Product: All The Responsibility

A look back, a look forward for the podcast In this episode I look back at 2022 and its highlights on the podcast, and what you can expect for 2023. Episodes I mentioned 121: Andrew Bowker on “Build Your Own Product” 106: Product Management And The Smart Sales Method, with Joe Morone 98: The 5 Read More

Putting knowledge in your product creates happier customers and great differentiation Even if it’s basic knowledge that everyone knows, putting it in your product will make your product more valuable. And of course, the more knowledge you can embed, the better. Links The article this episode is based on – Customers Don’t Buy Capabilities, They Read More

I asked ChatGPT some questions about product management. In this episode, I review its answers, and share my thoughts on this amazing new technology and its current limitations.

The goal is a repeatable sales process, but… One of the goals of a relatively early stage company is to establish some sales and marketing traction. This is often called “a repeatable sales model.” Which means that a trained sales person – trained on how to market and sell your product – can successfully sell Read More

The Value Inequality is about Risk vs Price vs Value This is the second of two episodes (here’s part one) centered around what I call the Value Inequality. It’s a way of thinking about your customer’s perception of risk versus cost and value of your product. This episode is a bit wider ranging than the Read More

The Value Inequality is new way of thinking about pricing, value, and the customer’s perception of risk.

Product Roadmaps – can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em Facts about roadmaps They are predicting the future As Neils Bohr said, “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.” A roadmap is interpreted as a commitment This is a cognitive bias of your audience You must manage it The audience doesn’t really want to Read More

Is the Value Proposition problematic? Shreyas Doshi wrote in a post on LinkedIn a few months ago: In product management, it is easy to BS yourself (and others) when framing a proposal in terms of “Value Proposition”. Any proposal with the right business speak can be made to sound compelling that way. This happens all Read More

You Can’t Test Quality In In this episode, some thoughts about quality: Two different ways of thinking about quality and its flipside, waste Fit for purpose vs lack of defects Mura, Muda, and Mira – the 3Ms of Japanese industrial engineering – waste (mura), inconsistency (muda), and overburden (mira) Links Shigeo Shingo A very thin Read More

Build Your Own Product That’s the title of Andrew Bowker’s email newsletter, and his advice to anyone trying to get into product management. Andrew is a fast rising LinkedIn star, at least among the product management segment, focused on helping would-be product managers get their foot in the door of our amazing discipline. Links Andrew Read More

Product manager interview tricks – what are they? In this episode, I share my insights on product manager interview tricks. Bottom line? There aren’t really tricks. But if you approach the interview with a product management mindset, and think about what the customer really needs when they say “I want faster horses,” you might gain Read More

Never Assume You can’t trust anyone. Even yourself. Product managers have to keep an open mind, be empathetic, and work in a world of uncertainty. That uncertainty extends especially to ourselves and our own assumptions. So my guest John Fontenot has a warning – Never Assume! John’s new book Never Assume: 10 Fatal Assumptions Great Read More

Getting your first product management job without PM experience is hard. In episode 118 of The Secrets of Product Management, some ideas on how to navigate this challenge:

The Secret of Great Social Proof One of the main jobs of our rational brain is to justify the decisions of our emotional brain. As product managers, the decision that interests us the most is people deciding to buy our product. That means we need to understand how to make our product, our positioning, and Read More

Imposter Syndrome makes it tough to take on that next project, especially in an uncertain, complex domain like product management or product marketing. Here are some techniques you can use to get moving.

Why do we care about getting better at product management? There’s a mini-industry of people posting on LinkedIn, and writing Medium articles, and doing podcasts about improving your product management skills. But why? Who cares? In this episode, I drill down into this question. It’s an interesting question, not least because no one else seems Read More

The Questions You Ask Can Change Your Life This episode is a direct follow on to last week’s episode on asking great market discovery questions. Last week Craig Davis left a comment on a LinkedIn post that I really liked, and it ties directly into last week’s episode on questions. He mentioned a course from Read More

How to ask great questions for market discovery In this episode, some guidance on asking questions for market discovery, sales, prompting your own creativity, and just having conversations with other human beings. A lot of times you find guidance on market discovery where they “be sure to ask open-ended questions,” without explaining what that means Read More

Risks, challenges, and obstacles In this episode I propose a new mental model for product managers – we need to always be thinking about risks, challenges, and roadblocks. They’re components of all the different things we do – market discovery, selling, persuasion, storytelling. And if they are important to us, the product manager, they are Read More

In this episode, Seth Erickson, Webby award-winning web designer-turned-storytelling maven. With his design and marketing company Storify Agency, he combines design and storytelling to create beautiful websites that also sell extremely well.