#175 — Shreyas Doshi — Better Teams, Better Products - The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish  ## Metadata - Author: **The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish** - Full Title: #175 — Shreyas Doshi — Better Teams, Better Products - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5a3b7251-fc54-4cb9-bd22-f4511dc08ff4 ## Highlights - The challenge of judging others and the impact on collaboration Key takeaways: - One personal challenge in the speaker's journey and growth as a leader was the tendency to judge others based on different priorities, hindering true collaboration. Transcript: Speaker 1 One of my personal challenges in my own journey and growth as a leader was it was easy for me to judge other individuals or other teams saying like, oh, these people are only focused on Optics, whereas I am focused on impact and execution, which are the right things to be focused on. And when you start with that sort of feeling, it doesn't create or make any room for true collaboration. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2345ef8e-bb6c-4608-aeeb-c368c74d6035)) - Episode AI notes 1. One personal challenge in the speaker's journey and growth as a leader was the tendency to judge others based on different priorities, hindering true collaboration. 2. Improvement in certain areas can be observed without explicit measurement or tracking. Evaluation can be a valuable tool for recognizing improvement. Measuring everything upfront can deter progress in some cases. 3. The speaker highlights the difference between evaluating and measuring one's progress. The effort to measure something can sometimes be so large that it dissuades action. Evaluating how something is going can be enough in some cases. Measuring a thing may not necessarily result in improving the underlying thing. 4. General patterns match the understanding and observations. Scaling requires relying on other signals and managing by numbers. Instincts that work at a smaller scale may not work at a larger scale. Some founders lose sight of the real goal and treat proxies as the goal. Managing with numbers is important for scaling, but qualitative signals should not be ignored. 5. Writing, like movies or books, is about creating an intentional experience for the audience. It's important to consider what emotions or thoughts you want to evoke and work backwards from there. This concept applies to decision making as well, where sometimes going against conventional wisdom can lead to better outcomes. Introducing the antithesis principle. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/episode-takeaways/94fefa47-fd39-4064-8c4a-ac3cc216939b)) - The Difference Between Evaluating and Measuring Progress in Parenting and Work Summary: The author reflects on the importance of measuring progress in parenting and other areas of life, but also recognizes that improvement can happen without explicit measurement. They distinguish between evaluating and measuring, suggesting that sometimes the effort to measure something can discourage action. Transcript: Speaker 1 And while, you know, I had clearly improved in certain areas of parenting, I had not done any measurement there. So then I started asking myself, well, if I've clearly improved in this area of parenting or this area of being a spouse, but I don't measure it. I don't track it on a daily basis. I don't have any metrics associated with it. And yet I can tell that I'm improving in these areas. So how am I doing that? Right? Like how many of us are doing all sorts of activities and improving in those activities without explicitly measuring those up front or measuring those on an ongoing basis. Actually, the way I know that I'm improving is because I'm evaluating, right? And that's where I feel like there's a difference between the idea of evaluating how you're doing and measuring how you're doing. And then I started seeing in many cases at work, it was quite similar. If we start everything with, oh, we need to measure this thing first before we embark on this project or this initiative to improve said thing. There is certainly value in measurement. So don't get me wrong. Like again, we should not think binary about this. But in some cases, the effort to measure something is so large that it sometimes dissuades us from performing the action. That makes sense. ([Time 0:13:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a02d7727-cadd-483a-8042-0345dd6276fd)) - The Difference Between Evaluating and Measuring Performance Key takeaways: - The speaker highlights the difference between evaluating and measuring one's progress. - The effort to measure something can sometimes be so large that it dissuades action. - Evaluating how something is going can be enough in some cases. - Measuring a thing may not necessarily result in improving the underlying thing. Transcript: Speaker 1 Actually, the way I know that I'm improving is because I'm evaluating, right? And that's where I feel like there's a difference between the idea of evaluating how you're doing and measuring how you're doing. And then I started seeing in many cases at work, it was quite similar. If we start everything with, oh, we need to measure this thing first before we embark on this project or this initiative to improve said thing. There is certainly value in measurement. So don't get me wrong. Like again, we should not think binary about this. But in some cases, the effort to measure something is so large that it sometimes dissuades us from performing the action. That makes sense. The fundamental sort of observation here is that sometimes evaluating how something is going is enough. And sometimes if you try to measure a thing, you might think you might improve the measurement. Right? But you might not actually be improving the underlying thing. So that's the other danger as well. So anyway, those would be a couple of core observations that led to this insight. Okay. ([Time 0:14:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0fe79bc8-ec11-45e0-9794-8e434d989c5c)) - Managing by the Numbers: Scaling and Maintaining Impact Summary: As a company scales, it becomes necessary to rely on numbers for management. However, founders should not lose sight of the real goal, which is impact. While numbers tell a story, qualitative signals about competition and customers should still be considered. Transcript: Speaker 1 I think if we were talking about general patterns that matches my understanding and my observations too. But Aladdin, interesting, additional observation, which is what happens when the company starts to scale. Right? So, now you're going to have to rely on other signals. And one of the things that you might end up learning along the way is that, oh yeah, so from this point onwards, you have to manage by the numbers. Right? Because you know, you're not close to the customer anymore. You don't have as much, you know, strong empathy for customers as you used to. And at certain scale, your instincts may actually be wrong. Right? The instincts that actually worked for you earlier may not work. The challenge though is sometimes some founders will kind of lose their way entirely. Right? And they again, they make the mistake of treating the proxy as the goal. Right? And they lose sight of the real goal, which is impact. So, while I do want you to manage with numbers, because that's the only way you can scale, I also want you to not forget that the numbers will only tell a certain story. And so, what you've got to still continue to do is expose yourself to some of the signals. And these might often be qualitative signals in the market with regards to your competition, with regards to your customers. ([Time 0:21:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ed7c0624-1601-42d8-969c-d6ce04ea2272)) - The Importance of Writing Backwards Summary: Writing, like movies or books, is about creating an intentional experience for the audience. It's important to consider what emotions or thoughts you want to evoke and work backwards from there. This concept applies to decision making as well, where sometimes going against conventional wisdom can lead to better outcomes. Introducing the antithesis principle. Transcript: Speaker 1 A movie is an experience. A book is an experience that somebody is creating. A podcast is an experience. And so similarly, a document that you're writing is an experience you're creating for your target audience. So it helps to be very intentional about what do you want them to experience. And I'm not talking about fiction writing, right. I'm talking about like just like business nonfiction writing about a certain product or a certain whatever. But it's really important to work backwards from, you know, do I want them to be excited? Do I want them to be slightly concerned? Do I want to kind of clarify that like we should be afraid about a certain, you know, competitor or whatever the case might be? And then, you know, kind of keep that in the back of our minds, right. Because then as we kind of write the words we choose, the structure we choose, the things we choose to emphasize, you know, change drastically based on kind of this working backwards View of what it is that we're trying to do. What it is that we really want to evoke in the reader. Speaker 2 I want to switch gears from writing, come back to decision making for a second. What do you know about decision making that most people miss? Speaker 1 You know, there are certain truths or maxims that we learn or we discover about the world and how the world operates. And then we use those maxims for making many decisions. Sometimes we should use the antithesis of that truth or maxim when it applies to us. Okay, so I'll call this the antithesis principle. ([Time 0:54:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d4ea0fbb-b2e5-4635-a8ff-eda45f6da27a))