Reverse salient
Sometimes making something seem simple is very hard. This is how supposedly Westinghouse worked. Making someone understand a complex concept is humbling. Reverse salient is one such concept. Its easy when you get it.
Reverse salient term can be referred to that person who slows down the hike. Woe begone, if that person is made to lead the team. When you fix one reverse salient, you find another. This is exactly how you come across failing timing paths in chip design. The weakest link is the answer to your strength.
You get same tech for less cost. Or more tech for same cost. On the return, the journey always seems faster.
Factoring away dont cares
In Transforming Nokia, ex-chairman Risto Siilasmaa says how knowing that the charging everyday would be acceptable was unbelievable. Here I want to show that forward salient too can blind you to other things that you could be doing. Its kind of like the inertia of a moving thing stopping you from looking where you are going. In Stage gate process, “Project ideas with early promise might get prioritized for funding, but go on to disappoint. “ . In writing, they call it “Killing your Darlings”. Sony Ericsson calls for “Forgoing Proof of Failure”. In hiking, even good hikers can get lost.
“If we had a powerful enough device,” Fadell said, “he could get them (cell phone carriers) to sign up to all of these terms that would remove all of those obstacles.”
Let your superior product reign and turn the tables. When the applications were good, customers didnt care if they had to charge the phone everyday. Factoring away dont cares might not be as simple as taking away something and seeing if customers dont miss it. Battery wasnt the darling after all.
Nicholas Carr showed how John Northrop’s sheath was a savior until it was not. A band-aid, his Darling. Progress then, boils down to getting better at killing bad projects.
PS: There is a writer thing that you have to write down a thought when it comes, so you dont forget it. It also makes space for the next thought. Sometimes there are thoughts, which you are afraid to commit to, because if you commit, then you have to fulfill them. Self-promises. This was supposed to be weekly. I want to increase the frequency, so I make way for more writing.