We created a blueprint of the Airbnb experience and used it to improve our service end-to-end

Apple Pie Position: A statement that instantly elevates the person who is saying it and is simultaneously hard for anyone else to push back on, and so everyone avoids the personal risk and just nods “yes”, even though its actual value in this specific situation might be relatively low, zero, or even negative. Because everyone in the workplace wants to come across as smart & competent, especially during meetings, Apple Pie Positions end up being frequently employed by your colleagues. Examples of Apple Pie Positions (trigger warning: might feel too painful at times) 1) “We need to define the success metrics for <whatever is being discussed>” Also seen in the wild as: “How will you measure success here?” 2) “Do you have any data to back that up?” (narrator: it is either impossible to get useful data in this situation or the effort to get useful data would be greater than just doing it) 3) “We need more scalable team processes” 4) “We have too many meetings” 5) “We need to sync more often” 6) “This is a two-way door, so let’s just decide quickly” (narrator: it was actually a one-way door. or, it was a two-way door with a hungry lion on the other side of the door, so we kinda died) 7) “We need more metrics before making a decision here” 8) “We need a better go-to-market motion to improve product adoption” (narrator: the problem is you’ve built the wrong product, no amount of GTM sorcery is going to fix that) 9) “We need to clarify our expectations from people in this role so we can set them up for success” (narrator: the problem is that you’ve hired too many people whose work overlaps with other functions) 10) “We need better internal documentation!” (narrator: yes we do. we also need 50 other things so let’s just finally admit that this ain’t happening. besides OpenAI will solve this for us in 2024, right?) 11) “Let us not forget [quote one of the company’s core values].” (narrator: sometimes used as a weapon to justify one’s position, especially when faced with objective & rational counter-arguments for an issue) 12) “We need to replace our team meeting with written updates” Fast forward a few weeks/months: “People are missing live interactions with team members, they don't know what's going on across the team, nobody's reading the written updates. We need a meeting” 13) “Our current org structure doesn’t set us up for optimal execution of our strategic goals. That's why we are announcing a re-org” 14) “We must not slow down our shipping velocity” (narrator: usually applied to push back against a fairly rational measure that will cause a minor delay in shipping the product but will prevent bigger problems for the customers or the company further down the road) 15) “We need to post-mortem this” (narrator: you should have pre-mortem'ed this, so you wouldn't have had to deal with an ugly post-mortem. and the systemic changes rarely happen and somehow we are doing another ugly post-mortem 3 months from now. repeat) 16) “After 13 amazing months as CxO, Bob has decided to leave for other personal pursuits. The company wouldn’t be the same without his contributions” (narrator: this is not how it actually went down) 17) “We need an offsite so we can align the teams better with our strategic priorities” (narrator: we said the same thing for the previous 6 offsites. it almost seems like we are doing offsites more than we are being onsites) 18) “Remember, we are a mission-driven company” (narrator: particularly effective when justifying below-market salary / stock for current and prospective employees) 19) “We need to go on a customer listening tour to understand our customers better” (narrator: no, you need to pay more attention to the customer research that’s already happened over the past 18 months that we haven’t done anything about. you then need to translate that into differentiated features, instead of just building me-too tablestakes) 20) “We need more apple pie” (narrator: 🥧yum. yes we do)

I love the idea of an emergent strategy or at least a blend of an emergent and deliberate strategy, especially given the current pace of technological advancements. 🤝 It is a must. 👏 Here are some features and benefits of emergent strategy.

The tragedy in Pakistan is a stark reminder of climate injustice. The top map shows which nations are most responsible for excess emissions. The bottom map shows which nations are most impacted by it. Climate breakdown is playing out along colonial lines.

Evidence and testimony from Alex Jones's damages trial revealed key financial details about the conspiracy theorist and his Infowars media company, which he used to spread lies about the Sandy Hook shooting. nyti.ms/3OX2OdK