wondering: when to let go of your "product focus"

I thought I had lost it forever, but there it was, in the bottom of a plastic bag full of crib mattress pads I discovered while cleaning out my basement.

My Newton MessagePad 120, nestled in its leather case with business cards from the (long defunct) Newton Source store in NYC tucked inside it.  Four AA batteries and one backup battery later, it booted up fine, looking as tidy as it did in 1995 when it went missing.

Alas, its handwriting recognition is still awful.  And it won't let me set its date to April 2011.

It's still as beautiful a piece of hardware as it was when it was new.  It's still delightful, even all these years later, for what it is.  But I've moved on.

I wonder if the #prodmgmt responsible for this device still think about it, or if they've moved on too.  They're all (obviously) doing something else today with their professional lives.  I doubt any of them still use a Newton.

But they still have users.  Some of them are very, very devoted. And I bet there are many more who would be ready to have their devotion restored, under the right circumstances.  Still, most have moved on.  It's the way of things.

I don't think about my old products very often, but I think about my old users, customers I used to care about deeply back when I was very, very devoted to delighting them.  I wonder if any of them are still delighted, or if, like me, they've moved on to other products, other problems.

It's why, as Boss Strouse once said, you don't meet many product managers over 50 - because by the time you hit that age, you've figured out that it is organizations that last, not products.  If you care deeply about people and you're trained as a product manager, eventually you need to let go of your product-focus and become organization-focused and brand-centric if you want to keep on delighting people over time.

Because those are the only two things that can last - products never do.  They're not supposed to.

So when is it time to let go of your product focus?

You'll know.  It's one of those forest and trees problems.

"That is. . .so frustrating.  I made it all the way to the end of the piece and you spring some zen mumbo-jumbo on me?  Damn.  This is why Cauvin and the other PM bloggers kick your butt these days.  They answer questions.  Forest and trees. . .you're losing it."

"What can I say.  There are some things you can't teach, you have to find them out for yourself.  All I can do is let people know that the question is looming out there so they're not surprised when it hits them."

"You used to be a lot more fun."

"Ha."

idea: the LRD (life requirements document)

In one of my first posts here I wrote about the importance of writing the MRD first. It's amazing to think that was almost four years ago. Gosh I'm long-winded.

Recently I've come to appreciate that there's a document that must be written prior to the MRD.

It has nothing to do with your market, your products, or your company. It has everything to do with you.

I can't take credit for this - my wife made it clear to me that I needed to write down "what I wanted" if I was going to conduct a successful search, whether it was for consulting clients or a full-time gig.

"If you're such a hot-shot product manager, Bob, where are your requirements? Have you written down what you want, what's important to you, and what you will and won't accept? I think I recall someone saying 'if it's not written down it's not real' so get busy."

And so was born the LRD, or "life requirements document".

My headings are values, work (vocation), work (avocation), family, location, priorities, outcomes and challenges. Your headings will be your headings. Like the MRD, it is a living document.

I'm sure there are folks out there who are very adept at the "writing down of goals" part of this thing. But what I think is illuminating was the idea of treating it like a PM document, and as a private precursor to the MRD.

So where the MRD helps you understand:

Who are we selling this product to?
How are we going to sell this product?
What is the competitive landscape we're selling into?
What are the sizes of our buyer segments?

The LRD helps you understand:

What sorts of problems are you interested in solving?
What sort of customers are you interested in helping?
What markets are interesting to you?
What sort of people do you want to work with?
What motivates you?
What will make you feel like you've "won"?
What constraints do you need to work around?
What other activities do you need to pursue to make you feel "complete"?
What gaps exist in your capabilities that you must address or can safely ignore?

I could go on like this for a while, but you get the idea.

I've written a lot of MRDs for products and customers that frankly I wasn't all that interested in. Maybe it's a function of age, experience and scar tissue, but I am very focused today on making meaning, not just money.

If you're staring down the barrel of another development adventure and wondering what your life has come to, perhaps a little time spent writing your own requirements would help you understand whether or not you're doing work that is going to meet those requirements.

musashi-sensei: rules for product management

Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, or as he is commonly known Miyamoto Musashi, was born in the village called Miyamoto in the province Mimasaka in 1584.

He was the author of A Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho), a philosophical treatise on the way of the sword.  To the Japanese he is Kensei (literally "sword saint"), and his teachings are an essential part of the Kendo bibliography.

