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Travis Kalanick believes a company has to solve problems at least as fast as it creates them. Each problem you solve creates new problems, so the problem you work on decides which new ones you get.
Show Notes
Travis Kalanick believes a company has to solve problems at least as fast as it creates them. Each problem you solve creates new problems, so the problem you work on decides which new ones you get.
Featuring: Travis Kalanick, Mike Isaac, Peter Senge
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Chapters:
(00:00) Travis Kalanick's rule for problems
(00:11) Taking Uber into China
(00:24) Losing $1 billion a year in China
(00:38) Working in priority order
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One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.
On a run last week I heard Travis Kalanick explain why taking Uber into China was a problem he chose to create.
Kalanick believes a company has to solve problems at least as fast as it creates them.
Around 2013 he took a few of Uber's earliest employees to China. One person there told him it was the worst idea ever.
He took that as a good sign.
By early 2016 Uber was losing more than $1 billion a year in China. That August it sold its China business to its local rival Didi.
Its problems there piled up faster than it could solve them.
Mike Isaac tells the story in his book Super Pumped.
Since each problem I solve creates new problems, I work in priority order.
When I work on my second or third most important problem, I create the wrong problems. The new problems from those lower priorities pile up and pull me further from my most important problem.
Work on your most important problem first and the new problems you create are the right ones.
What's the most important problem for you to solve right now?