fatherpreneurship: the allowance

Boxxet founder You Mon Tsang writes what may be the most cogent (and concise) description yet of how to manage your child's (or children's) allowance - and what an allowance isn't.

I've been a fan of Boxxet since the early days of their beta, and I'm sure one of the key reasons why is the character of its founder.

Nicely done.

round-up: awful questions

I'll take Seth Godin's "May I help you?" (often spoken by Maia Hepyoo) and raise him a. . .

How are you today? - No one wants to know how you are today. I recommend replacing this with 'Hi, good to see you'.

Were you able to find everything today? - A retail classic I still don't understand - I typically answer it with 'Yes, I managed to find everything I have brought to the check-out counter.' On the other hand, it could be a secret Zen question, like the monk asking for a hot dog.

Can I have your phone number please? - A Toys-r-Us request that I always jam with the phone number I had as a kid in Poughkeepsie.

Let me know if this hurts. - Holy crap, of course it's going to hurt, and when it does, I'll either mumble through a mouth-full of fingers (yours) or scream into space. Don't expect something like 'Golly, sir, it does hurt quite a bit, whatever it was you just did to me back then a moment or so ago.'

Is everything OK with your meal? - I'm chewing it, so it must be edible. If it were spew-flavored, I would not be chewing it - I'd be looking for you. Or hollering (see above).

What do you like about our product? - Why do you need me to tell you what I like? Shouldn't you know already? Didn't you know what I like when you designed it in the first place?

Do you know how fast you were driving? - There is no good answer to this question: yes means you were intentionally breaking the law, no means you're a lazy, inattentive schlub who shouldn't be trusted with a donkey, much less a ton or so of high-velocity metal.

Your nominations are, of course, warmly welcomed. Note that I did not ask Do you have any ideas? which is another awful question. Of course you have ideas. You merely choose not to share them, being the shy and retiring individual you are. Ahem.

charles: good night

Charles Nelson Reilly

January 13, 1931 – May 25, 2007

To say I "met" Mr. Reilly at Carnegie Hall in the late 90s would be a gross over-statement of the truth. Passing each other in the lobby and recognizing him immediately, I gave him my best "Hihowyadoin", to which he graciously replied, "Very well, thank you young man".

You know, it's the little things you remember about people.

ingenio: PM jobs available

I got a nice note last week from John Hennessy, a recruiter at Ingenio. I thought I'd post his note and the PM job postings he's looking to fill. If you know anyone who'd be a good fit for any of these, let them know. Karma being what it is, the job you find a friend may come back to help you someday.

I am the recruiter at Ingenio.com and we are recruiting talented Program (Product) Managers to join our team. We have several open positions including Product / Program Manager, Sr. Product / Program Manager, Product / Program Manager – Pay Per Call/Partners and Technical Product / Program Manager – Platform/Web Services.

You can view all these open positions here.

Please take a look and forward this on to anyone you think would be interested in these positions, or anyone else who could help me find a great candidate.

Thanks for your help!

-John

About Ingenio

Founded in 1999, Ingenio is privately-held, extremely profitable, and growing rapidly. You'll enjoy the best of both worlds with the entrepreneurial vigor of a startup that has a compelling product offering, proven business model and an established customer base. Ingenio's suite of solutions, including the industry-leading Pay Per Call® Advertising Network, Ingenio Live!Advice, Keen and Ether seamlessly integrate the Web and the phone to help businesses large and small acquire new customers and grow revenue. With strategic partnerships including Microsoft, AOL, InfoSpace and MapQuest, Ingenio is positioned for significant growth.

We are located in downtown San Francisco with easy access to BART, MUNI and Caltrain. Learn more about us at:

Ingenio Corporate: http://www.ingenio.com/documents/corp/home.asp

Ingenio PayPerCall: paypercall.ingenio.com - the industry-leading Pay Per Call Advertising Network

Ingenio Professional Advice: www.ingenio.com/default.asp

Ether - Earn Money Selling What You Say: www.ether.com

Keen - Your Personal Advisor: www.keen.com


John Hennessy
Recuiter
Ingenio

201 Mission Street, Suite 200
San Francisco, CA 94105

415.248.4071 o
925.890.6347 c
johnh@ingenio.com

www.ingenio.com

explained: marketing, PR, advertising & branding

Click on the image to see the picture in its full-sized glory. An oldie, but a goodie.

video: sony flexible full-color OLED display

Pay special attention to the video between 0:25 and 0:30 seconds.

spotted: audrey

monocle: a side of crow, please

Regular readers will recall my snarky review of Tyler Brûlé's new magazine Monocle.



