Years ago I worked as a consultant to small businesses seeking funding. Most of the companies and individuals I worked with were looking for business loans, but a few were also seeking equity investments primarily from angel investors. Among other things, I helped them prep their company information for loan applications as well as their pitch decks for investors when needed. As part of this, we always created a business plan. This included information like market size, strategy, competition, etc. But here’s the funny little secret. Very few people, especially anyone at a bank, would ever look at the business plan. I should know. Prior to working in my consultant role, I had worked at a bank in the small business loan department. I can tell you that a business plan was a required document for every applicant, but I may have been the only person there who ever looked at them, and it was mostly out of curiosity rather than necessity. No one ever read these business plans. So if no one was ever going to read these documents, why even ask for them? I’m sure plenty of business owners would have asked the same question. But in my time working with businesses both at a bank and as a consultant, I’d say that the single best thing they could do would be to write out, fairly extensively, their business plans. Even if no one read it. The ability to articulate an idea, especially in long-form writing, is one of the best exercises there is. Whether it is a plan for a new company, a business case at your job, or how to lose weight successfully, writing out your ideas creates a deeper understanding and a deeper reality to them. Writing is Thinking One of the most popular posts I’ve written, Product Thinking vs. Project Thinking, came out of the need I had to really think through a problem. At that point, things at my job had come to a head. Every meeting was a battle and I was feeling pretty beaten up and bruised. But I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. It felt like all sides involved were at odds and looking at the problems we were having in opposite ways. I wanted to really get to the root of the issues. So I sat down to write. This writing was all about me thinking through the problem and trying to get to the heart of the issue. And I did. I realized that the mindset of each side was completely different. We were constantly battling because we really were looking at the problem in opposing ways. After writing and refining this post, I finally had clarity about the issues we were facing and some ideas about how to resolve them. It was one of the biggest “aha” moments (and reliefs) I’ve had professionally. Writing about a topic means really thinking about it. And not just superficially, because all of us can tell within a few sentences if someone is bullshitting. Hopefully you can tell that about yourself even quicker. To write something out helps to drive thinking about the topic. I’ve continued to use writing as a way to think more deeply about topics. Even if a post or article or paragraph never gets shared, it is a way for me to think much more deeply, and drive the next phase of writing: understanding. Writing is Understanding If you can’t concisely and clearly write about a topic, you don’t understand it. A long while ago I embraced the idea of writing at work. It is one thing to have a nice presentation that you can speak to, it is another thing to write out a proposal or business case in a way that clearly articulates the value and reasoning. Using Documents Jeff Bezos has popularized this idea and it is core to Amazon’s culture now. PowerPoint presentations were long ago banned, and all meetings are accompanied by 6-page memos. I’ve worked with several former Amazon executives, and I can attest to how ingrained this practice is. I can also attest to how much a fan I am. In a previous role, I had the idea for a completely new product that would take the company into a new line of business. We had experimented with it at a tiny scale, but my idea was to go all-in and create what could potentially become the largest business in the industry for this particular segment. It was a big ask and a big commitment. As part of my pitch, I created a “future press release” as well as a 6-page document outlining the details of the proposal and opportunity. It was a massive undertaking because I came to realize that I didn’t fully understand the existing market as well as I had thought. As I wrote about the current state and competitors, I quickly saw that I needed to dive deeper and get a much better understanding. Fortunately the research I did and the document I prepared opened the door for all of this. I presented everything to our company’s executive team. We reviewed my document (by reading it all together in a meeting, Amazon style), and then had a very good discussion. Not only was the executive team open to the opportunity, but it spurred the creation of a new process and team to help with analysis of these opportunities so that we could more easily pursue them in the future. Good Tools The future press release — where you think about how you will announce your new initiative or feature when it is launched — is a great tool to ensure you understand what you’re doing and why. Marty Cagan, in his book Inspired, also proposes a future customer letter as another option. Both are great. The key is to look into the future and write about it. Another great tool for writing in order to understand is what I call a “Feynman Notebook” where I take random topics and write about them. The idea for this comes from Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who was a master at taking very complex ideas and explaining them in a way that anyone could understand. In my Feynman notebook, I simply take a topic that I want to learn more about and start to make notes. I then work to explain and clarify it until it is at the point that I think I could successfully explain it to one of my kids. It is a difficult yet exciting exercise. And an early work in progress for me. By writing things out, whether business cases or press releases or notes about quantum mechanics, we can truly start to understand the topic as well as the reason it matters. Writing is Teaching/Sharing One of the great things about writing is how easily it can be shared with others. And by sharing your writing, you can share your learning and help others understand new topics or think about things in a different way. Sharing My Fitness Experience I’m not a fitness fanatic by any stretch. But I’ve been very successful over the past while at getting into much better shape than I have been in the past decade. Because of that, I wanted to share some of my experience. In particular, there was someone close to me that wanted to understand what I did to reach some of my goals. So I wrote it all down and shared it here. Frankly, it was far more personal of a post than I usually do. I don’t like talking about that sort of thing. But I had found success, at least what worked for me, and it felt like I should share that in case anyone else might find it useful. Part of going through the writing process, as described above, was for me to actually understand what I did as well. I’ve tried a lot of things, so writing about it ensured that I could actually articulate and understand what it was that I did and how I did it. Then I could share and teach someone else. Shared Understanding Writing can also be an excellent way to achieve shared understanding when done correctly. As I’ve written out various articles and posts, I’ve had the chance to share them with others. The great thing about clarifying my thoughts in writing is that it then allows others to see them much more clearly as well. So when I’ve shared a post, other people can really get a good picture of what I mean. That helps in creating shared understanding. Because people who’ve read my writing have then been able to give their feedback, both in writing and in conversation, that has been much deeper than we may have otherwise gotten too. For example, as I’ve shared some of these posts with my wife, we’ve often had the conversation where she says something like “I understand what you’re saying about XYZ, but have you considered ABC? I tend to like ABC because it has worked for me in this other context.” She understands where I’m coming from because I’ve articulated it, and then I can better understand her perspective without getting defensive or jumping to incorrect conclusions. Shared understanding. This is part of the reason why using documents in meetings can be so powerful. Not only does the writing have to be thorough and well thought out, but it allows everyone to get to a shared understanding and then have meaningful conversations quicker than may have otherwise been possible. I have long had a love of writing. But you don’t need to be passionate about writing in order to reap the benefits. Whether it is simply an idea you need to flesh out or a story you want to remember, writing it down will help you not only clarify your own thoughts and ensure that you understand it, but will allow you to share it with others when the time comes. So pick your favorite way of writing, whether a pen and paper or a computer, and start writing out your ideas and stories. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll clarify your own thinking and help others as well.
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In February 2013, Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, decided to put an end to remote work at the company. In the memo, the company stated “to become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.” All Yahoo employees were expected to give up any remote working arrangements and get back into the office. I had a similar experience several years ago at a company I worked for when a new executive came on board. After a short period of time, he introduced a similar policy to the one above. We were much smaller than Yahoo at the time, but had been an extremely remote friendly organization up to that point. He described his motives as much the same (though he did let slip a few times that what he wanted was to look out of his office window and be able to see everybody in his department, for whatever that is worth). So is it true? Do co-located teams truly perform better? Are communication and collaboration truly better when physically close? The conventional wisdom today seems to believe that co-located is significantly better. I’ve been personally told that all the research points to that. But having experienced both poorly performing, co-located teams as well as high performing distributed teams, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the research as well as experiences of others. Some of the ResearchThere have been a number of studies that have taken a look at co-located and remote teams. While there could still be significant research done in this area (and I look forward to more of it), there has been quite a bit written and there are some key points we can glean from these studies. How organizations support distributed project teams: Key dimensions and their impact on decision making and teamwork effectiveness In this study, the researchers looked at how organizational support impacts project teams both in the decision-making process and the overall effectiveness. Ultimately, it found three key contributors to success:
While the primary focus of this study is on the agility of distributed teams, and the difficulties presented by remote work, it also has some key takeaways for the success of distributed teams that I found helpful.
