Hello, product leaders!

The new book STRONG Product Communities is out, but promoting it feels somehow weird these days. There’s so much violence happening in the world right now. So what can we do? How can we help? What contribution can we make to reduce hate and pain on this planet? 

I definitely don’t have the answer here. But one thing that does help me in these times is the perspective I get from the many multinational teams I’m working with. I can see how people from different, sometimes opposing nations work together every day. ☮️ Every personal connection made between humans does make a difference. 

If you are in a leadership position (and you most likely are if you are reading this newsletter), look at your teams and how well they get along despite the things that might separate them. Acknowledge this, because it’s never easy. I bet it does cost them some energy. Tell them you are proud of them. 

And if your teams have members from areas where the true horror is unfolding, be sensitive to their needs. Sometimes this means helping them to keep up with their routines, sometimes it might mean taking a break, and sometimes it’s being surrounded by colleagues and talking about their experiences. Be there for your teams. We’re living in tough times.

That said, let’s have a look at what else you can do to make your product organization even more successful. 

For this month’s featured topic, we’re looking at clarity. Whether it’s clear thinking, communication, or direction, it’s an essential element of any product leader’s toolkit. And it often feels like the world is working against us with its constant pings, dings, and distractions. I’ve gathered a few resources to help you enhance your own clarity and set a good example for your team.

And, as always, you’ll find plenty of other articles, videos, and the usual range of product leadership topics to check out.

Thinking Things Through: Creating Space for Clear Leadership

In the hustle and bustle of our roles, it's easy to get lost in the whirlwind of tasks and meetings. But here's a question: How do you create time for uninterrupted thinking in your calendar? It's a challenge many of us face, yet it's a critical practice for effective leadership.



Why It Matters: Carving out time for deep thinking feels like a luxury, but it shouldn’t. Here are three of the major benefits of making time for reflection.

• Clarity of Thought: We leaders are not just here to keep the wheels turning. Our real value comes from providing clear direction to our teams. That clarity only emerges when we take the time to think things through thoroughly.
• Holistic Understanding: Our best insights often come when we step back and consider different angles. It's about desk research, those casual chats with peers, and collecting insights that form a complete picture of the issues.
• Effective Communication: Your clarity of thought is only impactful when you can share it with your team. So, how do you bridge the gap between personal understanding and effective communication?

Creating the Time: Now, let's get real. We all know we need to protect time for thinking and writing. It's about shaping the future we want to see. But in the midst of the daily grind, we sometimes put off that precious time or simply forget to safeguard it.

So, here's a reminder, my dear readers. Let's explore some great talks and links that emphasize why it's crucial and how you can make it happen:

Recommended Reading and Watching:

• 🎥 Megan Murphy: Why Carving Space to Simply Think is an Evergreen Product Challenge and how to Overcome it - Megan's talk is a great watch if you, as a product leader, want to help your direct reports create more room on their busy calendars to think things through instead of being in do/crunch-mode all the time.
• Critical Thinking for Product Managers - Dive deeper into the importance of critical thinking for product people in this Mind the Product post.
• 🎥 Dominique Jost: Clarity at Heart - easy as ABC - Mindfulness is more than a buzzword. Dominique Jost offers a few proven ways to be more mindful in your everyday life.
• 🎥 Shaun Russell: Overcoming Self-doubt: Strategies to Reframe Attention & Unlock the Mind of a PM. Shaun shares a few tactics to help you escape negative thought spirals and engage in more productive thinking instead.

On Writing Better:

• The Looking Glass: So you want to write better? A long-form piece on some age-old misconceptions, Julie Zhou - Discover valuable insights into writing better and effectively communicating your thoughts.

What steps will you take to create that space for clear leadership thinking in your calendar?

My recent writing

I’ve been inspired to write about a range of topics over the past few months, so there’s no single theme here, but hopefully you’ll find a post or two that piques your interest! 

• Product Storytelling: How Matthew Arnold Used a Comic to Share His Product Strategy - Read this one if you are interested in learning about creative ways for developing and sharing your product strategy. 

• What Exactly Do We Mean by “Product Leaders”? - Read this one if you are often confused by people calling every individual contributor a “product lead.” And make sure you read the follow-up post for highlights from the lively discussion the first post generated: I Asked What Exactly Do We Mean by “Product Leaders”?—Here’s How People Answered

• Fixing the Shipyard, Not Just the Ships: How Product Leaders Should Empower Their PMs - Read this if you often feel like your PMs are coming to you with every small problem they are facing and hoping for you to make them go away. I also recommend it if you regularly feel like you’re putting out fires instead of tackling more strategic work.