I had an opportunity to spend some quality time with Issue 3 today at (one of my many local) Borders - time that felt like someone poking the ADD pleasure center deep down in my reptilian hindbrain.

Damn you, Tyler Brûlé. I hate myself for liking this magazine.

insight: understanding bad-ness

How many times have you taken a sip of wine and the first sensation you have is of a swarm of ants chewing on your gums, or of a large over-ripe melon exploding on your soft palate?


I'll draw a distinction between this sensation and that of a wine that's corked or otherwise tainted. This is just bad luck - the wine wasn't designed to taste like that, and you got a flavor the wine maker didn't intend.

What I'm talking about is wine that was designed to taste that way. The more wine you drink, the more likely this has happened to you. If you're like me you find yourself wondering who the wine was made to please, since it's so obviously. . . unpleasant. . . to you.

Musashi called on his students to "develop intuitive judgment and understanding for every thing." The ability to see through an experience to appreciate the motivation behind the experience isn't easy to develop, but it is enormously helpful when it comes to keeping your cool in the face of experiences that are ex vi termini bad.

This goes deeper than issues of taste. You could argue that the example I gave above was fundamentally flawed, in that the wine "just wasn't right for me" and could be "just right" for someone else. You could drag out the old aphorism "one man's steak is another man's poison".

I'm not buying it.

I'm talking about products and services that are designed around a wrong set of requirements, or a misunderstanding of the requirements of the targeted user. These products and services will never be right, because they are designed wrong.

And in certain cases, wrong isn't merely a question of fit - it's a question of producing an outcome diametrically opposed to the one you wanted to create. Coca Cola Blak comes to mind.

It's easy to build products and services that draw from the nova-bright intuition of smart people. It's hard to build products and services that are truly derived from real problems, that reflect the authentic voice of the consumer.

Seeing through the bad-ness to understand where it came from can turn an otherwise miserable experience into an educational one.

Enjoy your Friday.

triskadecaphobia: a software versioning problem

I noticed that Macrovision released another version of InstallShield yesterday.

When I first started working on the product it was InstallShield X. Over the next two years or so we moved through to InstallShield 12.


Why we released like clockwork every six months for two years running is a story for another day.

So it is with some amusement that I noted the name of this new product is InstallShield 2008. They skipped the number 13!

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for the meeting where this was decided.

"We've got a marketing problem with the next release of InstallShield."

"What problem is that?"

"I don't want to call the next version 'InstallShield 13'."

"Why?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No."

"The version number. 13."

"Yes, I see that."

"It's unlucky."

"So what you're telling me is that you don't want to increment the version number to 13 because you think our customers won't buy it because it's an unlucky number."

"Yes."

"Not because you think that version numbers in the teens are a sign of a product naming convention that hasn't been refreshed in years."

"No. I don't like the number 13. And I don't think my customers will either."

"What evidence do you have of this?"

"Other large industries avoid the number 13. For example, hotels skip over the number 13 when they count floors. You'll get on an elevator and the floors will go from 12 to 14."

"I see."

"The public is also aware of bad things happening to projects associated with the number 13, for example, Apollo 13. And there is a well-defined phobia of the number 13."

"Triskadecaphobia."

"Yes, that. There is no corresponding phobia of the number 14. Or the number 2008."

"Is that what you want to name the product?"

"Yes. InstallShield 2008."

"And you think that customers will appreciate this."

"Yes."

"And you think that the alternative would have a negative impact on sales."

"Yes."

"And you don't think that a decrease in new license sales would be attributable to anything else going on in the industry."

"No. It would all be positively correlated to the customer's dislike of a version 13 of the product."

