Denner's Digest - 2022-10-31

Using a technique from the US marine corp to help improve product management decisions. The reasoning for DFCs is simple: case studies don't put one in the situation, learning fundamental skills doesn't teach connections, and experience breeds intuition that is hard to express. Think of them as a Dungeons and Dragons for your job. I suspect this takes considerable planning, as DnD was of it was to be good. It feels like you would build a library over time rather than making these up on the spot. This strikes me as a lot of effort for an individual product organisation. And therefore this is probably something for a consultancy.

I expect many of these will resonate with you. I found myself nodding as I realised I'd subconsciously had the same thought. Some may need to be printed out and stuck on my wall alongside some other quotes.

This is packed with great advice on writing. It's not just for engineers and is a good rubric for anyone wanting to communicate. I love the opening idea that suggests AI could be useful in writing long winded EU project reports. It's almost the antithesis of what we think AI will be good for.

The use of age in this is really a misdirection, summed up at the end of the article. The study was focused on age and found a correlation that was the opposite of what is expected by society. But my intuition suggests that a successful founder really needs life experience. It's that that guides their understanding of their chosen domain. It's that which helps them understand that they must be intrinsically motivated to (sometimes) swim against the current. Time for me to think about testing this theory? Age, in most cases, gains life experience. But so does hardship.