Are you open to talking to people this year? Well you should be. There is a huge silo issue in product development teams, and much of it rests at the feet of the product manager. Your job …
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May.
New month. New priorities? Mostly not - things are the same, and for many, getting worse. What is about to change? Everything. Our Priorities won’t. A tad scary. …
Conversation over Interrogation
When talking to people to learn anything, conversation will beat interrogation. Conversation gets us, as humans, comfortable. We relate, tell our stories, and build trust. Conversation is a …
Strategy Custody
Strategic custody is who controls and owns the strategy. The trick is, this could be anyone - it requires someone to care about the outcomes and think about the future. The hard part about this is it …
Craft.
The goal is to become a better craftsperson. Craft is how we find our genius and leverage it consistently - without it, we're guessing at best. How can you reach that consistency varies, but …
Running
Running is great. It brings joy, and doing it as a group makes the team cohesive. Except if everyone is running in the wrong direction. Then, we're happy fools. …
Finding Form
When I’m kickboxing, I try to figure out form first. When the form is right, the body whips, and I can feel the speed and power on the bag in front of me. I can feel the environment around me shift in …
Problem Diving?
Do you have the right problem? Are you sure? What are some other possible problems that exist? What is the opposite problem? Where is this a problem? Just a few prompts to dive in. …
Value Questions
What do you all value? How does it work? What do you think everyone else values? How far away do you feel your definition is from the group? How does it get closer? …
The Launch Takes Care Of Itself
Everyone watches the “launch." However, the real work happens before and after. Unless something catastrophic (read: Massive Exception) happens during the launch, the results before and after are …
Three Questions To Help Your Team Grow
What can you not control? Getting this down is important because you need to budget time to deal with it. What keeps the lights on? There are rituals that helps your team play at their best. When …
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What Is Right?
Do you know? What about the people you work with? What are the answers they would give if you asked “what is the outcome our work seeks to make?" Worth asking from time to time, because I am going to …
Showing Clarity After You Are Clear
Clarity is a lot of work BEFORE you have it. There are all sorts of inputs that will create a map for others to follow. Clarity work is a lot simpler once you have it. You just have to: Tell them …
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Right Direction Over Anything
If you craft the perfect solution in the wrong direction, it means nothing. If you craft the wrong solution in the perfect direction, you’ve got data. You don’t have to “choose wisely” here, the …
No, The Covid Response Wasn’t Good
COVID won. That’s it. Whatever response we pulled together didn’t work. It isn’t over. We didn’t get through anything. We’re still here. Now that the books are starting to come out about what happened …
What Does Success Look Like?
We often don’t know what we want until we say what we want. This is why tasks like journaling are important. We say what is top of mind, pulling what may be churning in our subconscious to the …
How to Conduct Better Product Management Interviews
Hiring is one of the most important parts of product leadership. Use these principles to make sure you’re landing the best talent. Product leadership is difficult. That difficulty comes …
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As Product Manager, What Story Should You Tell?
As product manager, how do you take your plans from theory to action? Simple: Tell the right story. Making change is hard. Even harder is making change while projects are in motion. As a …
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What Do You Do When Product and Customer Success Won’t Play Nice?
Too often, customer success and product teams treat each other like adversaries. Here’s how to fix that. What kind of relationship do you have with your company’s customer success team? I often ask …
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Use a Premortem to Predict the Future
What if there were a way to figure out the problems that a project would encounter before you started work on it? With a premortem, you can do just that. If there is one constant we can count on, …
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