"I see."

seeqpod: amazing

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

A reader has asked why I think this is amazing. Try out the website. I like the idea of plucking music that's clicking by me and adding it to a playlist - then adding that playlist to my blog. I'm going to experiment with it on a variety of mobile browsers, and on my Wii browser too.

Ultimately, I'm a fool for well-executed interface designs and "new spins" on classic ideas. I think seeqpod does both of these amazingly well.

hmm: press release mad-libs

Did you know that Mad Libs come from the latin "ad libitum", or "as you wish"?

Oh, you did.

I bet you didn't know that you can build press release quotes using Mad Libs.


Try this one out for size. And yes, it is derived from an honest-to-golly real press release quote a colleague brought to my attention this evening. Ho ho, it's great to have informants.

"Our _____ _____ solution provides ___________ with the
-----(noun)-(noun)-------------------(group of people)
technology that will help them better leverage _______ as
--------------------------------------------------------(noun)
a core component of their value proposition."

OK, let's try out a few versions.

Our body shots solution provides adolescent men with the technology that will help them better leverage lack of B.O. as a core component of their value proposition.

Our basin scrubber solution provides overworked housewives with the technology that will help them better leverage toilet brushes as a core component of their value proposition.

Our pneumatic gavage solution provides goose fanciers with the technology that will help them better leverage guilt-free pate as a core component of their value proposition.

So next time you're trying to decide what words to put in the mouth of your favorite spokesperson, try the Mad Libs approach.

Because Sometimes Meaning Something Doesn't Cut It!^TM

ramen: the place just right

A story in today's New York Times "Travel Summer 2007" supplement caught my eye.


Adam Sachs' "They Eat Horse Sashimi, Don't They?" was ostensibly about the "infinitely specialized, supremely obsessive, wonderfully weird culinary universe of Toyko", but what really caught my attention were Takashi Yasumura's accompanying photographs.

The lead photo (page 152) is of a pair of woman's hands holding a large lacquerware bowl of shio (salt) ramen soup inside an "individual ramen-eating booth" at Ichiran in Toyko.

As a devoted fan of shio ramen as practiced at Santouka Ramen (corporate homepage) in Arlington Heights (inside of Mitsuwa marketplace), I immediately grokked the importance of this picture.

Ramen is a messy food. The Japanese understand this. So in an effort to create the "place just right" for the enjoyment of their ramen, Ichiran provides individual booths to customers in which they may sit and slurp away at their ramen without worrying whether or not they're splashing their neighbor(s).

To take the design of a restaurant and craft it so perfectly around the enjoyment of a single dish is sublime. Engaging all of the senses, creating harmony between the object and its delivery, these seem to be the mission of Ichiran. That and high-velocity noodle delivery. Hiro Protagonist would be proud.

I really liked Mr. Sachs' description of the "service moment":

(Ramen) is an inelegant food. This may explain the individual curtained-off ramen-eating cells at a chain called Ichiran, where you buy a ticket from a vending machine, consult a lighted sign indicating the position of open cells, and sit and await the appearance of the disembodied hands that eventually present you with a steaming bowl.

I find this concept to be just wonderful. It makes me want to think about "the whole product experience" in ways I've never thought of it before.

Ichiran GM Building 2F, 4-11-11 Minato-ku, Roppongi; 011-81-3-3796-7281. Ramen runs from $6 to $10.

Toyko Essentials review of Ichiran by Appleton Piper. Highlight - "Although the main reason for people to come here may be the flavor of the soup, it is just as likely that they come here for seclusion and a place to sit and let the whirl from the outside world settle down inside of them, and enjoy fully the undisturbed pleasure of their tailor-fit ramen, the one they have been imagining all day."

review: truemors (abridged)

Meh.

guide: the chicago panhandling technique

It's tragic, it's heart-breaking.

But I'll be damned if it isn't interesting how a majority of the Chicago Loop's panhandlers employ a very specific technique for signaling their request for your change. I've never seen this technique in use in any other city.

