[Book 6] Build by Tony Fadell

Build is a phenomenal guide to creating an optimal culture and process to build word class products. Tony led the product development of the iPod and iPhone before founding the company that created the Nest Learning Thermostat but his advice is applicable to established companies and startups alike. He paints a vivid picture of how a nascent, nagging idea can transform into a full fledged company, detailing each hurdle overcome along the way. With Tony’s guidance, I’ve enhanced my work approach in several ways including how I make data-driven vs gut decisions, viewing the product as the entire experience, and how to tell stories more effectively.

You should read this book if you…

• want a better appreciation for the various components needed to create world class products
• work in any role (such as product development or marketing) which requires creating something new and/or convincing people to support your ideas
• love data but struggle when it doesn’t tell a perfect story

Additional Information

Year Published: 2022
Book Ranking (from 1-10): 10 – Superb – Changed the way I approach my work
Ease of Read (from 1-5): 3 – Average

Key Highlights

1. When you’re looking at the array of potential careers before you, the correct place to start is this: “What do I want to learn?”
2. Highly successful products come from thinking about a problem or a customer need in a way you’ve never heard before, but which makes perfect sense once you hear it
3. The key is persistence and being helpful. Not just asking for something, but offering something. You always have something to offer if you’re curious and engaged. You can always trade and barter good ideas; you can always be kind and find a way to help
4. Don’t worry that your team will outshine you. In fact, it’s your goal
5. Storytelling is how you get people to take a leap of faith to do something new. It’s what all our big choices ultimately come down to—believing a story we tell ourselves or that someone else tells us. Creating a believable narrative that everyone can latch on to is critical to moving forward and making hard choices. It’s all that marketing comes down to. It’s the heart of sales. And right now you’re selling—your vision, your gut, your opinion
6. So you can’t wait for perfect data. It doesn’t exist. You just have to take that first step into the unknown. Combine everything you’ve learned and take your best guess at what’s going to happen next. That’s what life is. Most decisions we make are data-informed, but they’re not data-made
7. When you’re creating a new product, regardless of whether it’s made of atoms or electrons, for businesses or consumers, the actual thing you’re building is only one tiny part of a vast, intangible, overlooked user journey that starts long before a customer ever gets their hands on your product and ends long after. So don’t just make a prototype of your product and think you’re done. Prototype as much of the full customer experience as possible. Make the intangible tangible so you can’t overlook the less showy but incredibly important parts of the journey. You should be able to map out and visualize exactly how a customer discovers, considers, installs, uses, fixes, and even returns your product. It all matters
8. He used a technique I later came to call the virus of doubt. It’s a way to get into people’s heads, remind them about a daily frustration, get them annoyed about it all over again. If you can infect them with the virus of doubt—“Maybe my experience isn’t as good as I thought, maybe it could be better”—then you prime them for your solution. You get them angry about how it works now so they can get excited about a new way of doing things
9. That’s why analogies can be such a useful tool in storytelling. They create a shorthand for complicated concepts—a bridge directly to a common experience
10. The more amazing an idea seems—the more it tugs at your gut, blinds you to everything else—the longer you should wait, prototype it, and gather as much information about it as possible before committing. If this idea is going to eat up years of your life, you should at least take a few months to research it, build out detailed (enough) business and product development plans, and see if you’re still excited about it. See if it will chase you
11. The best ideas are painkillers, not vitamins. Vitamin pills are good for you, but they’re not essential. You can skip your morning vitamin for a day, a month, a lifetime and never notice the difference. But you’ll notice real quick if you forget a painkiller
12. The most valuable thing you’ll take out of any crisis is the tale of how you were almost swept away, but the team pulled together and saved the day. That story needs to enter into the DNA of your company so you can always return to it
13. Product management defines the product and gets it built. Product marketing writes the messaging—the facts you want to communicate to customers—and gets the product sold. But from my experience that’s a grievous mistake. Those are, and should always be, one job. There should be no separation between what the product will be and how it will be explained—the story has to be utterly cohesive from the beginning. Your messaging is your product. The story you’re telling shapes the thing you’re making
14. Building a product isn’t like assembling an IKEA chair. You can’t just hand people instructions and walk away. Building a product is like making a song. The band is composed of marketing, sales, engineering, support, manufacturing, PR, legal. And the product manager is the producer—making sure everyone knows the melody, that nobody is out of tune and everyone is doing their part. They’re the only person who can see and hear how all the pieces are coming together