Category: Daynotes

I noticed that recently that I’ve started to slip back into an old habit of jumping in quickly to answer people’s questions. I tried really hard to stop myself doing this so it’s a bit disappointing that I’m doing it again. Must try harder.

Wrote my weeknotes. I’m writing less and less about work, which is a bit telling.

Read a bit about the five dysfunctions of the team to try to get out how to assess them and what to do about them.

Shall I get GPT plus and train it on work info? Can’t quite decide if it’s worth it or not.

Trying to answer the question, “What do we mean when we use the word ‘product’?”

It definitely isn’t about technology, but whatever it is, it uses technology.

It includes achieving organisational goals, but that isn’t enough to differentiate product from any other discipline.

It has to be about the users, but in what way?

Whatever the answer, it has to work for people with no contextual knowledge of product management. Lots more thinking to do.

Clear goals make it possible to adjust how you achieve them without losing sight of why you’re achieving them. That applies whether the goal is empowering a team or helping someone gain independence.

Still trying to find the balance between being directive in a helpful way and letting people make mistakes to learn from.

Feel like I should try to formalise and write down some of the vision stuff I’ve got in my head about my four objectives.

Start of a new week. Did 19 things, most of which were “guiding” actions towards more impact or more simplicity.

Had a “robust discussion” with a doctor but got most of what I wanted. It’s a shame that’s the only way to get things done sometimes.

Helped with making a good decision. Not really fast enough, but made nonetheless. If the key to reducing WIP is making good decisions quickly, then that’s half way there.

Started reading Business Model Generation.

Reworked the weekly goal tracking in my spreadsheet. I set some goals at the start of each week and score how well I achieved them at the end of week. The sheet averages my goal performance for each project and rolls them up against each of my objectives. Over the last eleven weeks I’ve scored 45% against all the goals I’ve set. Rock n roll Saturday night.

Busy day. Completed 21 tasks. Average since I started tracking is 10.6 a day.

Been pondering how to deal with a colleague who doesn’t seem very good at listening and doesn’t share my belief in the importance of psychological safety. I’m tending towards doing nothing and letting it go. I have to remind myself that I can’t challenge everything.

Had some good feedback from a team member on my efforts to create a supportive team culture.

Been thinking a bit about data and our insight & evidence strategy. Today provided me with a messy real-world case to test the logic of the strategy against.

Learned some important lessons about organisational politics.

Did some more work on my product standards framework as a tool for helping product owners guide new product development.

Worked on some usage goals for a new product using pirate metrics. I’m keen that we use them to guide the design work.

My new books were delivered. Now I need to find time to read them.

I completed 17 tasks today, including getting ready for tomorrow’s team meeting. It’s going to be an interesting one.

One of the products I’m aware of but not really working on looks like it’s being managed in a less than ideal way, but I know I don’t have time to do anything about it. I think I’m going to have to let it go wrong, and I don’t like that. I don’t like that we aren’t learning from our mistakes.

I did a bit more thinking about product standards, especially for the value risk. That means a product has to be problem-focused, have an audience, and be marketable.

Still pondering whether I should give NoBloPoMo a go this year. I know I won’t have time, and I’m pretty much over those kinds of challenges, but I am looking for something to give me some focus on my stuff. Maybe I should make it a reading challenge.

Was near Bletchley Park today and there was a lot of police around ahead of the AI Summit next week. And the prime minister announced an AI chatbot so people can pay their taxes.

“When a user asks GOV.UK Chat a question, the remaining GOV.UK pages without personal data are searched and ones related to the question are sent with the question to our third party provider, OpenAI. When OpenAI receives the question, it uses the GOV.UK content it has been sent to create an answer to the question that is written in a human-like response.” Wonder what the content designers think about that?

Thought a bit about a new product development process and what the conditions might look like to make a process successful.

Read a little about monotropism as a theory for autism

Listened to Eric Reis on Lenny’s podcast.

I want to write about what I’m calling charity product management’s ‘moneyball moment’. It’s the point where we realise that we’re doing product wrong by following the Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur idea of how products exist in the world and develop a new paradigm for product based on systems thinking, feminism, ecology. It moves away from the individualistic approach of user-centred design and takes a system-shifting approach. But whenever I try to write, I can’t find the words to make it make sense.

Watched Into The Wild again. I’ve seen it before and it’s been years since I read the book. It’s a story that speaks to me.

Started thinking about what effective new product development might look like. What kind of process, skills, knowledge, resources, etc.