I was always curious about the way people make decisions as this could have a huge impact on the products I may be building or the content that I put out. In the past I read all the typical popular books claiming to offer a scientific deconstruction of human behaviour. "Contagious" by Jonah Berger, a Wharton professor of marketing, is my most recent read in this field of behavioral economics. Jonah's book is focusing on virality and promises to offer a theory of virality and to answer the million dollar question: "Why do things catch on?".
Read MoreAI is without a doubt the trendiest economic scare of the day. Technology pundits love to put forward apocalyptic scenarios about the impending takeover of the robots overlords. But very few question these dire prophecies, which is quite mind-boggling, considering that the AI alarmists are making some fundamental-logic mistakes that I think it's important to discuss. The topic of this first chapter is a deep dive into the concept of value, and it's (rather) miss-use in the media.
Read More“Shields up!” Thousands of ironclad legionnaires heed the call, raising their guard in unison. Nobody panics. Calmly, they wait for the coming clash with the barbarian horde like we wait for the ice-cream truck. The Barbarians’ deafening roars reverberate off this wall of iron moments before the horde’s bulky weapons collide with the well-rehearsed, synchronized counter-offensive of the legionnaires.
You can find scenes like this in countless movies. Russell Crowe’s portrayal of General Maximus in Gladiator comes immediately to my mind, but you may have your own fixation. The Roman army represents every manager’s wet dream and is the foundation of corporate structure today. It was, arguably, the greatest army in the history of the world. Legionnaires, after all, exemplify strength and honor, qualities that most companies aspire to emulate:
“If you think of your company as an army, fighting for the hearts and pockets of the consumers, wouldn’t you want to be like the Romans?”
Read MoreMost strategic initiatives are trying to solve (perceived) company problems. And that’s the problem right here. Company problems (usually fueled by paranoia) are NOT customer problems. This lack of alignment is the fundamental strategical error that leads to all sort of tactical blunders. The root cause is the fear of missing out. It is caused or accentuated by managers leading by looking in the rear mirror and getting freaked out by competitors moves or new tech trends.
Read MoreThese popular “definitions” of Product Management can make us (product managers) feel nothing less than incarnations of the Vitruvian man. In a business world full of Dilbert characters we are nothing less than a representation of the perfect, well balanced biz man. Heck, we are like Linus Torvalds, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos combined. We rock!
In the real world however, things could not be further from the Messiah-Like figure all these articles can led us to believe.
Read MoreThe quest for the perfect note-taking application: A never-ending saga full of excitement over the new shiny app followed by disappointment when the new-found love fails to meet a need I just realized I have to solve. I really tried them all. But they all ended up sucking in one way or the other. But as I putting down some of my thoughts around jobs-to-be-done, I realized that note taking is in fact a solution to a multitude of problems. There are many cases when taking some notes is the the answer, but understanding the question can help one in choosing between one approach and the other.
That led me to thinking about my own set of jobs for note-taking. This is not meant to be a guide on note taking, but as a personal example on how a simple tool (in this case notes) can serve a lot of jobs. Here we go:
Read MoreMost of the time we buy products we do it based on their appeal. We rarely ask about how good do they fit our daily lives.
The marketers behind most products wanna sell to you the idea of a better you. Buy these Nike shoes and you will be fit. Buy Microsoft Office and your productivity will soar. We seem to believe that our lack of fitness or productivity comes from a lack of better tools.
People building products may know about the jobs-to-be-done framework. In a nutshell the theory is people are deploying your products to get certain jobs done. This framework can easily be applied to making smarter purchases.
Read MoreNew year, new resolutions. And a very popular and recurring item on everyone's list is the desire to read more in the new year. Reading more books, not Facebook statuses. I now find it a bit peculiar how most people focus on quantity when it comes to reading. And to quote from Napoleon (while completely butchering the context), "quantity has a quality of its own". But I am yet to find someone who wants to increase the quality of the book reading. Quality in this context can be a complicated topic, but let's try to narrowing down by focusing on memorization andunderstanding.
Let me start by asking you "Do you know the books you read last year?". If you are like most people, this question alone will trip you into opening your Kindle, Audible, thinking about the paper books you have on the nightstand etc. What if we were to step it up a notch and I would ask you to summarize the main ideas from one of them. I did that a few times with some close ones and all I got back was blabbing. Ask about a book from 3 years ago and very few people can recall reading the book in the first place, let alone the content that they remember. We want to read more but even if we do, we seem to forget most of it anyway. Why bother then?
