PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
product daylight #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
Make your principles explicit so you can make the hard trade-offs between things you value
Your organisation’s strategy is the anchor that your culture – how you work together – is built on
hello
I’ll be joining Anton Kooll, Diana Matei, Chris Bracegirdle and Eugenio Galioto for another StartUp Product and Tech Q&A session on Tuesday 14 April @ 12:00 (UK time) via Microsoft Teams (live audio only). If you’re in a startup, join us and ask the panel’s advice.
One of the sharpest observations I’ve read recently about generative AI has not been about its promise of productivity gains, but how it exposes some companies as feature factories, whose only strategic play is to build everything and see what sticks.
When your and everyone else’s organisation can use genAI to create (or clone) software on a whim, it will be the companies with a coherent strategy, coupled with exclusive, hard-to-copy assets and know-how that will win out. Speed to market is no longer a competitive advantage, it’s table stakes. A lofty ambition is worthless if business as usual does nothing to realise that ambition. What will differentiate the winners from the losers will be the strategy they craft and how effectively they’re able to make it happen.
Over the last few years Martin Eriksson has been speaking and writing extensively about how important it is for vision and strategy to connect coherently with the day-to-day actions and decisions a company takes. And to pre-empt the circular debates over which are the ‘right’ good ideas to take forward, he also suggests defining the guiding principles (strategic trade-offs) that will break each deadlock before it happens. This way of thinking about strategy, execution and decision-making is what Martin calls the Decision Stack.
When faced with the extreme market disruption that digital photography posed the analogue market, Kodak and Fujifilm were similarly at risk. However, in response one prospered while the other foundered. What differentiated them were their respective choices of strategy and approach to making it a reality: Kodak chose to defend its core business by translating it to a digital world; Fujifilm took its unique combination of assets and know-how and imagined how it could exploit these in emerging markets, even if that meant sidelining (what had been) their core business. Kodak chose to stand still while Fuijfilm embraced evolution.
Applying the Decision Stack to your company’s approach won’t magically fix a poorly-chosen product strategy or wish away the dysfunction hindering your work. It will however expose where there’s incoherence, hard trade-offs everyone’s avoiding, and busywork that’s distracting from the core mission.
Martin tells the story of Kodak and Fujifilm in his imminent book The Decision Stack, along with other case studies showing the value of coherent strategy and execution. It’s out on this week on April 16.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
The Decision Stack in Action: How Fujifilm Survived What Killed Kodak
A case study in how clarity across every level of decision-making determines survival in technological disruption.
In January 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy with $6.75 billion in debt. That same year, Fujifilm posted record revenues exceeding $21 billion. Two photography giants faced identical digital disruption. One thrived. One died.
In the face of disruption, clarity and coherence determine survival
[Martin Eriksson / The Decision Stack]
AI Just Broke Your Strategy. Now What?
Classic Product Management is based on a very simple idea: Waterfall is bad, because we don’t find out if something has value for a long period of time. Agile is good because it allows us to experiment and learn quickly, because building things is time-consuming and expensive.
AI-based tools have fundamentally changed this. We can now build things quickly, and we can do it relatively cheaply. The idea that your CEO brought up this morning? You can have a prototype ready by the end of the week. And if you don’t the CEO might have done it themself.
Our job is to ‘help people make better decisions, faster’
[Randy Silver / Out of Owls]
recent posts
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]
Navigating your product management career
Ross Webb and I have been chatting about product management career progression.
We cover topics including:
» Thinking of visibility as a strategic competency, not self-promotion
» Controlling your narrative through regular updates
» Building cross-organisational relationships deliberately
» Mapping your stakeholders’ preferred communication styles
A roundtable chat on moving into product leadership
[I Manage Products]
can we help you?
Product People is a product management services company. We can help you through consultancy, training and coaching. Just contact us if you need our help!
Helping people build better products, more successfully, since 2012.
PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from typical Welsh weather.