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Not complex, simple

Updated: Feb 1


Reminds me of that old quote from Bruce Lee:

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Everyone wants to talk about "advanced" product management techniques. OKRs and North Star metrics and "product sense" and all that. Meanwhile their backlog looks like my junk drawer - full of good intentions and dead batteries.


Here's the thing about product management that nobody wants to hear: You're probably not failing because you need some advanced technique. You're failing because you suck at the basics.


Watch any pro athlete. The difference between them and that D1 college player isn't some magical insight into advanced gameplay. It's that they can do the fundamental things PERFECTLY. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.


The NBA player doesn't need a fancier jump shot. They just hit the basic one. Over and over and over.


But PMs? We're here trying to implement "dual track agile" when we can't even run a basic planning session without it turning into a six hour death march of "bUt TeCHNicAl dEbt" and stakeholder drive-bys.


Want to be a better PM? Here's your advanced course:

  • Talk to your customers. Build a POV on why they need what they need.

  • Write things down. Often. Always. Every time. Don't write for volume, write for clarity. By that I mean, write a lot AND edit a lot.

  • Say no to all but the best ideas. Your job is not to find a needle in a haystack it is to find a needle in a stack of needles.

  • Ship. Honestly, it may not be perfect. Just ship. If you have to "fix" it later? Then fix it. There are very few products that get better if you wait. (If you are writing software for airplanes or rockets, ignore this bullet.)


That's it. That's the whole game.


But no one wants to hear this because it's not sexy. It's not a framework you can put on LinkedIn. You can't do a conference talk about "How I Learned To Write Clear Acceptance Criteria (You Won't Believe What Happened Next!)."


Every PM team I work with wants to talk about scaling and "next level" stuff. Meanwhile their stakeholder meetings look like hostage negotiations.


The REAL pros, the QUIET pros, just do the basics better.

They write more clearly.

They get to the details.

They ask questions.

They say no faster.

They ship more.


That's it.


Want to level up? Quit looking for advanced techniques. Start doing the basic things better than everyone else.

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