Vital 9: How's it going?
Building the Vital 9 (And Where I Need Your Help)..
Over the past few weeks, I've been sharing the Vital 9 framework—the nine ingredients for a successful product career broken down into Catalysts; Achievements and Rewards.. The response has been really positive, and in the background I've had plenty of people trying out the Vital 9 assessment.
But this week, I want to step back and tell you how the actual product development is going.
I've always had confidence in the framework itself, but the real challenge has been turning it into something genuinely useful for people to use.
The Vision
From my earliest sketches, I've always envisioned three pieces to the ‘prouct’
1. Assessment and evaluation - helping you take stock of your career and work out what you need to focus on
2. Personal OKRs creation - turning that assessment into a concrete plan for what you should actually do
3. Regular check-ins - keeping you on track and helping you adapt as things change
Crucially, I wanted a low-touch, DIY (ie: cheap!) version that you could use without ever needing to speak to me.
Coaching and guidance would always be available on top, but never necessary.
Where I’ve got to
For the last few weeks, whilst sharing the framework publicly, I've been incredibly grateful to have some beta testers working through the first assessments. Their feedback has given me real confidence in the methodology—people are getting genuine insights about their careers and clearer priorities.
More than one person has compared it to a ‘Myers Briggs for your Product Career’ - which was something I always had in mind.
The next step is creating tooling to automate and accelerate this process, particularly helping people set their own OKRs and action plans.
This is where I've turned to ChatGPT. I've created a custom Vital 9 GPT that takes someone's assessment results and guides them through creating personalised OKRs and an action plan.
Early tests are promising, but I need more people to put it through its paces.
This Is Where I Need Your Help
I'm looking for a few more people to go through the complete process—first the assessment, then working with the GPT to create their plan.
I'm having to throttle this a bit to ensure everyone gets proper attention, so I won't link directly to the form. Instead, if you're interested in helping out, just reply to this (or add a comment below) with "yes please" and I'll send you the details.
What I'm looking for:
- Product people at any level who want to get clearer about their career direction
- Honest feedback about both the assessment and the GPT experience
- About 45-60 minutes of your time over the next couple of weeks
What you'll get:
- A comprehensive assessment of where you stand across the Vital 9 - with the option of a 30 minute session with me to talk through the results.
- A nice fat discount for when I launch a paid version .
- A personalised set of OKRs and action plan for your career
- Early access to tools that will (hopefully) become a game-changer for product career planning
- My eternal gratitude and a proper thank you
Why This Matters
I genuinely believe this framework can help people make much better career decisions. But frameworks are only as good as their implementation, and implementation is only as good as the feedback from real people using it in real situations.
Your input now will directly shape how this evolves—and hopefully help create something that makes a genuine difference to product careers.
So if you've been following along with the Vital 9 content and thinking "I'd like to try this for myself," now's your chance to help build it whilst getting the benefit.
Just hit reply/ comment and say "yes please."
Thanks for reading, and for all the brilliant engagement with the framework so far. Next week, I'll be back with more insights from the Vital 9.