Is your team struggling to stay focused during hours-long status meetings and presentation read-outs? Are you inundated by hundred-message “quick question” email threads that could have been resolved with a five-minute conversation? When it comes to making the most of remote work, many of us are getting things completely backwards…

How a Simple Pros and Cons List Can Become a Powerful Integrated Decision Plan — As teams, organizations, individuals, and families, we often find ourselves staring down big, daunting decisions. “Should we continue to build our B2B business, or make a strong pivot to B2C?” “Should we keep renting an apartment, or take out a mortgage and buy a house?” …

The Answer Will Surely Disappoint You! — Nearly every time I teach a session about product management, the first question I get asked is some version of “What’s the difference between a product manager and a [program manager/product owner/solution manager/project manager]?” It’s not hard to understand why this question is top-of-mind for so many people. As the…

Below is an edited version of a note I sent to one of the product teams that I regularly coach. I hope that some of you find it helpful. ❤️ First and foremost — this is not a normal “work from home” situation. We are in a pandemic and people…

Revisiting the creative tension that came to define the 2010s — Note: The following is a reprinting of an article I wrote in October of 2010 for the now-defunct MBVMusic site called “Living in the Age of Art vs Content.” As the 2010s draw to a close, it’s interesting to reflect on how the position held by “blogs” has been expanded…

A pledge to reduce busywork, increase collaboration, and drive better outcomes — Update: You can now sign up for the One Page / One Hour pledge directly at onepageonehour.com! How much time do we spend presenting decks and deliverables to our colleagues? How often does the feedback we receive about these decks and deliverables concern their format and style, not their content…

Even the best customer service can’t fix the damage done by company-centric decision-making. — Last week, I flew on Southwest Airlines for the first time in nearly a decade. Or, at least, I tried to. …

Only 4% of Respondents to a Popular Survey Say that Agile Practices are Making Their Organizations More Adaptable. How Can We Implement Agile in a Way that Lives Up to Its Name? — A few months ago, I read a glowing case study about an organization that achieved Agile adoption at scale. Using a popular scaled Agile framework, they were able to reorganize their entire product function into small, cross-functional teams led by newly minted product owners. These teams were kept in close…

The asynchronous communication tools preferred by most organizations are exacting an enormous and largely unseen toll. — It’s a typical Monday morning at CompanyCo. The smell of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, folks are cordially recapping their weekends, and you’re *finally* digging in to that big presentation you’re supposed to give on Friday. As you scan through the slides you started putting together last week, it…