PRODUCTHEAD: Tilting the umbrella

karma product #

every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

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tl;dr

Thinking purely in problems to solve can limit you

The words you use to describe your proposition are really a test of how well you know your target users’ needs

Find ways to ‘tilt the umbrella’: small considerate features for your users

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hello

I think there’s been a glitch in the Matrix. This week I’ve had some unexpected good luck, and frankly I’m suspicious.

You know those spam emails claiming you’re the recipient of some improbable prize from some competition you never entered? Well, one of those turned up last week, and as per usual I was about to delete it. Except it wasn’t a scam.

After a spot of verification, it turned out I’d been unwittingly entered into some kind of prize draw because I’d bought a pack of biscuits (or something) on a Tuesday in October. I’d not quite won the Euromillions jackpot, but it did end up being a fun day out with the kiddos, and nobody attempted to sell us a timeshare property before we could leave.

In other serendipitous news, a thoughtful reader of this newsletter mentioned he had a spare ticket to sell for the Radiohead London gig. I am extremely grateful, thank you! (Although my prediction that they’d play ‘Creep’ on repeat for two hours to troll the crowd didn’t pan out.)

Sometimes you’ve just got to take the win and not think too hard about it.

Aaaaanyway – some of you are here for the product management content, so:

For you this week #

Martin Eriksson reminds us that we should be preoccupied not just with finding problems to solve, but also with identifying opportunities to create value. Drawing on Teresa Torres’ work on Opportunity Solution Trees, he notes that thinking of a desired outcome purely as problem to be solved can limit your thinking to a single solution, whereas thinking about the various opportunities that exist to contribute to that outcome encourages a one-to-many relationship.

Next, Matt Lerner demonstrates why speaking the language of your target market is not just a platitude. In fact it is a necessity for ensuring your prospective users understand clearly that your product is exactly what they’re looking for. In support of his view, he cites the dramatic leap in conversion rates he’s seen with startups that have done this.

And over on Lenny’s Podcast, Stewart Butterfield talks about the various ways your product needs to form an emotional connection with its users. Part of this is about recognising the small ways to be considerate to users even in relatively inconsequential parts of your product. Speaking about Slack, he mentions the rooster that would pop up if you were about to message @everyone on the channel to remind you how many people would receive it. Internally, they called this feature ‘don’t be a cock’.

Speak to you soon,

Jock

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what to think about this week

The Problem with Problems: Why Opportunities Unlock Better Product Decisions

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. It’s one of the most repeated mantras in product management, and for good reason. Too many products fail because teams jumped straight to building without truly understanding what they were solving for.

Think bigger, explore wider, and deliver more value

[Martin Eriksson / The Decision Stack]

Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read Their Minds

After more than a decade of running B2B growth teams at PayPal and investing at 500 Startups, Matt Lerner now spends his days helping early-stage startups with growth. He’s seen firsthand how changes in a handful of words can yield jaw-dropping differences in conversion.

Techniques for securing attention

[Matt Lerner / First Round Review]

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Mental models for building products people love ft. Stewart Butterfield

Stewart Butterfield is the co-founder of Slack and Flickr, two of the most influential products in internet history. After selling Slack to Salesforce in one of tech’s biggest acquisitions, he’s been focused on family, philanthropy, and creative projects. In this rare podcast appearance, Stewart shares the product frameworks and leadership principles that most contributed to his success. From “utility curves” to “the owner’s delusion” to “hyper-realistic work-like activities,” his thoughts on craft, strategy, and leadership apply to anyone building products or leading teams.

“If something seems simple to you, you probably don’t understand it”

[Lenny Rachitsky & Stewart Butterfield / Lenny’s Podcast]

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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from surprisingly not a scam.