The Ockham Bugle - May 13
Product Management Notes: How to change stuff. The new Airbnb. And a couple of tips for better decisions. Tech stock meltdown. A bit of TV; and some top notch nostalgia. Feedback welcome.
Product Management Notes
Writing from me this week I quickly posted a flyer on LinkedIn that I’d used at my sons’ school career fair . Everyone seemed to like that.
I also put up an article I’d been thinking through for a while, about how to change stuff. Basically - first understand how it is, why it is - and that will show you what you really need to change, which got a more muted reaction (ie: it sank without trace). I will take that as ‘needs work’
The ‘new’ Airbnb This will be interesting. So - a shift away from ‘location first’ searching to ‘categories’. Making us choose where we want to go / looking to stay first is a massive bit of inefficiency for customers, in almost all travel searches. 9/10 times with leisure travel - we’re more interested in the type of experience we want rather than the specific location. I hope it works for them, because it will push others to rethink how their ‘browse’ / ‘search’ / ‘discovery’ paradigms can better reflect customer needs.
Are you using OKRs? Or just performing OKR Theatre? From Tim Herbig. Although, if it’s working for you…does it matter? I suspect a large n of implementations of OKRs aren’t ‘pure’, but they have left organisations in a better place than when they started.
Mercenary teams vs Missionary: Or the move from Waterfall to Continuous Discovery. From Teresa Torres - a bit old now but still worth your time.
Not ‘OK Google’ Maybe AR Glasses will be a thing, maybe not. But being able to just look and talk at a device definitely has potential.
Got a PM interview coming up? This list of 1250 interview questions might be handy. One of this great set of PM resources, courtesy of Rahul Manga.
Audiobooks - switching from subs: I cancelled my Audible subscription this week after many years. And moved to XigXag - a Cornwall-based start up that offers audiobooks at the same price that Audible charges for a title-a-month subscription (£7.99). They have an innovative offer of the ‘Listen and Read X-book’…but it’s the basic pricing that’s drawn me in. Too early to see if it’s a permanent swap, but one less monthly obligation is a good thing.
The AWS Story: Spectacular deep-dive over at Product Growth by Aakash Gupta.
Making better decisions
Preview of something I’ll post next week. It’s important because the thing we can all improve on is decision making. Decisions are the fuel that powers great products. We like to talk about the processes that are built around decision making (Roadmapping/ Strategy/ Discovery/ Definition) rather than the decisions themselves. Two tips.
Know who needs to be involved: this might just be on you - but more often than not, your role is to connect, and collaborate. From the outset it’s always worth doing a very quick (ie 5 min!) RACI-style analysis just so it’s clear a)Who is ultimately deciding/ approving; b)Who you need to speak to - to get their input; and c) Who you will need to communicate with when you’re done.
Take the gun away from your head (with apologies for the military analogy) No-one makes a good decision with a gun to their head - so first find a way to remove the gun(s). The two most common ‘guns’ are time and money. Is that a real deadline that’s forcing you to compromise? Can we find a way to fund the right thing rather than accept the wrong thing because it means we keep to budget? It’s worth asking yourself something along the lines of ‘Which option will look the smartest three years from now?’
Tech stocks over the last three months..
Peloton, Netflix and Amazon in the bottom three places..
Minor hiccup or something more sustained? Lots of people have a lot to say, but I’m not sure anyone knows anything. Here’s a cheat sheet.
Time sink of the week
I’ve stumbled into the world of NoCode and Bubble. So many bad ideas I can now bring to life! If you want a crash course - this is pretty good. (but 3hrs..and no I haven’t gone through it all yet)
Also of note..
> Google is now licensing content from publishers under the EU Copyright directive. This brings back memories of my time in newspapers and a lot of conversations with lawyers. It’s fair IMHO.
> Inside the world of paid crypto shills from Vice.
> Microsoft is gearing up for the industrial metaverse
> The FT profiles Bored Ape - following the virtual landsale on Otherside
> Apple director leaves because of WFH limits: ‘more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team’
> Trump was right about TikTok - according to Ezra Klein in the NYT
> Bezos will be back at Amazon before long from the Brisbane times.
Worth watching
True crime 1: Limited amount of TV watching this week - but I’ve loved The Staircase. Colin Firth does a great job of not being Colin Firth. At times he looks almost like Jim Broadbent as he plays Michael Peterson (spoiler alert if you follow that link).
We’ve got used to having simultaneous - or nearly - dramas and docs on the same story. This is the first time I’ve seen the making of the documentary (on Netflix) feature as part of the drama.
Simply Divine I’m halfway through Mother Theresa for the Love of God? and so far it’s not the total roasting I was expecting. It will make you think twice about calling someone jokingly Mother Theresa (unless they happen to think that suffering helps people closer to God).
Worth listening to
Top notch nostalgia: Robert Carlyle is our host/ narrator on BBC Sounds’ What Really Happened in the 90s - which looks at a number of current phenomenon and finds their roots in the 90s taking in Cheap airlines; Hong Kong; and Gender issues, as well as the obvious Tech/ Internet and Europe. I think they might be over claiming the ‘it all started in the 90s’, but this is still worth bingeing.
True crime 2: Having spent more than a sensible amount of time on the True Crime Podcast Reddit I ended up on To Live and Die in LA which is a few years old now, but is just tragic on many levels. Was I hooked? Embarrasingly, yes. Is it a bit prurient…totally.
Rock and roll event of the year
The band is performing at the Boileroom in Guildford on May 21. DJs as well. All for charity. Get a ticket here.
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