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Articles by Nir
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What are the best strategy learning resources and courses for professionals?
People often look at success stories to guide their strategic thinking. Yet the truth is that most strategic challenges are unique, and an overfitting of other people's success may prevent a leader from developing a bespoke strategy for their particular needs. Often the more valuable place to look is at stories of failures. Whereas success is typically unique to a specific set of conditions, failures often arise from the same common mistakes. Understanding these mistakes and learning to avoid them (where other people did not) is key to developing the muscles needed for strategic thinking.
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How can you ensure your project aligns with customer needs?
It's impossible to simultaneously please both your existing customers and your new ones. Therefore, prioritization of features should always happen based on which cohort a business needs to please at any given time. Sometimes, we over-serve our existing users, and potential users complain (or worse, new user acquisition drops). Sometimes, we're so focused on top-of-the-funnel growth that we neglect the needs of our existing users (and retention drops as a result). After determining what provides value to users, it's important to be very clear on whether a proposed feature is geared towards the existing or the potential user-base.
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How can you choose the best organizational design?
There is, unfortunately, a fundamental limitation to scaling organizational structure. Leaders who understand this limitation are able to account for it and optimize their organizational design for success. The rule states that only two of the following three options can be achieved at any given time: consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. Consistency means each part of the organization has accurate up-to-date information. Availability means that every question gets a quick answer. And partition tolerance means that, even if part of the organization is offline/unavailable, the rest continues to function as before. Understanding that you can only achieve two of the three in a large org is the first step in scaling a team.
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What are the most important leadership styles for executives?
There are three types of employees, and understanding which category your team members fall into is crucial to leading them toward success. Climbers are people driven by what their actions unlock (opening doors, promotions, raises, bigger teams). Hikers are people driven by the challenge of doing something new and different. Runners are people who know what they like and want to keep getting better at it. Managing these three personas requires different approaches from a leader. In my experience, it's critical to understand an employee's motivations early on to ensure that they're satisfied with their work and continually thriving to reach a goal that makes sense for them.
Activity
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These days, we're not trained to learn. We're trained to be right... You can see it everywhere you look: people drawing conclusions and then…
These days, we're not trained to learn. We're trained to be right... You can see it everywhere you look: people drawing conclusions and then…
Shared by Nir Zicherman
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This is the story of how I learned a critical life lesson. The story of the Angry Stock Broker Guy: In early 2016, as we approached the launch of…
This is the story of how I learned a critical life lesson. The story of the Angry Stock Broker Guy: In early 2016, as we approached the launch of…
Shared by Nir Zicherman
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The most dramatic blockbuster reality TV show in years is WHO'S THE ROBOT... ...except it doesn't exist yet. But here's how it would work if it did:…
The most dramatic blockbuster reality TV show in years is WHO'S THE ROBOT... ...except it doesn't exist yet. But here's how it would work if it did:…
Shared by Nir Zicherman
Experience & Education
More activity by Nir
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Here are 50 mistakes startups make... Startups are like a game of Minesweeper. We tend to start playing on an empty board. And although nobody can…
Here are 50 mistakes startups make... Startups are like a game of Minesweeper. We tend to start playing on an empty board. And although nobody can…
Shared by Nir Zicherman
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The rise and fall of crypto is basically the plot of the Poochie episode in the Simpsons.
The rise and fall of crypto is basically the plot of the Poochie episode in the Simpsons.
Shared by Nir Zicherman
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Some questions about history you may have never considered: How much of what we know of the past is what actually happened versus what's been…
Some questions about history you may have never considered: How much of what we know of the past is what actually happened versus what's been…
Shared by Nir Zicherman
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The best advice I got when considering a pivot and worrying about losing my existing users: "When your product is used by 100x more people, today's…
The best advice I got when considering a pivot and worrying about losing my existing users: "When your product is used by 100x more people, today's…
Posted by Nir Zicherman
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