In his 1974 translation of the book, Victor Harris remarked that "the book is not a thesis on strategy, it is in Musashi's word 'a guide for men who want to learn strategy'  and, as a guide always leads, so the contents are always beyond the student's understanding.  The more one reads the book the more one finds in its pages.  It is Musashi's last will, the key to the path he trod."

Go Rin No Sho is definitely worthy of that warning.  I've been reading it for 25 years and it reveals something new each time I visit it.

Musashi-sensei generously provided a list of nine guidelines for students who would follow his Way:

1. Do not think dishonestly.
   
2. The Way is in training.
   
3. Become acquainted with every art.
   
4. Know the Ways of all professions.
   
5. Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
   
6. Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
   
7. Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
   
8. Pay attention even to trifles.
   
9. Do nothing which is of no use.
   

For individuals interested in strategy these are powerful and quite intimate personal lessons.   Victor Harris describes the book as ". . . unique among books of martial art in that it deals with both the strategy of warfare and the methods of single combat in exactly the same way."  Put another way, Musashi-sensei teaches that you cannot master the grand strategy of armies without also mastering the self.

For product managers, this is the most powerful lesson of Go Rin No Sho.  We operate in a world in which we are called on to assimilate information, formulate plans, execute on campaigns and adapt to changing conditions - all without direct control of or authority over the resources who will perform the work required to achieve the goal.

I believe the superior product manager is able to accomplish this work of grand strategy if he or she demonstrates a strong competency in personal strategy - in the individual disciplines that give evidence of an ability to direct and accomplish the larger works.

Musashi-sensei wrote "all of the five books (that make up Go Rin No Sho) are chiefly concerned with timing.  You must train sufficiently to appreciate all this."  When to strike, and how, and why, are at the core of his teaching.  Is there anything more fundamental to our craft than timing?  This is worthy of some discussion, I think.

I carry these nine guidelines with me wherever I go.  Next time we meet, ask for a copy and I'll give you one.  You'll probably be better at many of them than I am, and I'll look forward to learning from you.

____

A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, translated by Victor Harris (The Overlook Press, 1982)

heraclitus: quotes for good friday

History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world. [52]

An unapparent harmony is stronger than an apparent one. [54]

He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is one. [1]

---Heraclitus of Ephesus (535-475 BC) (link)

wwjd: what would jesus drink?

In support of the upcoming (and long awaited) next episode of The Bob Swami Show (topic=cocktails) I would like to solicit your responses to the following question:

What Would Jesus Drink?

Please leave your recommendations in the comments. And Happy St. Patrick's Day. (Image courtesy of the KC Beer Blog)

tip: for reducing your carbon footprint by half

Take every other breath.

logo: care of typogenerator

Try as I might, the pavlovian urge to hit the regenerate button just one more time keeps tickling the hopeful part of my brain.  You know that feeling - it's the one that prevents you from being happy with the now.

hopkins: peace

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,

He comes to brood and sit.


Peace
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Poems and Prose - Selected and edited by W.H.Gardner
(Penguin Books, 1984)

say it: my father shovels ashes at the shipyard

Say the following:

"My father shovels ashes at the shipyard."

Now please stick out your tongue and pinch it (gently) between your forefinger and thumb.

Without letting go of your tongue, say "my father shovels ashes at the shipyard" once more.

Congratulations, you're seven again.

To my great surprise, a Google search on the phrase quoted above appears nowhere on the intrawebs.

But now it does.  My job is done for this evening.

Sister Mary Noel, late Principal at the Saint Martin de Porres Elementary School in Red Oaks Mill, New York would be oh so proud right now to know that I've shared this with all of you.

dieter rams: 10 principles for good design

Good design is innovative.

Good design makes a product useful.

Good design is aesthetic.

Good design helps us to understand a product.

Good design is unobtrusive.

Good design is honest.

Good design is durable.

Good design is consequent to the last detail.

Good design is concerned with the environment.

Good design is as little design as possible.

(references: 1 2 3)

reminder: real ultimate britney

I used this photo to festoon a post from a little under a year ago. As I trolled my archive pages this evening (which I do from time to time to remind me of just how Damned Clever I used to be), I discovered it and felt you should all enjoy it again.

