transparency: your calendar

If I were to magically gain access to your work calendar would it tell me anything about your priorities?  Or would I just see "meetings"?

Product managers and product marketers live in an intensely networked world - our jobs require us to spend a disproportionate amount of time in meetings with others in order to accomplish our goals.  Take a look at any of our calendars and you'll see a patchwork of weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly recurring meetings.  During release seasons, you may see that we're completely booked.

It will be immediately clear what's "urgent".  But will it be equally clear what's "important"?

I ask because one of the quality-of-life problems for practitioners of our craft is - wait for it - not having enough time to dedicate to the long-cycle problems.  And one reason we don't have enough time is that we're too free with it.

Have you ever heard the following statement: "I looked at your calendar and saw you were free, so I scheduled a meeting with you"?

Conversely, have you ever heard the following statement: "I looked at your calendar and decided what I needed you to do was more urgent than what you had scheduled at the time, so I scheduled a meeting with you"?

My bet is you've heard both - the former from peers and subordinates, and the latter from the folks you work for.

In both situations you ask yourself- do you want to be the one who DECLINES the meeting and upsets the cart?  Or do you just accept, secretly resentful that you've been pulled away from a task that you need to accomplish?  Are the first words out of your mouth at the meeting "where is the agenda" and "I have a hard stop at. . ."? 

Or: do you schedule time to advance your non-urgent (or "long-cycle") agendas, and if you do, do you label them in a manner that would make sense to a third party?   Beyond the title, do you include any details in the meeting notes that could help the viewer understand what you were doing and why?

I ask for two reasons - one external to you and one internal - with a bonus outcome you may not have anticipated.

Externally, booking your own time for activities that make sense to an external viewer raises the bar for someone looking to take that time away from you.  It also forces you to "reschedule" those activities to remove the conflict from your calendar (if you accept the meeting), which means they'll still get done.  Marking a time for "projects" is OK, but it's not going to stand up to much external scrutiny.

The bonus outcome is you become more transparent.  Your process for advancing your personal agendas is visible to everyone, especially those whose contributions are required for you to accomplish them.  For the members of your team, imagine seeing an item on your calendar that reads "update team MBO progress" every month.

And this helps to make time for the activities that can get "lost" - how many of you PMs wish you had more time to spend with telesales?  Get it on your calendar.  Tell them that you've got time dedicated to them each month, and that they can book you for time to sit at their desks with a pair of headphones on, listening to actual prospects.

It also serves as a helpful tool for justifying an investment in additional staff - when you run out of time to advance the agendas you've been assigned you have three choices: find more time, eliminate some existing agendas from your list, get more resources.  Option number one is only an option if you're not managing your time well, and option number two is only an option if you're not managing your priorities well.  Once those are both as tight as you can get them, you can make a good argument to add staff.

I'm sure there are other benefits that you, my dear reader, will remind me of.  But I've run out of time today to write you and must move on to my next activity.

"7:00am: make coffee for Julie"

No way am I rescheduling that.

quiz: do marketers and programmers talk?

Please respond in the comments.

Yes - our marketing guys and our developers talk all the time, and have a deep appreciation for each other's perspectives on creating and selling products.  That's not to say that they're best friends, but they have an active dialog going on.

Maybe - I think they know that the other guys exist, and I think they've been known to say hello and share brownie recipes.  Occasionally.

No - our marketing folks and our developers get along like turkeys and wood chippers.  In fact, I don't think I've ever seen them talk to each other.  I'm not sure they even speak the same language.

news: new bc voice-over

A nice flash demonstration for the new Emmi+Healthwise solution is up on the web, with voice-over work from yours truly.  Let me know what you think.

evangelism: the transitive property

It's hard to be an evangelist. You have to carry the flag you're given, read the lines that show up in your briefing books, and make it sound like you really truly believe what you're saying.

You need to tread the fine line between being a thoughtful, credible commentator and being a shill.

And you need to do it over and over and over again.

Want an example of how hard it can be? Consider the following uttered by evangelist Richard Bullwinkle in a recent interview with ipTV News:

“I think that when you give consumers tons of choice on how they purchase the (video) content, they will buy more – consumers want to feel good about their use of it. We need to work on technologies that enable honest consumers to enjoy the content they want.”