The Chicago Loop does have its share of the classic global techniques such as the Hand-Printed Sign or the Laying on the Sidewalk or the very successful Guy Drumming on Plastic Tubs. Today I witnessed the saddest technique of all - Woman with Printed Sign and Child in Stroller.

But these are the exceptions to the dominant Chicago Panhandling Technique.

1. Obtain plastic cup.
2. Fill cup with a large quantity of coins (see Note 1 for quantity guidelines).
3. Stand still in one place.
4. Rattle cup.
5. Say absolutely nothing.
6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 (see Note 2 below for frequency distribution)

Note 1 - having a few lone coins in your cup won't produce the distinctive sound required of the Chicago Panhandling Technique. You need about an inch of coins. I have yet to walk past a serious practitioner with only a few coins bouncing around.

Note 2 - a typical rattle sequence goes like this: two or three shakes, then a pause for three to five beats. Yes, it's arrhythmic, but I think it's supposed to be. If the Chicago Panhandling Technique followed a 4/4 or 6/8 rhythm, you wouldn't hear it.

awww: tony blair's white house sleep-over

I wonder what sort of fun things Tony and George did at their sleep-over last night.

On a separate note, I was also unaware that there was a room called "The Queen's Room" at the White House.

e-book: secrets of market-driven leaders

I got a note from Pragmatic Marketing's Graham Joyce yesterday that I thought I'd share with you.

As someone who discusses technology product management and marketing, I thought you might be interested in Pragmatic Marketing's new e-book on the Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders: How technology company CEOs create success (and why most fail). It is free and requires no registration at www.pragmaticmarketing.com/secrets.

Based on our annual product management and marketing surveys, and one-on-one interviews with 30 technology CEOs, it describes the seven consistent success factors related to company culture, management style, and product & marketing strategies that propelled the winners. And also the seven fatal flaws that derail market laggards.

Give it a read - it's a good use of your time.

story: coffee with buster

One early summer Sunday morning in Babylon I woke up to find my grandfather Buster boiling water in a shallow sauce pan.

"Are you making eggs?"

"No, Bobby, I'm making coffee."

When the water came to a boil he poured an indeterminate amount of coffee grounds directly into the pan.

"Do you drink coffee, Bobby?"

I wasn't quite sure how to answer, so I nodded. As a six-year-old, coffee seemed like a pretty good idea.

"It'll be just a minute," he said. Buster always wore khakis and a white shirt, even first thing on a Sunday morning when the house was still. His hair was pure white, and curly, and cut short on the sides. I sat down at the small kitchen table and waited.

After the coffee had boiled for a minute or so, he crushed a handful of dry egg shells directly into the pan.

"Why are you doing that?"

He smiled, something he did often and very well. "It's how we made coffee in the Navy."

"I didn't know you were in the Navy."

"I helped Hap Arnold win the war."

That was good enough for me. "Do the egg shells add any flavor?"

"They help settle the grounds. How do you take your coffee?"

This was an impossible question, so I shrugged. "How do you take your coffee?"

"Good answer. Dark then."

He pulled two mugs from the cabinet, set them on the counter then gently poured off two portions of coffee, using a spoon to prevent any coffee ground-encrusted egg shells from slipping into the cups.

"Here you go," he said, sliding the mugs on the table and sitting down opposite me. "This will be our little secret, I'm not sure your mother would approve."

I nodded, and he smiled. "OK, Buster."

process: appropriate vs complete

I'm implementing a product review process at the big shop. You know, the thing you do when you bring lots of ideas together, evaluate them, make recommendations, get agreement (or not), and move forward with a plan of record.

Yes, that sort of process.

Here's the question - what is the right balance between "no process" and "oppressively exhaustive process"?

Can you consciously decide to take a "short cut" and still have faith in your ability to follow a credible due diligence process?

How can you take advantage of inspiration but still get the benefit of validation. . . and do it in a reasonable amount of time?

This is the central mystery of product management. That and how to get sales to pay for lunch.

UPDATE 1: Pithy replies of "you do enough to get sign-off" will be deleted and their authors rendered into lard.

review: my adventure at the dentist (abridged)

Ouch.

hooray: the drinky crow show debut

It's a banner day for Tony Millionaire - first a very nice profile in today's New York Times, and next the debut of The Drinky Crow Show tonight on Adult Swim.

