Words are an essential part of software product design. They are a key ingredient for both usability and customer success. Yet, from what I have seen, far too many designers delay working on copy until late in the process. I’m all for sketching (rough draft culture!), but even a sketch should have thought and purpose. Don’t just think about the …
Yesterday I was asked how a designer differs from a product manager. I found the answer surprisingly hard to give. Everyone designs, but not everyone is a “designer,” which encompasses both a skill set and a mindset. I look for designers who bleed into product management and product managers who bleed into design. The venn diagram overlaps significantly in terms …
The product and design team at Axial is only 6 people (3 in each discipline, excluding me) so we run as a very flat group, working in cross-functional teams. But the flatness of an organization doesn’t mean that everyone in the team can’t try to improve their leadership game. Leadership isn’t bossing people around. It’s not writing reviews or determining …
As an entrepreneur pitching VCs, I learned the hard way how important the first words out of my mouth could be. You couldn’t get those first few seconds back. The start of every conversation outside your inner team is no different for a product manager (or UX designer). How you set context impacts everything you do. It sets you up …
We’re always thinking about “minimum viable process” — i.e. what’s the least process that gets the job done. The answer to that changes as your team size scales, but I think it’s always worthwhile to fight a running battle for no more prescriptive process than you need. This impacts everything from how you treat agile, how you approach research, how you interleave …
There’s a lot to love about Medium. It’s a bubbling spring of human ideas and intellectual connectivity. It is living proof that the written word has not gone out of style. But there are a lot of things to say that are not really for the rest of the world. This is especially true when it comes to work. When …
One of the most important things a product manager has to do is avoid giving surprises, in a context where surprises are coming at you all the time. What do I mean? Never let someone who cares about a particular product change be taken off guard. This applies to changing timing, changing design, changing messaging, changing pricing, changing rollout approach, …
A few months ago, Brad Feld wrote about a cultural exercise that I just tried with my team to very good effect (Brad in turn had referenced this post from David Politis). Instead of taking pysch tests and then trying to make sense of the results, the team answers a few written questions as honestly as possible. Before I get …
There is a lot I admire about Tesla, but their recent reaction to the death of someone driving in autopilot mode is a lesson in what not to do for a product manager. I hold no blame for Tesla for the accident itself. From what I have read, the victim was a brave man who enjoyed playing the role of …
Last Thursday, I started a new gig as VP of Product for Axial. Given that the company is both B2B and has a target market largely outside of tech, I’m guessing that most people have not heard of it. Axial is a 100-person startup that runs an online network for connecting business owners who want to sell or raise equity/debt …