Month: November 2024

I did:

• Data analysis, financial benefit modelling and theory of change. I love this kind of abstract intellectual challenge. Sometimes it’s a nice break from all the people.
• Chatted about the idea of long-lived teams versus agile investment. They seem mutually exclusive. If products receive investment based on a feedback loop of the value they return, they can’t have a long-lived team as that accounts of a lot of the cost. And if a team has funding committed so they can be long-lived, and assuming they can’t be easily moved to a different product, then the investment can’t change based on feedback. I wonder which is most valuable in the short or long term?
• Watched a piece of work get and lose alignment, and wondered why. I think it was because different people were involved in different conversations, and no update was sent to those who weren’t to keep them on track. So, I asked myself what behaviour can I change, and realised I don’t write things down so much any more, so I started changing that.
• Chatted to some more product people in another part of the university. I’m fascinated by everyone’s background and the lives they led that brought them to where they are. Everyone has so much knowledge and experience.
• Tried to help someone with building momentum for a piece of work. It isn’t easy to get there but there definitely comes a point where path dependency takes over and it’s easier to carry on than stop.
• Tried to explain what I do. Can’t say I nailed it.

I read/watched/listened:

Shaping Product Culture

No offense, but if these are the people we’re listening to about product culture then we get what we deserve.

Treating people

I watched this video about unreasonable hospitality. The bit that resonated with me was about not treating people like a commodity, treating them like a unique individual so they feel seen. We believe that not treating people as a commodity is good for them and good for the organisation, but why do we believe that? I was watched another video of Russell Ackoff explaining how systems understanding has changed management. We have come to expect that the parts of a system place demands on the system to better meet their purpose. As people, we are parts of an organisation and we expect that organisation to help us achieve our purpose, part of which is being treated as a unique individual and not a cog in the machine. As managers are the interface between the organisation and individuals, they get the job of figuring out how to make the parts and wholes work together.

Work as a product

An obvious but nonetheless interesting idea about how organisational management can consider employees like customers who choose to work for the org and that they should design jobs in the same way they design products. It fits the trend Ackoff explained above about recognising organisations and people as part of a system that all have demands on each other.

Nice

Been listening to Snarky Puppy and Gogo Penguin, because good product teams play jazz.

And I thought about:

Product management capability frameworks

I’ve been looking into and thinking about product management capability frameworks, but most of them and many definitions of product management seem so overly simplified as to be useless to a product manager working in any context other than the silicon-valley-esque ‘company is the product’. So, in true product style, I’m trying to figure out, if a capability framework is the solution, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? I’ve seen quite a few organisation turn to the idea of standardisation, where every product manager has the same skills, as a proposed solution to that problem. But I think that creates lots of round pegs, which is fine if all your holes are round, but what happens when a square hole shows up. Rather than trying to make everyone the same, let’s make everyone different. Lets have people who have unique specialisms. Lets have people who can learn quickly and adapt. Lets have S-shaped people.

The road junction

I’ve been pondering Simon Wilson’s road junction problem since I first saw it months ago. Here’s my solution: cycling infrastructure, school governors and friends of groups, community action, self-driving cars, smart roads and materials sensor technology, local highways departments learning from and designing with data, better public transport, working from home, relocating local facilities. Create the enabling environment and let the solution emerge.

Flow

Ducts are conduits that enable flow. If you were trying to make the flow better, you’d be a duct manager. If you were really good at it, you’d be a pro duct manager.