This study took a look at leadership in partially distributed teams, analyzing the different dimensions of distance such as geographic, cultural, and temporal. The key conclusion was that leaders must assist the team in bridging the distances. It took a different kind of leadership to make this happen on the teams, and ultimately took effort from leaders and team members to be effective. Supporting the development of shared understanding in distributed design teams Shared understanding is a key measure of communication effectiveness, especially on distributed teams. Reaching and maintaining shared understanding is critical, both perceived shared understanding as well as actual shared understanding. For teams to reach this level of communication and effectiveness, they need appropriate training and support. The tools that teams have access to are also very important in their ability to communicate, work on tasks, and reach a shared understanding. This study also highlights the difference between homogenous and heterogeneous teams, noting that more diverse teams (diverse in background, experience, location, culture, etc.) will require more support initially. Project Risk Differences Between Virtual and Co-Located Teams It shouldn’t be taken for granted that there are different risks in creating and managing virtual teams as opposed to co-located teams. This study looked at 55 project risk factors that other studies have identified as important to project success. Of the 55, seven were identified as greater risks for virtual teams as opposed to co-located teams. These included insufficient knowledge transfer, lack of project team cohesion, cultural or language differences, inadequate technical resources, inexperience with the company and its processes, loss of key resources, and hidden agendas. Effects of team member psychological proximity on teamwork performance Some studies have claimed that as team-member physical proximity increases, the frequency and quality of communication increases, resulting in better team performance. More recent studies have found that there is no effect of team-member proximity on team performance. The missing factor may actually be the idea of psychological proximity, which takes into account all the aspects of proximity for a team. This study analyzed the psychological proximity factors (spatial, temporal and social) and their impact on teamwork quality factors (communication, collaboration, coordination, and cohesion). Ultimately, reducing social distance helped overcome spatial and temporal distance, and was the most important factor in team quality. Social ties are incredibly important among team members. The spatial distance can be overcome with the right tools and coordination, especially when supported by the broader organization. And some sort of synchronous interaction is needed for overcoming both social and temporal distance. Summary Most studies I reviewed showed that there are hurdles to remote/distributed teams. But these challenges can be overcome with certain adjustments. We’ll take a closer look at some of those below in addition to a few examples from other teams. Some Team ExperiencesI personally have had the opportunity to work on successful satellite teams as well as high-performing distributed teams. The success of these teams wasn’t by chance. My Team At one company, I worked for several years with a highly functional, and highly distributed, development team. Our lead developer was remote as well as our UX designer. Two other team members were primarily remote, and everyone else on the team was partially remote on any given day. As the product manager, I shifted my mindset from an “in-office” focus to a remote focus. Even being in the office, we utilized the tools for effective collaboration across the entire group. It gave everyone the chance to either be present physically or dial in, whether from their desk down the hall or from their office across the country. This type of mindset was across the team. We often took time to call other team members regularly, even just to chat. This mirrored the kind of discussions that often happen sitting together. Our developers pair-programmed on the phone and shared screens regularly. Our UX designer and I regularly brainstormed and prototyped over video calls. Our team was intentional in our effort. We had to be, given our distributed group and the fact that we were working on the single most important product for the company. We made it work and were incredibly successful in developing and launching a brand new product (more on that in another post). We hadn’t read any of the studies above, but seemed to understand intuitively or from previous experience that we needed to put in the effort to bridge the gaps and create a cohesive, effective team. By the end of my time with that specific team, we had successfully launched our new application to over 100,000 students, saving the company millions of dollars and setting the stage for significant growth thereafter. InVision I’ve been interested in companies that either have remote teams, are fully remote from the start, or have transitioned to being remote. InVision is a prime example of a company that built remote work into their ethos from the beginning, and then transitioned to being fully distributed as they grew. If you’re not familiar with InVision, it is a prototyping and design tool widely used across the technology industry. I’ve been using InVision personally for many years. Since it was founded in 2011, InVision has grown to over 1,000 employees and is used by over 5 million people at thousands of companies worldwide. The benefits of being completely remote have been significant according to the founder, Clark Valberg, and CPO, Mark Frein. These benefits have included the ability to hire without geographical restrictions, saving millions by not having office space, and building a better product. InVision has been incredibly successful, and has done it with a completely remote workforce. Automattic Automattic is the company behind Wordpress, a popular content management system and site builder that is behind many websites on the internet. And it is a fully remote organization. While it also didn’t start out that way, it moved to being fully remote when it realized that it could better empower its employees by allowing them to work when and where they wanted, and after deciding that too few employees were showing up to the office anyway. Automattic now has hundreds of employees across more than 60 countries. As described in this HBR article, there are numerous lessons from Automattic, as well as some very compelling reasons why remote work has worked so well for them. One of the keys is creativity. Creativity thrives online, and allowing people to find the best way to work allows them to be far more creative than they might be otherwise. That means allowing employees to work when they are most productive, and from wherever they are most productive. Additionally, being distributed allows Automattic to hire the very best people regardless of location (a common theme among the companies I looked at who favor remote work). Automattic has been very intentional in developing its culture, and it ensures there is ample communication on teams by hiring right, providing good onboarding and tools, and then bringing people together periodically. Those steps have allowed Automattic to thrive as a remote organization, as evidenced by its growth and continued popularity of its products. Zapier Zapier has been a remote company since its founding in 2011. It has literally written a book about the subject as well. For those unfamiliar with the company, it allows a user to easily connect apps together to automate processes or accomplish any number of tasks. It essentially allows non-developers to accomplish development tasks that wouldn’t have been achievable before. Many of the lessons described so far are the ones that Zapier offers as well, as described in an interview with the CEO. The key benefits of remote work for the company have been in attracting and retaining talent, and in overall employee satisfaction. Basecamp No discussion of distributed organizations would be complete without discussing Basecamp. Its founders have long been proponents of remote work, and they have also literally written the book about working remotely. Basecamp was founded in 1999, and has had a longstanding remote-friendly environment. Though the company has stayed intentionally small, it’s longevity and growth is a testament to its values. The keys to success at Basecamp revolve around the idea of allowing employees to do deep work — limiting synchronous communication, interruptions, and meetings — and allowing employees to do their best work, however and wherever they do that. Basecamp’s style is significantly different than many other companies. It may even seem radical. But the general principles are similar to other remote companies and they’ve clearly found success in what they’re doing. Key Factors to SuccessSo what can we take away from this? How can we make our teams successful and high-performing? In order to be successful, forming and maintaining a remote or distributed team needs to be intentional, as some of the keys to success are different than co-located teams. While either structure (co-located or distributed) can be effective, both types of teams need to be designed and led with intention.
