BlogSat

Ben Horowitz's blog  is a cornucopia of insight and pure wisdom.  One post I've really liked is Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO . It got me thinking about Product Managers in general, and how there is such a thing as a Peacetime PM and Wartime PM.  Here are a couple of excerpts from Ben's post: Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture.  Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children.  Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market.  Peacetime CEO strives for broad based buy in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus-building nor tolerates disagreeme...

Last Google I/O (Google's annual developer conference) was an interesting one for me - my team had a launch which I was excited about, but a total of 3 things that I worked on at different times at Google launched at this I/O. My and most of my colleagues work pretty hard - most of the time because we think, we believe and sometimes we just hope that what we're doing matters. So it was with mixed feelings that I received the news that two things that I'd worked on earlier in my career at Google were being shut down. The news wasn't surprising to me - at least one of those decisions was the right one, but it still hurt. It meant stuff that I'd spent a lot of time working on - agonizing over, sweating over and sacrificing a lot of other things including family over... now just no longer existed - all the work didn't matter at all. WTF!! I got over it, but it rankled a bit. Then I saw this video over the weekend. Its pretty great perspective. Given...

"I can't believe I get to make the decisions that they let me make. Its scaring me" Five years ago, a friend who'd just taken on a new role - a pretty great role - said this to me with nervous excitement as we finished catching up. Remarkably, another friend had said something similar to me at work a week before. Then today morning I read this great post by Anne Toth , which reminded me of what I'd said to both of them then. Now I believe confidence in appropriate amounts is a good thing - it helps you perform at your best - eliminating unnecessary doubts and allowing you to truly focus. But not everyone has it particularly in unfamiliar situations and especially if you're a certain personality type If you do have such a problem, and I did especially when I was younger,  I found that there's two things one can tell oneself (i.e. pull the confidence-con) to convince yourself that you are in actuality good enough - good enough to compete; to...

[True for all posts on my blog, but bears repeating for this one - opinions are my opinion and aren't informed by anyone at Google or otherwise that actually works on this stuff :-)] About 10 months ago, I started a blog post titled "How we f-ed it up: the Stream/Newsfeed" (screenshot below) so: I jotted down a few bullet points, but realized in a couple of minutes that I was railing too much (in some cases at people that I knew) and not making any points that I wanted to read. So I gave up - there were other things to rail about. I started the post again two months later after a discussion with co-workers that looked at me funny when I told them that streams/feeds were a bad idea for what they were working on, since they were going to die one day anyway. I liked the title better this time (screenshot below). But then I never finished the post.  :-/ But the Facebook feed announcement made me revisit the draft. If you actually see this, I finished th...

Thanks to Sachin Rekhi's list I found this incredible read on Product Management  by Adam Nash. Almost as soon as I was done, I decided it was the most concise, well-written description of the job I've read in a while - actually possibly ever. Actually Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager wins out - primarily because of its as much poetry as it is polemic. While there's a lot of goodness in there, the phrase that stuck with me (to the extent I was using it all day today) was "What game are we playing?"   - its a great, concise way to describe product strategy. From the article: Clearly defining what game you are playing includes your vision for the product, the value you provide your customer, and your differentiated advantage over competitors.  More importantly, however, is that it clearly articulates the way that your team is going to win in the market.  The only part that I didn't agree with in the article was the "you need to know th...

I had a birthday last weekend, and around such times I naturally find myself looking for material that forces me to introspect an take stock of my life. So my wife pointed me to this video of Prof. Deepak Malhotra at HBS. This "Tragedy and Genius" was a great speech to a graduating class. You should try to watch the speech if you have the time. If not, here's what I took from it Tragedy: is when you had the potential and ability to be happy, but didn't because of the choices you made Genius : The question isn't "Are you a genius?" It is "What is your genius?" What is your essence. Find it and you'll be happy. Some ways to find it are   Quit: early, and often: if you don't like it, and you can afford to, just quit. Add Value: Make things better for everyone before thinking about what you get out of it. Empathy: Understand the other persons' point of view Humility : have it. Learn: from everyone and in every...

