108: Learning From Failure

Learning from failure

I worked on a product back in the mid-2000s called Accept360. It was a product for product managers.

There’s no question that using Accept360 would make product management orgs more effective in a lot of different ways.

But Accept360 failed as a product, and so in 2011 I started to realize I had to figure out why a product that I loved, that all our customers loved, that definitely delivered a lot of value, was not successful.

In this episode: how the failure of Accept360 drove me to figure out the “secrets” of product management, and led to my book, this podcast, and my coaching and training work.

The entire history, in bullets

if I put the entire history of my journey since that failure, what does it look like in steps?

Business value of PM.

Business value of PM tools.

Importance of go to market.

Importance of problem.

Relative lack of importance of solution itself.

Painkillers versus vitamins

The Secret Product Management Framework

The Secret Product Manager Handbook

The importance of storytelling to tie all this together

What you need to do for effective go to market.

The fundamentals of persuasion.

Links

* Kathy Sierra’s “Building The Minimum Badass User” talk from the 2012 Business of Software conference. I recommend this video contantly. I think it’s literally the best hour you can spend in your product management continuing education.

* Alan Cooper’s The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. Great, iconoclastic book. Most of the points are still as true today as they were when it was published in 1999.

* My article on using personal goals in your social proof.

* What’s the business value of product management?

* The best way to engage your audience is to help them kick ass!

* Teresa Torres’ amazing site on customer development and market discovery. She’s the expert!

Subscribe and comment

Please subscribe to The Secrets of Product Management on your podcast system of choice. And consider giving me a review on iTunes or “starring” the episode on your player. Subscriptions and ratings help other product managers and product people find the podcast, and makes me a little happier as well. I might even read your review in an upcoming episode.

If you have comments, questions, or complaints about this episode or the podcast, please leave a comment down below and I’ll get back to you immediately.

Learning from failure

I worked on a product back in the mid-2000s called Accept360. It was a product for product managers.

There’s no question that using Accept360 would make product management orgs more effective in a lot of different ways.

But Accept360 failed as a product, and so in 2011 I started to realize I had to figure out why a product that I loved, that all our customers loved, that definitely delivered a lot of value, was not successful.