ConclusionWhen managed correctly, distributed teams perform just as well as their co-located counterparts. But therein lies the rub: you can’t simply put any team together and hope for success. It would seem that co-located teams may generally perform better because they take the path of less-resistance. There is more room for mistakes when everyone is together in an office. You may not need as strong leadership or as many tools to make co-located teams effective. The effort to communicate can be smaller and the amount of time to bridge some of the distance can potentially be shortened. That’s perfectly fine. But let’s stop claiming that one outperforms the other. With intentional leadership and design, we can create high performing distributed teams. As we’ve seen from the research and the examples above, the limiting factors to remote work are often in the effort put in rather than inherent in the nature of the team. Like what you read? Feel free to follow me over on Twitter (@kylelarryevans) or sign up for my newsletter, where I post other interesting pieces and explore a range of topics. References:
Cash, P., Dekoninck, E. & Ahmed-Kristensen, S. (2017). Supporting the development of shared understanding in distributed design teams. Journal of Engineering Design. 28(3), 147–170 Cha, M., Park, J., & Lee, J. (2014). Effects of team member psychological proximity on teamwork performance. Team Performance Management.20(1/2), 81–96 Drouin, N. (2013). How organizations support distributed project teams: Key dimensions and their impact on decision making and teamwork effectiveness. The Journal of Management Development. 32(8), 865–885 Ocker, R., Huang, H., Benbunan-Fich, R., Hiltz, S. (2009). Leadership Dynamics in Partially Distributed Teams: An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Configuration and Distance. Group Decision and Negotiation. 20(3), 273–292 Reed, A. & Knight, L. (2010). Project Risk Differences Between Virtual and Co-Located Teams. The Journal of Computer Information Systems. 51(1), 19–30 Sarker, S. & Sarker, S. (2009). Exploring Agility in Distributed Information Systems Development Teams: An Interpretive Study in an Offshoring Context. Information Systems Research. 20(3), 440–461 I had a few wake up calls a while back. The first came when I was looking at some photos of myself, I looked really chubby. It was somewhat unexpected. I didn’t think of myself as overweight, and didn’t see that when I looked in the mirror, but there it was — photographic evidence. The second big wake up call came when I purchased a smart scale. It was an Amazon lightning deal, and I got it on somewhat of a whim. I like technology and like data, so it seemed like an interesting thing to do. But when I stepped on the scale and went through some of the analysis, not only did it confirm what the photos had shown, but took away all possible excuses. Not only was I overweight, but I was flabby and soft too. Well outside of the weight range for my height, way too much visceral fat, a slow metabolism, weak bones, and on and on. I could no longer use the excuse that the camera adds 10 pounds or that muscle is heavier than fat. I had to face reality. We can certainly debate the accuracy of photographs and consumer smart scales, but that isn’t the point here. The point is that I needed to change. I needed to lose weight and get into shape. Not only for myself but for my wife and my kids. I wanted to be a fit husband and the kind of dad that my kids would not only be proud of, but would want to emulate. So that is what kicked off my journey. This post is a bit different than my usual writing. I’m not a fitness writer and probably won’t become one. But this is about the things that worked for me. I know that they won’t work for everyone. So if you’re reading this and disagree, you’re probably right in some way. Your mileage may vary and you’ll need to find the things that work for you. But these are the steps that worked extremely well for me. I’ve lost around 35 pounds and am much more fit and lean than ever before (including my high school and college days). And the main reason I am writing this because a person very close to me asked for some help and guidance. So this is mostly for them. But if there is something useful, hopefully others will be able to leverage it as well. 1. Measure, Track, & MonitorThe first step to making any change is to start to take measurements. As the saying goes, it is difficult to change what you don’t measure. Get a Smart Scale To start, get yourself a smart scale and start weighing yourself. This will help establish a baseline and allow you to track progress and trends. I use Eufy. There are lots of good ones based on Amazon reviews. I haven’t tried out many others, but mine was $25 and works perfectly for what I need. I weigh myself every day at the same time so I can keep track of my progress and my trends over time. This helped me establish a baseline and begin to actually monitor my progress as I began to make changes. Track Your Movement I’ve been a Fitbit user since the very first wristband came out. Way back when it was just 5 dots and no one had any idea what you were wearing on your wrist. I’m a big believer in it. Tracking your activity level and sleep will help establish a baseline that you can build from. I’ve personally set a goal of 10,000 steps each day. That tends to be a stretch for me most days. It gets me going outside to walk around the office complex a few times a day (it’s about 1,000 steps to make a full loop). I wouldn’t otherwise do that. I don’t think there is anything magical about 10,000 steps. But understanding where you are currently and then setting a stretch goal is the real key. Once you have measured your current activity, you can then start to set those stretch goals and actually get moving. Track Your Eating To truly make a change, you have to track what you’re eating. I’ve used MyFitnessPal for this, though there are other good apps as well. Enter everything into it, even if you don’t change anything to start. Simply understanding what and how much you’re eating will be critical to making changes. This may feel onerous to start. And it is. However, you won’t have to do this forever. This is meant to help you get started. Once you’ve established the right habits (more on that below), you’ll likely be able to scale this back. But it is critical to get started. You’ll likely be surprised at how much you’re eating every day. I know I was shocked when I started tracking my food. It helped me make a few changes right off the bat, though that hadn’t been my intention. Tie It All Together to Monitor There are numerous apps that can bring everything together for you. As a Fitbit user, that one has worked well for me. I also use Google Fit to see some of my trends, including weight trends since I can add my smart scale to it. Whether it is a single app or multiple apps, use technology to your advantage. I’ve tended to use a variety of apps since each have their own strength. You can certainly tie them together though since many of them have integrations with each other (though not all of them, so don’t expect to get your Fitbit data into Google Fit for example). 2. Eat Right — Diet Is KeyI used to believe that exercise was the most important key to fitness. With that mindset, I used to exercise frequently with little regard to what I ate. When that didn’t work, I continued to increase my level of exercise more and more, spinning my wheels endlessly. At the same time I was spinning, my wife was taking the opposite approach. She didn’t have a massive exercise regimen like I did, but focused on eating right, both in quantity and quality. And she managed to lose weight and look great. This was especially pronounced after she gave birth to our kids. She was able to rapidly return to her pre-pregnancy weight while I struggled to do anything. When I switched to a similar mindset, I was actually able to make massive progress. Control the Quality The first key to eating right is to focus on the quality of the food you consume. When I started really focusing on my eating, I wasn’t as concerned about the amount of food as much as I was concerned about getting the food right. For me, that meant switching to a Keto-style diet. I’ve long believed that fat and meat and those types of food are significantly better for you (check out The Big Fat Surprise for a fascinating read about the history of dietary guidance). A Keto diet focuses on cutting out most of the carbs and sugars in your diet and replacing them primarily with fat and protein. I started scrambling some eggs for breakfast every morning. I started to cut out breads and carbs in other meals wherever I could. I also switched some of my snacks from crackers (I love Ritz Bitz) to nuts like almonds. At first, I didn’t even cut back too much on how much food I was eating. I simply started by replacing foods and eating better. That massively helped the transition and got my body ready for bigger changes. Now I’m not a Keto purist, and I may be missing some of the benefits of that. I still have some sweets and some carbs and some things occasionally that aren’t the best. But I do believe in the principles and have found that the closer I can align to a Keto diet, the better I’ve done and the better I’ve felt. Control the QuantityMy next focus was on reducing the quantity of food. Once I established a baseline for my daily calories and food intake, I started to scale back. My first step was to cut out a lot of junk food. I noticed (by tracking) that I ate a lot of sugary foods. I have a sweet tooth, and anyone who knows me can attest. So starting to limit myself to a few treats a day was the first step. Next, started to cut out other snacks. I found (again, by tracking) that I ate a lot of snacks. My meals were pretty normal sized, but I ate a few meals worth of calories each day just in snacks. So cutting that back was a key to success. Start Intermittent Fasting I’d heard about the benefits of fasting for some time, but hadn’t really tried it until more recently. And it was a huge boost to my weight loss. The idea behind intermittent fasting is that going without food for an extended period of time forces your body to use its fat stores (rather than the food in your system) for energy. So you start to use up that stored fat. It also helps decrease your insulin, which also helps your body start to use its fat stores