Sean Bonner has prepared some more Real Ultimate Britney for you here, where he reminds you that:

1. Britney Spears is a mammal.
2. Britney Spears fights ALL the time.
3. The purpose of Britney Speakrs is to flip out and kill people.

Bon week-end.

caution: christmas tree syncope

Dr. Wes reminds us to avoid hanging too many ornaments on one side of our Christmas trees.

Why?

To avoid Christmas Tree Syncope, of course.

two takes: on right now

take 1

It is very tempting to live in the past.  In fact, most of us do.  Psychologists tell us that most of our conscious thoughts are thoughts of the past.  We replay old scenes in our minds; we fight old battles; we recall past joys; and most of all we find ourselves stuck in the pains of the past.  We spend much energy reliving old scenes over and over again.  The sad part is that the past is over.

The second most common place for our minds to dwell, after the past, is in the future.  Our minds are filled with hopes, fantasies, and fears for the future.  We want to create a future exactly as we dream it should be.  We have an ideal vision and want to realize that vision but our fears and conflicts nag at us, jeopardizing our future.  Ironically, most of our fears for the future never materialize.

from When the Lion Roars by Stephen K. Rossetti (Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, IN  2003)

take 2

A monk told Joshu: "I have just entered the monastery.  Please teach me."

Joshu asked: "Have you eaten your rice porridge?"

The monk replied: "I have eaten."

Joshu said: "Then you had better wash your bowl."

At that moment the monk was enlightened.

Koan #7 - Joshu Washes the Bowl from The Gateless Gate by Ekai (called Mu-mon, circa 1228)

1Cor13: say less, be heard more

How many people do you know who have an ON button? I'm one of them.

A year ago if you brushed against it accidentally you might get "an inspirational speech", accompanied by "appropriate gestures" and "stage right/center/left focus points", along with snippets of "jargon" and a liberal sprinkling of "wacky metaphors". It was almost a game show trick. On a good day, I could fire off 30 minutes without blinking an eye.

A month ago you might have had to hit the button a few times, but you'd have gotten much the same result.

Yesterday I was asked to say a few words at a meeting of our extended management team. I opened with "I'm going to try to be a model of restraint and limit my comments to introducing the members of the team." I made a single point, then passed the ball to my colleagues.

When they were done, I thanked them, and reiterated the single point I made in my opening comments by means of a conclusion.

It was the most effective talk I think I've ever given. And one of the shortest.

Today someone I work with whose opinion I value told me, "you said less, and you were heard more".  

In 2008 there are three aspects of "less is more" that I'm going to be paying very close attention to. The management consultants call them "Communication", "Feedback" and "Consensual". In Bob-speak they mean "speak clearly, respond thoughtfully, and listen actively".

But the deeper challenge is this - I think I've been speaking in the tongues of mortals and angels for years, and all this time I haven't realized I've been coming across as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

It's a sensation that is equal parts humbling, depressing and inspiring. I'll have more for you later.

subtitle: self-referential pomo haiku fun

I've changed the "subtitle" to ack/nak. If you've got a better idea, let me know.

on-again, off-again

SYLLABICATION: on-a·gain, off-a·gain

ADJECTIVE: Informal - Existing or continuing sporadically; intermittent or occasional: an on-again, off-again correspondence.

considered: life without/with power

Living without power for four days in 2007 was a little like living with power in 1968.

Without power in 2007, you had no TV. With power in 1968, there wasn't much on TV, and even when there was, we spent all of our time outside during the day "playing".

Without power in 2007, you had no computer or internet access. Ditto for 1968.

Without power in 2007, you had no air conditioning, and slept with windows open listening to the crickets, tree frogs and amorous cats. Ditto for 1968.

Without power in 2007, we listened to baseball on the radio. Ditto for 1968.

Without power in 2007, we cooked on the grill constantly. Ditto for 1968.

Without power in 2007, after dinner we read books, talked, and played piano. Ditto for 1968.

Without power in 2007, we washed dishes by hand. Ditto for 1968.

I'll stop there. There were a few other parallels, but you get the idea.

Were it not for the absence of refrigeration (which sucked) or hot water (which sucked more), and the constant brain-stem poking whine of the sump pump battery, I could have lived with it for a while.

