Strong Product People

This is what I call positive friction. We can debate ideas and give them a thorough working out without attacking the people who have them.

Step 2: Create a strategy for success. Once you’ve agreed on the goal for your coaching, then the next step is for you to help your PM come up with tactics to put it into action—a strategy for success. As

In summary, be human, have strong opinions but be adaptable, lead by example, maintain and model a healthy attitude toward work, and have an impact across your organization.

The lesson is this: If a task comes up, think about its size. You need to figure out in advance how many rocks and pebbles you can work on in parallel. Make a point to limit your work in progress.

1. Create it. Creating your narrative—including parts for product vision, strategy, goals, and principles—requires looking to see what is going on around you: the current situation, the diagnosis, and the reality (what is). This includes: Customers, noncustomers (a.k.a. humans), behavior changes; Market, industry, competition; Trends, macrotrends; and

We learn by consuming books, blogposts, podcasts, and so on. We improve our skills by applying what we have learned to our daily work, or to a side project we’re working on. Reflecting helps us make sure we’re investing our precious development time wisely. And contributing to the product management community (no matter whether it’s your company’s

The matrix has four quadrants: Upper left: Important and urgent—do it now! Upper right: Important, but not as urgent—get it on your schedule to do later. Lower left: Urgent, but not as important—delegate the task. Lower right: Not urgent and not important—just don’t do it!

Team Radar (see Figure 19-1) allows the team to discuss how they think they are doing in eight different team characteristics, including such things as customer centricity, courage, communication, and trust. They have to agree on a score which is added to the spider web graph and will, therefore, share their thoughts about each of the buckets. In t

Putting things on a to-do list frees your mind. But always question what is worth doing first. Find your delegation pool—there are always people you can ask for help. Try limiting yourself to no more than eight tasks per quadrant. Before you add another one, complete the most important task first. Remember: It’s not about collecting tasks—it’s abou