as energy. A good start may be 12 hours of fasting, while going up to 14–16 hours is often the goal of many folks. There are other combinations as well, but I haven’t tried those. I’ve seen the benefit fasting for myself. Not only have I been able to lose weight, but I’ve also been able to lower my body fat, and I largely attribute that to fasting. I still haven’t even fully optimized my fasting routine either, so I hope that as I get better at it, I’ll see even more benefits. Personally, I started my intermittent fasting by ending snacks in the evening. We usually finish dinner around 6:00 pm, so that is when I finish eating for the day. This was a huge change in itself because I always used to eat in the evening. And not healthy food. I know some folks skip breakfast, but I never have done that. I have my scrambled eggs around 7:30 am (sometimes 8:00 am if I’m lucky enough). That typically gives me around 14 hours of fasting, which I’ve found to be great. If you can push that further, go for it. The key for me was cutting out evening snacks (and desserts). Other people aren’t breakfast people. I have a friend who prefers to eat in the evening and skip breakfast. That has worked for him. Personally, I’m a breakfast person. But the key is narrowing the window of time you’re eating on a given day. 3. Exercise — Resistance Training FirstAnother misconception I had a while ago was that cardio was key to weight loss and fitness. When I didn’t see results with cardio, I doubled down, often skipping lifting days to do more cardio. It was a vicious cycle. Lifting and Resistance Training The reality is that strength training is more important than cardio in my experience. If you have to choose, choose to lift or do resistance training over the cardio. When I made that switch, I started (gradually) to see much better results. The great thing with strength training is that it compounds over time. By increasing your muscle mass you can increase your metabolism and actually burn more calories at rest. Which is the dream, right? Actually being able to burn more calories by not having to constantly be exercising. Cardio and Steps That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do cardio type exercise. Like I mentioned above, moving is really important. Doing it every day is important, especially if you sit at a desk all day like most of us. Additionally, I’ve found that switching to high-intensity intervals is better than simply hopping on the elliptical every day. So as I’ve done cardio, I’ve been doing my normal cardio routine for about 3 minutes, and then I kick up my speed and resistance for 30 seconds, basically sprinting for a short burst. Then going back to a jog. Rest Days By chance, I also found out that having rest days was critical for me. For a time, I was exercising every day. However, as my schedule got busier I had to start taking some evenings (I exercise in the evenings) for other work. Against my expectations, that actually seemed to jumpstart my progress in losing weight. I don’t know if I wasn’t getting as much out of my workouts by doing them each day or if I just needed some extra rest, but I’d suggest making sure that you have some rest days. Keep up with the steps, but try and do it throughout the day and take a break during your normal workout time. The key takeaway for me is that I didn’t have to exercise every single day to see results. I could actually have time for other things as well, as long as I was getting the most out of my workouts and eating right. 4. Push ThroughOne of the most difficult things is getting started. You’ve likely created habits that you have to start to break. Your body is going to be upset with you. I know that as I started to make changes, my body rebelled against me. I had overwhelming cravings for all things sweet. I occasionally binged on ice cream or pie or cookie dough. The exciting thing about getting started, though, is that you’ll likely see some good progress up front. As you make some changes, you probably have some room to lose weight. Which will help you get going. Use that momentum! It does get easier. But you will also hit some plateaus along the way. I hit several plateaus as I moved toward my target weight and fitness. It was hard to break through. First, stick with it. As you focus on eating well, exercising and doing the things you need, you will be able to make progress, even if it seems slow or stalled. Second, it may be worth it to “juice up” your returns by going to more extreme lengths for short periods of time. I’ve done this by completely cutting out snacks (even healthy ones) and any dessert/treats for a period of time. I’ve gone extra hard during my workouts and made a big push to get through. This has usually worked for me and has allowed me to then get back to my regular, sustainable routine but at a new, lower weight. 5. Create New HabitsNone of the things I’ve talked about above are easy. They’re actually really hard. To be successful, you have to literally rewire your brain. I found that giving up an evening snack was massively difficult. My body had gotten accustomed to eating around 9:00 pm every day. Breaking that habit was hard. But I established the habit of not eating after 6:00 pm, and now it’s hardly a temptation. The ultimate goal of all of this is to change your lifestyle. It has to be long-term to be sustainable. You can’t starve yourself indefinitely, so you need to adjust your body and your habits to make these changes sustainable. Hide the Food Willpower is a muscle. You can build its strength over time, but you can exhaust it on any given day. I know that when my favorite treats are out on the counter, I’m much more likely to snack on something than when it is hidden in the pantry. Make things easy on yourself, and don’t leave your favorite snacks out. Even better, stop buying some of those things. It is much easier to avoid Oreos if you don’t have any Oreos. Create a Workout Routine This is something that I did a long time ago, and it is a habit that has served me well. I’ve tried workouts at all different times of the day, but have found that the evening is best for me. The kids are in bed and I’ve done everything else I need. When 9:00 pm comes around on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, that is my workout time. Find the time and days that work best for you and then make them a habit. No excuses because you’ve already planned for this time. Once it’s not in questions, it becomes so much easier. And do something you enjoy while you workout. One of the few times I watch TV or movies is during my workout. It’s basically the only way I can keep up with any shows or Netflix. I’ve also gotten through a ton of audiobooks while working out. Find something you enjoy and add it to your workout. Make Switches Wherever You Can Swapping out breakfast food for eggs was a big change for me. But a couple of scrambled eggs in the morning are now a habit for me. It’s easy now. I eat eggs for breakfast. Make these types of switches wherever you can. Get a big thing of Costco chicken strips and take those for lunch every day. I do something similar to that now. I’ve made a few switches where I’m in control and that gives me some more flexibility where I don’t have as much control (such as family dinners). Be Intentional & Mindful I’ve found that being intentional and mindful is another key to success. It is easy to mindlessly snack while watching TV or staring at your phone. I alwayseat more when I’m not paying attention. So pay attention! When you’re eating, take it slower. Focus on what you’re doing. Don’t zone out to the TV with a bag of chips. Even if you only intended on having a few, you will end up eating the whole bag before you realize it. Stick With It The biggest key is to great some routines and stick with them, even when it is difficult and even when you’re not seeing quick results. The goal isn’t to lose tons of weight immediately — it’s to create a new you. So make the changes, however small, and keep them going. The funny thing is that you’ll look back in 3 months and see tons of actual progress, even if it felt like you didn’t make any progress day to day. That is how my experience was. By sticking with it, you’ll be able to see massive (albeit gradual) changes too. Nothing about this is easy, though some items are easier than others. The picture above is my actual trendline for this year. It is even more dramatic if you look at last year as well. It’s been an incredible journey, but it has taken time and commitment. At the end of the day, you can do this. It may take some time, but don’t get discouraged. You’ve done harder things than this. You’ve survived much more difficult things. You can do this! 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Putting the Focus on Frameworks Rather Than OutcomesIn my post about Product Thinking vs. Project Thinking, I highlight the differences between the two mindsets. Fundamentally, project thinking is about outputs and timelines while product thinking is focused on outcomes and solutions. And while there are instances where project management is critical, applying project thinking (or project management) to the entire lifecycle of product development is incredibly problematic. And that is what I see with SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework if you’re unfamiliar with the term). While its intentions may be good — and there may even be companies or situations where it is helpful — as a whole, SAFe is the wrong answer. It may be a project management dream come true, but the issues with SAFe are numerous and significant. Practical Problems From a practical perspective, there are several issues. Layers of Process. SAFe adds layers of process to product development that don’t need to be there. For example, Program Increment Planning (PI) is a formalized process by which all teams plan out and discuss their deliverables for the next quarter and align with all other groups. It is a formal meeting that takes place for several days. Now, this may sound good on its face because communication like this is a good thing, as is the planning and understanding that can result from it. But the process by which it is accomplished makes it overly burdensome in practice and takes away a team’s agility both by forcing the set meetings at the set time, and by locking in many of the commitments of those meetings with little wiggle room after the