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🤦 The failed edition / PM Snacks #53

Building products involves a lot of bad decisions: learn to be kind with yourself and how to avoid some of them.

Olivier Courtois

Jan 18, 2022

1️⃣ A Bad Product Decision
Aug 2016 • 9 min read • #manageyourself #execution
Here is an article that I like to not only read as well as, share with my team every year, to remind ourselves that being product people involves making a ton of decisions every day. And among them, a lot of bad ones of course! Even when you perfectly execute your discovery & delivery phases, every decision will still be a bet. So be kind with yourself when you fail. And remember that the real fight should be: to ship faster (= the only way to learn for sure).

Anyway, in PM Snacks 29, you’ll find another article by Brandon Chu on how to make good decisions. I highly recommend reading his whole series on Medium.

Productverse

🔋 Boost your productivity, make better decisions & embrace complexity to build a simpler product / PM Snacks #29

1️⃣ How I stay productive as a Product Manager Apr 2017 • 4 min read • #execution #manageyourself For years I've suggested co-workers to leave the office after listing the main expected outcomes of 1/ the next day every night, 2/ the next week every Friday. This way you invest a little bit of time to create clarity about the next period & kill any "menta…

3 years ago · Olivier Courtois

2️⃣ A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems
Apr 2019 • 11 min read • #execution #strategy
Lenny Rachitsky shares another failed product story here. He has since started his own newsletter, which is a must read! In this case, the targeted problem was badly framed so he shares a method to solve the right ones:

1/ Crystallize the problem you are solving: use this handy 1-pager to be sure to answer all the important questions. What is the problem? Why is it worth solving? Why now? Who are we building for? How will you know if the problem is solved?

2/ Align on the problem with your team and stakeholders: use a precise problem statement, review it with your team then make it more like a “silver burrito” ;)

3/ Keep coming back to the problem: start every meeting by reviewing & reminding people about the problem statement, from design sessions to stakeholders decision meetings.

3️⃣ A matrix for prioritizing user research
Jan 2022 • 4 min read • #discovery
In my experience, the reason why most companies that don’t invest time in the discovery phase, is because they feel like it’s gonna take too much time. They usually know that user research exists and that it’s useful. In this case, I would recommend you to 1/ assess which decisions are worth researching (= difficult to revert or potential costly mistakes), 2/ use this diagram to adopt the best research method in your specific context.

A simple diagram to spend the right amount of time on research and more importantly to show to your managers.. nothing beats a 2x2 matrix ;)

4️⃣ Struggling to connect on your remote team?
Jan 2022 • 4 min read • #teamwork
Uku is a very young company distributed across 2 continents and 5 cities. Due to this, I spend some time every week reading about how to improve our culture in this hybrid context. So far, this thread by Nathan Barry (CEO @ConvertKit) highlighting some unique tactics, has been the best thing I have come across on this subject.

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A warm welcome to the 73 new subscribers, we are now 1897 readers strong!

Thank you for reading me.
Have a great week!

Olivier Courtois
10y+ in product, co-founder of 🥕 uku.wtf, coach & advisor

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