Dylan Field live at Config: Intuition, simplicity, and the future of design

1. Embrace Constant Learning Mindset

Maintain a mindset of continuous adaptation, growth, and change to scale effectively as a leader and with the business. This involves being ready to absorb new information from all sources.

2. Seek Diverse Mentorship Sources

Actively seek mentors from a wide range of sources, including community members, employees, investors, coaches, and even those you mentor. This broadens perspectives and accelerates learning.

3. Lead with Responsibility and Craft

As a leader, embrace the responsibility to continuously simplify products, maximize their power for users, and advance the state of the craft. This commitment drives impactful product development and champions quality.

4. Treat Intuition as Hypothesis Generator

Generate hypotheses from intuition, then debate them and seek data to support or negate them, winnowing down to a working hypothesis to move forward. This helps refine product taste and decision-making.

5. Continuously Ingest Information & Ask Questions

Actively seek and ingest information from various sources (social media, support channels) and ask deep follow-up questions to understand root problems. This helps in understanding user needs, as user requests may not reflect their true desires.

6. Focus on Problems, Strategy, Point of View

Product managers should prioritize solving problems, developing a clear strategy, and having a strong point of view, rather than solely focusing on process. This ensures meaningful product direction and outcomes.

7. Create Shared Strategic Frameworks

The best product managers develop frameworks that clearly articulate strategy and a point of view, ensuring everyone understands the destination and how to achieve it. This aligns the team and provides clear direction.

8. Foster Team Cohesion & Celebration

Product leaders must unite the team towards shared objectives, ensuring milestones are celebrated and everyone feels happy and stoked at the project’s completion. This builds a cohesive team and sets the stage for future success.

9. Influence Decisions with Concrete Artifacts

To influence leadership, present concrete artifacts and examples, and be prepared to answer follow-up questions with data or commit to finding answers. This approach helps ensure decisions are understood from first principles and are well-supported.

10. Empower Teams with Non-Fatal Decisions

When a team member proposes an idea that isn’t “fatal” to the business, allow them to pursue it, providing your feedback and skepticism, then observe the outcome. This builds trust and allows for experimentation.

11. Ship Products as Fast as Possible

Prioritize getting products to market quickly to gather feedback sooner, which is crucial for iterative improvement. This accelerates learning and development.

12. Define Minimally Awesome Product

Before launching, clearly define what constitutes a “minimally awesome product” to ensure a valuable initial offering. This sets a clear target for the first release.

13. Choose Two: Quality, Features, Deadline

For new product launches, understand you can only prioritize two out of quality, features, and deadline. This helps make realistic trade-offs and manage expectations.

14. Iteratively Improve Quality Post-Launch

If a minimum quality bar is met, launch with desired features and deadline, then continuously improve quality iteratively. This allows for faster market entry and user feedback.

15. Make Simplicity Everyone’s Responsibility

Foster a culture where every team member is responsible for ensuring product simplicity, not just leadership. This combats entropy and prevents products from becoming overly complex.

16. Prioritize Simplicity and Possibility

Design tools and products by keeping simple things simple, while still enabling complex functionalities. This prevents unnecessary complexity and maintains usability.

17. Beware of Irreducible Complexity

Recognize that adding more features or components to a product can lead to disproportionate increases in complexity, making it harder to maintain coherence. Continuously evaluate the system for overall complexity, even if local decisions seem right.

18. Engage Influencers for Feedback

Identify influential figures in your target community, study their work, and reach out to them for feedback on your product. This strategy, while not a “growth hack,” can lead to valuable insights and early evangelists.

19. Leverage Feedback-Apt Communities

When seeking early feedback, target communities or professions known for their ability to provide constructive and detailed input, such as designers. This maximizes the value of early user interactions.

20. Engage Directly with Users

All product team members (PMs, designers, engineers) should have direct exposure to and dialogue with users. This ensures a shared understanding of user needs and problems.

21. Develop Cross-Functional Expertise

Product managers and designers should cultivate technical expertise or understand how systems work to create the best possible products. This blurs traditional role lines but enhances product quality.

22. Understand Business Objectives & User Needs

Designers and engineers should understand business objectives and user desires to contribute more effectively to product development. This ensures alignment and user-centricity.

23. Cultivate Taste, Craft, and Visual Care

Engineers and product managers should develop taste, craft, and a desire to care about visual implementation. This contributes to a higher quality and more aesthetically pleasing product.

24. Interpret Advice Contextually

When receiving advice, recognize that the giver is often advising themselves in your situation, not necessarily you directly. This helps in critically evaluating and adapting advice to your unique context.