Inspired Work
I have had days where I come home from work and can barely see straight due to stress. When this happens, there are two things I may do when I get home, neither of which are good. First, I start to be ‘short’ and crabby with the first person I see. Second, I dive
For most of my career, I have been on a somewhat spiritual search. I was looking for an organization that harnessed the wisdom of the employee and where everyone was valued, respected, and treated as a whole person. I knew in my core that if you felt valued and respected, you would do fabulous
As part of my career journey, I have had so many people say to me…I want to be a VP or a CEO. It’s important to remember that leaders are not just the ones with formal titles such as VP, EVP or CEO. In fact, many leaders that have inspired me have not been formal
We have all been there. We work on a project for years, roll it out, and there are significant problems. In fact, I was once on a project where we had to go ‘dark’ for six months and pull the product from the market. This week, we heard about Samsung pulling their mobile phone from
As I think about helping others learn to stand in their power, I think back to my favorite leader, Jim Mitchell. It was 2002 or so. I was a new product manager who was a bit clueless. I was not confident in myself or my ideas and was easily swayed by people who had control,
As my children head off to college, I know they will start to compare themselves to other students. Who is smarter? Who is going to succeed? However, is a person’s intelligence a fixed quantity they’re born with? Or is it something malleable, something that can change throughout the lifespan? Can a person change careers, even
A client of mine works as a product manager. She has two primary product leadership teams. Let’s say team A and team B. Each team is composed of a product manager, architect, and senior developer and herself. The goal of each team is to determine high-level design, user flow, and architecture. A concept called psychological
You sit in a three-day product strategy session. The walls are covered in sticky notes. You’ve listened to hours of presentations. There are hundreds of ideas. There is excitement in the room. The group is onto something big. We are going to build the next big innovation that will make our company stand out from
What makes a good product manager? Is it one who knows the many product management processes? Is it one who has specific industry expertise? As I coach product management teams, I see many teams with different skills. Are there core skills or traits that make someone a great product manager? As a coach, how can
The product design and discovery process is messy, involves many people, and is linked to social and organizational dynamics of the team. To determine what to build, what problems to solve, how to solve them, whether it makes sense to solve them, you need a team of people with many different skills. For example, the
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