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Do you want to make things worth making? 

Here's my key takeaways from Tony Fadell, "the father of the iPod", co-creator of the iPhone and co-founder of Nest labs.

Cool technology isn't enough

A great team isn't enough. Plenty of funding isn't enough. You have to time it right. Customers need to see that your product solves a real problem they have today - not one that they may have in some distant future.

You can't wait for perfect data

It doesn't exist. You just have to take the first step into the unknown. Use what you have learned and take your best guess at what's going to happen next. It's not data or intuition; it's data and intuition.

Your product isn't only your product

It's the whole experience that begins when someone learn about your brand for the first time and ends when it disappears from their life. It's when you give care and attention to every part of that journey you create something that people will love.

Every product should have a story

A narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer's problems. Make the story easy to remember, easy to repeat. Someone else telling your story will always reach more people than your own talking.

• The story appeals to people's rational and emotional sides. Recognize the needs of your audience and connect with something they care about, like their worries and fears.
• The story takes complicated concepts and makes them simple.
  
• The story reminds people of the problem that's being solved. Why does this thing need to exist? Why does it matter? Why will people need it? Why will they love it?
  

You can only have one customer

You cannot make a single product for two completely opposite customers for two different customer journeys.

You need constraints to make good decisions 

... and the best constraint in the world is time. By forcing a hard deadline on yourself, you can't keep putting the finishing touches on something that will never be finished. Don't allocate too much money at the start. People do stupid things when they have a giant budget.

The best teams are multigenerational

Experienced people have a wealth of wisdom that they can pass on to the next generation and young people can push back against long-held assumptions.

Always be training someone on your team to do your job

There should always be at least one or two people on your team who are natural successors to you. Take vacations, they are a great way to build a team's future capabilities and see who might step into your shoes in the years to come.

"Build" by Tony Fadell

No business plan survives first contact with customers.

Testing is the activity of reducing the risk of pursuing ideas that look good in theory, but won't work in reality.
Design is the activity of turning vague ideas, insights and evidence into concrete value propositions and solid business models.

We test business ideas to reduce risk and uncertainty. You break a big idea into smaller chunks of testable hypotheses covering three types of risk.

First, that customers or users are not interested in your idea (desirability).

Second, that you can't build and deliver your idea (feasibility).

Third, that your business can't earn enough money from your idea (viability).

A well-formed business hypothesis describes a testable, precise and discrete thing you want to investigate.

• Your hypothesis is testable when it can be shown true (validated) or false (invalidated), based on evidence (and guided by experience).
• Your hypothesis is precise when you know what success looks like. It describes the precise what, who, and when of your assumptions.
• Your hypothesis is discrete when it describes only one distinct, testable and precise thing you want to investigate.

Turn your most important hypotheses into experiments to create evidence you can learn from.

• "We believe that ..."
• "To verify that, we will ..."
• "And measure ..."
• "We are right if ..."

Evidence is what you use to support or refute the hypotheses. Insights are what you learn from studying the evidence.

• "We believed that ..."
• "We observed ..."
• "From that we learned that ..."
• "Therefore, we will ..."

Then turn insights into action. Make informed decisions to abandon, change and/or continue testing a business idea based on collected insights.

But testing ideas costs money. So then you just ask for millions in the big bang annual funding process and spend it all to avoid decreased budget next year?

No. Think like a venture capitalist instead. Invest and incrementally fund the teams and a series of business ideas and double down on the ones that are successful.

Set up a small investment committee that consists of leadership with decision-making authority when it comes to budget, because they will be helping the teams navigate from seed, launch and growth stages. Funding decisions typically take place at 3-6 months intervals.

To summarize: Key Hypotheses + Experiments + Key Insights = Reducing uncertainty and risks.

"Testing business ideas" by David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder

Are you good at asking the right questions in the right context?

Here are some questions I will ask more of.

When you hear things are impossible, problematic or difficult, try to lift the cognitive load of reality and let the person play with the imagination, and solutions may become more accessible.

• What would it look like if it were possible? What would it look like if it were easy?
• Imagine a miracle happened and your problem was solved. How would you know?

Instead of examining something problematic, difficult or bad in isolation, try to get clarity from contrast.

• "This is so hard / bad / problematic ...", ... compared to what?

Have you met people who are very confident and firmly believe they are right and that they know the answer or solution? Be curious, and ask some questions.

• How do you know that? How do you know that this is the right thing to do?
• What leads you to that conclusion or to that assumption?
• What might happen if it's wrong?
• What are the uncertainties in your reasoning?

When you are presented with new strategies, directions or processes, don't you sometimes wonder ...

• Do we have to change in an obvious way in order to execute this strategy?
• What do we need to do in order to deliver on this? What do we need to stop?
• How do we know if this new strategy, process or whatever is successful? How do we recognize a successful execution?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and stressed over all the problems and opportunities that should be addressed and solved.

• But what happens if we do nothing? Maybe that's a question we should ask more often.

Have you ended up in a deep rabbit hole where the discussion leads nowhere?

• What are we trying to accomplish here?
• What are we up against here?
• How would you like me to proceed? How can we solve this problem?

Learning is important for me. These fun questions are difficult to answer, but they at least trigger some reflections.

• What have surprised you the most?
• What's the most difficult thing you did the last X weeks/months, and what did you learn from it?

I am not good at small talk with new people, so here's at least one opening I use.

• What are you currently working on that you are most excited about?

What questions do you tend to ask and why?

In Equinor, we have now helped hundreds of people applying jobs-to-be-done to discover what their stakeholders are actually trying to accomplish or achieve when they use or are about to use their products.

It is about understanding the problem that you are trying to help someone solve.

Why? The extent to which their product helps their users and stakeholders accomplish their job to be done determines the value they perceive from their product.Second, don't forget unmet or underserved jobs

You are not you in an organization, but you are what the stories tell about you. In many different organizational contexts, you are your narrative.

That's one of many things from Christian Vandsø Andersen (rest in peace) that made me think.

The narrative shapes us, and it shapes those around us. We try to live up to it.

How many people know the real you? Are they hiring you or the illusion of you - the story told about you?

And who created your narrative? Someone was characterizing you. Somehow, down the road, your story was shaped into what it is today.

People are cognitively lazy when it comes to others. When someone asks "Hey, do you know Steffan?" the easiest thing to do is just to repeat the description that you just heard instead of making up your own.

Changing an established, dominating story in an organization is quite tricky, but not impossible. You can influence what is being said and how the story is told. You can become the author of your own story.

But you have to make sure it's not just a "story told", but also a "story lived". It has to be based on behaviors experienced by several people.

To take control of your narrative is to take control of what you do and select the important "stars in the star signs".

Didn't get the job you applied for because they wanted someone more strategic?

When you introduce yourself in meetings next time, drop a potential piece of your narrative.

"Well, I am first and foremost known as a strategist. I enjoy helping other teams and I'm often invited to help build strategies in various parts of the company. I'm not saying I'm an expert strategist - I think it's mainly because I don't mind lending a helping hand that people call me a strategist".

The words will spread, and invitations will start to drop in, requesting strategic help. The expectations to you will rise and you will start living up to it.

This will lead to some successful strategies which people begin to talk about at the water cooler.

The next time you apply for the same strategic position, it's not unlikely that "I hear you are quite a strategist" will be the opening mark from the recruiting manager.