This is the second to-last newsletter before my annual writing break for the holidays. After next week's issue, I will return to your inboxes on January 31, 2025.

1 Question For You To Put This Into Practice

Reply and let me know your answer.

5 lessons I learned after conducting 100+ customer interviews

When crafting interview questions, you naturally formulate them in a way that makes sense to you. However, the people you are interviewing might react differently to your questions. You won’t always guess or predict how everything will work. Questions that make sense to you might not give you the information you want or might confuse the interviewee. So, go ahead and arrange that interview, but when analyzing your interviews, don’t just summarize the answers—go back to your interview guide and see if it worked the way you intended.

The Easiest Way to Start Working with OKRs: Ground Your Work in What Matters

OKRs can sometimes feel abstract, especially when you’re first starting out. You may get lost in lofty goals and struggle to bring those goals back to the day-to-day work. That’s why applying OKRs to an existing project is such a powerful way to start. By starting with the project you’re already working on, you keep yourself grounded. You’ve got the details, the deadlines, and the people involved. The difference is now you’re bringing in a layer of strategic thinking by asking why you’re doing it and how you’ll measure success.

In command

Being “in command” doesn’t mean the metrics are always healthy, nor even that they’re moving in the right direction. It means you’ve already thought about what to measure and you’re watching the things that really matter. When metrics go awry, you’re the first one to identify that, and are already taking action in proportion to their importance and how far off the mark they are.

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