We have sessions every week about the product we are building and I get the entire team to contribute thoughts on how we can make improve our foundation.

Most of the time our discussions revolve around the 10% incremental changes we could make that could improve the product. The truth is that it takes the same amount of effort to build a 10% better product and a 10X better product.

Startups that straddle the safe option with some bravery sprinkled into the mix never win big. They relegate themselves to the group of forgotten pieces of software that never have a meaningful impact on the world.

10X thinking requires you to have an opinion on where the world is going. Teams need to lean on bravery and creativity rather than taking the safe path.

This way of thinking is challenging for most people. We have been brainwashed into picking the safe path, the one where we can see all the steps before we start the journey. Where we can measure our effort and not the impact.

To enable this type of environment we need to have a transparent culture, one that promotes openness and where people are brave enough to fail.

At Identifi we are building products that we hope will be an integral part of how all of us will work in the future. Where teams will be distributed, will rely heavily on async work and yet need to feel that they are connected to a core.

As someone who has spent over 14 years in the people management space, I am a firm believer that most products in this category are becoming incrementally better. They have their roots based on a world view that is very different from the world we live in today.

We don’t need another HR product, we need a whole new way of imagining of how will teams work and grow together today.

🧰 Resources

📝 Moonshot Thinking

This article has many great references that you can refer to from Astro Teller at Google to Peter Thiel talking about the power of thinking big.

📺 10x Not 10% Product management by orders of magnitude

This is a great video that every founder and product manager needs to watch. Ken Norton is an accomplished product leader at Google and this talk is one that I refer back to regularly whenever I think about 10X products.

📚Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries

This was one of my favourite reads of 2019. The author’s interview with Tim Ferris is also one that I would highly recommend for people to watch as well.

📝 How to Build Products That Are 10x Better Than the Competition

This article provides an expansion on some of the points that were listed above.