Like all evangelists, he needs to transition from general statements of truth to specific applications of whatever it is he is selling in a way that can be logically connected back to the general statement of truth. The evangelist's success depends on his ability to do this right, every time, whilst treading that fine line I described earlier.

Let's parse the quote from above to watch this in action:

1. I think that when you give consumers tons of choice on how they purchase the content, they will buy more. He's off to a good start. Consumers love choice, no doubt there. The argument here is that consumers wait to buy until you make it possible for them to buy in exactly the way they want to. And once you do, they'll go apeshit and start running up their credit cards.

2. Consumers want to feel good about their use of (content). His choice of the phrase "feel good about their use" gives you the feeling he can imagine individuals who don't or shouldn't feel good about their use of content - namely, those who didn't purchase their content, or more to the point, who chose not to purchase their content.

3. We need to work on technologies that enable honest consumers to enjoy the content they want. This is the payoff. Technology enables choice which is a prerequisite to creating an honest consumer, therefore technology is a prerequisite for enjoyment, QED. At least as far as the vendor is concerned.

Mr. Bullwinkle needs to convince skittish studios and broadcasters and other purveyors of rich media that they can grow their businesses by doing exactly what they've been resisting - giving consumers choice.

The interviewer concluded that Mr. Bullwinkle's position was the following:

"Consumers will buy more content if they are given more purchasing options enabled by robust Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

While I think this speaks to the concerns of the publisher, I'm not sure it really speaks to the concerns of the consumer. Consumers want choice not just in how and where they buy but how and where they choose to consume content. If the technology solutions Mr. Bullwinkle is evangelizing fail to meet the needs of both constituencies, the technologies will not deliver on their promise.

Then again, what do I know. In any event, my hat is off to Mr. Bullwinkle for constructing an elegant evangelical argument for the publisher - I'm keen to see him do the same for the consumer.

interlude: sun and strategy

No, I'm not dead or trapped in an old fridge somewhere in Teaneck.

I'm "on the road", catching some rays and working on a strategy document. Somewhere between my first beer and my last Chupacablahblah, a tenuous link between the two suddenly became clear to me.

You need the sun to live - you can't thrive without a well-articulated strategy. Actually, you can live without both for a while, but you end up kind of pasty and unhealthy-looking.

If you get too much sun, you'll get a sunburn or some wild face-eating melanoma - if you spend too much time working on your strategy, you burn out or get killed by someone who spent less time on strategy and more on execution.

The best way to enjoy the sun is with your friends and family - just like the best way to articulate a strategy is with the help of your colleagues, each of whom brings a different and unique perspective to "where you're going".

Ultimately, the tan wears off, and you have to get some more sun - the same way that you strategy grows stale over time, and needs an infusion of reality. Put another way, the same way you don't expect to keep your tan, you can't expect your strategy to stay fresh-looking forever.

OK, maybe this isn't the best analogy. I blame the Chupacablahblah.

networking: application packaging expert

In my time as a product manager for a Well Known Installation Software product, I got to know a lot of people across the so-called installation industry. Few of them impressed me more than Christopher Painter, a guy who can honestly describe himself as an industry-leading expert in application packaging and deployment.

Application packaging is a somewhat fancy way of saying "installation developer", but it goes without saying that it doesn't matter how good your software solution is if your customers can't install it and get it to work. The more complicated your solution and the more critical it is that it "play nice" with other applications on the target hardware, the more important your installation gets, QED. Chris may have a whole constellation of other skills, but this is how I know him.

I'm not sure if I'm doing Chris any favors here, but when I know of someone as capable as he is, I like to let people know about him. If you're a product manager of a packaged software solution, and you need to network with someone who really really understands the ins-and-outs of how to package up your baby so that it can be successfully deployed and installed, put Chris on your Rolodex.

Need more? Groove on his blog here.

The way I see it, we all need to look our for each other, right?

Right.

partnership: apple/google announcement at WWDC 07?

I (generally) don't traffic in rumor and innuendo. Ahem.

But a Digg comment-er laid out a very cogent argument this morning (borrowing heavily from a Seth Weintraub article) for what we might see in an Apple/Google announcement at Monday's WWDC, and why.

Pure Speculation: .Mac to integrate Google Apps into fold - maybe even iWork?

