Skills

3 minute read

Skills can be taught

First of all, it is important to emphasize that skills can be taught

  • Leadership is a skill, so it can be taught
  • Resilience is a skill, so it can be taught

Get a Mentor

Having one or more mentors that have large experience in the things you lack experience and knowledge is the way to learn those skills faster. It can be technical skills or not.

Networking

If you surround yourself with people who are far smarter than you and you can learn from them it will help you in your Journey. You can learn from them and be challenged.

Leadership

  • Leaders sell their vision
  • Leaders inspire
  • Leaders drive others to give their best
  • Leaders create productive conflict

Sell (Pitching)

You are always selling your business (to your parents, friends, business partners, employees, and potential investors), that is why you need always to keep your Pitch sharp.

Communication

  • Learn to Synthesize - avoid wasting time by communicating clearly and in a succinct way
  • Learn to adequate the message to the receiver - Different receivers might need a different message and/or channel
  • Communicate only enough to give context and be transparent
  • Everyone should know the Vision and Strategy to get there
  • Everyone should know what each other is working on and how they are contributing to the Strategy

To help improve Communication study

  • Communication Theory
  • Elements of Communication

Time Management

It helps to

  • Set SMART Goals - SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely
    • Specific: what do I want to accomplish?
    • Measurable: how will I know when it is accomplished?
    • Achievable: how realistic is this goal, based on my workload and resources?
    • Realistic: does this align with our overall priorities?
    • Timely: what is my target date?
  • Set Priorities
  • Plan your week and/or day

Techniques

  • Timeboxing
  • Pomodoro
  • Getting Things Done (GTD)

Decision Making

  • Always try to get data / information to back your decisions, but sometimes you will find yourself without any help on that matter.
  • Separate daily basis decision making from future impacting decision making. The first one you should do as fast as possible and the second one you should work on it to make an informed decision.
  • But don’t take too long to make decisions.
  • The faster you decide, the faster you learn from it.
  • Most decisions are not definite and you can make up your mind later.

References

 The Power of Habit - by Charles Duhigg
Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
The Hard Thing About the Hard Things - by Ben Horowitz
Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Blitzscaling - by Reid Hoffman (founder of Linkedin)
The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Running Lean - by Ash Maurya
Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
Original Version Launch Year: 2010
Key takeaways
  • Systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success.
  • 3 Principles: Document Plan A (your initial plan), Identify the Riskiest Aspects of your Plan, Systematically Test your Plan
  • 3 Stages of Startup Growth: PROBLEM/SOLUTION FIT, PRODUCT/MARKET FIT, SCALE
  • Lean Canvas: focuses on addressing broad customer problems and solutions and delivering them to customer segments through a unique value proposition.
    		•
    		The Lean Startup - by Eric Ries
    How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
    Original Version Launch Year: 2008
    Key takeaways
  • Is about maximizing learning and minimizing waste in the innovation process; it combines Customer Development, Agile software development methods and Toyota’s Lean practices.
  • Lesn Startup is a methodology for developing businesses and products, which aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning.
  • MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
  • Continuous Deployment
  • Split Testing (A/B Testing)
  • Actionable Metrics
  • Pivot
  • Build-Measure-Learn
    		•
    		Business Model Generation - by Alexander Osterwalder
    A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
    Original Version Launch Year: 2008
    Key takeaways
  • Business Model Canvas - business model design template, that help describe its business model.
    		•
    		The Four Steps to the Epiphany - by Steve Blank
    Successful Strategies for Products that Win
    Original Version Launch Year: 2005
    Key takeaways
  • Customer Feedback is a framework for incorporating customers’ inputs into your product development cycle.
  • Customer Development Methodology consists of 4 steps
  • (1) Customer Discovery: tests hypotheses about the nature of the problem, interest in the product or service solution, and business viability.
  • (2) Customer Validation: tests the business viability through customer purchases and in the process creates a 'sales road map', a proven and repeatable sales process. Customer discovery and customer validation corroborate the business model.
  • (3) Customer Creation: executes the business plan by scaling through customer acquisition, creating user demand, and directing it toward the company's sales channels.
  • (4) Customer Building: formalizes and standardizes company departments and operations.
  • Customer Discovery Steps
    		•