I just back from a trip back home to India right now. I spent some of this trip helping my mom with bunch of chores - some around the house and others involving lots (and lots!) of paperwork. What surprised me though is how I actually helped - in most cases the way I could be most useful was to just show up, offer support, provide advice when asked and follow orders. Sure... in some cases, my presence helped practically (e.g. reach and carry stuff , get out and run errands, and I'm a fast proofreader/editor/form-checker), but my real value was in just being a good sidekick. It made me realize how the value of a good sidekick is under-appreciated. In general, even as children, we're all taught to want to be good leaders and then management education, and indeed most professional career development, is about how to be one. Sure, one reason to be a sidekick for a while is the whole "Before you can learn to lead you must learn to follow" thing, but there'...

Happy New Year! The blog has been neglected again and as always, I think I have a good reason... though any reason is never really good enough. :-) But New Years is as good a time as any to restart the blog - and it kinda fits in with one of my resolutions this year. Last year, I didn't make any and mostly didn't make any growing up. However, I do think New Year Resolutions are an awesome idea -  rituals serve a purpose and a social ritual that forces you to think about what you want to accomplish (or at the very least what you're not doing) is always a good thing. So make those resolutions, even if people tell you they're silly or you could do them at anytime or even if your track record with them (like mine) is kinda embarrassing... You can resolve to get better at your resolutions. :-) However, resolutions aren't real until your write them down and so I just did, and with this post I'm on my way. Here's hoping I have better luck than this guy ...

A quick glance at my LinkedIn stats suggested its MBA recruiting season again, so I refreshed by MBA PM recruiting FAQ from last year . Hope it helps any MBA students interested in Google or the Product Manager role here. :-)

I realized I needed a PM reset today: something to quickly renew myself: remember what I need to be thinking about to do my job well - for my product and my team. The quickest way to do this is to read something that inspires me.  I knew the two articles I wanted to read first and I realized that they would suffice for the reset I was looking for; I then realized that Ben Horowitz wrote both of em. :-) Good PM, Bad PM : Ideally this is a once-a-month Product Manager read - to remind yourself what the job is really about. A Good Place to work : a article goes over a lot of things, but the reason I wanted to read this again is the idea that you need to take responsibility for the happiness of the people in the environment you work in. Over time I've realized just how much a PM (or really any team lead) can affect the professional (and hence personal) lives of the people he/she works with. Thanks for the quick reset Ben Horowitz !

Just as a book club discussion at work on Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs ' autobiography concluded, I started " Insanely Simple " by Ken Segall. The book is a reasonable read in terms of style and content, weaving a number of anecdotes form the author's interactions with Jobs and experience at Apple and some other companies into some themes. But this book left me as deflated and angry at myself as I've felt in ages after reading a book. As you go over Jobs' insane focus (and that adjective has more meaning as used here) on keeping product design simple and ruthlessly thinking through how to achieve that, you realize just how short you and most others fall from that standard. The temptation to add complexity (in the product and for the user) is so strong in most teams and processes, that most products and companies don't escape it. The book has a bunch of examples of how and why so many fall in the trap  and how Jobs avoided it. Quick recom...

I ended up actually getting some reading done on long train rides over the summer break. Two short articles ended up giving me more to think than I'd expected. Clayton Christensen's   How will you measure your life ? Peter Drucker's: Managing oneself The former isn't behind an HBR paywall and well worth the read. A couple of people had told me about this article and had discussed a lot of what was in it with me, but reading was still well worth it. The latter is behind a paywall, and while there's a lot to take away form it (find your strengths, understand how you learn, grow your strengths etc.), the point that stayed with me was the final one: know your values and if your values aren't consistent with those of where you're working, it doesn't matter how good you are or what you do, you're unlikely to be successful there. So find a place and role where you fit. If you're in the mood for some career-ish reading, I highly recomm...

Every once in a while, I'm reminded that humans can be completely lacking in humanity. My wife had the following experience yesterday on her ride back home. She got on the train and found a seat. The train was unusually crowded and it looked a lot of people had to stand for a long ride. An elderly Asian gentleman carrying a few things in both hands, was looking for spot, started to complain smilingly about the train being so full and stood in the aisle at the back of the carriage some seats away from her. She expected someone closer to gentleman in the aisle (lots of younger people on the train) to give him their seat. No one did. The train started, and it was clear the man was having a lot of trouble standing up. Then at the next stop there was actually an announcement saying the train was full so please give up your seats to people who needed them. Still nobody moved. My wife got up walked to the end of the train and asked the gentleman to go over to her seat. Sh...

