PRODUCTHEAD: Avoiding putting people in boxes
PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
packt like products in a crushd tin box #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
Personality, skills and values are interpreted differently in different contexts
Cultural norms can make it harder for teams to communicate effectively without conflict
hello
It’s been a hectic and slightly chaotic week for me, although I’ll spare you the gory details. To give you a sense of it: I find it darkly amusing that almost being ensnared by a book publishing scam has been more effective for cutting through my writing procrastination than anything else I’ve tried so far. Now, if I can only bottle that feeling …
For you this week: two articles looking at different ways people are ‘put in boxes’ (their behavioural traits generalised). John Cutler describes how organisational culture tends to reward certain behaviours and punish others because that reflects the established cultural norms and ‘ways of working’. What this means is that the same individual’s behaviour – say, pressing ahead with a decision after minimal consultation – could be seen as a positive in some places and a negative in others.
When faced with a culturally diverse team in conflict, Cara Bermingham turned to Erin Meyer’s excellent book The Culture Map for inspiration. She describes how she refocused from conflict to communication and unmet needs, and set out to create a little more mutual understanding and empathy amongst the members of the team with differing cultural norms. (h/t to Emily Webber)
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
TBM 440: The Problem With Putting People in Boxes
Personality and “strength” tests at work have never sat right with me. Sure, they became fodder for some fun discussions and had that occasional “wow, how right!” horoscope vibe. But they rarely seemed to help with day-to-day work, and they never replaced the hard work of truly getting to know people, including how they interact with others and how different contexts bring out different versions of them.
Labels are convenient but often over-general
[John Cutler / The Beautiful Mess]
A different way of overcoming conflict in culturally diverse teams
When a team is stuck in a cycle of tension and misunderstanding, jumping straight into conflict resolution often backfires. By shifting the focus from conflict to high-context vs low-context communication, teams can build a shared language and move out of defensive mode towards understanding each other better.
Creating mutual understanding of differing norms
[Cara Bermingham]
recent posts
Chess is easier when you can see the board
A Wardley Map is to corporate strategy what a chessboard is to players: you can absolutely play the game in your head without seeing the board, but if you can it’s a lot easier to play, and you have a massive advantage over the people who can’t.
Know what moves you can make, and why to choose this move now
[I Manage Products]
How to form a go-to-market strategy
A go-to-market strategy isn’t something you tack on as an afterthought to an upcoming product launch. Instead it’s about understanding where value exchanges occur, and figuring out how to make them more frequent, consistent and predictable.
Go-to-market emerges from your discovery
[I Manage Products]
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]
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 an odd pivot from crystal healing to business books.
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.