Strategy
Strategy Pattern-Match
Most companies don't do a good job of articulating and communicating their strategy to employees. The book 'Patterns of Strategy' can help you spot what execs are not saying.
Focus
OKR plays for Product
I don't reach to OKRs often, because most companies lack the maturity to use them. But, there is one kind of company where they make sense.
Leading
Loose Goals
I would love to have SMART goals all the time, but sometimes executives resist being specific. Sometimes it's more valuable to keep options open...
Leading
3 Quarterly Rocks
Your team needs focus, but the larger organization struggles with setting measurable goals. Instead of OKRs, find your 'big rocks'
Strategy
Strategy Brief / A3
A PM is waiting for clarity from the company about direction. Surprisingly, the execs feel that they have given perfectly clear direction. Use a 2-page strategy brief to build consensus.
Results
Learning, not failure
Once the hypothesis is written down, how can we make it safe for PMs to learn, take action, and talk about what they learned?
Results
Write down why
A good PM is also like a hunting dog, with a keen sense of smell for what the company expects of them. If the company just wants more and more features, how do we convince PMs to move out of feature factory mode?
Leading
Oxygen Mask
Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. Before you take action or applying other plays, ask yourself, "Am I asphyxiating? Am I being buried alive? Am I suffering self-induced overload?"
Leading
Intentional Calendar Design
Outlook and Google calendar have one goal: To fill every hour of your day with meetings. Is that the best way for you to be productive?
Focus
Collaborative Feature Scoring
For companies that deliver 10-30 features per quarter across a handful of development teams, PMs will have different intuitions about what matters. Using a structured approach to align their intuitive perceptions might help.
Leading
No-Agenda PM weekly
Book an hour on Thursday or Friday for the team to meet. Don't have an agenda, don't try to lead the discussion, and don't collect action items. Simply talk informally about whatever comes up, like a Quaker meeting.
Focus
Triage Prioritization When Capacity Isn’t the Constraint
MoSCoW leaves you with too many Must Haves. With more delivery capacity, the pressure to say yes gets worse, not better.