If you can't wait, you can view the first episode here. The episode is broken up into two pieces - when you're done with part one, click on part two.

garden: the knock out rose revisited

A little over a year ago I wrote about the Knock Out Rose for the first time.

This will be the third summer for five of these roses in our garden - and the second for one of their cousins, the Double Knock Out.

Unlike last year, we waited until mid-May to trim back the dead canes. This gave us a month to see which of the old canes would produce new growth, and protected us against the freak frost we had in mid-April that killed off some of the new growth on all of them.

And unlike two falls ago, we stopped dead-heading the roses in September so the plants could have time to build some strength for the winter.

I can't say these two decisions resulted in better growth - but the plants all look better now than they did last spring. Only time will tell.

All of the roses got irregular fertilizing last summer, starting with some fish emulsion in the spring, followed by weak blue water on a monthly basis until fall. I'll probably stick to the same schedule this year.

Here are two other "rose tips" that I picked up over the winter and applied earlier today:

1. When you cut the dead canes, cut them on an angle and cover the cut portion of the branch with a dab of white Elmers (PVA) glue. This should protect any of the cut branches from falling victim to bugs or rot.

2. Cut down the long dead canes you've cut from the rose into smaller branches with your clippers right above your lawn bag. It makes it a lot easier to handle them, and if you're like me, you can live without having your arms and hands savaged by thorns.

Pictures to follow in July. Happy Spring everyone.

*$&#^$: singing the jetblue blues

The flight was originally scheduled to leave at 12:15pm.

That time came and went.

Then they hurried us on to the plane, hurry hurry! We can take off and get there if we all hurry and get on the plane and leave right now!


The second we're on the plane, a guy took the microphone and told us we'd be waiting for 90 minutes for our departure slot.

90 minutes later, we pushed back. . .hooray. . .

But wait, we're in a holding area, we're stopping the plane, turning off one of the engines.

And we wait some more.

At 2:30pm, the pilot tells us we're going to need to get more fuel, we're going back to the gate, if you need to get up and stretch your legs, go ahead.

But don't think you'll be entitled to hotels or meals or anything - "it's weather related".

Hmm.

So here I am, care of a wireless modem, left with the following:

Even if it isn't JetBlue's fault, they have a reputation for poor organization, shabby treatment of passengers left to stew for hours in hot planes, and general ineptitude.

So I can't help but blame this on them. My expectation of service was low, so I'm not surprised when I receive bad service.

I may eventually make it to Vermont tonight for my speech tomorrow. Nothing permanently "bad" is going to happen. Bad weather will always be bad weather, and it's ATC's job to keep people safe.

But still. I can't help but think "this wouldn't have happened if I took that direct United flight".

I don't care how nice the JetBlue DirectTV in every seat is, or how crispy the Blue Chips are, I've been stewing in my own juices now for a few hours and I'm ready to blame someone.

I couldn't help but overhear the lady in front of me talking on her mobile phone to a loved one she wouldn't be seeing as planned - her message? "Tell her I was flying JetBlue and my flight was really delayed."

Lesson: Protect your brand, no matter what. Once your customer's impression of your brand is spoiled, it's spoiled.

review: hitchens+sharpton=debate

What a concept - put Christopher Hitchens and the Reverend Al Sharpton on a stage to debate. . .

Faith. Bravo, New York Public Library!

Read the review of the debate here.

Listen to the debate here.

Comment on the debate here.

re: your brains

Yes, I'm working through a case of the sillies tonight.

And yes, you can find more fine WoW "videos" like this at SpiffWorld. The song is by Jonathan Coulton - mark my words you'll be humming the chorus to yourself tomorrow at an Inopportune Moment.

And most certainly yes, if you are so inclined, please go read Roger Cauvin's blog for Actual Product Management Articles. I especially enjoyed his post on iPhone predictions, a speculation game much akin to the classic if she weighs as much as a duck is she made of wood line of discussion.

