How To Learn From FAANG

There’s a popular notion that we should copy the playbooks of the most successful tech companies, aka Big Tech. The most obvious sources of inspiration are the FAANG companies: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. So you may be told to Work Backwards like Amazon, use OKRs and 20% projects like Google, or organize according to …

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Working Better with Stakeholders — Three Key Techniques

Working with stakeholders can be tough. Whether it’s sales, marketing, PR, legal, or finance, these folks tend to have strong opinions about the product, and they are often more senior or more influential than you. They certainly are better at negotiation, escalation, and corporate politics. Your company is probably not offering good tools to deal with …

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The Most Important Thing

In a famous essay Martin Eriksson defined product management as “the intersection between the functions of business, technology and user experience.” While it’s flattering to imagine ourselves as the center of things, it’s also a strange way to define a role. Why do we need a function in an organization that is a composite of …

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Company Mindset – Mapping Out The Ultimate Challenge

When I talk to product teams and company leaders, one challenge comes up more than anything else: the mindset of the company. It seems that even in the 21st century many people feel that their companies are too top-down, sales-driven, output-focused, and traditional. This is a far-reaching problem. I see it in old businesses looking …

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Enough With Must-Have Features

Here’s a sentence that always fills me with dread: “We plan to adopt this new approach, just as soon as we launch these must-have features.”  The must-have feature list (AKA catch-up features) has become my nemesis—it’s forever standing in the way of progress. Usually it’s a laundry list of things copied from leading competitors, from …

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The Big Project Syndrome

There’s a common and highly destructive pattern I’m seeing time and again (and likely you have too). The leadership team falls in love with a big idea and turns it into a big project. This project becomes the top priority—apparently the future of the company depends on it. Other projects (including yesteryear’s top priorities) are …

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