OK, I admit this: I am basing this on some facts and some speculation but if you can stay with me here, this might all make some sense:

1. In a recent stockholder meeting, Steve Jobs admitted that .Mac has hasn’t achieved its full potential, but said the company was working on it.

2. Eric Schmidt, Apple Board Member and Google CEO, said that there are going to be a lot of Apple-Google partnerships because they have "common competitors". Common competitors==Microsoft. Microsoft's bread and butter==Office. We've already seen a flurry of Google Applications for Macintosh, the GMaps and Gmail on the iPhone, but why not Google Docs and Spreadsheets integrated into .Mac? Seems like a perfect fit.

3. Using iChat as a guide, we know that another network (AOL) allowed .Mac users their own namespace xxx@mac.com as AIM names. Google could do the same thing in Apps. Perhaps the whole mac.com domain would be ported to Google Apps.

4. Google has cheap, fast, plentiful cloud space. They also have the ability and desire to search it and advertise on it (monetize it).

Gmail has won the battle against .Mac Mail for most Macintosh users. Calendar/IM/Addressbook integration? Diskspace (100mb vs. 3GB and counting)? Spam detection? Google wins most of these battles hands down.

Google is SPENDING $5/domain for Apps users through its Adsense subsidiary. They WANT more non-paying users. Apple would be happy to offload the .Mac users on Google. Apple’s $100/year customers could get a premium version of Apps with desktop backups and larger file space and a lot of the benefits they currently enjoy. Apple isn’t a cloud vendor, it is a Hardware/Software company. They want to stick to what they do best.

5. We know that iChat in Leopard has a special account preference for GTalk accounts. Not that you currently can't use ANY Jabber (Gtalk is based on Jabber) server in iChat. It is just interesting that they’ve split off the GTalk from the rest of the Jabber servers.

6. It has been 18 months (forever in software development at Apple) since iWork was last updated. That is lots of time to do some pretty fun things. I would love to see Apple enter the Blog editing game here - where MarsEdit, Ecto, Journaler are sweeping up. This would also be a serious game changer for the Pages.app/MS Word rivalry on the Mac Platform. And for google’s part? What better way to get into blog editing than use Google’s Writley technology.

7. Google needs a Keynote type of presentation tool, Apple needs a spreadsheet tool to round out their Office competition. They both have what the other needs.

8. Throw the Sun OpenOffice.org into the mix. The first Native Alpha release of this software was released this week. Both Apple and Google have been playing very nice with Sun lately.

9. iWork. This might just be the most important piece of the puzzle. There are so many things that can happen here, I am going to break it down into another subset.

* iWork could be a caching front end for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Use it when you are on an airplane, at grandma's house with no Internet, in the subway, wherever Internet is spotty. As long as we are on the subject, why not use it all of the time you are on your own computer? The Web application interface is nice, but not Native Application Pages.app/Keynote nice.

* While we are talking about applications, what is stopping Apple from porting iWork and iLife applications to Windows? Quicktime and iTunes already enjoy a large following in the Windows camp. A few more ice cubes in hell perhaps?

* OR, and I realize we are flopping off of the deep end here, what if Apple sells a Leopard virtual machine for Windows which functions like Parallels Coherence mode (except Mac operating in Windows, not Windows operating in Mac). Run Leopard anywhere! You could even boot from a Google HOSTED OS. Not a full version, mind you, but a stripped down, embedded version of the Mac OS like they are throwing into AppleTV and the iPhone. One of the great things about virtualization is the elimination of the need for gigabytes of drivers and such. Install small Google/Apple app on your Windows desktop. As a comparison, Parallels is around 70 megs - bout the same size as iTunes/Quicktime. Your OS and files sit in the cloud. Can be done, why not? OK, I realize not everyone has Fiber in their house…yet.

Maybe in a few years? We'll see. But as for WWDC? I think there is every chance that .Mac will integrate with Google Apps. Why not? It makes sense for all parties and would finally give Microsoft a run for its money. Plus the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
http://9to5mac.com/-Mac-integrate-apps-google-iwork

PS - Perhaps Digg member rued is Seth Weintraub. Rued lists his homepage as The Paris Times, and Seth Weingtraub is a contributor to the Paris Times.

The world may never know. Cue Charms Tootsie Roll Pop ad.

UPDATE 1 - Shazam, the question is answered in the first comment.

