Hey folks! Wanted to send out a brief updated on what to expect from me in the coming months.
Look, the world is both scary and weird right now. Folks who usually work in offices—especially open-plan offices—may be struggling to focus, be productive, or even stay sane. Here are some really simple tips to try and keep you and your people in good shape for more long-term remote work.
This is the long way of telling you I had a breakthrough in that moment, sipping coffee together in the window. Product vision is the Benjamin Button of the business world.
Go ahead, laugh. But… it’s just so crazy it might work.
I find it very effective to create an internally-facing document for each general set of problems—a problem page. This document should articulate what problem set you’d like to address, for what audience, and why.
While this page should serve up data and facts, its purpose is also to persuade your internal audience that this is, in fact, the thing you should be working on. This is the time to get on your soapbox, to tug at heartstrings. You want a rallying cry that is as persuasive as Daenerys on her best day. You want for someone to read your words and jump up from their desk to CHARGE!
I believe deeply that every product engineering team should have a tripod at its helm. Hopefully, by the end of this blog post, you’ll agree with me.
The infamous “Product Manager Take-Home Assignment” has gotten on my last nerve. I’ve been asked to do them in the past, and my clients now are often tasked with them as well. Every time I look at one, I’m appalled at what I see—because what’s being asked is not remotely what it’s like to be a PM in real life.
We can all improve our feedback giving/receiving skills by approaching feedback a bit more like a product manager. Not to say you should form your feedback in the way that a product manager might, but rather you can approach feedback in a similar way that a product manager approaches a customer problem. There have been a billion things written on how to give feedback well, so for now I’d like to start with how to receive feedback… even if it’s bad.