» 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
» To reduce coordination cost, partition the work by time or space
» Behavioural design considers customers’ levels of mental energy, cognitive biases, and their existing patterns
» Successful organisations reinforce psychological safety in different ways
» Adding more people to a team makes communication a more significant overhead
» When delivering difficult news at work, you are not there to seek sympathy
» Tie business impact to deprioritised work to highlight the problem to your CEO without sounding whiny
» An organisation’s emotional culture governs which emotions people express and suppress at work
» Many organisation equate “fixing” to basically “patching holes in the slowly sinking boat”
» Desire paths spring up as users’ needs and goals change
» The effort paradox: the effort of forming a new path versus the desire to take the path of least resistance
» In digital products we use analytical tools to help us observe desire paths
» When a new desire path emerges, question your old assumptions — user behaviour is changing
Years ago, someone once told me that “perception is reality” when it comes to reputation at work. Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my career, this has been by far one of the hardest.
» Async working lets you set aside time for deep thinking
» Forced remote working led naturally to more async work
» Async relies on three main tenets: multiplexing, communication and action
» Find the right balance between flexibility and cohesion, independence and togetherness
» In-person time is important to sustain the human relationships that enable you to get work done
» Firing someone is a task you will always perform with some anxiety, but you still need to be able to do it well
» At Netflix, it’s not enough to be a hard worker achieving only B-grade results
» Founder of AngelList Naval Ravikant seeks happiness by trying to live in the here-and-now, neither obsessing about the past nor fantasising about the future
» If your team’s cultural norms cause you to feel uncomfortable, ask yourself why you think it’s not ok
» Make small changes and embrace experimentation
» People may have a sincere commitment to change, while also unwittingly applying productive energy toward a hidden competing commitment.
» Extreme situations can build extreme understanding and can also push people apart
» Does our current worldview limit the way we think about organisations?
» Financial rewards alone for complex work can have the opposite of the intended effect
» Even a small perceived penalty is enough to discourage experimentation, learning and success
» A large part of our behaviour is influenced by our peer group
Because so much of product management is about working with people, it’s important to take time to reflect on the kind of first impression you make to those people. In this latest entry for my series of 100 things I’ve learned about product management, I pass on my coaching advice to help you make the best possible impression every time.
