# Anish Patel **An operator's perspective on business** --- ## Notes ***From the day job*** **Reading the numbers** - [[Confidence]]: *the risk of false precision* - [[Variance]]: *know when to react* - [[Estimates]]: *which number are you asking for?* - [[Samples]]: *ten interviews aren't a percentage* - [[Bases]]: *fishing where the fish are* - [[One timeline]]: *the average you never get* - [[Year one]]: *the cost of a slow start* - [[Instrumentation]]: *the wrong dashboard* **Money and growth** - [[Beyond margins]]: *when cost focus is a mistake* - [[Paying for growth]]: *when the money comes back* - [[Customer-funded growth]]: *growth on your customers' cash* - [[Bolt-ons]]: *price for the deal you'll actually run* **Where to compete** - [[Complements]]: *the sum of the parts* - [[Niches]]: *small bets, big profits* - [[Edges]]: *win where the incumbent isn't looking* - [[Intimacy]]: *know one market better than anyone* **Getting things done** - [[Execution trap]]: *too much work in flight* - [[Two halves of trust]]: *when alignment isn't enough* - [[Marginal gains, sometimes]]: *find the weakest link* - [[Inverse response]]: *when the right move makes the numbers worse first* - [[Turnarounds]]: *what it actually takes* - [[Attention]]: *the answer that feels responsible* ## Studies ***Strategy in practice*** **Where the advantage comes from** - [[ASSA ABLOY|The completed map]] *(ASSA ABLOY)* - [[Cintas|Building density]] *(Cintas)* - [[Descartes|The network you can't rebuild]] *(Descartes)* **What the market misreads** - [[Jack Henry|Staying focused]] *(Jack Henry)* - [[Pool Corporation|The misread cyclical]] *(Pool Corporation)* **How the business is run** - [[Bergman & Beving|One number, no centre]] *(Bergman & Beving)* - [[Halma|The centipede]] *(Halma)* - [[Action|The box that pays back in a year]] *(Action)* - [[The thin centre]]: *leaving well alone* **Making a real choice** - [[Veeva|Own what you depend on]] *(Veeva)* - [[Attractive opposites]]: *picking a side* ## Ideas ***Stolen from science*** - [[Bayesian thinking]]: *start from the base rate* - [[Signal and noise]]: *most movement is noise* - [[Ergodicity]]: *you only get one run at it* - [[Flow and bottlenecks]]: *focus on the true constraint* - [[Systems first]]: *the problem is rarely the person* - [[Power laws and networks]]: *a few things carry everything* --- [[About]] · [[Now]] ---