PRODUCTHEAD
PRODUCTHEAD is my free curated newsletter of the best articles, videos and podcasts from product leaders and commentators all over the world. All neatly packaged up in a weekly email delivery for your reading, viewing and listening pleasure.
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Recent editions
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» Written well, personal user manuals can build psychological safety » However, they can also be abused to excuse certain counter-productive behaviours
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» Most read: Choose your own adventure — discussing better product roadmaps » Most clicked: How to sharpen up your vision and strategy — a practical set of prompts and worked examples
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» Conversational programming changes the nature of the developer job, but doesn’t do away with it » Describing needs and context is more valuable than giving instructions or requirements
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» There are 3 reasons why a discovery should end: 1. It is purely performative 2. Ignored / unknown context 3. Unconnected to value » Everything on your product roadmap should have lots of context that is easy to find
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» By reinstating Sam Altman, OpenAI has chosen financial success over its altruistic principles » When Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, the board believed he wasn’t ready to be CEO » Google was quick to fire ethicist Timnit Gebru when she challenged its lucrative search advertising business
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» Product models are more scalable and have higher investor valuations than service models, but can be more difficult to implement and require a longer sales cycle » If you find your team is biasing towards delivering custom features (= output), refocus on discovery and problem solving instead (= outcomes)
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» When designing an experiment to test a hypothesis, ask how might it fail, and what you need to find out » Luck and uncertainty mean that even good decisions can have a bad outcome (and vice versa) » Framing our beliefs with a confidence percentage makes us more willing to accept contradictory evidence
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» Anyone can access generative AI, so simply using it is not a competitive advantage » SEO has long sought to game search engine rankings; AI provides a new tool for doing so » LLMs trained on AI output become increasingly detached from reality: “model collapse”
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» We can and should measure discovery activity and its impact on the team and users » Discovery cycle time and cadence are critical to adopting a continuous mindset » Avoid vanity quantity metrics such as number of research activities; measure quality instead
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When sunsetting a product or feature: » Explain why honestly and be transparent about how it will impact your users » Be understanding as they may be disappointed or frustrated by the change » Be responsive and supportive by answering your users’ questions and helping them with the transition » If possible, offer your users alternative features or solutions
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» Context helps to make a service good as opposed to simply existing » By not consciously designing our services, we instead force our users to link actions together » Outcomes for users are core user needs that a service helps them to meet » A starting point can be to ask different teams what ‘good’ looks like to them
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» Rather than focusing on engineering team productivity, examine the causes of their low / negative value work » When asked for development estimates, ask why they need the information and what they’ll do with the answer » Different development tasks need varying amounts of user story detail » Treat your developers with the same thoughtfulness as your users
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» Empowered teams can only succeed if the leadership team is on board » Leaders can’t scale or have all the answers; empowered teams stand a better chance » Leadership needs to be open and transparent when issuing a “must-do” edict to an empowered team » Product leadership is continually striving for coherence of approach and clarity of purpose
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» Motivation comes from making progress in meaningful work » A mission-focused team tackling poorly understood problems may appear unproductive to outsiders » It is everyone’s responsibility to act upon negative behaviour / thinking, but without assigning blame » Even in the most controversial negotiations, the other party is just like you and aims to walk away happy
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» Success at every life cycle stage hinges on the same challenge: being able to solve problems for your users » Early on, focus on learning about your users and their context and the constraints that affect your problem » Maturity is the most difficult stage for a product, so you have to make the absolute best out of what you have
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» In product management, “the basics never change, it’s the more advanced stuff that changes” » Oft-cited company frameworks such as the Spotify model were just a moment in time — everything moves on » When all is changing around you, be an anchor of stability and trust for your team
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» Early in your career, focus on building one skill at a time » Find out what a company’s really like by meeting a contact there informally before the interview » Practice experts can enjoy a varied career, but may find it harder to work in some domains » As a product leader, what are your identity, superpower, mission and impact?
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» An inflexible process means working with incomplete information and making the wrong decisions » Treating work as closed-ended projects leads to context switching and discontinuity » A way to increase value in Scrum is to involve the team members in the discovery and strategy work » Respect is not deference; it demands that we challenge each other to be the best we can be
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» Wartime vs peacetime leaders employ different skill sets » Airbnb’s changes to product management could be just what is needed in wartime or equally a retrograde step » Working from home is a particularly polarising debate because it aligns with the leader-employee divide » Discussions about productivity are often a proxy discussion for some other dysfunction
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» To buy your product, the value users perceive from the product must be greater than its price » The biggest, worst-kept secret of monetisation UX: ask, ask and ask again