Cutting through to the essence of strategy
I have been musing on how to cover strategy to my NYU MBA class. How the hell do you teach strategy in a few hours? I think my “aha” over the last few years is the below:| giffconstable.com
I have been musing on how to cover strategy to my NYU MBA class. How the hell do you teach strategy in a few hours? I think my “aha” over the last few years is the below:| giffconstable.com
In the “personal news to share” category, I’ve joined a startup. After quite a few years working at scale, and then a “sabbatical” to focus on family needs, it’s back to the early stage for me. And yes, I’m loving it.| giffconstable.com
Andrew Chen, long one of the best startup/growth voices out there, just tweeted about “The Traction Treadmill” —“It’ll kill your company,” he writes. Before I go on, let me explain what he means by that term. You’ve got a startup with okay customer retention, but not great. You successfully boost growth by doubling or tripling sales & marketing spend. You’re still churning users but at small numbers, you stay ahead of this and continue to grow. It’s only once you expand into...| giffconstable.com
It’s hard to avoid the agony on prod-eng Twitter about the basics of making software. It’s heartbreaking. Making software is hard, but we as humans do like to make it harder. Here are 10 lessons of my own about agile software, in case it is helpful. Some are high level and some are super tactical. Use only as useful for your own context.| giffconstable.com
This summer I’ve been teaching product management to the tech MBAs at NYU, and like all teaching, it’s forced me to clarify my thinking. I’m going to touch upon some of those areas in the next few posts. Today’s topic is customer segments — in particular, the initial ones you choose to design for and market to.| giffconstable.com
(These thoughts went out in my weekly newsletter this morning)| giffconstable.com
A sentence stood out to me yesterday in a doc Randy Silver shared on Twitter: “One of the most jealously guarded secrets of TV is the reality that those who get their pilots made and show picked up on any given year are usually no more gifted, visionary, or prodigious, than the ones who did not.”| giffconstable.com
You’re an inclusive leader. Maybe you’re an executive trying to find good ideas and give more people a voice. Maybe you’re a PM trying to foster the creative juices of your team. What’s your move? Do you get everyone in a room (virtual or real) for a brainstorm, break out the sticky notes (virtual or real), and let the conversation flow?| giffconstable.com
Last week’s case prompt, to both the executive cohort and the aspiring-executive cohort (senior/director level) in Case Camp, went as follows:| giffconstable.com
I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of product and finance given my new class on financial fluency. Product managers, whether an individual contributor or a head of product, get lots of advice on how to start a new job:| giffconstable.com
