In the details or micro-management?

Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, was recently on Lenny’s Podcast talking about how he runs Airbnb. And one thing that really piqued my interest was that he gets personally involved in signing off and reviewing the progress of every project. He calls it getting “in the details”.

This is a huge undertaking because Airbnb has just under 7,000 employees, but Brian says it’s actually reduced the overhead on him because he gets ahead of problems and has to fight fewer fires. It has also increased the pace of delivery which he attributes to the removal of politics: there is no hiding when the CEO is reviewing projects directly.

He called out the negative labelling of this behaviour as micro-managing however he sees it differently - he’s not telling people what to do, but he is aware of what is happening.

My view is that this approach may work for a single product company like Airbnb but at some point it will outgrow what one person can manage, creating a brittle bottleneck. Should Brian leave, replacing him with someone who has the same level of knowledge across the business would be challenging.

Kudos to Lenny for hosting one of the best interviews of the year.

I’m curious to know,  what’s your take on this?

* Scroll down to see last week’s poll results.

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

Underpants Gnomes, Outcomes, and Intermittent Reinforcement by Jeff Patton
According to Jeff, organizations and the people in them, irrationally and addictively build and release products that often have no real value. This article gives his explanation of why.

Four Leadership Motions Make Leading Transformative Work Easier by Jason Fraser
Have you ever been tasked to lead a cross-functional project at work? You may have encountered multiple stakeholders–all believing that their viewpoint is the most valuable–competing to have their own needs met instead of collaborating to make progress.

Product Direction

Who Should Do Strategy? by Roger Martin
This article breaks down what the team composition should look like, what the role of the strategy function should be, how outside consultants should be involved, and more.

A primer on product metrics by Alex Reeve
There’s a lot to consider when defining your product metrics. This article includes what you shouldn’t miss when defining your own.

Continuous Discovery

How Experience Data Can Help You Do More with Less by Niki Hall
Long periods of economic uncertainty have sparked conversations about doing more with less. This article showcases how companies can harness the power of data-driven insights and learn to truly do more with less.

How to Get Engineers Involved in Product Discovery by Tim Simms
We’ve just published this talk from UXDX USA 2023 where Tim Simms, Engineering Director at FullStory, delves into the benefits of, and how to incentivise, getting engineers involved in the discovery process.

Continuous Design

The Cost of Obsessing over Design Perfection by Michael F. Buckley
The article delves into the danger of design perfectionism, urging designers to prioritize usability and communication over subjective aesthetics.

Figmas Sate of the Designer Report  by Paul Trotter
Explore Figma’s report on job satisfaction among designers in the era of remote work, revealing increased happiness and new challenges.

Continuous Delivery

What I Talk About When I Talk About Platforms by Evan Bottcher
Evan writes about why an effective digital platform can help you scale delivery, what it should have in it, and how to get started building one.

The False Dichotomy of Monolith vs. Microservices by Ashley Davis
Earlier this year Amazon Prime Video sparked some controversy by ditching microservices and returning to a monolith. Ashley explains why there’s actually no such thing as monolith vs. microservices.

Black Fri-YAY at UXDX!

This week and until November 27 enjoy up to 70% discount on our tickets for the USA and EMEA conferences. Now available on our website starting from as low as $179.

New speakers announced for UXDX USA

Curious about who you’ll meet at UXDX USA?

We just announced our initial lineup of 15+ industry pioneers! You will find some amazing senior Product, UX, Design, and Dev leaders covering a range of leading companies including Ford, Kayak, Northwestern Mutual, Shopify, Salesforce, Comcast, and many more.

Dive into the details of our first wave of speakers here and stay tuned for more announcements.

Free UXDX Community Event - 28 Nov!

There is a better way to create products. In this UXDX Community event, Stephen Carrey-Chan, Director of Product & Design from CrowdStreet, will share how to maximize business results by applying customer research at scale. Plus Jaclyn Touchstone, Senior UX Designer from Bitwarden, will share how to ensure the success of an open beta through mixed-methods research.

FREE tickets are available now, register to get yours!

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: Does the theory work in practice?

Users responded:

I’m glad there is consensus and we’ve certainly cleared up that confusion 😃 

It’s interesting to see that there is no clear winner. From my perspective, while it’s technically possible to implement any practice in any company, politically, it’s not.

The biggest blocker I've seen is that typically there is no shared vision for how to work so any improvements suggested become an opinion battle. Toyota tackled this in manufacturing by implementing their single-piece flow vision (zero WIP), which has become instrumental in their way of work.

We don’t have a universally accepted best practice vision for how to work in software development, unlike in manufacturing. So, we have developed one as part of our upcoming framework for scaling autonomous teams: Zero blockers. The idea is that teams should be able to work autonomously from idea to working software. It's practically impossible, akin to Toyota's single-piece flow, but it serves as a great vision to strive for and continuously iterate towards.

Join Us

Attend our conferences to learn from industry leaders of top-tier companies. Participate in workshops to enhance your skills, or even take the stage as a speaker to share your expertise.