Aug 23Member-onlyA case to not align on strategyDoes low tenure make strategy & values alignment work pointless? — Lately I keep wondering how strange it is that people who run companies religiously try and get alignment on things like values and strategy from their entire (smallish) organisation, when the average tenure of employment (in technology) seems so low. If, as management wisdom says, in order to succeed, you…Strategy4 min readStrategy4 min read
Apr 3Member-onlyCrushing it: The blindness of overconfident CEOs?Investigating the relationships between JTBD importance and satisfaction in SMB CEOs & founders in North America. — The information presented below shares some findings that were a side effect of some user research completed by a product manager I work with, Xisca Mairata, who works for a client of mine, the management consulting company, ByMany. We set out to try and find some opportunities with small business…Product Management11 min readProduct Management11 min read
Feb 5Member-onlyOptimise for what?Is it possible to outsmart Godhart’s law? — Product management, at its heart, is a profession about choices. Making good decisions when only bad ones are available is one of the essential, yet challenging, elements of the job. Those who excel have a high degree of decision intelligence and a knack for asking themselves, not what is right…Product Management9 min readProduct Management9 min read
Published inXross Functional·Aug 28, 2022Member-onlyBi-Directional Product ManagementWhat if product managers did something else? — For a while now, I’ve had this suspicion that something is wrong with product management more broadly — especially as it relates to the roles responsibilities. I believe there might be alternative way to do this job that is fun, and more effective for the customer and organisation. …Agile20 min readAgile20 min read
Jul 27, 2022Homo Decidus: The card game that reduces bias and logical fallacies so your team can make better decisions.For a while now I’ve become increasingly interested in the field known as decision intelligence, a somewhat flexible term from engineering which sits at the cross sections of social science, decision theory and the managerial sciences. Beyond its applications into AI, which is being put through its paces at Google…Bias12 min readBias12 min read
Jul 7, 2022Member-onlyWhat if meetings cost money?The benefits of meeting scarcity and why you should create it — Last year, after a lengthy discussion about ‘meeting culture’ at dinner with some friends, an idea emerged that I think has promise. It’s simple to explain, and I believe worth exploring for those who have long felt meetings are mostly an enormous waste of time. …7 min read7 min read
Published inProduct Coalition·Feb 26, 2022Member-onlyThe Great SilenceWhy have Product Managers stopped speaking to customers? — Very sadly, most product managers I meet today no longer talk directly to customers regularly. If you ask; “How many customers did you speak to this week?” …most invariably say zero. I know this because I asked. I ran a survey with industry insiders and at least 50% of all…Product Management33 min readProduct Management33 min read
Jun 30, 2021What I say when people ask me for more moneyEvery now and then I’ll have a discussion with someone on the team who is looking for more money, a promotion, or just wants to talk about how they progress their player token on the financial scorecard of professional life. People want to progress. Sometimes it’s being called something different…9 min read9 min read
Published inXross Functional·Jun 19, 2021What phases do product ideas go through?How do we know we’re building the right product? While the engineering roles at Whispir primarily focus their energy on building the product right, the product, design & intelligence roles focus on ensuring we’re building the right thing for the right market. That’s the idea at least. The way we do this is to simply follow the math. When…Agile6 min readAgile6 min read
Published inXross Functional·Apr 19, 2021Member-onlyWhy We Don’t Interview Product Managers AnymoreJob interviews are mostly nonsense. According to Ron Friedman, a psychologist and author of “The Best places to work”, 80% of people lie during their interviews — so if that's the case, the information you’re hearing is likely fiction, or at best, inspired by real-world events. On top of that…Product14 min readProduct14 min read
