“Hi Jock,
There’s plenty that needs doing. As head of product I could focus on the hiring process and delegate, or I could get stuck in with the products as a player-manager. What’s the right balance?”
» Encourage continual scrutiny of your product’s central flaws — talk openly about the elephants in the room
» Cognitive biases lead us away from rational thought and objective truth
» Research and evidence help us to neutralise biases
» Focus helps to reduce cognitive load without losing sight of the underlying complexity — it is different to simplifying
» The challenge of simplifying a complex legal process was to find simpler language that didn’t sacrifice essential points of law
» Work continues after the project ends — plan for the ongoing support of your product
» A support team deals with user queries, incidents and ongoing improvement of the product
» Great user support is an expectation, not a nice-to-have
» Feedback from user support can identify areas of product improvement
» Treating symptoms may provide short-term relief but does not alter the status quo
» Root cause analysis helps us to systematically prevent future issues or to repeat successes
» Impact maps help to connect what we choose to build and why we choose to build it
I was asked recently whether platforms will conquer the world. My view? They already have. In this article I share how they’ve done it, and how you can successfully bring your own platform to market.
» In case you missed it: recap of the communication toolkit
» To earn trust you need people to know what you’ve achieved
» Weeknotes are a way to work in the open, reflect and attain a sense of achievement
» Being trusted makes it easier for you to carve out the space your team needs to succeed
» Your users must value your product more than it would cost them to switch
» An end-of-life policy sets out the process you will use to retire products for customers
» Think about your users and customers’ technical and economic issues first
» Retiring a product gracefully means making a plan
» People more easily accept they’re not seeing the whole picture than being told they’re wrong
» Don’t make people feel bad about their beliefs — be kind and connect with them
» Research shows that we interpret words like “we believe” with differing confidence levels
» There is often a lack of discipline when it comes to talking about uncertainty