I actually felt a little sad when the power beeped on yesterday afternoon; I turned off the baseball game my son and I had been listening to on the radio, and as I closed the windows and turned on the dishwasher the TV turned on and I lost my kids to some cartoon. I sense future power outages in my future.

willy wonka: koan fountain

At the turning of the day I find I have, for a few brief moments, new eyes that afford me the ability to see differently.




Try this on:

Mike Teavee: Why is everything here completely pointless?
Charlie Bucket: Candy doesn't have to have a point. That's why it's candy.

Now go pore through the list of so-called "memorable quotes" from both the 1971 and 2005 Willy Wonka movies and see which ones speak to you.

Have a great Sunday.

lesson: making your own good news

My dearest friend and college roommate told me tonight that his wife had a miscarriage. They've had no end of difficulties throughout their marriage conceiving a child and have never carried one to term. To make their own good news, they adopted a child a few years back, a wonderful little boy who has thrived under their care.

Then for his second act he told me he had colon cancer.

As he continued with "the doctor says it's unremarkable, they caught it early, I'm going in on Tuesday for the surgery" I spun quickly through denial and anger, skipped right over bargaining and was well on my way towards enjoying a nice full plate of depression when he said:

"But on the good side. . ."

That's my friend. Other men would have broken under the constant sorrow he's had to endure with his wife so many tragic times. And I know I'd be absolutely shattered with debilitating fear if I had cancer.

But he was telling me about how he and his wife had made their own good news in the face of this.

I'm humbled and amazed that in the face of all of his troubles, he was concerned that I'd be worried and was trying to make me feel better.

I don't know what to say. Except to ask all of you to cast a good thought out to a good man next Tuesday and wish that his surgery goes well, that he recovers, and he can go on living a long, long time. I'll do what I can, and will pass on your wishes to him and his family.

I'm sure I'll look at this post at some time in the future and find some blithely meaningful way of relating it to product management. When that happens, hit me.

lesson: emotional leakage

A few minutes after a strategy planning discussion late yesterday afternoon, one of our executives sat down in my office.

"I thought that went well."

"Thanks," I said.

"Are you OK?"

"Yes. . .why?"

"There were a couple of moments in that meeting where you looked like your head was going to explode."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you didn't say anything, and your voice didn't show it, but you certainly looked it."

It's at moments like this when my vision narrows to a pinpoint and everything I hear turns into barking noises. The icy clutch of crystal-clear insight reached out, grabbed me by my jumblies, and squeezed.

I had been guilty of emotional leakage.

Thankfully it didn't sabotage my contribution to the meeting, but I can easily imagine there have been other situations when it has.

You probably remember watching Don Vito smack up Sonny and tell him to "never let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking". Modify that to read "don't ever unintentionally tell anyone how you're feeling", and you capture the essence of my point, and the slight twinge of shame that comes from missing it.

The decision to not transmit emotions in an unintentional way requires some discipline. Being a kind of emotional guy, I can see this is going to be a challenge to balance the following:

1. To understand how I am transmitting information about what I am feeling
2. To not lose the ability to benefit from the transmission of emotion

Non-verbal cues are a huge part of anyone's communications arsenal. I think learning how to be a better communicator and ultimately a better leader is going to mean leaning how to master them.

Have you had this problem? Honestly, I think I'd rather be an emotional guy who knows how to control how he expresses his emotions than be a non-emotional guy who has to fabricate them.

lovett: if I had a boat (updated)

If I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

If I were Roy Rogers
I'd sure enough be single
I couldn't bring myself to marrying old Dale
It'd just be me and trigger
We'd go riding through them movies
Then we'd buy a boat and on the sea we'd sail

And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

The mystery masked man was smart
He got himself a Tonto
'Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free
But Tonto he was smarter
And one day said kemo sabe
Kiss my ass I bought a boat
I'm going out to sea

And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

And if I were like lightning
I wouldn't need no sneakers
I'd come and go wherever I would please
And I'd scare 'em by the shade tree
And I'd scare 'em by the light pole
But I would not scare my pony on my boat out on the sea

And if I had a boat
I'd go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I'd ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat

If I Had a Boat
Lyle Lovett
from Pontiac (1987)

UPDATE: I've been a big fan of this song for a while, and finally got around to learning it over the last week. I found that I can slow the tempo down a little from what Lyle sings it at and it works pretty well for me. E-flat major is just about right. I'm a particular fan of Tony Furtado's version (thanks Amazon for the sample).

Next up, Mo Ghile Mear.