TBM 381: Stop Trying To Make Prioritization "Easy"
Hot take: We want prioritization to be hard.| The Beautiful Mess
Hot take: We want prioritization to be hard.| The Beautiful Mess
You’ve likely heard the saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, and expecting different results.” Humans have an intuitive sense of what scientists call attractor states, the concept that systems tend to revert to the same patterns unless external factors change.| The Beautiful Mess
Sharing a 2x2 I’ve found useful lately (and wrong, of course).| cutlefish.substack.com
One of my biggest personal career challenges has been advocating for the smart use of constraints. I strongly believe in concepts such as work-in-progress limits, planning-in-progress limits, force-ranked prioritization, getting extremely crisp on ICPs, zero-bug policies, andon cords, having a single roadmap (not two, one for engineering and one for product), "start together", maximum initiative sizes, etc.| The Beautiful Mess
Spoiler: the concept of capacity allocation is fraught with misunderstanding, and companies waste a lot of money (and do a lot of damage) by mistaking time allocation for capacity allocation.| The Beautiful Mess
This post is about understanding why your company is organized and designed the way it is.| cutlefish.substack.com
A term I’ve been using a lot with teams lately is “minimally viable consistency,” or MVC.| The Beautiful Mess
This is a post about strategy and prioritization, and how reframing urgency can help you be more strategic AND prioritize more effectively.| The Beautiful Mess
It might sound like a leader saying, “We can work out the details later. For now it helps to keep options open. We know the big goal, and we are committed to it. The exact path can come later.” That ability to hold off until the last responsible moment—that is the powerful part.| The Beautiful Mess
I see two broad categories of company attempting to “transform” to a product operating model:| cutlefish.substack.com
In this post, I want to give you a way to diagnose what is going on. Too many people default to a simplistic explanation like, "We just need a strategy." Well, yes, that helps, but it is critical to diagnose why the strategy you're satisfied with isn't emerging.| The Beautiful Mess
Thought experiment.| cutlefish.substack.com
Most 'source of truth' problems in product development aren't really about the source of truth at all.| The Beautiful Mess
Once or twice a week, I run into teams struggling with OKRs. To me, OKRs are goals. And you know what? Goals are hard. Setting good goals and reflecting/pivoting based on your progress is a mix of skill and environment. What seems odd to me is that companies somehow believe that OKRs, alone, will magically solve the problem of goal setting.| cutlefish.substack.com
But a nagging doubt builds. The team is moving slowly. The views never change. Doubt grows. Or maybe a new strategy is emerging. Execs stop paying attention to these views. Meetings missed, etc. You learn that there's back-channeling, and other meetings set up to get the "real story." OKR cycles get missed or are rushed. Suddenly, you learn about new views emerging like the "just the tier 1 launches," or "the engineering roadmap," or ___________.| cutlefish.substack.com
There's an emphasis on team independence and autonomy, but also fairly traditional ideas about the role of the manager (as gatekeeper, filter, escalation resolver, etc.). In many ways, these ideas are complementary to one another. After all, how else do you achieve empowerment and independence without holding someone accountable for keeping things "clean" at the edges?| cutlefish.substack.com
I would like to write a respectful critique of a recent Marty Cagan article on the SVPG site.| cutlefish.substack.com
I’m experimenting with Substack’s Video feature.| The Beautiful Mess
I was reflecting recently on how stark the differences between teams can be and how often you can pick up on those differences within seconds just by asking someone how things are going. You can feel it. The words they use are different. The way they describe their work tells you almost everything.| The Beautiful Mess
How can the dependency challenge get so bad before companies do something about it? Why does it creep up as a problem? Let's explore this question by discussing four archetypes: Human Load Balancers. Renegades, Insiders, and Platform Saviors.| cutlefish.substack.com
A lot of teams approach dependencies like this:| cutlefish.substack.com
One of the big challenges of offering a customizable tool in the product space is that you risk reinforcing unhelpful practices.| cutlefish.substack.com
In product, we're bombarded by high-level concepts like empowerment, data-driven, product-led, customer-focused, accountability, getting into the details, and high agency. But teams have trouble putting these ideas into practice. Why? And what can you do about it?| cutlefish.substack.com
Recently, I have been thinking deeply about what it would take to "dampen" some of the harsh pendulum swings we are experiencing in the industry.| cutlefish.substack.com
"Be customer-obsessed."| cutlefish.substack.com
(I’m doing a new 3hr workshop on prioritization if anyone is interested)| cutlefish.substack.com
If these points sound familiar, here's a fun way to structure a quarter. It's a nice change of pace and helps a team go through the "full cycle" of learning, building, measuring, learning, etc.| cutlefish.substack.com
What do leaders who are skilled at navigating complexity know how to do?| cutlefish.substack.com
Here’s an activity ANY team can do to stay more aligned.| cutlefish.substack.com
What you tend to find is one of two problems: A: Teams that ideally could work more closely together that are forced to work more transactionally, B: Situations where the relationship could be more transactional, but teams are forced to collaborate more closely| cutlefish.substack.com
This post is Part 2 of my Dependencies In Fast(er) Growing Companies series.| cutlefish.substack.com
I recently shared this Tweet:| cutlefish.substack.com
Catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 if you are new to this series.| cutlefish.substack.com
Imagine a framework or a way of working as a game.| cutlefish.substack.com
“Are all companies messed up?”| cutlefish.substack.com
How do you deal with the tension between your go-to-market and product teams as you scale? In this post, I will explore one of the central mechanisms behind that tension.| cutlefish.substack.com
We have ten companies.| cutlefish.substack.com