UPDATE 2 - It appears that this article got picked up by the Wall Street Journal online. Too bad I don't have a subscription, otherwise I'd read it. In any event, welcome all of you, drop me a line if you'd like. Glad to have you. Wipe your feet before you come in, and whatever you do, don't annoy the tiger.

disconnections: losing touch

I've lived through my share of "reductions in force" and "restructurings" in my career. I generally came out on the other side feeling a mixture of elation and depression, suddenly aware of empty cubes, interrupted conversations and bigger workloads. Judgment had been passed, and I had been deemed worthy and that was that.**

But when you watch one of these "restructurings" happen at a former employer and learn that people you know and admire are numbered among the suddenly (and inelegantly) fired/terminated/riffed/"given a package", it's an entirely different sensation.

Different in part because you've already disconnected that part of you that could have been wounded by such an action. The lack of a personal stake makes the event itself a bit of a non-starter. . .Randy Newman put it best: "I don't care 'cause I'm all right".

But also different because you become truly disconnected from the cause you used to fight for with the departure of your comrades.

The competitors you used to worry about, the specific customers you used to love and agonize over, the politics, the constellations of ennui and energy that used to define your relationship with the company. . .you can be distanced from those and still care if the the people stay the same. You still care because these people hold an institutional memory of you, for better or worse, and that's a strong connection. The shared experience binds you.

But with the departure of the people you used to go to war with, there's less left to sustain your interest. Memories fade, life goes on.

I fear the disconnections created by the transiency of work diminish us, bit by bit.

**I know this opens the door to a comment from Ron on the dehumanizing effect of the corporate model, but that's OK.

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.

explained: marketing, PR, advertising & branding

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

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

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...

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.

phew: long day & looking ahead

Have you ever been in a meeting and come to the simultaneous realizations of "I'm learning something important right now" and "if my blood pressure goes up any more my head will explode"?

That was me. Multiple times today.

I am definitely ready for the weekend - for getting my clock cleaned by my son at Pokemon, for weeding, for making dinner. I'm looking forward to exercising, to playing piano, and to working on my "personal projects".

One question for all of you - do any of you have any specific skills in the printing industry? I have some questions I'd like to ask a professional printer that would only take a few minutes.

Have a great weekend. Play a game, get some sleep. Who knows what sort of oddness I'll come up with here by Monday for your enjoyment.

meme: identity and access management

The hammer and anvil of "security" and "compliance" are coming together - finally - to create opportunities for software companies. And consultants. Don't forget the consultants.

But I digress.

I say "finally" because I was talking about this about eight years ago back in my Teleran days. Back then, we talked about iSight and iGuard as vehicles for tracking and controlling how users accessed relational databases. We even won a nice award for our work. Some guy from Microsoft is still pissed that he got beaten by us that day.

Jump ahead eight years. Companies like Centrify and Preemptive are actively promoting solutions to detect "improper usage" of applications. I'm particularly keen on Preemptive's approach for detecting attempts to tinker with deployed software assets, a solution that leverages their deep experience in code obfuscation.

Even my old pals at MVSN are getting in the game, with a solution for the games space that embeds Update Service (oops, "FLEXnet Connect") in games so publishers can update them remotely. . .and figure out what sort of exposure their games have to P2P distribution. Assuming pirates aren't smart enough to remove the updating software before re-distributing it, of course.

I'm sure there are many more solutions out there whose sole purpose in life is to tell you that someone is messing with your stuff. Any other products come to mind?

Or movies?

Psycho: My name's Francis Sawyer... but everyone calls me Psycho. Any of you guys call me Francis... I'll kill ya.

Leon: Ooooooh.

Psycho: You just made the list, buddy. Also, I don't like no one touching my stuff. So just keep your meathooks off. If I catch any of you guys in my stuff... I'll kill ya. And I don't like nobody touching me. Any of you homos touch me... I'll kill ya.

Sergeant Hulka: Lighten up, Francis. We're all in this together. One of these men may save your life one of these days, you understand that?

'Winger: Then again maybe one of us won't.

balance: focus on financials / foster innovation

Susan Quandt, author of Sudden Impact - Top Business Leaders Reveal the Secrets to Past Success (Jossey-Bass, September 2006), makes the following observation:

In the first half of 2005, more than 770 CEOs left their jobs—a full 90% higher than turnover the previous year. And according to one survey, with the easing of the job market, a whopping 96% of currently employed senior executives expect to change companies…within a year. Another survey of middle managers found that 48% were currently job hunting or planned to start looking as the job market improves.