One my favorite professional-ish quotes (source is hazy) is "There's a huge difference between 20 years experience and 1 years experience 20 times." I interpret that as a few different things: the need to constantly grow, to learn new things, develop professionally etc. etc. - but for the past couple of weeks, in brief pauses while being on vacation, I've been thinking about when and how that actually happens. We're in execution mode most of the time. We're doing things either for work or in our personal lives and we often measure how well we're doing by the sheer number of things we do.  We are programmed to favor things that seem urgent over things that are important. Learning, however, is most effective in the pauses - i.e. not when you're doing but when you have a chance to step back and review what you actually did. If we're not regularly reviewing we're not likely to improve, and even more importantly less likely to learn from our ...

This started out as a very different post on Father's Day that I couldn't actually finish... but here goes a more rambling one that  I think I can. :-) Father's Day: Last Sunday was Father's Day. I never remember celebrating Father's Day - I may have wished my Dad once, because we were on the phone and my mom told me there were TV ads for Father's Day running. But this was the first one, where as I heard the ads and marketing, I was reminded that I couldn't wish my father even if I wanted to - and I regretted all the times I felt I could or should have. As is often my (annoying) habit, I started thinking about what this meant and why the right thing to do is to live life in a way that there are no such regrets, but that's just not possible, is it? No regrets:  is not possible. We're conditioned to make satisificing  decisions, and even with perfect information and rational decisions and incredible decision-making discipline, chance/luck etc. ...

I sent this in an email earlier in the week and it felt like one of those Sundays when reading these again might be the thing to do. :-) If you're feeling all reflective and such - and missing some product inspiration, I can also recommend some light reading :-) the classic  Good PM, Bad PM   - ( shorter, better version here )   the recent, but still good quora answer by Ian McAlliser to What  does a 1% PM  look like?

I'd heard it often enough, but I didn't know it had a name too: the " Lake Wobegone effect ." " a  cognitive bias  that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. " You've likely encountered it often as well: perhaps its the stat that 80% of all drivers think they're above average, perhaps it was in poll data where most people expect their peers to be worse off than their parents, but expect to do better than their own. The bias is important to recognize - on an average its likely you're not as that much better than everyone else at something as you think you are. But on the other hand, unless you believe that you are (or will be) better than everyone else its hard to actually be better than everyone else. So recognize the effect, but sometimes recognize that the belief is necessary.

Once in a while, you get some really, really great advice - so great that it is the most obvious thing in the world once you hear it. Its the kind of advice that definitely bears repeating; so here goes. I was chatting about the strategy of a certain product with a senior product lead over lunch. I started talking about what it should be doing going forward, when the person I was talking to asked me pause. "Given where they are, and what they knew then, what do you think should've happened six months ago instead?" I paused for thought. "If it is hard to answer that question" , he continued, "even when you are 100% omniscient about how things will play out, its less likely you can figure out the right path going forward." The past isn't a predictor of the future, but it does inform it and at the very least “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”  -  George Santayana As obvious as it is, this kind of thinking...

The Economist has a great cover story this week on the fading sheen of public companies . The stat below stood out to me. The number of public companies has fallen dramatically over the past decade—by 38% in America since 1997 and 48% in Britain. The number of initial public offerings (IPOs) in America has declined from an average of 311 a year in 1980-2000 to 99 a year in 2001-11. Particularly as I discussed the mechanics and laws of the IPOs last night with my wife (in the context of the supposed Morgan Stanley mangling of the Facebook IPO ), the incredible inefficiency of the entire IPO and stock pricing process became so clear to me - it made me appreciate the Google IPO auction even more.

Its been two months since my Dad passed away today, and I find myself remembering things he'd mentioned to me in passing a lot these days. This one, in particular, came to my mind today. Help others, especially if they ask you for help, whenever you can. Its easy and you'll feel good that you did. However, almost as importantly, never, ever expect anything in return - even thanks, certainly not praise or a returned favor. You'll very likely be disappointed and less likely to help the next time around. Its good advice, and over the years has definitely made my life better - especially the second part. :-) So, if someone asks you for help, do it and enjoy the feeling it gives you. Just as importantly, discipline yourself to expect absolutely nothing in return.