The Ockham Bugle - 1/4/22
A few things about product management. Some of the stuff that I’ve been watching, listening to and reading this week. Every Friday for 12 weeks.
Product management bits
Bingeing on Biddle: I can take or leave about 80% of what about 80% of people say about product management. But, I’m constantly impressed by the prolific output of Gib Biddle, the former VP of Product at Netflix who has since gone on to do a host of product jobs and during lockdown turned himself into a virtual product management teaching machine. He is refreshingly bullshit free; and. his series on product strategy (which he says he’s turning into a book) is a top read. And yes, it’s fascinating to hear someone lifting the curtain on the Netflix product machine (albeit from some while ago, now). Hear him in these two podcast episodes..
Dreams with Deadlines: Product Strategy, Consumer Science, and Culture at Netflix
This is from way back in August last year; and is a great overview of his thinking and experience on product teams and culture overall..Also here on Spotify
How Does Netflix Get Us To Binge Watch?
…meanwhile this (from February) has Gib go a bit deeper into specific examples of product decisions at Netflix, in conversation behavioural economist Kristen Berman. She is a co-founder of Irrational Labs (along with Dan Ariely) and used to be a PM at Intuit and coined the term the Behavioural Product Manager - so she adds a bit of behavioural rationale to the conversation. The big lesson, as always, is that what people say they do, isn’t what they actually do. Also here on Spotify.
Two thought pieces on good ways of working: A couple of bits of writing I stumbled on that chimed with me. Both very Amazon-esque.
Thinking about Product Growth in terms of Outputs and Inputs
From Shipra Agarwal Kanoria Principle PM at AWS this is very Amazon thinking about the difference between input and output metrics. It’s good to be data driven - as long as it’s the right data.
Don't just pitch ideas, explain decisions..
This is brief, but poignant, and reminded me of something I learned at Amazon, and often need to remind myself, and my team of. When you’re presenting an idea, you don’t just sell the idea; show - show the alternatives that you believe this idea is better than; and explain why.
I find we do this naturally when it’s something we’re not sure of, and feeling defensive. But not when it’s something we’re totally behind and think is utterly awesome.
The irony is that it’s when we’re most sure of something that we most need to calm down, step back and present our plan as the best of a number of well-thought through options: rather than a no-brainer act of total genius that only a total doozy could fail to understand. I like this..
Explaining rejected options provides important context. It conveys rigor and decision making integrity. The criteria and thought process becomes more understandable. Having one option is scary. Sometimes one option is just the middling, mash everything together, have no real perspective grab-bag option.
The week in Web 3.0: Things can only get meta
I thought I’d just follow the web 3.0 (or is it just Web3?) news for a week - in particular anything with the word ‘metaverse’ in it.
Hell, I even joined a (genuinely quite interesting) webinar on it and spent a (totally useless) hour kicking around in Decentraland.
I’m having to fight against a fair bit of scepticism. But, I built my career on being enthusiastic about Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 when most people thought it was all over-hyped nonsense because they just didn’t get it; so I need to be careful about now dismissing something as ‘over-hyped nonsense’ just because I don’t get it.
(If you want scepticism, btw, I totally recommend Tom Goodwin on LinkedIn who does it really well )
So…just some of the highlights from another week in the metaverse..
The celebrity rush to the metaverse is a thing to behold: David Beckham has entered the metaverse; so has Madonna and Nelson Mandela and Grimes and Will.i.am thinks it should be renamed.
The first metaverse fashion week took place. Here’s what it was like. (there is actually an institute of digital fashion - and for the CEO of Gucci, the metaverse is already ‘a very real place’; and Selfridges has opened up there)
Of course, we’re going to need a virtual tequila distillery and some trainers.
If you were waiting for the first economic summit to happen in the metaverse - wait no longer.
It’s heading to be a meta-mess, and it’s scaring an adman shitless (perhaps he should take a bit of advice from this guy and make sure he can take advantage of a few lessons learned)
Human influencers are very 2010s - in Korea it’s all about virtual influencers. This totally screws with Love Island contestant career options.
This isn’t just for capitalists. The Chinese Communist Party is also building its own metaverse. Although even that is just a part of how things meta will pan out in China (if you look at Google trends - you can see the biggest source of searches by far for metaverse, nft and web3 are from China).