Read MoreStrategy. The adjective you use to make everything sound like it was based on serious research. You know, unlike the rest of the stuff that you come up without working them neurons. Let's take "directions" for example. By itself is a rather void and boring word. Put strategy before it ….. and boom …. You get "strategic directions". Such a more inquiry-free language. It works with a lot of words: goals, plans, objectives, initiatives, organization etc. Pretty much anything. It's magic. Just like bacon. Makes everything better.
Read MoreWe all deal with priorities and goal setting in our personal or professional life. And I recently realized that if you have problems in picking and sticking with a list of priorities you don't have a priorities or a goal-setting problem. Most probably you have a strategy problem. Strategy details how a team will use the power available to the them to exercise control over sets of circumstances to achieve certain objectives. Once that is decided the priorities become pretty clear.
Read MoreYou probably heard Warren Buffett reads 500 pages/day but you thought it does not apply to you. Especially if you are not an investor. That's what I did. "He must be reading lots of reports and studies …. That's his job!" But I noticed that a lot of other people are also reading like crazy. Bill Gates is an avid reader. Heck, even Zuck is doing it. Almost all the people that I admire are learning machines. There must be something there.
Read MoreIf Evernote feels like a drag to use, but you can't explain why (especially when everyone around you is raving about it) it might be because you have a different goal for note-taking. You might be using the wrong tool for the job.
Evernote wants to act like your second brain. But storage of data has no intrinsic value by itself. Even saving itself is devoid of any goal. In my case the secondary brain is a wonderful analogy but my main interest is in saving information in my primary brain. I want to remember the things I am saving, not burry them in a database. My goal, in that sense, is to record and organize the information I collect so I can create my own repository of knowledge. That is what I am going after and note-taking is just a tool, not a goal in itself.
Read MoreHow good are you at task management? Not so good eh! Have you tried the latest iPhone app? Some people claim it to be two times better than the app you used last month. How about keeping your task on a paper? I heard that Tim Ferris swears by that method. Still nothing? Listen, it may be the process … have you heard of GTD? It's based on this book by David Allen. Still no improvement?
That was my life since I started my quest to increase my productivity. I used pen and paper. Many, many apps. Nothing worked. Until now ...
Read MoreThanks to Ward Cunningham, the metaphor technical debt is quite a well-understood concept. It means you are borrowing time by writing messy code, not worrying about scaling, documentation or other items required for a quality release. You go quick and dirty to release early but all that bad code will incur debt. And there will be a time when you need to pay that debt back - with interest.
I think the parallel with the product design world is a welcome addition. I frequently find myself using the term product debt but I also get the sense that very few people know what I am talking about. Like technical debt, product debt is inquired when you make short term product decision with an expensive long term consequence.
Read MoreOver the years, I had numerous calls with clients or potential customers over Skype. I went with a remote solution mostly because of distance. That was important as most of the people I wanted to talk to were not nearby. Heck, they were not even in the same country as me. Skype was simple, it saved me time and money.
I am starting to appreciate real-life customer interviews. I am doing them more and more and I believe the level of insight you can gain from a face2face discussion is fundamentally better. Why is that?
Read MoreIn 2011, Adelina and I decided to have our first real vacation as a couple. We picked Turkey as our destination, and after 5 days in Istanbul we landed in Bodrum, on the shores of the Mediterranean sea. But unlike in Istanbul, where we were staying in an amazing hotel with a stunning view and we had an infinite variety of things to do, Bodrum seemed like a crowded place with nothing to do. There wasn't a beach and our hotel sucked. Ohhh .... and we were staying there for a full week.
Read MoreHow come we always make a strategy and then something else happens? Would we better off without any strategy since nothing we do seems to work? What is a strategy after-all? - All questions I was asking myself during sleepless nights or during discussions with my colleagues. I knew the difference between strategy and tactic but somehow this "strategy" concept was one that I didn't fully use. Clearly I didn’t understand it completely.
Read MoreLeaving the click-bait title aside this will be an article about writing good specs
This year I learned something that I kinda guessed already: The biggest benefit of keeping a journal is not archiving your experiences. Very few people take the time to read what they wrote 5 years ago. The biggest benefit is in the writing process alone. Writing helps you clarify your thoughts and feelings. According to science: writing accesses your left brain, the analytical and rational, so your right side is free to create, brainstorm or mix ideas.
Journaling and writing specs have a lot in common. The benefits for me are strikingly similar.
Read MoreI got a new computer a few months ago. Yet another device adding to the already long list of gadgets: I have 2 laptops, an iPad, a Windows Phone, an Apple TV, Xbox One, smart TVs etc....
As I was moving all my files, reconfiguring everything I got really frustrated. It's 2014 for God's sake. And I was doing it the way I did it when I was on Windows XP. I thought by now everything should be in the cloud and I should be able to access all my content from all these devices. And like a good product guy I started with ....
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