Mastercard is my favourite example. Companies can be reasonably successful without any essence.
Companies that do have an essences could unintentionally or intentionally change it, or bet on a new essence. Making decisions that actively hurt the essence you have stood for, especially unintentionally, is a risk all companies have over a period of time. Because new leaders come in and don’t think of this and aren’t told about it either.
What is the difference between a company's 'essence' and its operating principles? Can you give a concrete example of "Mastercard's essence" and a decision that would violate it?
Operating principle for Apple could be saying no by default. “We’ll keep the bar for saying yes to anything new very high.”
Imagine a restaurant with a small menu but every dish is impeccable. By limiting the menu, they are making a choice for the diners to only get the best they offer, and they can keep the quality standards high inside the kitchen. As opposed to restaurants with a big menu, lots of options, but you leave with a mixed bag experience while their kitchen is optimised for speed and not finesse.
Essence is what customers feel when using a company’s product or services. Operating Principles are more internal to the company.
Mastercard is shared as an example of no essence. So there’s nothing to violate.
But Apple has an essence of taste, so if they launched a product that feels sloppy, that would be violating the essence because the customers won’t feel the way do using the current Apple products.
The voyage of simplicity and clarity is illuminating.
And for me, underlines the massive overlap in the Venn Diagram between Strategy, Marketing, and Branding– Promising something, and delivering against it consistently.
Love to see how these “make my ai chat public” posts of yours are evolving. “See how I teach Claude to think” was the hook for me btw to actually read the chat, then I skipped straight to your responses and skipped Claude’s mostly.
Q: if this concept of publishing a chat with an ai wasn’t novel / interesting at the moment, why not publish a chat/transcript with another person?
(Other than the obvious privacy considerations / permissions you need to acquire to share the human conversation)
For me, I’d actually be more interested to read both sides of the conversation if it was with a person, though I’m not sure I can articulate why.
Sharp and simple, which is the hard part. Pulled your chat into my own Claude and ran it on what I’m building, and it landed close to what I’d already settled on. Running through the exercise and putting it in those terms gave me real clarity.
Great read, thanks for sharing the discussion with Claude as well! Insightful reading that too, is there a specific system prompt you’re using these days Shreyas ?
Shreyas I do enjoy these articles and your chat flows but I worry that you are drifting away from what you sell (or at least what I buy from you) and what makes you different, towards what everyone else sells.
This worry was triggered because I sent your recent parenting one to my son (around the same age as yours I think) and he said, “I’m so scared you’re falling prey to ai/productivityslop”
My first reaction was to dismiss him and get defensive on your behalf but then I thought about it and wondered if there was some truth in it? I think there is.
So I think there is a risk you are being pulled towards doing what everyone else is doing (ai) for understandable reasons (everyone is doing ai so I should too) but these reasons are ironically the exact same reasons that your prior writings say we should resist!
What I have always found different about you is:
- your ability to call out the ego and internal political motivations in our daily lives (looking smart, being right, earning points). The “social and emotional” JTBD
- saying the things no-one else is saying (or even seeing) and helping me apply these to my situation. For example you challenged me a few months ago with your video saying that ai was incapable of critical thinking and that we had to do this ourselves. I understand that your view may have evolved on this based on the latest models, but again, that’s not what I am buying from you
I miss your videos poking funny-but-painfully-true observations at our weaknesses as humans and how these show up in product leadership and how to push ourselves to do better. Those were unique. These how-I-ai threads are helpful, but they don’t meet the quality bar I expect of you.
And I’m grateful to my son for calling me out on this today. I hope you don’t mind the spicy feedback.
I think the voice on which distribution is built for selling the above can either be encouraging or fear based (FOMO and other negative emotions). How does that impact the product and org in longer run?
The exercise is sharp, but the real test starts when what you think you sell and what the customer actually buys drift apart. In my PM trainings I nominally sell method, yet what sticks is usually a sense of regaining control over a messy situation. How do you check that your "I sell clarity" matches the reason clients later give for coming back?
Mastercard is my favourite example. Companies can be reasonably successful without any essence.
