When Giving the Benefit of the Doubt Backfires
Over the past year, I’ve heard more and more founders and design leaders tell eerily similar stories:
Over the past year, I’ve heard more and more founders and design leaders tell eerily similar stories:
In 1949, a crew of elite smoke-jumpers parachuted into Montana’s Mann Gulch to fight what looked like a routine wildfire. But within hours, the fire turned deadly. As the flames roared up the slope, their leader, Wagner Dodge, made a radical move: he lit a fire of his own. By burning the grass ahead of him, he created a patch of scorched earth the wildfire couldn’t cross. He lay in the ashes as the main fire swept over.
A lot of designers, especially those with a strong systems-thinking mindset, pride themselves on being rigorous problem-solvers. We stress-test ideas. We poke holes in weak assumptions. We say things like “That won’t work because…” or “The problem with that is…” and we think we’re doing our job — helping move the team forward, protecting users, flagging risks.
But let’s be honest: a lot of the time, we just come across as… difficult.
Most product requirement documents (PRDs) are boring, transactional, and—let’s be honest—kind of useless. They tend to be a simple feature request with a rough deadline, putting all the thinking and risk on the product and design teams.
But what if your PRD could do more?
Starting a company is a crash course in humility. You’re juggling 100 decisions a day, half of which you’ve never faced before. You’re trying to build a product, grow a business, and stay sane—all at once.
Here are seven principles I’ve seen trip up first-time founders (myself included). If you're just getting started, I hope this saves you some scar tissue.
It starts, as these stories often do, with a bold vision.
A founder has an idea — one they’re convinced is going to change the game. It’s innovative. Disruptive. The kind of idea that turns heads and opens investor checkbooks. Before long, there’s money in the bank, a team in place, and the runway to bring this vision to life.
From the founder’s perspective, the stars are aligning. The idea has been validated — after all, someone just put money behind it. Now it’s just a matter of execution.
But this is where things often go wrong.