-- David Henke

Most business books are drivel. One of the rare good ones, however, is "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt. Jeff Bezos requires incoming execs read it, and it’s one of the books David Henke recommended when he came and spoke at HubSpot (where I work).

The core lesson in the book is to avoid local maxima, and to make sure your systems are optimizing for the overall goal your company has (hence the name). The story follows a manufacturing plant, but applies just as readily to many other businesses and their processes. The main character learns again and again how various parts of the plant need to subordinate their own metrics and throughput in order to maximize the overall output.

This is a great lesson to internalize, and for product managers like me, it's a good reminder when working on a small part of a much larger product.

The lesson: lift your eyes and see how you fit in the larger customer journey and don't just solve for your team and your part of the user's flow. We have lots of small, autonomous teams at HubSpot, which makes it all the more important to have an eye toward the full customer experience and the resulting revenue impact of our decisions.

That said, an even bigger take-away that I got from the book is the necessary conclusion that you’ll come to whenever you're working in a company that isn't a non-profit:

Revenue will always be your north star at the end of the day.

Depending on the history/size/sophistication/industry of your company, you may not have been forced to consider this. It's easy to lose sight of in large corporations, especially if you're relatively far removed from the sales team that has numbers to hit every month. Maybe your team's focus is driving usage or improving specific on-boarding flows. You're measured by Weekly Active Users or Activation Rate (hey, at least it's not scrum points per sprint or something). Those all sound like fine goals for a product team.

Just don’t lose sight of the ladder those goals all sit on, and what’s at the top of it.

When you switch your mindset to always keeping revenue in mind, it puts your sub-goals in perspective. Sure, let's focus on increased Activation Rate *as a way to improve our customer conversion rate and drive more revenue*.

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Group chat (or constant email checking) is a productivity killer. Like you, I probably check it more often than I should, and it saps my brain more than I care to admit.

But it’s worth fighting against.

My main strategy is an idea I’ve borrowed from one of my colleagues, who believes, “If it’s important, it’ll come up again.” That tenet is the basis for my email and Slack notifications workflow, which is: ignore them in the short term.

It sounds scary to ignore emails and slacks (what if it’s my boss!?). But in my experience, any notifications I miss always resurface if whatever caused them was important enough. Yes, this means I’m less responsive than I could be. But it’s worth the tradeoff to keep my attention. (There are, of course, important exceptions - write them down on your to-do list and move on.)

At this point, you might be thinking, "wow, Lars is one of those dicks who never responds to emails". And you're not completely wrong. But reflect for a second on 1) how immediately (and even whether) any given message needs your response and 2) how much your employer is paying you to focus your attention on something that moves the business forward instead of pushing emails/messages around. If there's actually an emergency, someone will get in touch with you - they'll find you in the office, call your cell, or continually ping you until you can’t ignore them.

So, what does this mean for my day-to-day workflow?

Here’s how I use email:

- I use the keyboard shortcuts - “y” (archive) is your new best friend. I read and then archive anything without a direct action item for me to follow up on. I can always search for it if I need to re-read later.

- Some messages only require a quick (sub 2 minute) response. I deal with them immediately, then archive. (NB: I don’t leave those messages in my Inbox to remind me I’m expecting a response - If it’s important, it’ll come up again.)

- I leave messages (usually one or two) with larger ‘to-do’ items in my Inbox. I archive them once I’ve ‘done’ whatever the action was.

- Close the email tab so I won’t be tempted to check it out of habit. This has done as much for my productivity as the rest of these rules combined.

Here’s how I use slack:

- Turn off all notifications in the Dock / top right corner. I don’t understand how people get anything done without disabling this.

- Stay on the “All Unreads” tab by default. (Cmd-shift-a)

- Hit ‘enter’ to read and then ‘r’ liberally to mark notifications not needing a response as “read”.

- Use Cmd-K to jump to and respond to channels/conversations.

- Create slack in my day by turning off Slack. I usually take a few hours in the morning to focus on “deep work” (a la Cal Newport - http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/ ) before I open Slack for the day.