fact. By putting so much focus on the structured meetings and process, it also takes away the emphasis on continual learning. Discovery shouldn’t be happening once a quarter, but continuously. Same with prioritization. Locking in these important aspects of product development to be done only at specified times does a real disservice to teams. Generally speaking, if you look at the diagrams and processes outlined for SAFe, you can easily understand why the entire thing is overly burdensome and complex. Rather than simplifying or streamlining, it bogs down the entire development cycle with unnecessary processes. Layers of Management. In addition to the heaviness of the process, SAFe also add (or keeps) layers of management throughout the development process. From the development teams to release train engineers to epic owners and beyond. The many layers of management reflect the many layers of process, complicating the overall workflow and adding a lot of cooks to the kitchen. While this may look incredibly appealing to managers, centralizing a lot of control at each level, the reality of having so many hands involved is often confusion and slow-downs as everyone steps on each other’s toes and each group may have different ways of doing things. Additionally, it removes too many teams and people from the impact of their work. Instead of having a product owner or team responsible for features, and another layer responsible for business communication and yet another layer responsible for market needs, a development team should know and understand all of those facets. How can anyone be expected to truly deliver value to users beings so far removed? Stagnation. In some regards, SAFe could be considered remedial agile. I never like to get into the debates about what is agile and what isn’t — they tend to be unproductive and pointless — but SAFe isn’t about scaling agile for large organizations in the sense that it takes agile principles and applies them to large groups. Rather, it is about beginning to apply some agile principles to large organizations that have no other agile experience. This could be great for a large company that is steeped in processes and waterfall methodology. But if SAFe is the end rather than a stepping stone in the process, it will ultimately result in stagnation of teams and products. Philosophical Problems From a more philosophical perspective, the issues are even greater. Focus on Methodology. SAFe begs for the focus to be on the methodology itself. With the heavy processes and prescriptions, it’s almost necessary. This, of course, isn’t unique to SAFe. It is a fundamental issue with many methodologies: the process becomes an end unto itself. Scrum has the same problem, where the focus too often drifts from creating value for users to optimizing the development process, as measured by story points, velocity, etc. Optimizing may be important, but it is a means to an end, not an end itself. Lack of Autonomy. Second, rather than giving autonomy to teams, SAFe removes autonomy from teams and ties them down often to lists of features. Part of PI often involves determining the features of the next 3 months. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes an issue by locking a team into features rather than outcomes. SAFe also ties all teams together into release trains and other processes. Rather than allowing a team to function independently — experimenting, releasing, and learning — teams are all formally tied together and dependent on each other. Decisions that may have otherwise been able to be made independently are now constrained by the process. Lack of Agility. The purpose of agile is to allow teams to be, well, agile. That means allowing teams to design, build, test, learn, and iterate. The focus is on outcomes, which may or may not be achieved by certain features. Having agility means being able to shift priority or feature in order to better deliver the outcomes. It allows teams to learn from their experiments and then make adjustments as they go. This type of agility is the antithesis of the planning and processes imposed by SAFe and project thinking in general. Hiding the Real Issues. Finally, rather than addressing the real underlying issues, many of which are described above, SAFe can cover them up with its processes and prescriptions. If an issue an organization faces is too many interdependencies among teams, SAFe’s prescription adds lots of planning and coordination between those team prior to having work begin. That is great if those dependencies can’t be decoupled. But what about organizations where they can and should be decoupled? Rather than tackle the hard work of reducing complexity, we paint over it with more meetings and processes. That includes complexity from a product as well as from a people structure. If there is too much hierarchy within an organization, SAFe realigns it, but doesn’t fix it. The real issue is likely too much structure already, and the solution may be to flatten the organization so that people can actually have ownership of their work. Finally, rather than fostering better communication up and down the chain, SAFe adds too many layers. If the real issue is executive communication and buy-in, SAFe may seem like a good answer with its processes and pyramid structure. But it doesn’t address the underlying issue, which may be a lack of understanding or a lack of real involvement from executive leaders. Theoretically, SAFe is meant to solve some real problems for teams and organizations. Unfortunately, it fails in too many regards in practice. By overburdening teams with heavy processes and prescriptions, it ultimately takes away too much autonomy and agility. Rather than supporting product development teams, it asks that product teams support all the layers of management above. This isn’t unique to SAFe, and managers too often have their roles backward in thinking their teams are meant to support management rather than the other way around, but it is ingrained in the process.
SAFe is another embodiment of project thinking. While product thinking is the solution for product development, it is easy to slip back into a project mindset where the goal is to map out features and outputs and then simply focus on delivering them on a specific timeline. And that is what SAFe does: it puts the focus on outputs rather than outcomes. Success is measured on committing to features and then delivering them throughout the quarter. Of course, this is great if you’re right about all your guesses ahead of time, but that won’t generally be the case. And when processes take the place of outcomes, it’s not good for teams, organizations, or users. Ultimately, the focus should be on the users of our products and services. We should eliminate as many processes and constraints as possible to better allow our product teams to deliver value. That means reducing complexity and organizational overhead, not adding to it. Get the right people and the right goals, then get things out of their way. Principles will scale to any size, so get those right and you’ll find the right scaled structure. In some recent conversations I’ve had, the idea of leadership has come up numerous times. From my own leadership philosophy to the leadership (or lack thereof) of those in positions of influence, I’ve had the chance to analyze leadership from several angles. This has led me to reflect on my own views of leadership, and how I’ve implemented those principles. I wrote about the importance of establishing a leadership philosophy in my article 6 Questions for Determining Your Leadership Philosophy. As part of that process, I spent some serious time determining my own leadership philosophy and its core underlying principles. I wanted to dive deeper into it here, as a way of articulating my ideas and hopefully as a useful reference for others as they establish their own leadership philosophy. My Leadership PhilosophyGet the right people working on the right thing in the right way — and get everything else out of their way. The above statement is what I distilled from the principles below. It summarizes what I consider to be my key beliefs and how I view leadership, incorporating my core principles. Leadership for me really is about getting the right people, creating a vision for what we’re doing and helping establish the criteria and roadmap for success. And then getting things (and often yourself) out of the way. I didn’t start out with this summary though. I actually went through the process I outlined in my other article and began establishing principles that I believed were core to leadership, and my views on leadership. After several iterations, I refined my thinking to the principles below. My Leadership PrinciplesGet the right people When it comes to companies, teams, or even projects, having the right people is the first key. It’s even more important than having a vision, because without the right people, you aren’t going to reach your vision regardless of how compelling it is. In the essential book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about how successful leaders (Level 5 leaders as they are referred to in the book) get the right people on the bus before doing anything else. “The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it." This isn’t just for executives of large companies. It is for every team and group. The right people will make or break a product. You could have the greatest idea for a world-changing product. But without the right group, you simply won’t get there. That’s why as a leader, I think it’s crucial to find and keep the best people. I added the idea of keeping them because the best people will have lots of opportunities elsewhere. So you have to actively work to keep them within your organization. Unsurprisingly, teams that stay together longer perform better. So how do you get the right people? While this isn’t an exhaustive list, I’ve found at least a few key ideas to be critical:
