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My Product Management Toolkit (35): Effective One-on-One Meetings

Like all meetings, it’s easy to get little out of one-on-one meetings. Ineffective one-on-one meetings affect both managers and their direct reports. Ineffective one-on-one meetings are characterised by at least one party feeling that it’s been a waste of time. These are two examples of ineffective one-on-one meetings that I’ve observed over the years: ‘The…
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My Product Management Toolkit (34): Product Principles

“Values are like fingerprints. Nobodies are the same but you leave them all over everything you do.” Elvis Presley “Values” – each organisation has got them. Whether they’re explicit or implicit, strong company values underpin everything a business does (and doesn’t do). “Serve Our Users” for instance is a core value articulated in the Google…
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“Principles” (Book Review)

“Principles” is the latest book by Ray Dalio – founder of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund. In this rather hefty tome of a book, Dalio offers an insight into the principles which he’s applied throughout his life and work, and his underlying reflections. He kicks off the book by explaining that “Good principles are…
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My Product Management Toolkit (33): Launch and Learn

“Build it and they will come!” I used to work once with a senior executive, who was of the opinion that a product or feature should just be launched, without any testing with customers beforehand. “I know that once it’s out there, people will want it” she’d explain to me, adding that “it’s what people…
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“Autonomy” (Book Review)

Lawrence Burns is a veteran of the automative industry. Having worked his entire professional career in the car industry – in Detroit, the birthplace of modern car manufacturing no less – you might expect Burns to be apprehensive about ‘change’ and modern technology. The opposite couldn’t be more true of Burns, since he’s been an…
