Maintaining the empowerment of product teams
“Maintaining the empowerment of product teams” by Thor Mitchell https://link.medium.com/olAkRmqSRZ
“Maintaining the empowerment of product teams” by Thor Mitchell https://link.medium.com/olAkRmqSRZ
Running around, getting things done, staying on top of your to do list, too busy to stop and think about how we work not just what work we do. Sounds familiar.
Taking time to stop and think about taking a more deliberate approach to our practice of being product managers is time well spent.
Calling it a practice is important. It implies that we approach it in a considered and consistent way in an attempt to get better.
I’ve written previously about being more reflective in our practice, and I think being reflective is part of a good practice, but there is a lot more to it.
Good practices are effectiveness multipliers. They provide a frame for approaching work, start conversations, offer a fallback in times of uncertainty, and justify the professionalism of product management.
There are things to learn from other endeavors such as sports and music where practice literally means focused repetition of the things you want to improve on, and art where an artist’s practice involves them developing their own ways of working.
So what might a good product management practice look like? Given my definition of a Product Manager being a balancer of risk and opportunity, I think any definition of a practice needs to have balance in it. Rather than a hard line of ‘this but not that’ it should create space around things for individual PM’s to evolve a practice that suits them (like an artist) but it needs enough definition and clarity to enable the deliberate practice of the things that make up the practice.
It might include:
https://www.notion.so/7f4693c723cb42e18e8b4ecdbc34db04?v=c24b148c0be947118d514a8e5123d77e
“Signal vs. Noise as a Product Manager” by Kyle Evans https://link.medium.com/nHyiNaIaEZ
“Why is Product Management so misunderstood?” by Luke Gallimore https://link.medium.com/KjozLLEEeZ