People truly are the key to success, so this principle really can’t be overemphasized. Establish Principles & Live Them “When values are clear, decisions are easy” — Walt Disney As a leader, I believe it is critical to establish personal and leadership principles, and to live by them. Leadership principles. Part of this is the exercise here — creating a leadership philosophy. Without the right principles, you won’t fully understand the actions your taking. Team principles. As a leader, it is also important to establish the principles of the team or organization. This helps guide the overall culture mentioned above, and sets the tone for autonomy. If groups can understand the overall guiding principles, they can make decisions for themselves based on those principles. Personal principles. Finally, a leader should have personal principles that they live by. This may seem like somewhat of a dated notion, but it’s something that teams, organizations, and the world need — leaders who have good fundamental principles, such as honesty and integrity, that they live by. Set The Vision “ If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”That above quote by Antoine de Saint Exupéry (though it has a variety of different translations) really captures the essence of setting a vision. A leader shouldn’t be set on divvying up work and creating silos where each group is “optimized” for their task. Rather, a leader should inspire everyone towards a common goal. The vision is the driver, the inspiration that everyone is working towards. Jeff Bezos has put it well when he says that we should be stubborn on the vision, flexible on the details. All too often we see managers being stubborn on the details (from how we use story points to how teams run meetings) while disregarding the vision. That’s the opposite of what a leader needs to do. Define The Framework Of course, it’s not necessarily enough to paint an amazing picture of the future that we want to create. As leaders, we do need to help establish the framework for success. While a vision may be years away, we obviously need to do work now that will move us in that direction. I’ve long been a fan of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for this exact purpose. If you’re looking for some good books on this subject, I’d highly suggest Measure What Matters and Radical Focus, which are great reads. Creating OKRs allows you and your teams to establish what matters most (objectives) and how you're going to measure whether you’ve achieved your objectives (the key results). This allows flexibility in how the objectives are achieved, but ensures that the most important things are getting the right attention. By defining the framework, you can unleash the creativity of your teams to find the best solutions. This helps guide work toward the vision, but allows groups to be much more autonomous in how they work. Give Continuous Feedback & Recognition It is critical to give ongoing feedback to teams and team members. There is simply no other way for people to improve than to understand real-time what is working and what isn’t, so they can adjust accordingly. The idea of an annual or semi-annual performance review is probably one of the most antiquated notions at this point. And the sooner it dies, the better off we’ll all be. It amazes me that over 10 years ago, as a manager at the computer labs at BYU, my fellow managers and I had implemented a feedback system that is far superior to what many companies still use today. We actually had a mechanism for all employees to give real-time feedback to each other. That feedback could then be conveyed via managers or supervisors on a weekly basis. We were also doing a more formal review quarterly. But little of that information was new since it was being delivered continuously. Improvement was an ongoing thing. In Measure What Matters, this is the type of system advocated along with OKRs. It is called Continuous Performance Management. “To power positive business results, implement ongoing CFRs (conversations, feedback, and recognition) in concert with structured goal setting. Transparent OKRs make coaching more concrete and useful. Continuous CFRs keep day-to-day work on point and genuinely collaborative.”It’s also critical to give recognition as well. Different people will appreciate this in different ways, so it’s important to understand individuals. But everyone needs recognition. And leaders need to find ways to give that recognition. Get Everything Else Out Of The Way Finally, the last key principle is to get everything else out of the way. That often includes managers and leaders. Once you’ve got the right people on the bus, have set the vision and framework, you really need to allow them to do their thing. In Powerful, Patty McCord’s excellent book about Netflix culture (that I actually started and finished after writing most of my thoughts here), she describes one of the keys of their success as eliminating as much process and overhead as possible. Policies and structures can’t anticipate needs and opportunities. That’s why I included the quote at the beginning from Steve Jobs. It’s critical to get obstacles out of the way of great employees. And often that includes getting leaders and managers out of the way. Fundamentally, each layer of management should be in place to support those folks on the ground doing the work — not the other way around. If we find ourselves adding work because someone needs an additional report (or something to that effect), we’re doing it wrong. Leadership needs to be in support of the vision and the work, not a barrier to it. As I’ve had the chance to really think through my own philosophy and the underlying principles, it has helped me clarify my own leadership ideas as well as better understand how I expect my own leaders and managers to function. I expect that this will be subject to update as I continue to add experiences, but these underlying principles form a solid foundation from which to build, at least for me.
I’ve had multiple occasions recently to reflect on my own leadership philosophy. Not only have I been asked about it explicitly, but in several conversations with friends and others, the topic of leadership has come up with both positive and negative examples. This got me examining my leadership style and the principles that make up my overall philosophy. Reflecting on your philosophy can be a surprisingly useful exercise, because we don’t often examine many of the underlying tenets that govern our actions. But as we do reflect on it, we can begin to uncover not only our own beliefs and principles, but also the principles we value in our own leaders and managers. So What is a Leadership Philosophy?When I think of a philosophy in general, it is the set of principles and beliefs that govern our actions and direction. It is made up of many different pieces that are all intertwined, guiding us through various situations. So a leadership philosophy is made up of the core principles that govern the actions of a leader. Not only what they do, but the vision that they set and the policies they put in place to guide others. I often see “philosophy” confused for “style”. While style will be influenced by philosophy, they are not the same. Style may be the implementation of philosophy, but it is not equivalent. Additionally, style can be much more determined by situation while the underlying philosophy, though subject to reflection and revision, should not be changing situationally. It should be much more resilient and all-purpose. Why Determine Your Leadership Philosophy?Everyone has a philosophy, even if they don’t determine explicitly what it is. All of our thoughts and actions, especially when it comes to leadership, govern our direction. So even without determining or reflecting on a leadership philosophy, you have one. You just may not know exactly what it is or how it drives your decisions. By taking time to reflect (and write out) your philosophy, you can begin to have a much better understanding of the forces driving your decisions and leadership. Additionally, you can start to measure where your philosophy and implementation may not be aligned. Are there practices you currently have as a leader that don’t measure up to where you’d like to be? Determining your philosophy and reflecting on it gives you the perfect opportunity to ensure they are aligned. Or what you may need to do if they aren’t aligned. But what if you aren’t currently in a leadership or management role? For product managers reading this, hopefully you already recognize that even without managerial authority, you are in a critical leadership role. For others, I’d likely argue that you too are in positions of leadership, even if it’s not readily apparent. Regardless, most of us likely have managers and leaders in some capacity. By understanding our own leadership philosophy, we can better recognize the underlying principles guiding our managers. This is important for working with managers and fulfilling our responsibilities. But it is also critical in determining where we will work best. If your leaders and managers don’t have principles that align with your own, how can you expect to do your best work long-term? Ensuring that we determine our own philosophy and then find leaders who also align with our principles is crucial to our individual success and happiness. How to Determine a Leadership Philosophy?As I was thinking about this topic and fleshing out my own philosophy, I asked myself a series of questions that helped me begin to articulate my own philosophy. Here are some of the topics I used to help me determine my philosophy:
What is My Leadership Philosophy?As I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the principles of leadership that I value, I’ve been able to articulate my overarching philosophy and the underlying principles. I go more in-depth on my own philosophy in my post My Leadership Philosophy & Principles, but I’ll summarize it here as well: Get the right people working on the right thing in the right way — and get everything else out of their way. The key underlying principles for my philosophy are:
Not only is this the way I try and lead, but it is how I want to be led as well. Understanding that and articulating it are critical as I continue to lead various teams and take on more leadership roles, but also in understanding the kinds of leaders I want to work with. As you begin to reflect on your own leadership philosophy, you’ll begin to set the stage not only for how you lead others, but the kind of leaders you work with. I’m convinced that if more leaders and managers would reflect on their own philosophy as well, we’d begin to see significant changes across companies and teams. So let’s all begin to be that change by understanding our own philosophies and creating the kinds of teams and organizations that everyone will admire.