Companies that do have an essences could unintentionally or intentionally change it, or bet on a new essence. Making decisions that actively hurt the essence you have stood for, especially unintentionally, is a risk all companies have over a period of time. Because new leaders come in and don’t think of this and aren’t told about it either.
What is the difference between a company's 'essence' and its operating principles? Can you give a concrete example of "Mastercard's essence" and a decision that would violate it?
Operating principle for Apple could be saying no by default. “We’ll keep the bar for saying yes to anything new very high.”
Imagine a restaurant with a small menu but every dish is impeccable. By limiting the menu, they are making a choice for the diners to only get the best they offer, and they can keep the quality standards high inside the kitchen. As opposed to restaurants with a big menu, lots of options, but you leave with a mixed bag experience while their kitchen is optimised for speed and not finesse.
Essence is what customers feel when using a company’s product or services. Operating Principles are more internal to the company.
Mastercard is shared as an example of no essence. So there’s nothing to violate.
But Apple has an essence of taste, so if they launched a product that feels sloppy, that would be violating the essence because the customers won’t feel the way do using the current Apple products.
Clarity received ❤️
Thanks for sharing Shreyas! Lots to learn from your interaction with Claude
The voyage of simplicity and clarity is illuminating.
And for me, underlines the massive overlap in the Venn Diagram between Strategy, Marketing, and Branding– Promising something, and delivering against it consistently.
Love to see how these “make my ai chat public” posts of yours are evolving. “See how I teach Claude to think” was the hook for me btw to actually read the chat, then I skipped straight to your responses and skipped Claude’s mostly.
Q: if this concept of publishing a chat with an ai wasn’t novel / interesting at the moment, why not publish a chat/transcript with another person?
(Other than the obvious privacy considerations / permissions you need to acquire to share the human conversation)
For me, I’d actually be more interested to read both sides of the conversation if it was with a person, though I’m not sure I can articulate why.
Sharp and simple, which is the hard part. Pulled your chat into my own Claude and ran it on what I’m building, and it landed close to what I’d already settled on. Running through the exercise and putting it in those terms gave me real clarity.
Great read, thanks for sharing the discussion with Claude as well! Insightful reading that too, is there a specific system prompt you’re using these days Shreyas ?
I don’t have a system prompt
got it!
Great point Shreyas! Having this kind of Clarity is a rare commodity in this AI age.
Shreyas I do enjoy these articles and your chat flows but I worry that you are drifting away from what you sell (or at least what I buy from you) and what makes you different, towards what everyone else sells.
This worry was triggered because I sent your recent parenting one to my son (around the same age as yours I think) and he said, “I’m so scared you’re falling prey to ai/productivityslop”
My first reaction was to dismiss him and get defensive on your behalf but then I thought about it and wondered if there was some truth in it? I think there is.
So I think there is a risk you are being pulled towards doing what everyone else is doing (ai) for understandable reasons (everyone is doing ai so I should too) but these reasons are ironically the exact same reasons that your prior writings say we should resist!
What I have always found different about you is:
- your ability to call out the ego and internal political motivations in our daily lives (looking smart, being right, earning points). The “social and emotional” JTBD
- saying the things no-one else is saying (or even seeing) and helping me apply these to my situation. For example you challenged me a few months ago with your video saying that ai was incapable of critical thinking and that we had to do this ourselves. I understand that your view may have evolved on this based on the latest models, but again, that’s not what I am buying from you
I miss your videos poking funny-but-painfully-true observations at our weaknesses as humans and how these show up in product leadership and how to push ourselves to do better. Those were unique. These how-I-ai threads are helpful, but they don’t meet the quality bar I expect of you.
And I’m grateful to my son for calling me out on this today. I hope you don’t mind the spicy feedback.
Ah, who else is publishing these kinds of in depth Claude chats to help people see how to think clearly?
I think the voice on which distribution is built for selling the above can either be encouraging or fear based (FOMO and other negative emotions). How does that impact the product and org in longer run?
The exercise is sharp, but the real test starts when what you think you sell and what the customer actually buys drift apart. In my PM trainings I nominally sell method, yet what sticks is usually a sense of regaining control over a messy situation. How do you check that your "I sell clarity" matches the reason clients later give for coming back?
Meta sells attention, if by selling you mean what it gets paid for (by advertisers).