there's no ultimate. I don't think like there's people who are trying to say jobs, I'd rather do this versus jobs or personas versus jobs. And like, I know how to be honest, personas can be helpful and jobs can be helpful. And I know how to use them both together. And the real question is, is it useful to help you make progress for your product or with your company? And so ultimately it's that's the question.
And so I think of these as complementary sets of tools as opposed to overlap or competing sets of tools. Okay. If you could give my listeners, CTOs who often feel they know what their customers want, three tips like what would it be? Yeah. So I think the first one is two things is is is take try to take a step back and one find the struggling moments that they have that they want to address. There's a difference between the way I say it is bitch and ain't switching.
It just because people complain about it doesn't mean they want to do anything about it. So what you want to do is look for where people have workarounds for things where they've actually figured out how to export it and then import it and then do this and then do like, where do your customers really struggle? So instead of starting with what can you do with your product, you need to be able to actually understand kind of like where do they struggle?
If you have a bunch of things you can do, how do you actually map them to help people in their struggling moments would be another way to think about that. The second thing I would suggest is to think about the progress they're trying to make. Think of the almost the state they are in and ultimately what are the outcomes that they're seeking and if they get them what would be the benefit for them.
And so it's not about the outputs but ultimately you can then understand how much you can charge or the value they're willing to put on it in terms of how they'll think about it. So as you can see the progress and think about the progress they're trying to make before we think about the product or service. And then the third thing I would say is ultimately we always never have enough time, money or resources to actually build the perfect thing we want.
And so to be honest, what I would say is when you're really working with the customer try to figure out the things that you don't matter at all that you can suck at that you actually don't really, doesn't matter if it works or doesn't work. Because at some point we try to end up trying to be perfect in everything and we end up being perfect in nothing. I think Jason Fried says it best you're better off with a kick ass half than a half ass hole.
And so how do you actually figure that out and make sure you understand what we don't need to worry about. So if you look at Southwest Airlines here in the US they don't worry about snacks. Nobody's not going to fly them because they're snack suck and if you tell them they're snack suck they don't care.
Because they're not going to, they know what the four or five important things are which is on time flights going to places that are, if you will, kind of promote and at the same time being the lowest cost fair and on time. It's it. Like if the snack suck they'll bring their own snacks but they're not actually accommodating for everything and they know what they can suck at. Did you consult them or? No, no, it's just an observation.
I can't. Great. But I do actually do a lot of work in that space because most people try to be good at everything and they just can't. And I can imagine that like you really did, like you really flexed your observation muscle right throughout the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's so that's the whole thing is as what I would say you become neo from the matrix when you can start to see struggling moments everywhere and you know right exactly what like oh, I can put that there.
Oh, I can do that and you just start and like at some point they become distracting because you can see where opportunity is just about everywhere. I see struggling moments. Yes, yes, exactly. So I was in the airport the other day and it was like I was counting them. I got to like 137. I'm like, okay, I got to stop. I got to stop. That's great. I still have a little surprise for you as a closing question.
So Jason Fried actually told me about a secret easter egg that he built into basecamp after like doing your interview techniques and working with you. So it came up through your research. I don't know if you knew and DHH secretly developed it and it's like hidden in the product and you really have to know it. There's like a hidden prompt where you can actually enter up.
You can select a person and you can you can enter a year and then you travel back in time like physically to that year and you end up in that person's life. I now select you because you obviously still have a user at basecamp in their product in the project. They organized their product with and I now select 1985 and you were back then working as a supplier quality engineer at Ford Motor Company. And we can now observe yourself for a while.
I think you started as a student intern and it really liked you. Yeah. So I started as an intern at to be honest. I got an internship from a gentleman by the name of W Edwards Deming who was Dr. Deming. He's the one who is the father of Lean. I thought he was somebody's grandfather. I actually sat down next to him and had a conversation with him. I asked him, he said this to me.
I asked him 52 questions in 22 minutes and said I'm one of the most curious people he's ever met and he asked me if I'd be as interesting in the summer. And so that's how I got into Ford Motor Company. And basically I went to I end up going to Japan and being part of the very front line to help kind of reduce product development cycle time from 70. It used to take 72 months to develop a car from concept to customer. Really introducing age processes essentially right. That's exactly right.
And we did parallel. We did so we went and learned Lean basically at Toyota and then brought it back and applied it in 1985 to 1992. So I did it is basically it. I did it in the US. I did it in Europe and basically did it through the supply chain and helped reduce product development cycle time to 72 to 36 months. So we cut it. It's great. It made quality better and extended the life of the vehicle simultaneously. So we went from 60,000 miles to 100,000 miles. That's pretty great. Sorry.
You're bringing it now. You just opened the door. I'm just going to slide the box of Pandora. Wait, wait, wait, wait. We all see that right? We all understood it. And now you have the chance to whisper something into young Bob's ears. What would you whisper yourself? Yeah. The first thing I would say is I would tell myself to slow down. I was moving very, very quickly and I was not being as diligent as I should have.
And I should have relished the time with these people because they were brilliant and they taught me so much. But there's times where I wish I was paying more attention. I think that would be the first thing is that these people in your life, though, they seem like they're your boss or your colleague or whatever. At some point in time, they're way more special than that.
And to be honest, I do this now is like I try to be in the moment with everybody who's with me because you just, you want to be so mindful of what's going on. And so that's the one piece of advice I would give myself. I think that's a good advice. Like really learning how to focus and not saying yes to everything. Yes, all that, all that. That's a good one. That's a good question. So yeah, thanks for being my guest here. Really, really great, great pleasure. My pleasure.
Good content and looking forward to getting. Hopefully the CTOs can relate to what I'm talking about. Like I feel like I had to go to the dark side, which is like the sales and marketing side. Because I felt like they were feeding me a whole bunch of wrong information. And so I ended up having to try to do it myself, but I didn't have the right message. So I ended up kind of flipping over the lens and going like, okay, I'm going to go in here and figure this out.
And so it's like, I'm a nerd at heart. And it's just one of those things where I love to build. But it's like at some point, I do feel like I have to play this demand side strong. Because at some point it's like from a product perspective and an engineering perspective, I feel like it's our blind spot. Absolutely. We almost assume we already know. And it's just one of those things having spent now 30 years of my life studying why people change.
It's just so much easier for me to develop a product because I don't have to try to go find people who want it. I actually know what to go build because the problem's obvious. I imagine it straight away. Let's go. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's kind of cheating, right? It's a form of a cheat. But at some point it's very, very successful and useful for me. I think it's just a quick up half to dopamine normally, right? And that's why we do it. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's exactly right.
So, well, thanks a lot for being my guest. And hope to get you over to Germany at a certain point. Let's work on that. Yeah. Yeah, we'll work on that. Have a great day. And I hope to see you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Aseulist podcast. If you like this episode, share it with friends. I'm sure they love it too. Make sure to subscribe so you can hear deep insights into technical leadership and technology trends as they become available.
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