Influence is probably one of the most valuable currencies as a product manager. Because you likely don’t have a lot of authority, you have to rely on your ability to understand others and help them understand your perspective and ideas. A key part to influence is having and inspiring confidence. You must first be confident in what you’re doing and what you’re proposing to do. You also have to gain the confidence of your product team, since they are relying heavily on you for the success of the overall product. You need the confidence of your stakeholders and users as well. So how do you gain confidence in yourself and inspire confidence in others? Confidence in Yourself No one will have a lot of confidence in you if you don’t have confidence in yourself. So be incredibly confident, but also incredibly self-aware. Because taken too far, you’ll lose a lot of credibility if you’re unjustly overconfident or arrogant. Gaining confidence starts with a big dose of humility. I talk a lot about this process in my post about credibility deposits. By definition, you aren’t an expert initially. But you can get there. And as a product manager, you are expected to get there. It starts with acknowledging that you have a lot to learn and then setting out to learn it. I’ve personally come into almost every product and project as somewhat of a novice. Years ago when I was working with the Money Markets and Liquidity team at Goldman Sachs, I knew very little about the products and environment. But I became an expert in the products we were offering as well as each piece of regulation and how it would impact our products. When new rules were released by the SEC, I went through nearly 1,000 pages in the course of a few days in order to review and understand the implications. The same can be said for current products I work on. But as I’ve first sought to understand everything from start to finish, I’ve been able to build up not only credibility, but confidence. As you really dive in and get out of your comfort zone, you’ll be incredibly uncomfortable for a while. But that’s what it takes. Another real key in this process is taking ownership. While the CEO analogy for product managers isn’t perfect, it is an apt comparison in terms of the knowledge you should have and the care you should take with your team, product, users, and stakeholders. Confidence from your Team As a product manager, it is critical to gain the confidence of the entire product team. You will be working together day-in and day-out. The success of everyone in that group is tied together. You succeed or fail as a team. So how can you gain the confidence of the group? Understand. Take time to understand the team. Understand how they work and who they are. Every team is different, so don’t assume that you understand until you’ve taken the time. Dive In. I’ve found that one of the best ways to gain confidence from the developers, designers, and fellow product managers you’re working with is to dive in. Head first. Get your hands dirty in any way you can. You’ll likely make some missteps, but that’s okay. That’s how you learn. One thing that I’ve found to be incredibly valuable is to really be in the trenches, even when it’s not necessarily where you add the most value. I’ve been on the late night pager duty, taking the 2am phone calls when something breaks. And even without being able to really fix anything, staying up all night until it’s resolved. Really being part of a team means being part of it all the way. Develop Technical Expertise. There is certainly a lot of debate on how technical a product manager needs to be, and it depends on the role and company. But more technical skills are rarely bad. And being able to code and understand the nuances of development go a long way in helping you gain the confidence of the other technical folks around you. Just don’t forget who the experts are. Confidence from Stakeholders Depending on the size of your organization, you may have a few key stakeholders or you may have dozens. Certainly as the size of the group increases, so does the complexity. But the principles remain the same. Again, you need to gain an in-depth understanding of each stakeholder. This time it goes beyond the understanding that you gained for your team though. Because each stakeholder will have different priorities, needs, and styles of working. You won’t necessarily be aligned completely like your development team is. As I’ve worked with a wide variety of stakeholders across different organizations, I’ve founds that I have to continually tailor my approach. Here are some key considerations: Understand the Business. As a product manager you need a broad understanding of the organization. That includes not only how your product impacts different groups, but how those groups then impact other groups as well. Without understanding the business and how everything aligns, you won’t be able to gain the confidence you need from the stakeholders in those areas. Understand the Priorities and Constraints. Each group, department, or stakeholder will have different priorities. Hopefully these all align broadly with the business, but the reality is that they may not. You need to understand this. Often there may be competing priorities in different groups that can impact your product or team. You have to also understand the constraints that your stakeholders are operating under. Often there will be budget implications, results they are responsible for, or other difficulties they have. How can you expect to sell the vision of your product or get a stakeholder on board if you don’t understand the constraints they are under. On the flip side though, by showing that you understand stakeholders priorities and constraints, you can gain a tremendous amount of confidence. For example, in one product launch that I did, we had to coordinate closely with another team in order to be successful in our release. However, they were incredibly short-staffed at the time. So working closely with the key stakeholder in that group, we were able understand their constraints, find the right level of help, and coordinate the right timing. It was a tough process. And it set us back from our target. But it was the right decision and ultimately earned us a great deal of confidence not just from that group, but from many others across the organization. Understand the Individuals. Understanding individuals means understanding who they are, how they prefer to communicate, and what level of involvement they have or need to have. This could potentially be one of the most difficult areas to navigate. And I’ve found that no matter how careful you are, you’ll likely run into trouble here (so don’t beat yourself up). Because everyone is different. Some stakeholders are very hands-on while others are largely detached. Some prefer quick summaries of highlights, others want to know all the details. Very much like tailoring roadmaps, you have to tailor communication and involvement. A word of caution as well. Don’t assume that little involvement or delegation means that the stakeholder doesn’t need to be involved. It may seem that way, but there are few things that grind a product to a halt as quickly as a stakeholder coming in from the wings because they haven’t been involved enough. Err on the side of too much communication and too much follow-up. Confidence from Users Finally, and maybe most importantly, you need to gain the confidence of your users. This is such a broad reaching topic that it could likely be many posts all on its own, especially across a product’s life cycle. But we’ll hit a few key points here. Understand your Users. You need to understand your users. Empathize with them. Know what their problems are and what they need from your product. This will not only help you deliver a great product, but will help you gain confidence along the way. Get them Involved. Do user testing early and often. Find your users or potential users and watch them use your product. Get their feedback. This is probably one of the best ways you can truly understand your users and deliver value to them. It goes beyond the metrics and gets to real understanding by watching real people really use your product. Err on Their Side. If there is ever a choice between erring on the side of the business and erring on the side of the user, err on the side of the user. Every time. For one, you won’t have a business for long without users, but it will also show how serious you are about their experience. It will build their confidence in you and what you’re doing for them. Hopefully you won’t have to make this type of call often. But you definitely don’t want to be remembered for selling out your users for the sake of your business (*cough* Facebook). Deliver Value. Ultimately it comes down to delivering value to your users. Knowing what problems they’re solving and helping them solve those problems. Once you’ve done that, you’ll already have gained the confidence of some users. Build on that value and continue to deliver. Inspiring confidence as a product manager is critical. Without it, you won’t be able to accomplish much. But as you gain confidence in yourself and inspire the confidence of your team, your stakeholders, and your users, you’ll be able to work magic. And that’s what keeps most of us here, and what makes the role of product manager so exciting.