But if you insist on a coherent PM thought from ack/nak tonight, here's a thought from one of the great PM thinkers:

Perhaps 'adjacent market segments' are just other persona inside the same firms that we already sell to? How exciting would that be!

Low-Hanging-Fruit FTW!

Oh, and remember to turn your speakers up for the video.

Enjoy, and Good Night.

onion: on stealth marketing

I'd Love This Product Even If I Weren't A Stealth Marketer

Like you, I'm bombarded every minute of every day with advertising. And having been misled more than a few times in my life, I'm immediately...

cbs: blatant spelling error in csi-ny ad

There it was. In the middle of a CSI-NY ad that aired about halfway through tonight's episode of CSI-Miami. . . right after teasing us with an appearance by John McEnroe. . .

Was this:


This would have been OK. . .if they had spelled it JUDGMENT DAY.

Yes, that's how you spell it in the US.

Really.

Lesson: Pay attention to the details. Because someone out there is paying attention.

wine: charles joguet chinon cuvee terroir 2004

The best way to learn about wine is to drink wine, QED.

To that end, and in honor of the election there, this weekend we tried a down-market trip through four of France's wine regions: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone and. . . the Loire.

The Loire is not known for "great wines" in the same way that Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhone are. But this weekend, the Loire was the big winner, care of Charles Joguet's Chinon Cuvee Terroir 2004.

The Chinon appellation is located near Tours between the Loire and Vienne rivers, encompassing about 4,700 acres and nineteen towns. Back in the Day we'd take day trips from L'Etang-la-Ville to see the great homes (chateaux) of the Loire.

So perhaps I've got a bit of sentimentality for the region. It's really beautiful, BTW.

This particular wine, one of a number of cuvées produced by Charles Joguet, is like its siblings an expression of Cabernet Franc. Visit the webpage for a trip through his different offerings.

We let the wine breathe for about 30 minutes before serving it in cheap (but effective) Ikea baloonish wine glasses. That was an excellent decision - this wine had an incredibly interesting nose, slightly funky in a mature Bordeaux way - smoky and complex, and very distinctive.

The wine was earthy, peppery, with smooth tannins and a quick finish that reminded me of black currants. I could almost taste the heat that had baked the grapes in a late French afternoon. Curiously, some of the mature scents from the nose didn't carry over to the palate - it didn't have anything mushroomy or "forest floor" about it, which was OK by me.

Ready for the good news? I paid about $13 for it. If the tasting notes I've read about their 2005 vintage are to be believed, that one should be even better.

If you've got a "surprise wine find" you'd care to share, let me know about it.

hitchens: the lou dobbs interview

I've always enjoyed Christopher Hitchens' appearances on The Daily Show, but his most recent interview left me kind of flat. Thankfully Lou Dobbs delivered the interview I wanted to see. Before you watch this, make sure you can get beyond the title of Mr. Hitchens' book, and focus on the practical topic at hand.



Talking about Buddhism in his lecture Journey from India, Alan Watts said,

"You do not need a religion. You do not need any Buddha statues, temples, Buddhist rosaries, and all that jazz. But when you get to the point that you know you do not need any of those things, you do not need a religion at all; then it is fun to have one. Then you can be trusted to use rosaries, ring bells, hit drums and clappers, and chant sutras. But those things will not help you a bit. They will just tie you up in knows if you use them as methods of catching hold of something."

I'd like to think that Mr. Hitchens rejects religion because he doesn't trust the occupants of the fat part of the homo sapiens bell curve to use it properly. Unfortunately, there is plenty of good evidence to that effect. And that's a shame.

ideas: quick exercise

After the positive response I had to my last so-called "quick exercise" around competition assessment, I thought I'd herald in the weekend with another gem from my bag of PM tricks.


This last week brought an opportunity for me to do one of my very favorite things - listen to ideas from someone who knows a lot about my product.

I'm not going to tell you how to capture requirements. What I am going to suggest is that when you have an individual with a particular point of view (sales, marketing, executive, accounting, support, etc) who presents to you with a desire to express a requirement, and you really, really want to understand it, do the following:

Schedule a fixed period of time of no more than sixty minutes.

