Product Business
Paying Attention to Competition
Right now, if I asked you, could you name 10 competitors? Could you rattle them off with ease? Because you’ve been paying attention to the competition? Here’s another way to ask the same question. If I asked you to tell…
What Drives Your Roadmap?
A couple weeks ago I wrote about product roadmap themes. If you haven’t read that, I strongly recommend it. I say that because today’s post relates to that, and is a general warning to small product teams. It directly applies…
Some Nonintuitive Lessons That Are Hard To Learn
I spent today in an all-day meeting With some very smart people, we worked on planning for the second half of the year, and did a lot of work to identify themes, areas of effort, strategies for prioritization, and more.…
Are Your Product RoadMap Themes Complete?
Whether you create a product roadmap or not is immaterial I know people who plan their products without anything written on paper. I know folks who use SaaS products, and others who use checklists. And these days the folks who…
Hate Marketing & Sales? Build The Narrative Into Your Product
I hear a lot of people saying they hate marketing & sales The other day I participated with a few folks on Twitter, talking about people who say they hate marketing & sales. If you don’t follow Corey, Louis, and…
Differentiation Needs To Be More Than Rent vs Own
Digital sharecropping is a thing. I get it. If you’ve never heard of the phrase, “digital sharecropping”, then you should check out this 2015 article at Copyblogger by Sonia Simone. The short version is don’t build your digital empire on…
Are You Trying To Win? Or Just Not Lose?
I used to run a yearly innovation conference Years ago I worked for a company where, every year, we invited the top 20-30 employees (from about 120 folks) to a conference center for an innovation conference. I would spend months…
How To Build Your Personal Brand to Attract Better Clients
A personal brand isn’t the same thing as being famous If you spend time googling, “how to build your personal brand,” you’ll find a lot of examples in articles that have nothing to do with you or me. Using Michael…
Teaching Soft Skills: How to Develop Your Team
What are soft skills and why are they important? Few things are harder than teaching soft skills – because there are no simple curriculums or solutions. But I have a framework that helps. Before I introduce you to it, let’s…
How to Structure & Build a Great Product Team
Want to build a great product team? There’s no one formula. It’s been a long time since I’ve written about hiring on this blog. So when someone asked the question about growing and building a great product team, I thought…