PRODUCTHEAD: What is a product? What is a service?
» Services are best identified as verbs rather than nouns
» You cannot have services without products, nor products without services
» A service is something that helps someone to do something
Category: PRODUCTHEAD – Product management newsletter
PRODUCTHEAD is my free curated newsletter of the best articles, videos and podcasts from product leaders and commentators all over the world. All neatly packaged up in a weekly email delivery for your reading, viewing and listening pleasure. Curated by Jock Busuttil (jockbusuttil.com).
PRODUCTHEAD: Deconstructing Duolingo’s growth
» Dissect your monolithic metrics to drive growth in more easily influenced segments
» Don’t kill the golden goose of growth by oversaturating a channel
» If growth is your goal, have a sense of urgency
PRODUCTHEAD: Trust in photos is dead and gone
» Sarah Jeong on why the Pixel 9’s Reimagine feature is the final nail in the coffin for trust in photos
» 9 Sept: I’m giving a talk for Product People on lessons about org culture
PRODUCTHEAD: When Sales ask for stuff
» Knowing what kinds of customer you want and don’t want help you to prioritise ‘one-off’ feature requests from sales
» “Enterprise customers look at our roadmaps as the starting point for negotiations”
» Are feature requests a deliberate strategy or a reactive wild goose chase?
PRODUCTHEAD: Wicked problems
» The uncertainty of a problem should influence how we respond to it
» Misdiagnosis of a problem can compound it
» We frame our solutions through the lens of our social predisposition
» Wicked problems can only be addressed by collaboration between different social types
PRODUCTHEAD: Spheres of influence and buy-in
» The only thing you can truly control in life is yourself
» Securing buy-in is meaningless if you let people go back on their agreement without challenge
PRODUCTHEAD: Context changes everything
» At C-level, focus more on “what’s in it for you” and less on “here’s what I need”
» Get your strategy, priorities, risk-taking heuristics, and goals straight, and treat allocation as a hypothesis
PRODUCTHEAD: Frame performance in context
» Failure to adapt and iterate on team structures and processes will result in your strongest product people leaving
» Accepting that an employee might thrive in another environment is accepting that you (as their manager) could have done a better job
PRODUCTHEAD: Moulded to fit in
» Vocal self-confidence in the midst of uncertainty has become a desirable trait in leaders
» There must also be space for quieter, more contemplative leadership styles
PRODUCTHEAD: Shape Up
» Shape Up is a collection of product development techniques that happen to work for Basecamp
» Just because they work in Basecamp’s context doesn’t mean they’ll work for yours
» OMG so problematic