IMHO: The first two waves of internet innovation were massive popular movements that brands and other corporates struggled to keep or catch up with. This time round, they’re making up for it by setting out their stalls way way before the people get there. I mean, Accenture are all over the metaverse but my (technically adept, totally Gen Z) teenage kids are still quite happy with Snapchat. Way too happy, in fact..but that’s for another time.
Next week…time to go deep on NFTs.
Something to watch: Spy special
I wouldn’t normally recommend something I haven’t watched yet, but I loved this series of books by Mick Herron - and have decided already I’m going to love the TV version.
Genius premise: take a gang of spies who have fallen out of favour with M15 but can’t actually be sacked, put them in a crappy office, and give them a boss in Jackson Lamb - who is everything James Bond isn’t (overweight, smoker, addicted to takeaways) add in some friction with M15..and see what happens. The books are smart, funny and well plotted: often surprisingly poignant as you go into the failed spies’ back stories.
I binged the lot on Audible, and I’ve been waiting for this to arrive on TV ever since. All queued up for tonight. If for some reason Gary Oldman disappoints (although the first reviews would suggest not) - or if you don’t have Apple TV+, try the audiobooks.
Joe Cole progresses from gangster (Peaky Blinders and Gangs of London) to working class spy Harry Palmer in this excellent reworking of the Len Deighton thriller (how dated does the trailer for the Michael Caine version look?). It’s been running for a few weeks on Sunday nights, but you can binge the lot on the ITV hub. They’ve smartly bumped up the role of Jean Courtney (Lucy Boynton) to stop it being a total bloke-fest. And Tom Hollander is in it..which is always a good sign.
The reviews have been deservedly good; I liked this in the Guardian.
Cole is a Harry Palmer for our times. Imagine Stephen Merchant was a foot shorter and appropriated Damian Lewis’s pout. Imagine too that he is as taciturn as Alan Ritchson playing Jack Reacher.
More importantly it got the general nod of approval at a recent dad’s curry night…so I feel obliged to pass it on.
[Side note: while looking for a link about Tom Hollander, I found this glorious piece in the Sun which a) labels him a ‘sex thimble’ (nice!); and b) illustrates it with a whole load of pics of (30 years younger; totally unrelated) Tom Holland (Spiderman). Quality British journalism.]
Some things to listen to
I never really watched the TV drama when it came out (1996 ). But, I absorbed the overall idea through some kind of cultural osmosis: the trials and tribulations of a group of friends from the North East starting over 20 years, starting in mid-sixties: capturing the shifting social and political trends of the time - along with an original cast that included a future Dr Who and James Bond. I’m not quite sure the chain of events that led to it being resuscitated as a radio drama, and at times it feels a bit thin as a radio play…but it’s still a great
I’m not sure about the underlying premise of this - that the rate of innovation is slowing down, because, for example, sewing machines evolved rapidly in their first 20 year and then have looked the same ever since. But perhaps that’s for a much longer discussion - this is still a thought provoking listen though: about how both corporate R&D and academic research are skewed against break through innovation.
Freakonomics Radio: Why Do Most Ideas Fail to Scale?
This didn’t cover the ground I was expecting - which made it all the more interesting. In it economist John List, author of ‘the Voltage effect’ goes deep on why some things might look good in an initial trial, but then fail to scale. Confirmation Bias, is only a part of it. Spotify.
Entertaining read of the week
"Top Boy" Season 2 Slang Guide
Don’t go out onto the streets of London without first reading this guide from Newsweek..
D**khead: An explicit term used to describe an idiot person, who generally acts foolish and does countless stupid things.
And this week I learned..
In Japan, they have hundreds of kit-kat flavours
That smiling person who just approached you on LinkedIn might be a computer generated fake
Rising steel prices might lead to a slow down in clean energy tech
YouTube is making thousands of TV seasons and movies available for streaming for free (in the US)
Bitcoin uses more energy than all of Sweden - but this could be reduced by 99%.
A tree can tell us about a forest; and a single galaxy can tell us about a whole universe.
Playlist of the week
This is Going to Hurt soundtrack
The TV show went much deeper and darker than the book. Not to everyone’s tastes, I suspect. The soundtrack is like a mixtape from a friend who has just slightly better music taste than you: annoyingly good.
And finally: Thank you if you’ve made it this far. Suggestions of things to look at are most welcome; as is any feedback - as long as it’s along the lines of ‘This is awesome. I can’t believe how I survived without it for so long..’ etc ;-)
A weekly round up of Product Management goodies - all very grounded in the real world. Plus: updates what I've been watching and listening to. Every Friday, from deepest Surrey.
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