Never take them and here’s why — Here’s a story that happened to me many times in my career. You go into a meeting attended by some folks from your team, and some other folks from another team. Either you need them for something or vice versa. …

Why the Famous Advice Telling you to Focus and say no is all Wrong — There is this standard piece of productivity advice out there telling you to “Say No” — to distractions, to people who try to pull you into their priorities and away from yours. The late great Steve Jobs famously said that “Focusing is about saying no”. …

Poking holes at a widely held Tech tenet — So Amazon has this list of 14 leadership principles, and one of them is: Bias for Action Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking. It’s by no means unique to just one company. If you’ve spent…

How to consistently and repeatedly draw up your plans for anything — People succeed for all sorts of reasons. Some are exceptionally smart. Some are likable. Many of us work hard. Some get lucky. In many cases, it’s a combination of factors. Me? What modest success I’ve had in my career, I attribute mostly to being prepared. Now when I say being…

It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future, or so goes the Danish proverb; that’s not going to stop me from trying! Here are some things that will happen in 2020 in this tech business of ours. Facebook will give up on Libra and shut it down. Zuck has already proven he will back down unemotionally when he’s beaten…

In technology products, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Your customers use the product. As a good PM, you listen to them. Sometimes, you’ll even go as far as building the features they ask for. Most of the time, that’s a good thing. But, sometimes, you fall into a trap…

Yes, but not intentionally. — Recently I had a tweet go unintentionally viral, while I was venting about product roadmaps. I’ve been practicing product management for over a decade now. It’s not like I don’t use roadmaps. I didn’t mean to call them out as useless. What I did mean to say is that…

For founders trying to pitch Venture Capitalists on investing in their startups, the generally accepted advice is you have to get a warm intro to the VC. A warm intro in this context is an intro by someone who both: knows you and would recommend you if put on the…

I recently tweeted this message about an interview question I’ve been asking Product Management candidates, off an on, for years: The reason I tweeted it, is that I thought it was going to cause some discussion around what factors should be analyzed for something to count as a good…