PRODUCTHEAD: Augmenting your thinking without delegating it
PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
product rubber #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
Exclusive free giveaways for PRODUCTHEAD subscribers in May
Use genAI to generate possibilities and identify blindspots in your thinking without incurring cognitive debt
Backlash against the UK’s NHS closing public code repositories
hello
Last week was a good one: I had a chance to fanboi Martin Eriksson and Barry O’Reilly at their joint book launch event on Wednesday, while also meeting with a lovely crowd of people I’ve not seen in ages. Barry’s new book is Artificial Organizations; Martin’s is The Decision Stack.
I was also really pleased to finally finish and publish a long-read article on our apparent addiction to genAI, why it can trigger similar compulsive behaviour as gambling, and why – despite all that – we’re going to be okay. I think I started work on it in October last year, then became stuck and sulked at it for a while. Some readers have been kind enough to get in touch to tell me that it resonated for them, and one to say I was being overly harsh to tech bros in the introduction. Do have a read and judge for yourself when you have the chance.
For you this week #
In my recent article, I touched on why it can be more tempting for some than others to outsource their critical thinking to generative AI. If you’d like to delve deeper, Caroline Clark has written a two-part series about the psychology of strategic thinking and decision making, and her advice on how to use genAI to augment both more safely.
For those of you who care as I do about the UK government design principle, ‘Make things open: it makes things better’, Liam Proven highlights the negative response to the UK’s National Health Service’s plan to close its public code repositories. His article also links to the open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open, and to a petition to migrate the UK Civil Service to open source software, to which UK readers may also wish to add their names.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
Use it or lose it: your brain in the age of AI / Are you still making your own decisions?
At CPO Connect last week, 70+ senior product leaders gathered at AKQA to do what product leaders do best: identify problems and solve them. I co-facilitated two breakout sessions with my friend James, exploring which cognitive skills are most at risk from over-reliance on AI. Across both groups — somewhere between 25 and 30 people in total — the same skills kept coming up: strategic thinking and decision making. The concern, though, was almost entirely directed at someone else.
Part 1: How to build and protect your strategic thinking
Part 2: The science of decision making and how to stop AI doing it all for you
[Caroline Clark / Liftoff with Caroline]
NHS code clampdown draws open source backlash
Negative reactions are mounting against the UK National Health Service’s plan to back away from open source – and you can add your voice.
Make things open: it makes things better
[Liam Proven / The Register]
recent posts
We’re all addicted to AI, but it’s going to be okay
We seem to stuck in a contradiction in which we worry about AI’s effect on our critical thinking, while finding it equally hard to resist using. Why is that?
[I Manage Products]
Canary in the mine: AAA game developers are unionising
Product management has had its own fair share of problems over the last few years. Nevertheless, there are early warning signs from AAA game studios that there may be another storm brewing in tech for us to weather.
Union-busting just isn’t a good look
[I Manage Products]
Are developers vibe coding themselves out of a job?
And is the increasing reliance by junior developers on AI coding assistants storing up a generational skills shortage for the future – ‘professional debt’, if you will?
So simple, anyone could do it. Wait – don’t fire me
[I Manage Products]
can we help you?
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Helping people build better products, more successfully, since 2012.
PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from conceding that being sociable is okay sometimes.
Read more from Jock
The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management
by Jock Busuttil
“I wish this book was published when I started out in product management. It gives a really wonderful overview of what product management is and involves on a day to day basis.”
— Keji Adedeji, product leader & coach
Jock Busuttil is a product management and leadership coach, product leader and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.