--- title: "Reflection - Empathy is all you need" description: "Author's reflections on the book 'Empathy is all you need', covering product-market fit, hiring, and life." keywords: "reflection, business empathy, product-market fit, hiring" url: "https://empathyisallyouneed.com/reflection" language: "en" --- # Reflection Don't judge this book by its cover Start Listening 0:00 “Don’t judge this book by its cover” - is what the cover of this book said. It's much more than a literal request about a book. It’s a rallying cry to avoid snap judgements. I believe having the ability to avoid judging on first impressions is one of the most important skills we can master as human beings. Most of us have had experiences that may have turned out completely different, both good and bad, from what our initial impressions were. A distant relative, a new colleague, a meal at a restaurant, even meeting a childhood hero in person. The reason we know better is that we went a bit further than just judging on first impressions. This prevents us to overcome bias, cultivate patience, be mindful, embrace complexity and in a nutshell leave the world better than we found it. My grandfather once shared with me how the _power of reflection and going beyond face-value_ helped him become aware of the biases in his thinking he developed due to the newspaper he read growing up. He shared how he tried his best to actively prevent them from affecting how he went about life. He highlighted how people mistake reflection with meditation or note taking. He explained how _true reflection is the ability to think without bias, while being empathetic towards others._ In my reflections, I realized that deep empathy combined with curiosity and a mindset of abundance, leads to happy and productive lives, which for most of us means pride at work and peace at home. Here are some of my reflections as I try to test whether _empathy is all we need._ ### Empathy and Product-Market Fit I firmly believe that the only thing that matters for a startup is to find _true_ product-market fit. When this happens its magic. There are more people who want to pay and use your product or service than you can serve. Most times a company gets to product-market fit by iterating fast and staying in business long enough. The best advice on how to get to true product-market fit usually can be summarized as _making something that your customer really needs._ What I have realized on our journey building Konigle is that usually a great product follows a deep understanding of the user of the product -and this cannot be gauged via some analytics solution, as early in a company’s journey you can’t measure anything of value. The highest probability of one achieving product-market fit is if we have an intuitive understanding of a problem and those facing their problem, i.e. empathy. That is why many times people who build products for themselves or for their loved ones, like the famous story about Wordle, end up making products that capture the fancy of people. ### Empathy and giving up It is often said that progress in most things is a consequence of someone somewhere not giving up and trying one more time. But I have also heard that sometimes we need to give up and move on. So what is the best way to decide? If we truly empathize with the task at hand, we intuitively understand when we are not a good fit to make progress on a given task and often have the self awareness to accept it. It is the essence behind that one more try at a moment of truth or giving up and doing something else where you can have massive impact. ### Empathy and marriage We hear folks who date each other for years end up hating each other when they marry. Many times folks marry for the sunk cost fallacy - _we have dated for many years, a known devil is better than an unknown angel_. Folks marry for a career convenience - I have heard about someone marrying a person for better career prospects and ending up in an abusive relationship. Folks marry for social status or in Singapore- for government housing. I am no expert at marriage. But here’s my understanding of the situation. Marriages that do not work out are usually because those getting married do not do something tough together before marriage and marriage is usually their first difficult moment together. This is when they realize that they made a mistake. If two folks of similar empathy marry, they are more likely to enjoy a blissful marriage. ### Empathy and Hiring “But whatever may be the reasons, it's never just what you do , but how you do it that matters. … does not fall in line with the culture we want to build at Konigle. This has to be a _line in the sand_ moment for Konigle, that not a single one of us can take for granted.” The journey of truly understanding empathy began from the above message I sent to my co-founders, when a key hire did not work out. But to be fair, when Andy Hwang, our board member and my port of call in crisis, had said when interviewing this hire - they _lack empathy for the role_. But maybe I didn't really understand empathy at the time. Once we realized that if we could continuously get a sense check of our collective empathy as an organization and we try to make sure every hire that we interview has similar levels of empathy we could have a productive working relationship between all team members at Konigle. This is what we did. We have developed an empathy measuring framework for our hiring process and also for appraising performance of employees. What has been most heartening to see is that once we became conscious of hiring based on empathy, the entire team at Konigle has been extremely productive. Also there are the little things - the engineering team going the extra mile to make sure others can work better with the codebase, customer success going beyond just helping pacify customers to truly helping them, team-mates waiting for everyone to have their lunch before they start eating and more.. In fact some of our folks went to take personality tests and it turns out most of them were similar personality types. ### Empathy and Curiosity Below we start with a 2x2 matrix that we came up with for our hires. We realized our founding team at Konigle had very high empathy and high curiosity, with extremely high agency. The hire that didn’t work out was low empathy, low curiosity with very low agency. Curiosity Empathy Low Empathy and High Curiosity High Empathy and High Curiosity Low Empathy and Low Curiosity High Empathy and Low Curiosity In the matrix, a person who has low empathy and low curiosity, would usually regress in their life. They would find it difficult to change and evolve. A usual tell-tale sign is they would keep harping about how they are the victim, almost always. A person with high empathy and low curiosity, would usually not act on their empathy and wouldn’t really do much to help solve problems. They would be ears to people, but can’t be helpful. A person with very low empathy and high curiosity is someone who will not act on their curiosity for the good of others, hence they aren't too helpful. But even if you have very high empathy and curiosity, but don’t have a true belief that you can have an impact with your work, you wouldn’t be very helpful either. Hence, truly happy and productive people are those who have deep empathy, radical curiosity and a mindset of abundance. ### Some questions to ponder on * Empathy and marketing * Empathy and decision making * Empathy and cooking * Empathy and climate change * Empathy and career choices Hope this book was useful. If you would like to share your thoughts and discuss more - please email at [empathy@konigle.com](mailto:empathy@konigle.com). [← Helpful Lies](/helpful-lies) [Outro →](/outro)