• Celebrating 10 Years as a Solopreneur: A Journey of Discovery, Growth, and Community - Read this if you want to hear what a ride my last ten years have been.

I publish on my blog on a regular basis. So make sure you come visit once in a while or follow me on your preferred social media channel (Mastodon, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram) to stay up to date on the latest.

Gems I found - I think you’ll like them as well

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, autumn is a cozy season where we start spending more time indoors as the temperatures cool down. My editor Melissa mentioned that in Japan, there’s even an expression “dokusho no aki” (essentially “autumn reading”) referring to the increased commitment many of us feel towards reading at this time of year. So it feels apt that there are so many books that have been released recently. I have not yet had time to read them all, but I’m looking forward to digging into them over the coming weeks.



Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles
Product Operations: How successful companies build better products at scale
This is a MUST 📌 read for all product leaders in corporations and scale-ups. This brilliant book explains why everybody has started to talk about product operations recently and how it can help companies to build products more efficiently. Melissa and Denise invested a lot of time  thinking about how to teach all the things they’ve learned along the way to others. A lot of illustrations and easy-to-remember mini frameworks will help product leaders to set their product org up for success.

Itamar Gilad
Evidence-Guided: Creating High Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty
A long overdue book. I like Itamar’s GIST Framework and I’m happy to see that he’s put everything he learned about prioritization and decision-making in product teams in a book.

Andrea Saez & Dave Martin   
The Product Momentum Gap: Bringing together product strategy and customer value
While I haven't had the chance to dive into this book yet, it's already found a place on my desk. I wanted to share it with you because it promises to be a hands-on guide that could answer some critical questions. If you're wondering how to reorient your teams around a value-driven ethos, the best ways to communicate across departments for greater efficiency, or how you can achieve measurable growth by truly meeting your customers' needs, then The Product Momentum Gap is worth adding to your “to-be-read” list. Stay tuned for a more in-depth review once I've had the chance to read it!

April Dunford 
Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win
I talked about the power of cross-disciplinary learning in a blog post a few weeks ago. This is definitely a cross-disciplinary learning book recommendation. But as profitability becomes more and more a central part of all product people’s concerns, this book could be the perfect tool to help you broaden your horizons. 

Seyda Kurt
HASS. Von der Macht eines widerständigen Gefühls
This book is only available in German, but I still wanted to share it here. The author sheds light on hate as a strong human emotion and explains why some parts of society use it as fuel while others don’t allow this emotion to be felt at all.

→ More on books I've read here and on Instagram

 

Articles, posts, & talks

Running the Product Organization

• 🎥 What is extreme clarity and how can you make it part of your everyday work? This is a great talk by Simon Cross where he explains how small changes in your ways of working can make a huge difference in alignment and decision-making. 
   
• I’ve already mentioned my recent blog post on “fixing the shipyard, not just the ships.” John Cutler shares his perspective on a similar topic in his post on "Process vs. Systems & Habits”
   
• If you’re inspired by the clarity theme of this month’s newsletter and looking for further reading on how to do deep thinking, “You Can’t Force Focus. You Need To Train It, Like a Muscle” by Charlotte Grysolle is a great place to start. 
   
• Product discovery is an evergreen product management topic. How mature is your product organization when it comes to de-risking the many assumptions everyone has about your users, the competition, the product, and the value certain features are going to bring? If you think there might be room for improvement, read “Assumption Testing: Everything You Need to Know” by Teresa Torres to get your benchmark.
   
• John Cutler is at it again with another thought-provoking post on the various types of waste a product org can create, “15 Metaphors for Waste in Product Development.”
   
• Hope Gurion just released a seven episode podcast miniseries on Resource Allocation. If this is something you are struggling with (or perhaps it’d be useful to share with someone else at your organization?), go check it out.
   
• 🎥 I had so much fun moderating a fireside chat about product discovery from a leader’s perspective with Teresa Torres at the Product Leadership Forum at Product at Heart. If you just want to watch the video, you can do so here, or you can read an edited version of the transcript on Teresa’s blog.

You as a Leader

• Lena Reinhard makes the case that working with your peer leaders is way more important than you think. Check out “How to work with your peer managers as a ‘first team’ and why it matters” to learn more.  

• 🎥 Improve your Listening Skills: During the Leadership Forum at Product at Heart, Shaun Russell and Emilie Lindström helped us to practice our listening and reframing skills. While their presentation was set up as a workshop, you can still watch along and try out the activities on your own. The video is now available here. 

