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Mehrotra: Prioritize strategic questions by how many other decisions they eliminate

Shishir Mehrotra · The rituals of great teams | Shishir Mehrotra, Coda, YouTube, Microsoft · Aug 14, 2022 · at 53:26

Shishir Mehrotra (co-founder/CEO of Coda, former head of product at YouTube) explains his Eigenquestion framework for product strategy and executive decision-making.

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“The eigen question, the simplest definition of eigen question is the question that when answered also answers the most subsequent questions. And it's a very simple idea that when you sit down and you say, Hey, here's all these questions we gotta answer. How do we all usually rank? Like sometimes we write them just by, yeah, what order we came up with them. Sometimes we rank them by importance, like which is the most impactful decision we're going to make. But this methodology says, don't rank them that way. Rank them, like you said, Chesky's thinking about leverage, same, same idea. Rank them by which ones would eliminate the most other questions on the list.”

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