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Bias For Clarity

Bias for action. Gets things done. Go-getter. Traits companies big and small look for. And for good reason, you're being hired to do things! However, action is a secondary step that often overshadows the primary step, direction.   Clear direction is the foundation that enables our actions to takeoff. Without it, we're stuck in the mud.  Striving for clarity is an underrated skill. Having the courage to ask ( seemingly ) obvious questions, and to check in, making sure we're all on the same page. "O bvious " questions are a low risk, high reward way to add value. At worst, you'll add confidence to our actions. At best, you discover a misalignment that saves us from a dead-end.  The more people, the more clear we need to be. The bigger the initiative, the bigger the risk of reaching the finish line, only to realize expectations were off.  Success is always uncertain. But we can be certain about what we want and what everyone's job is. Things that can be clea

Skeuomorphic Design and Predictions

A floppy disc to save your drafts. A shelf to access your ebooks. A recycling bin to store your deleted files. These are examples of skeuomorphic design - digital interfaces that mirror their analog counterparts. A helpful way to introduce the new through the familiar. 

Skeuomorphic design leverages the past to guide us into the future, but it's doesn't create that future. 

If we think skeuomorphicly, we dream narrowly and fall into the classic "faster horse" trap - where the future is only an improved version of now. We predict better horseshoes and saddles, instead of self-driving cars. 

Smartphones are not phones with internet, but entertainment consoles and payment systems. Youtube is not home videos online, but a medium for a whole new class of creators. 

Amazon started as a bookseller and evolved into the world's biggest cloud provider - an innovation in its own right that spring-boarded countless others.

Innovation by its nature is surprising. It's not a version of now, but something else completely. 

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