Episode 63: 3 Short Acts of Product Management

A new and different format

This episode is a bit of an experiment. Rather than one focused topic, we have three short “acts” – somewhat related brief stories that, hopefully, illuminate aspects of product management for you.

Let me know what you think of this structure and if you’d like to hear more episodes like this one.

Giving back to the community – The P24 Event

In this time of great strangeness and pandemic, I wanted to share two ways that other product leaders and I are trying to give back to the community to support people in need.

P24

* On Thursday April 24 (the day after this episode drops), Jay Stansell of Product Coalition will be hosting a marathon 24 hour live event called P24, featuring product, tech, and design thought leaders, and with the purpose of raising money for healthcare workers around the world. * The event starts at 9am London time (1am Pacific time) on Thursday April 24, and runs until 9am/1am Friday. (My 1/2 hour is at 7:30pm Pacific time.)* For more information, to sign up, to see the schedule, and to find links for your donations, go to p24event.com.

“Tell Your Story” master class

Whether you need to find a new job after the quarantine, or you’re just planning to move up and out, the good news is that you can apply your product management instincts and skills to finding a job. You are the product in this case.

Of course, competition is stiff in this “sales” engagement, so you have to know how to best accentuate your differentiators and how to effectively reduce the hiring manager’s perception of risk. All the tools of taking your product to market are at play when you are taking yourself to market.

I’ll be giving a free master class on “How to present your best self in interviews and on your resume” – this is the basics of go-to-market for yourself, focused specifically on the needs of product managers. The master class will be next week on April 30th. Go to alltheresponsibility.com/masterclass to sign up. (And if you sign up but can’t make it live, I’ll make sure you get the replay.)

Links from the episode

Act 1

* Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World, by David Epstein. I loved this book and I can’t recommend it enough if you want to cultivate better ideas in your team and in your life. * My episodes on Fermi estimates, useful product management metaphors, and why product managers are unicorns.

Act 2

* My episode on product management metaphors.

Act 3 – Mountains

An image of one of the spires in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park region of China that I mention in the episode. An amazing sight that I hope to see in person some day!

* <a href="https://alltheresponsibility.