WIP Newsletter #9

What we’re reading:

Product Managers tell stories to pitch ideas, get buy-in from our teams and to convince people to go on a journey with us. Being a persuasive and compelling communicator helps us move an audience (of any size) to action. This is a critical skill for success as a Product Leader or Exec and can be taught. Read “Persuasive Communication for Product Managers — a practical guide for moving an audience to action”.

Alicia Hurst reminds us to dig deeper when perfection is used as an argument to delay or speed up shipping of a product. Often, it isn’t a fear of perfection is used to mask other underlying reasons or agendas. Check out “Stigma of a perfect product”

“Ideas are cheap but execution is very, very hard”. Jonathan Nightingale examines how to tell if your product team is failing. Hint: a lot of code is shipped but features that drive impact aren’t delivered. Jonathan makes the argument for treating Product Management as a real discipline in “You know your product team is failing — Do you know why”

When confronted with a new product that seems like a toy, don’t dismiss it. Instead, try thinking through the reasons it might work. Andrew Chen, lays out reasons we think new marketplaces, social products, premium products or products that look like toys might fail and offers up questions to ask instead. Read “Bad Product Fallacy”

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