Navigation

Seven areas where Product Managers need to lean in

By on 7th August 2020

I’m enjoying Todd Birzer’s Becoming a More Strategic Product Manager. It is part of my learning journey to become a more business focused designer. Product management thinking is an essential skill set for anyone working in tech. For maximum impact there are seven key areas where product managers need to lean in:

  • Customer analysis: Collect stories from users to get a deep understanding of what they need. Stories work best to ignite empathy for customers across teams.
  • Competitive analysis: Have deep understanding of what your competitors are doing and where the next disruptions are likely to come from.
  • Strategy: Have a bold vision that inspires the team. Be clear on where you want to play and how you are planning to win. Read Roger Martin’s Playing to win: How strategy really works for more on strategy.
  • Prioritization and roadmapping: Roadmaps helps visualize and communicate strategy and prioritization helps teams focus on high impact features.
  • Discovery and Delivery “Discovery and delivery is best driven by a small empowered team–typically a product manager, a user experience designer, and an engineering lead. Prototyping, experimentation, and rapid customer feedback are all part of this process.”
  • Pricing “…intelligent price changes can be one of the fastest and most effective ways to increase margins.”
  • Finding growth “Generating revenue, profit, and share growth is a central job of product management.”

Understanding the Mind

By on 3rd August 2020

Sam Harris quotes that I wrote down without getting the source. They are from the lessons and interviews in the Waking Up App which I love as I am delving deeper into mindfulness. Also recommended is the Making Sense Podcast.

…to recognize how consciousness is prior to thinking, reacting, or trying to change your experience, in any way at all, can be the most important thing you ever learn to do.

…a choice between noticing what arises in your mind, and not noticing…

When you are suffering you are lost in thought.

Diversifying your life

By on 3rd August 2020

I loved How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams. I lost the book at Houston airport. Maybe it was meant to be. I hope that whoever picked it up enjoyed it and found it valuable. I don’t think the quotes below come from the book, they are from Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. Scott Adams is featured in the book.

This involves choosing projects and habits that even if they result in failures in the eyes of the outside world, give you transferable skills or relationships.

Diversification works in almost every area of your life to reduce your stress.

Quotes from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

By on 3rd August 2020

Quotes from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari.

In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.

Humans think in stories rather than in facts, number or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.

The revolutions in biotech and infotech are made by engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions, and who certainly don’t represent anyone.

It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.

The next decades might therefore be characterized by intense soul-searching and by formulating new social and political models.

The book seems even more relevant now that COVID-19 has intensified the crises we are facing. In a Financial Times article on 20 March 2020 Harari writes:

In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.

Primary and secondary research

By on 17th April 2020

I like how Matthew Kalil describes primary and secondary research in his book The Three Wells of Screenwriting. In the book he applies the lens of screenwriting to creativity. I find it relevant for design as well, lately I’ve begun to see design as a performance played out in organisations to create change. In the book he describes three wells that creatives can draw inspiration from: The External Sources Well, The Imagination Well, and The Memory Well. As a designer I find this a useful framework.

Secondary research is based on information gathered by others.

Primary research is new research. It could be interviews we have personally conducted or photographs we have taken. It is preferable to secondary research because it is new and personal.

The context here is that when we create something new, doing primary research is preferable. The direct experience provides material to our Memory Well that we can draw from when we need inspiration.

One of the best things about this on-the-ground research is that we are constantly activating all our senses. Later, when we write, we will consciously, or even unconsciously, tap into these senses. One can’t buy that kind of research, and we certainly can’t find it online or in a book.

The usual case for doing primary research is that we empathize with end users and the understanding that we get helps us to design products that solve real pain points. Another way of looking at it, is that doing primary research changes us, and in the process it changes what we end up designing.