My son & I won our family sandcastle contest (again!).

​The 45-minute build was a masterclass in product strategy. I wrote up the 6 key lessons on my new Substack, "The Definition of Ready".

​A thread on two of my favourites: 🧵

Tanya Cordrey, CPO of @motorwayuk.bsky.social, describes important it is to know your users.

If you expect users to photograph their car:
- They're more likely to do it at the weekend or in the evening
- They're not likely to do it in the rain.

Don't remind them on Monday at 9am when it's raining.

Tanya Cordrey, CPO of @motorwayuk.bsky.social, tells The Product Podcast how the used car market is "broken" on both sides. Consumers lose money when part exchanging & dealers end up with cars they don't want.

It's an interesting insight: identifying & fixing a broken market is a great opportunity.

Listening to Tanya Cordrey of @motorwayuk.bsky.social (previously Instagram, eBay) explaining the concepts of "extreme clarity" and "canonical everything".

She says these are a #ProductManagement "superpower".

naomi.com/canonical-ev...

"There will be miscommunication. We have different contexts and history. The best way to guide a team through this is to ask them to assume the best intent."

- Pénélope Carlier, VP Product at TIER-dott, talking about teams working together at #ProductCon

"You won't be in the room for most decisions - and that's expected. Give your team guiding principles they need to make decisions."

- Pénélope Carlier, VP Product at TIER-dott at #ProductCon

"Anger and fear are the two most common emotions people experience at work. Put people in a transformation and they'll feel these, but they're also the people who make your transformation a success!"

- Carlos González De Villaumbrosia, CEO of ProductSchool at #ProductCon London

Debbie McMahon, CPO @financialtimes.com talks about Augmenting Product Value with AI at #ProductCon

Steps with big change:
- Look for precedence in org in past
- Demystify (give everyone access)
- Friendly guidance for everyone on use and guardrails
- External comms

I'm at The Barbican for #ProductCon London by Product School.

#ProductManagement #ProdMgmt #Conference

"Ascribing all fault to coworkers is a dead-end. If the problem is that you work with bad people, then there is nothing to except resign yourself to the current situation or resign your job and go elsewhere!"

- #GettingItDoneBook by Robert Fisher & Alan Sharp

2/3

Why is it hard to get people to collaborate? Maybe they are not sophisticated enough, don't like working with others, too controlling?

You should be suspicious of these 👆, because they "exonerate YOU".

"Knowing your own bias, you should doubt self-serving explanations."

- #GettingItDoneBook

When it seems impossible to get people to work together together or improve your team or org (or anything), you might think...

"What can you do about it?!?! You might start by thinking seriously: what CAN I do? After all, the situation is not hopeless."

- #GettingItDoneBook by R Fisher & A Sharp

"The easiest conduct to change is your own. You empower others by first empowering yourself..."

"Your ability to help others get things done would be greater if you had a systematic way of getting things done by yourself."

- Roger Fisher & Alan Sharp, #GettingItDoneBook

I read "Getting it done: how to lead when you're not in charge" by Alan Sharp & Roger Fisher & assumed it was a recent book about working in tech teams.

It turns out it's from 1999 and not trivial to get a hard copy of. The advice remains relevant and universally applicable.

#GettingItDoneBook

Most product managers suck at sharing progress updates.

They waste everyone's time with too much (or too little) information.

Here’s how to create the perfect Progress Update Email:

Many orgs have leaders who are so busy and overstretched that they can barely pay attention to something for more than ten minutes. Meanwhile, armies are working to boil complex things down into "simple" summaries, so those precious 10 minutes are "productive"

cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-242-th...

One of the best pieces of productivity advice I was given was:

Stay in control by offering options on the timeline you define. They can have:

The Bronze option now
The Silver option soon
The Gold option later

#ProductivityTips #TimeManagement

Does anyone else feel dishonest when they say they read something when it was actually listening to an audiobook?

I do. Not sure why. It's the same content, and I digest it better. But I always feel a need to explain I read it but actually it was an audiobook, or say I listened but it was a book...

When the product manager tries to persuade the CEO with book talk