✉️ Today’s email → Meetup on Freelance Product Mgmt next week ∙ How Zenly Nailed It ∙ Balancing Founder Intuition vs. Team Expertise ∙ AI impact on designers ∙ The worst leadership advice the Shopify’s CTO heard

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🫵 I need you

📺 Freelance Product Mgmt (clients, price, how to start) - I’ll host an online meet-up on the 22/03/2023 - 12:00, about how to be a freelance product manager.
- Would love to see you there → Signup to attend (it’ll be in French)
- If you have any question you would like for me to answer → 💬 comment below or reply to this email.
🖌️ Product Designer Talent Alert - I know a young product designer who’s seeking an “alternance” in a French company. She’s driven, hard working and a promising talent. If you are interested → reply to this email, I’ll share more details.

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1️⃣ How Zenly Nailed It - Product Methods!
Sept 2016 • 6 min read • #culture #product #design
Zenly shut down a month ago, and I want to pay tribute to their team & methods. They successfully created a rare combination of a strong brand, a playful-delightful experience, a strong utility and a mix of unique social features. It felt like a social video game on your mobile. It’s a big inspiration for the work we do at uKu. Anyway, get to know how they worked in this presentation. If you want to learn even more, I can’t recommend this podcast by the ticket enough (only in French). Btw, don’t be too sad, they already started working on something new.

2️⃣ Founder Intuition vs. Team Expertise
Feb 2023 • 6 min read • #culture #manageyourself
This article sums-up many reasons behind a key source of tension I encounter a lot during my coaching sessions: when should you trust the founder’s intuition vs the team’s work?

A table summarizing how companies might optimally behave based on their stage

1/ Assuming you join an early-stage company with founders doing their homework, they should know more than you about the business, the users and their edge. Learn how to pick their brain in the most efficient way. Clarify which decisions they trust you to make and which ones should be reviewed by them. For the latter, you should always name your assumptions and suggest a decision path, then ask for their input.
2/ If you join a later-stage company, and your founders can’t give you enough space, use this article content to discuss with them how they should balance between their intuition and the team’s expertise. Don’t hesitate to document decisions underlining your point until they can finally see it too. PS: you can also share with them the twitter thread below (first shared 1y ago).

3️⃣ Design-by-wire
Mar 2023 • 9 min read • #design #AI
The changes AI might bring to design, could be compared to the introduction of fly-by-wire systems in the airline industry. It won’t replace most contributors, but rather make them more efficient by becoming their sparring partner, and turning them into “pilots”. By becoming more productive, designers will have more time for strategy, user research or to cover accessibility concerns that previously took hours of effort from UX specialists and QA engineers. A few examples of such tools are Galileo AI, Diagram's Genius or even Microsoft Designer. I still wonder how it will impact product crafting as a whole, and other jobs.

⏳ What is the worst leadership advice you’ve heard?
Feb 2022 • 4 min read • #manageyourself #mustread
Most clicked link, shared one year ago in PM Snacks 56.
I’ve been struggling for years with my behaviour as a manager, afraid that my guidance or challenges could be perceived as a micro-managing tendency. According to JM (former CTO at Atlassian & Shopify), I was right to do it:

1/ As a leader (especially in product) you work hard to align people… but the second you leave an alignment meeting, you’re mis-aligned again. Alignment decays incredibly quickly. It’s normal. Accept it.

2/ Another big misconception about alignement is that most people stop at the why level. Actually many strategies are vague and also stop at the “why”…

Jean-Michel Lemieux @jmwind

17/ The biggest alignment problem is the gap between how much people think they have to align versus what they should align on. There are many strategic decisions in the "how". eg, what technologies to use, new system vs integration, build in core or in an app.

3/ But don’t worry, JM has 3 tips: in 1:1 with your direct reports, advertise in what mode you operate - 25% of the time like a boss (keep them accountable for goals), 50% like a peer (they bring decisions that you challenge & brainstorm with them), 25% like a resource (ask them how you can help), differentiate decision types and how they should use you (decision tree), finally… alignment is your responsibility, be proactive and work on it (send your boss notes, seek feedback, share decision logic not just outcomes)

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About → Productver.se is curated by Olivier Courtois (10y+ in product, co-founder of ⚡ uku.wtf, coach & advisor). Each issue features handpicked links to help you become a better product maker.

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🗺️ How Zenly nailed it / PM Snacks 70