There are a great many different corporate cultures to be found in the world, but one consistency among far too many of them is decision-making processes that rely more on gut-level instinct and whomever yells the loudest rather than on hard data. For some companies, this has served the CEO well — a small, nimble […]
Five Questions to Ask in Any Product Management Interview
At some point in every interview that you have, the people on the other side of the table will inevitably pose the ultimate question to you: “So, do you have any questions for us?” There are hundreds of guides out there that list out the kinds of questions that you should ask in general, but due […]
Leading Through Influence: Limiting Choices
I was working with a future mentee last week and we noticed a recurring theme to some of our discussions — that a large part of good Product Management results from limiting the number of choices that our teams and our executives have to choose from, so that they make decisions that reflect the actual […]
Clarity Drives Success
I’m often asked what I think makes a successful Product Manager, and after giving it some thought, I’ve narrowed it down to one key factor: Clarity. When applied to our daily jobs, this can mean any number of things: clarity of communication, clarity of purpose, driving discussions to clarity, or even insisting on clarity from […]
Leading Through Influence: Driving to a Decision
We’ve all been there — whether you’re a Product Manager or not, you’ve sat in a meeting that’s going far longer than it should, horribly off-agenda, listening to people bicker about some minor point that’s preventing anyone from moving forward and actually making an actionable decision. Usually what happens is the loudest person in the room […]
Qualitative vs Quantitative Data
This article was originally written for the folks over at UserVoice, as the first of my contributions to their Product Management blog… To be subjective, or to be objective, that is the question, and the best product managers already know the correct answer is “both.” As product managers, we constantly face situations where the unknowns […]
First, Kill All The Product Managers!
There’s a very famous quote that’s used quite often when people are expressing their dislike of lawyers: “First, kill all the lawyers.” This, they posit, is something that good old Bill Shakespeare himself advocated for, after all – and what better way to stabilize our society than to dispose of the bottom-feeding trolls and sharks […]