Here is a telling bit of Q&A around why she left finance/marketing/sales world to pursue a PhD in organizational development at her own company:

Every time I moved to another executive position I kept thinking, “Is this all there is?” I knew something was missing in how companies focused just on their financials, or ROI—return on investment. I did some deep soul-searching and realized the missing component was the focus on people and how they ultimately influenced that ROI. I also could see that the laser focus on financials was depleting organizations of any semblance of innovation, imagination or creativity.

A CEO (primarily of public companies) who fails to balance a focus on financials with an equal focus on building the human capital that is the essential source of their organization's innovation, imagination and creativity. . . hmmm. Have any of you encountered one of these?

choice: $50 or $500 per user

We all saw it coming.

"Google Apps Premier Edition is available for $50 per user account per year, and includes phone support, additional storage, and a new set of administration and business integration capabilities." (source)

And what does your $50 buy you?

10 gigabytes of storage per user
APIs for business integration (e.g. data migration, user provisioning, single sign-on, and mail gateways)
99.9 % uptime
24x7 support for critical issues
Gmail for mobile devices on BlackBerry.

Surprisingly, Google is making advertising "optional" for these business accounts.

Release the hounds.

beginnings: . . .and other job starts up

I've been wanting to "make meaning" with my work for a very long time. By this I mean I've wanted to contribute to an endeavor that has a material impact on the quality of life of individuals. Look at it this way - my wife's career is raising our children, a job with true "meaning". The work that teachers do has "meaning", the same with lifeguards, crisis counselors, even crossing guards.

(Please don't write me angry notes that I'm dissing your way of life by suggesting that it doesn't have meaning to you - this is an entirely personal observation on my part around what matters to me, so don't take offense.)

A few months back I got a note from an individual with a most unusual title: "Chief Creative Officer". She was looking for someone with a very unusual background - product management plus medical plus "voice over" plus "something extra". She had a hunch I had all four.

We had a few conversations, agreed to meet in person, had a lovely chat, and I left feeling like I'd met a very creative, bright person whose company "made meaning". By the products they create and the markets they serve, they make a real difference in people's lives every day.

Well, apparently I'd made a sufficiently strong impression that further conversations ensued, and ultimately, this organization elected to extend me an invitation to join them, which I accepted gladly.

Because I'll get to "make meaning" every day.

I've left the friendly confines of traditional "software" manufacturing for a much larger overall space - one I've worked in before, but one that's changing dramatically, and one that has a real need for what I'll be making. I've weathered a change, but this time I've made a conscious decision to "make meaning" - which at the end of the day is a lot more important to me than "making software". YMMV.

More soon. One job winds down, another job starts up.

half-review: the e-myth revisited

I'm about halfway through Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited. It would have made an ideal beach book. It also qualifies as an excellent book of business pr0n (wrong definitions, right definition).

Which I mean with all respect. After all, it's accessible, it's episodic, it's full of big themes, it's light on substance, and it's not strong on dialogue. But I digress.

Mr. Gerber's central thesis that you should work on your business, not in your business, is certainly an valid point. As is his point that most small businesses are most often created by expert "technicians" who, in an entrepreneurial spasm, decide to go into business for themselves and who fail in the vast majority.

As a PM, the part I'm taking away for further review is his idea of the "franchise prototype". Hideously simplified, this idea goes like this: if you had to create 5,000 businesses like yours, each of which must operate identically, how would you go about creating that prototype?

Beyond the software you create, what aspects of your business would you target for innovation? How would you quantify the impact of that innovation? And how would you go about orchestrating the consistent execution of that innovation?

The reason I'm going to need to work on this some more is my concern that there are few if any elements inside of a modern software company that are consistently quantified and orchestrated for consistent repetition. Other than tracking sales.

event: bc speaking at software marketing perspectives conference

If you happen to be at the Santa Clara Convention Center today at 4:15pm, stop by for my talk on "value-based licensing". You'll enjoy 40 minutes of wit and insight, and if you mention this post, I'll buy you a drink. Really.