Only the Obsessed Should Ship

JA Westenberg: What I want from the people who run companies is much smaller than passion: I want the habit of using the product on weekends. If you run a publisher you should be reading novels (other people’s, ideally) by choice on a Sunday with no work email open; if you run a games studio your Steam library should not be empty; if you run a burger chain you should be eating one on your day off, ideally at the competition; and if you run a software company you should be sitting down with your own product on a steady and regular afternoon trying to do something real with it, without the help of the sales engineering team or a deck. Maybe I’ve become cynical, but there are way too many CEOs that are so out of touch with their own products and how real people interact with them. There’s a point that there’s not even a passing interest, let alone passion about a product and they’re simply insulated by money and yes-men. Think of every bad customer service interaction or every “we’ve…