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Google’s mission statement anno 2024 is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. The failure to execute against that mission since the rise of LLMs has been epic. I’m not talking about the recent damage to their stock price or the latest earnings calls. I’m talking about Google no longer being relevant to how humanity accesses useful information from 2024 onwards, and not having the wherewithal to take decisive action on that change....

Feedback happens when: There’s a high confidence it will be well received. Are you easy to give feedback to? There’s a likelihood it will make a difference. Have you demonstrated a willingness to change based on feedback? The work has been inspected. Are you clearly holding up your work for review that might elicit feedback? The work is well understood. Have you communicated in detail about the work and highlighted areas that might be especially relevant to get feedback on?...

Teams perform better when: Information flows free and fast. Accountability is clear and implicitly expected. Trust is high. Teams perform better - and deliver strategy more effectively - on a foundation of strong relationships. But relationships to who? On the left: Relationship strengths when a team leader tries to build connections, information flows, and work around themselves. This can create dense and strong relationships with direct reports. This is, all else being equal, a good thing....

Focus groups have a series of commonly known shortcomings that are generally accepted as a worthwhile trade-off in order to get really detailed qualitative feedback from a user group. But the core challenge is this People don’t say what they’re thinking / feeling. People don’t make purchase decisions using executive function – they feel their way into a buy. People can’t be trusted far, and even if they could be, they wouldn’t be able to explain what they’re feeling or how they’ll act in the future....

Having a brand as a front to the customer has some convoluted benefits rooted in people simply not caring in the slightest about the brand. Regular humans are far too busy with their regular human lives to pay much attention to your brand, and they’re definitely not emotionally invested in it. They may feel a slight warmth or comfort from it, at maybe 2% of their full emotional capacity in that direction....