Invite a third party with a very different point of view to sit with you to hear the requirement. By "different point of view" I don't suggest you find someone who disagrees, but someone whose perspective of the product is different. This is important for any discussion of point #5.

Make sure the person who is going to give you the requirement knows that you're inviting a third party.

When the time comes to sit down for your meeting, set the following ground rules:

1. The person with the idea gets to talk first, then there's a short discussion between the person with the idea and the person you invited.
2. Start with the "most important idea".
3. Ask for a single line description of the idea, then some background into where the idea came from and why it's important.
4. Then invite the two other people to talk about the idea. . .and write down everything they say.
5. When you sense the conversation either drifting or starting to cover territory again, summarize what you've heard is the impact of this idea. In other words, if you had this feature, what would you get? Would it accelerate sales? Open a new market? Make your current product break less?
6. Note how much time is left in the meeting then move on to the next one.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 6 until time is up.
8. Forward the notes from the meeting to the two people who attended the meeting, and invite them to comment on what you wrote down before you make what was discussed public.

Once you get feedback, your job is to incorporate this information into whatever mechanism you use to publicize ideas - whether that is an internal discussion group, a wiki, whatever.

I'll let you have a look at this before I tell you why this particular process is so effective - and important. What do you think this would do for you that's different from how you capture ideas and requirements today?

milestone: 10k

Sometime over the last few hours ack/nak hit the ten thousand unique visits milestone. The counter is at the bottom, down there. Have a look.


It's a small number, really. When you compare it to "serious blogs", it's a mere drop in the bucket.

But then again, this was never envisioned as a "serious blog". How many serious business (or product management) blogs have labels called "koans", "lint", or my favorite, "liberal arts crap"? Or a dopey quote generator. Or a specific format for naming posts. Bet you hadn't noticed that.

(And don't even look at the blogroll. It'll give you scabies.)

Here's where I'm coming from with this thing. As a product manager, I learn about my craft through doing it, by watching others practice it, and by finding inspiration from, well, just about anywhere.

Product management is a craft that teaches you how to lead by teaching you to serve. It forces you to empty yourself of your prejudices and predispositions.

When I ask you "are you listening" I'm being serious - and not serious too. Listening without judgment exposes you to new ideas and perspectives, some of which will totally surprise you. If you're open to the experience.

Which I hope you are, or will be.

So I say "thank you" to the ten thousand visitors to ack/nak since its inception. If I lined each of you up, side by side, you'd block a lot of traffic and worry the neighbors. So lets not line you up, on second thought.

It's my hope that by writing about my craft, I'll learn more about it, and maybe help you learn about yours.

Goodnight.

IF/THEN: understand/understood

Those members of this profession whom I most admire have always been keen leaders. But first they've been tremendous listeners.

I've watched them sit and let colleagues/customers/analysts drone on at length without opening their mouths.

They take notes.

They don't play obvious "attentive body language" games.

They work hard to see what's going on around them in a clear light.

They are observers of how organizations work, and how the people in them interact.

Then they get their flashlights out and illuminate the dark places, shining light on those questions that their companies haven't had the ability (or perhaps the desire) to answer for themselves.

To be understood, they work to understand.

(Note - You Could Argue that this is true of any job, or in truth, is a basic tenet of life. Phooey. How many people do you know who listen really, really well? Count them, it's a small number. Listening well is a learned skill that is depressingly rare.)

ballmer: the 85-year-old uncle test

He's got more money and status than I do.

He's clearly got more experience than I do.

But when I read that Microsoft CEO Mr. Steve Ballmer said the following to USA Today's David Lieberman. . .

But it's not like we're at the end of the line of innovation that's going to come in the way people listen to music, watch videos, etc. I'll bet our ads will be less edgy. But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune.

I realized he doesn't have more common sense than I do.

Because even I know that victory in the mobile market can't be measured by your market share in the 85-year-old uncle segment.

Besides, if Mr. Ballmer hasn't sent free Zunes to every one of his relatives - both near and far - then either I've grossly overestimated the power of the Microsoft CEO to throw perks around or he's just not willing to take the hit against sales that such a give-away would represent against total Zune sales.