In our current day and age, we are constantly bombarded with new information. It is more accessible than ever before, and we’re constantly awash in data, metrics, news, reports, etc. How much of it is truly valuable though? How much of what is around us every day is truly an actionable signal versus what is just noise? It’s hard enough to answer some of these questions in our day-to-day lives. It can become even more difficult as a product manager as you’ve instrumented your products and are constantly paying close attention to the huge variety of metrics that are available to us. From latency to active users to monthly revenue to everything else. There is a lot of information available. But what is most valuable? And over what time period? And who decides? Financial Markets I spent a good deal of my early career in financial markets. There probably isn’t a better example of data overload than in finance. The sheer volume of data available is astounding. And the pace at which you can get it is overwhelming. New reports are available every day with economic indicators, financial forecasts, analyst rating, price movements, and much more. And add the fact that CNBC is on all day long, you have the perfect recipe for information overload. So how can you make sense of all of that information? How do you trade on it? The short answer is that you don’t. You simply can’t. If you tried to, you’d be thrashed around hour by hour and end up losing significant amounts of money. While I never traded professionally (for better or worse), most good traders I had the opportunity to work closely with had key pieces of information they’d use. A way to separate out the signal from the noise. A way to create an investment thesis using key pieces of information that actually move the needle, and then make adjustments based on additional inputs they’d get. Whether that is certain ratios for stocks, or certain spreads and purchasing patterns for bonds, there are some key signals that stand out from the noise and can give real insight into markets. We’re Not Great at Separating Signals from Noise Despite knowing this, we all fall victim to overconfidence based on noise. In a fascinating study done by Paul Slovic (and described really well by Adam Robinson in a podcast found here), a group of professional horse race handicappers were gathered to see how well they could predict outcomes based on a number of factors. At first, they were only allowed to pick 5 pieces of key information about the horses and then were asked to make their predictions. Using just the 5 key things they knew, they were able to correctly predict nearly 20% of the time, which is well above what we would expect from chance. They were also roughly 20% confident in their predictions. Not bad. The key part of the study came as more information was added. Each handicapper was allowed to pick more and more data. As they did, their confidence in their predictions increased while their actual results stayed roughly the same. Despite knowing more information, they were not able to better predict the outcomes, though their confidence nearly doubled. More Information Isn’t Necessarily Better I’ve been asked throughout my product experience to put together numerous slide decks and reports with significant amounts of data about our products. Our team is often asked the same. Numerous charts with all the information about our applications that people feel is relevant to see and understand. The specific metrics of interest often vary depending on the manager and what they care most about (often based on their background or experience). But there are always numerous problems with this. First, by paying attention to every metric or piece of information, we’re essentially paying attention to nothing. The true signals get lost in the noise. In a multiple page dashboard of metrics, what are the important things? CNBC has to fill up an entire day with reporting and information. That doesn’t mean that it’s meaningful. There are probably days when nothing should be reported because it’s all noise. But that’s not how the world works. We may be asked to fill out a whole host of metrics for our products. But that may not be the right thing either. Second, we end up focusing on the wrong things. Often in reports or slide decks, the main things that get attention can be the wrong things. For example, if a specific metric isn’t great or isn’t known well, it can get an outsize amount of attention. We may then focus our attention on making that metric better simply because its lack of information got the attention of upper-level management, when it is likely not significant overall. Third, we can get into data paralysis. By requiring more and more data before we make a decision, we may never end up making a decision at all. One of my teams nearly had this happen to us with an executive who wanted to analyze (nearly to death) a vendor selection. He required months of work and literally dozens of pages of analysis for what amounted to a relatively insignificant decision. In the end, the decision was made by inertia since we had already selected a vendor to pilot with, and it became too late to make any changes anyway. Finally, on the flip side of paralysis, we can fall victim to overconfidence. Like the study above, we feel like with all the information available we have a good handle on things. Pages and pages of data must mean that we can be 100% confident, right? It’s that kind of overconfidence in the data that can lead to catastrophic outcomes. Because rather than understanding that we may only be 50% confident in an outcome and manage it accordingly, we go in with 100% confidence and are unprepared for the unexpected. Does that mean we shouldn’t care about our data or metrics? Should we not instrument our products? Of course not. We need data and metrics. But we have to make sure we’re making decisions and doing work based on the most important metrics. What Can We Do? So given the pitfalls above, what can we do? First, we have to understand our biases. I was on a bit of a psychology kick a few months ago, and my reading included some great books including Behave and You Are Not So Smart. It is fascinating to me to analyze our own thinking and understand some of the areas where we may fall victim. For example, the latter book dives into a number of fallacies we may commit. One is finding too many patterns in randomness. It happens more then we think, especially with all the data we have. And we can start to correlate unrelated data points, leading to potential wrong conclusions. But when we understand where the pitfalls are, we can at least acknowledge them, if not avoid them. We can see when we risk being more tuned into the noise. Second, we have to elevate the important. Not every metric is equal or even important. We have to help key stakeholders and managers understand that. Be confident as a product manager! (More on that soon.) You know your product. You know the important things. While certain stakeholders may want to see certain metrics based on their background or point of view or department, we have to ensure that those metrics don’t take the place of the really important ones. In order to help with that, it is great to explicitly establish what is important and why. A great way to do that is with OKRs (objectives and key results), which I’m a big fan of. (Check out Measure What Matters or Radical Focus for some good reading on OKRs). By calling out the key things our teams are focused on, we can avoid getting sidetracked with other things. Earlier this year I made a concerted effort to do this for our product. While there are many metrics we’d like to move and that are important, by calling out one, and only one, we’ve been able to keep the focus on the main goal. And while we don’t want certain other indicators to slip, when we have to make a trade-off, it is clear to everyone what we’ll do. And that’s the point. Trade-offs will always have to be made in product development. But having a clear goal or objective allows us to make those trade-offs. If we had 15 metrics that were all equal, we would constantly be pulled in the direction of the loudest metric (or voice) at the time. And that’s no way to do product development. Finally, we have to accept that data don’t make decisions. Signals have to be interpreted, and there is inherently a human element to that. No matter how much data we have, it cannot make a decision for us, nor should it. Understanding the most important things, synthesizing that information, and determining actionable steps can be just as much art as it is science. There is an ever-increasing amount of noise all around us. From metrics to voices to everything else, it is increasingly difficult to identify the important. It takes a deliberate effort to not only understand what is truly a signal, but then to ensure that we aren’t getting lost in the sea of noise. It’s an artful balancing act, especially in product development. But that’s part of what makes it so exciting and fun.
At the end of every year I like to take a look back at some of the highlights. Things that happened personally & professionally, things I learned, books I read, products I loved, etc. So here is one of those posts. This year I had the chance to try out a bunch of new products (and some older products). So in keeping with the tradition I started last year, I wanted to take a moment to review some of my favorites from 2018. Not necessarily bleeding edge things, but things that made my life better.
So those are my top picks for this year. I have a handful of other runner-ups such as the Echo Show and Echo Spot, which have been surprisingly good. Seeing Alexa with a screen has made it clear how much better it is being able to interact with voice and with touch. The screen has saved us a couple of times as calendar events have popped up, reminding us we need to get the kids to an evening class. The Eufy Smart Scale is another one. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of smart scales in general, but having it connected to your phone and fitness apps makes things so much easier. And the price on this one is quite reasonable for the quality.
I’ve already started working on potential products for 2019, and am looking forward to reporting back what I’ve found over the next year! At the end of every year I like to take a look back at some of the highlights. Things that happened personally & professionally, things I learned, books I read, products I loved, etc. So here is one of those posts. My reading list from 2018 was fairly broad, as I love everything from science fiction to history to product management. And this year had some great reads from all of those categories. As 2018 draws to a close, I wanted to take a look back at some of my favorites and most influential reads from the past year. 1. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst This was probably one of my favorites from 2018 as it was endlessly fascinating and actually led me to explore some other books around similar topics, such as The Willpower Instinct, You Are Not So Smart, and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The interaction between our genes, our environment, our ancestry and every other possible factor combines to make us who we are. It’s such a beautiful and profound complexity. 2. Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love For anyone familiar with some of my other posts regarding product management, this book won’t come as a surprise. It is one of my top reads for product managers and has profoundly influenced the way I work. I’ve probably read it through a couple times this year as I’ve referred back to it in various scenarios. If you’re a product manager or involved in product development, this is one you’ll want. 3. Foundation Series: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation This series is incredible. I hadn’t read any of Isaac Asimov until this year, and I was blown away with how great this was. The original stories were published in 1942, which is crazy to think about. But it’s amazing how futuristic they still seem even today. If you enjoy science fiction, I’d highly recommend them. And I’ve already got more Asimov books in my backlog ready to go soon. 4. A Short History of Nearly Everything I know I’m late in discovering this one (I’m always behind the times in my reading it seems), but what a gem. It’s a walk-through of, well, nearly everything in history. It is incredibly fun and kept me coming back for more with the clever writing and fascinating incites. It’s a great overview and refresher of everything you likely learned, and so many things you probably haven’t. 5. User Story Mapping Going back to product management/product development, User Story Mapping is now one of my favorites. It is a great book on tools and techniques to use in building great products. I also had the opportunity to attend a session by Jeff Patton where he walked us through some of his key insights. If you ever get the chance to attend a workshop with him, don’t miss it. Worth every second. In the meantime though, you can definitely get a ton out of his book. It was a great year of reading. I set a goal to read a book every 2 weeks, and I was able to do it! I’m planning on upping that goal for 2019, so hopefully I can keep up with an ambitious schedule and maybe even catch up with some of the current best-sellers (though that probably won’t happen).
Here is my full reading list as well (in order that I read them), including first time reads and re-reads:
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