• On this special bonus episode, “The One Skill Leaders Need Today (from Radical Candor),” host Muriel Wilkins joins the Radical Candor podcast to help answer a listener question: should a manager try to change an employee’s interpersonal behavior? She and Radical Candor’s Amy Sandler and Kim Scott also discuss how to meet the demands of leading in a hybrid environment.

Cross-Functional Teams

• One of the challenges of working with cross-functional teams is learning to understand our colleagues’ different terminology and priorities. This post from Julie Zhuo, “How to Work with Designers - A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs” offers a high-level overview of what matters most to designers.

Transformation Case Studies

One of my clients was asking for some corporate (product mindset) transformation case studies, so I’ve collected the posts I knew about and thought they might be helpful for some newsletter readers as well.

• Accelerating Transformation: Why Did Your Business Need A Crisis?
• Product in Practice: Opportunity Mapping Led to a 20% Lift in LTV at Grailed  
• How American Airlines is Transforming Its Culture by Transforming Delivery 

What's new with STRONG Product People?

What I’m up to these days 

I mentioned this briefly in the intro and I hinted about it in the last edition of the newsletter, but my newest book, STRONG Product Communities, is now available on Amazon.🥳

This is a much shorter book than my first one, STRONG Product People. In fact, we like referring to it as STRONG Product People’s “little sister.” And just like those little sisters of the world, don’t let her small size fool you—she can still be quite powerful! This new book is designed to give you an overview of product Communities of Practice: what are they, why should you consider launching or revitalizing one, and how are other product people going about it? It’s packed full of tips from real-life CoP practitioners, data from the survey I ran, and observations from the CoP consulting work I’ve done with several clients. 

If you or someone you know could benefit from this book, make sure to check it out. It's the perfect end-of-year gift for anyone who's committed to growing their product skills.

Before You Leave - Last Note: Prepare Yourself for the Product Operating Model Trend in 2024

As we start to look ahead to 2024, it's clear that the product world is abuzz with discussions about the "Product Operating Model." This concept is set to take center stage, and here's why you should be ready for it.

What's the Product Operating Model?

Marty Cagan is about to release his third book, Transformed, where he talks a lot about the concept of the Product Operating Model. Marty defines it as the way the best tech-powered companies work. It's a set of principles, practices, and competencies that represent a distinctive way of working that companies like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Stripe, and Spotify have mastered.

For some, it's simply referred to as the "Product Operating Model" or "Product Model" for short. This model signifies a shift toward a product-led approach. In fact it’s nothing revolutionary or new, but a solid new name for something many companies need: a better way of scaling product work and, maybe even more important, a better way of explaining how things could work in the future.

And it is not only Marty Cagan who’s talking about it. Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles have dedicated parts of their new book, Product Operations, to this model, adding depth and perspective to the conversation. And several valuable resources are already available, including articles, webinars, and interviews that provide insights into the Product Operating Model. 

And I’m sure we will see more and more companies talking about how they are scaling product and organizing work now that this topic of the Product Operating Model is on the agenda. Here’s one example where Spotify’s Gustav Söderström shares parts of how they are currently approaching product work in Lenny’s podcast and another example from the CPO at a company called Coda. 

Already established frameworks that could be part of a Product Operating Model are the Decision Stack, OKRs, my Opportunity Assessment and the Task Boards I talk about in Part 4 (especially chapter 17) of STRONG Product People. 

So get yourself prepared for what’s likely to be the small talk topic of product management in 2024, reflect on your own product operating model (if you already have one), and dive into some of these resources if you want to know more about it:

• Marty Cagan's Article on the Product Operating Model - Marty Cagan's take on the Product Operating Model provides a good overview of this topic.
• Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles: Product Operations - Explore their work to gain a deeper understanding of product operations.
• Marty Cagan's Webinar: "Moving to the Product Operating Model" - Watch Marty Cagan's webinar discussing the transition to the Product Operating Model.
• 10 Takeaways from a Day with European Product Leaders - Gain insights from Product Coach Nick Jemetta, who shares key takeaways from a gathering of European product leaders discussing the transformation to the Product Model.
• Teresa Torres at Product at Heart: “Even You Can Do Continuous Discovery: Bringing the Continuous Discovery Habits to Every Organization” - In her keynote, Teresa Torres shares her insights on bringing continuous discovery habits to every organization, aligning with the principles of the Product Operating Model.