Welcome to my blog. You may want to filter posts by your role for your convenience. Click here if you are an individual contributor in product (aka. PM) and here if you are leading a product organisation (aka product leader).
Even if you haven't read the book Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, you might have seen the title. And if you are a product leader, chances are you believe in servant leadership or the fact that you should prioritize your team’s happiness, health, and motivation above your own.
Read MoreSpring is just around the corner in the northern hemisphere and since most people around the globe are still fighting the pandemic, our work/life balance continues to be a challenge. Many of us haven’t seen our colleagues, employees, and peers in person in a long time. Everyone seems to be exhausted and drained from the last 12 months of home office, homeschooling, home everything.
Read MoreMy virtual book tour for STRONG Product People continues this month. Find all my latest podcast appearances and interviews listed here.
Read MoreIn my new book STRONG Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, I’ve aimed to deliver everything a product leader needs to help team members live up to their full potential and to feel empowered. Get a quick overview of the book here and find out how I recommend approaching the content in the book here.
Want to actually dive into some of the book content? In this post, you can preview Chapter 11: How to Find the Time?
Read MoreIn the past, I’ve written a few posts about the PMwheel, a tool I created to help define product managers’ roles and responsibilities. But today, I’m excited to share someone else’s perspective. Sophia Höfling is a Head of Product at Babbel. She’s been using the PMwheel as a coaching tool for the product managers on her team.
Read MoreOne of the biggest topics I address in my daily work is the development of strong product people. I help product leaders to understand the importance of people development and I’ve created all sorts of frameworks and canvases. My goal is to help them become the best coach their PMs have ever had.
Read MoreIn our conversation about STRONG product people, I chose to focus on Chapter 4: Define Your Good. You’ll hear about my own approach to defining good and the six personality traits that I believe define great product managers.
Read MoreThree interviews, three podcast episodes, four wonderful hosts! Tune in if you want to hear me talk about my career in product, how product leaders can build a strong product organization by helping every individual on their team to develop, and about my new book (of course!).
Read MoreMy book, STRONG: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, is now available and I already answered some of the common questions about the book in my previous post. Today I’d like to talk about something else: about how to read the book and to make sure you are getting the most out of it.
Read MoreIn case you haven’t heard the big news yet, my book, STRONG is now published. In this post, I’ll be sharing some of the concepts from the book. If you find yourself wanting to explore any of these topics in more detail, be sure to check out the book. You can order your copy here.
Let’s talk about developing product managers—and not just any product managers, but strong product managers. We all know that product management is a super hard business to be in and we expect a lot from our product people.
Read MoreBig announcement! My book, STRONG: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, is now published. If you already know you want to get a copy (or two), you can do so here.
Want to learn a little bit more about who the book is for and what you can expect to learn from it? Keep reading!
Read MoreWe’ve been hearing a lot lately about the speedy development of the COVID vaccine. Great news, right? Well, there are a lot of people who are worried that by getting this vaccine, they’ll be turned into the “guinea pigs” of the pharmaceutical industry. The common argument is that “A vaccine that has been developed this fast can’t be tested well enough.” But as a product person, I completely disagree.
In my career as a product manager—and in my work as a consultant and coach—I’ve had the opportunity to observe several product initiatives that have unfolded in a pretty similar way: there’s no time to lose and we have external pressure to succeed (if we don’t, we’ll run out of funding, money, or lose important customers).
Let´s assume you are a Product Manager and you know or have figured out what your next best development topic is (e.g. by using the PMwheel) you then should come up with something I would call a development plan. Something that helps you commit to small actions that get you closer to the competent product management personality you want to become.
The future-self framework takes the form of a document that you need to fill, and it has four parts: As-Is, To-Be, Actions and a Timeframe.
Read MoreThe PMwheel has become a reliable compass for people who want to navigate their product career or develop their direct reports. It’s an approach that I have personally used in my work with clients ever since I developed it.
For managers, The PMwheel is a simple, but powerful way to assess the responsibilities, skills, and knowhow of your product managers. Keep in mind that no two assessments for your different product managers will be the same—some will be stronger in one area, while others will be stronger in others.
Read MoreI have created the PMwheel back in 2016 to give my coaching sessions with PMs from all over the globe some more structure and I am using it ever since in my work with my clients.
And I figured out that it is a framework that many of my former coachees are still using long after they have left the initial company. They, in this case, are mainly using it as a tool for self-assessment in times where there is no line-manager helping them with their personal growth. It became a compass for many people that helps them navigate their product career. So I have decided to share it with a much bigger audience to help even more people with it.
Read MoreBack in 2016, I was working with the product organization of a larger tech company. They asked me to help every product manager on the team “understand the role of the product manager better,” and to help the product managers understand what “better” would actually look like.
This was not an easy challenge and, although I had a certain take on what product managers should be responsible for, I lacked a clear framework—an assessment that I could have discussed with the individual product manager in one of our coaching sessions.
Read MoreSome weeks ago, I had the honour of being interviewed by Teresa Torres. There was no shortage of topics for us to cover in our recent conversation. We’ve talked about my upcoming book, about how to develop STRONG product people if you are a product leader and about my coaching cards.
Read MoreWhat is the job of a product leader? How should a Head of Product, a VP of Product, or a Product Team Lead behave?
Many articles have been written on this subject, most of them either by product consultants or people holding one of the above titles. But what if we ask these questions to the people they’re supposed to lead? What does a product manager think about this? What do they want from their boss?
Read MoreYou know that moment when you realise that something is not quite right in the team? Often you think you know straight away what needs improvement, but for some reason the team can’t see what you’re seeing. What’s wrong with them? It’s so obvious!
There’s nothing wrong with them. There’s a saying from the world of coaching that springs to mind here: “You can’t push the car you’re sitting in.” It’s the same principle.
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