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Lead Bullets

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Re: Lead Bullets

#2
Famed chef Gordon Ramsay has a show called "Kitchen Nightmares" where he rescues restaurants that are in trouble. There's a fair share of drama and spectacle in every episode but much of what he does is apply the same fundamental changes to every restaurant. And it's not silver bullets, it's just sound execution of basic, common sense practices. Keep the menu simple, make stuff fresh, keep the kitchen clean, keep service timely, keep spending under control, etc.

If you have a product that has traction in the market it's not necessary to try for silver bullet features. It's only necessary to get your ducks in a row and execute well. Execution tends to be multiplicative along every aspect. If you can deliver solid features AND solid usability AND solid performance AND solid reliability AND solid customer service then there's no reason why you shouldn't do well.

Ultimately I think the search for silver bullets comes out of a sense of denial. People like to think that the reason their restaurant is doing poorly is some external problem they have no control over, rather than because they. Don't clean their kitchen and their food is bland.

Re: Lead Bullets

#3
“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power

Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html

Re: Lead Bullets

#4
post #3

“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html

Yeah, that is a pretty huge over sight. Who would want to make a reference to PE without realizing that?

Re: Lead Bullets

#5
"They did not want to hear that, but it made things clear: we had to build a better product. There was no other way out. No window, no hole, no escape hatch, no backdoor."

This is simply known as "not resting on your laurels".

Or as Andy Grove would say "Only the paranoid survive," ... "Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction," ... "Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure."

(And all of the above also leads to missed opportunity.)

Re: Lead Bullets

#6
post #3

“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html

Do you have a transcript of Thomas N. Todd saying that so I can see some context?

Re: Lead Bullets

#7

Famed chef Gordon Ramsay has a show called "Kitchen Nightmares" where he rescues restaurants that are in trouble. There's a fair share of drama and spectacle in every episode but much of what he does is apply the same fundamental changes to every restaurant. And it's not silver bullets, it's just sound execution of basic, common sense practices. Keep the menu simple, make stuff fresh, keep the kitchen clean, keep ser…

The same phenomenon occurs in online games like Starcraft. People in the lower leagues of Starcraft constantly go to message boards like the TeamLiquid forums and ask for advice on strategy, critiques of replays, etc. But in 99% of cases, basic fundamentals like always making workers, constantly producing out of existing production buildings before making new ones, and not becoming supply-blocked (a form of production bottleneck) are the real problem. But they have the same sort of denial you are referring to where they want to believe that if they just _knew_ something that they don't know, they could win.

It's actually kind of sad that these biases towards easy thoughts exist, because often the fundamentals are more accessible than the silver bullet is to any given practitioner. In other words, almost anyone can execute on fundamentals with practice, but the grand silver bullet strategies are often beyond the capabilities of a typical person.

Re: Lead Bullets

#8

Famed chef Gordon Ramsay has a show called "Kitchen Nightmares" where he rescues restaurants that are in trouble. There's a fair share of drama and spectacle in every episode but much of what he does is apply the same fundamental changes to every restaurant. And it's not silver bullets, it's just sound execution of basic, common sense practices. Keep the menu simple, make stuff fresh, keep the kitchen clean, keep ser…

In a DEC Press book covering the history of minicomputers (Gordon Bell was one of the authors as I recall), the most interesting observation was that the companies that survived let alone thrived in the frothy period for them were the ones that did an acceptable job of every essential thing.

E.g. make great hardware but don't document it well enough, you fail. DEC's forte at the time was CPUs, most of the rest wasn't so hot, but it was all good enough.

Re: Lead Bullets

#9
post #6
post #3

“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html

Do you have a transcript of Thomas N. Todd saying that so I can see some context?

[deleted]

Re: Lead Bullets

#10
post #3

“Yet our best trained, best educated, best equipped, best prepared troops refuse to fight. As a matter of fact, it’s safe to say that they would rather switch than fight.”—Public Enemy, Fight the Power Seriously? Public Enemy sampled it, they clearly didn't say it. Thomas N. Todd did. http://www.njcdlp.org/Thomas_N_Todd.html

Yeah, that is a pretty huge over sight. Who would want to make a reference to PE without realizing that?

Because he intentionally made the reference to PE to pick up on PE's context. He "sampled" PE, he didn't "sample" Thomas N. Todd.
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