Kenton R.

Wise analysis from Greg Boone: "Without training and guardrails, we risk both misuse and missed opportunity. Leaders must foster environments where AI exploration is guided, not reckless." Walk West, North Carolina Technology Association (NC TECH), WRAL TechWire

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If you are getting into PM because you "want more decision-making power," it's time to think again. This morning Nate Cusick posted about the realities of product management - we don't really have any power. We have influence, yes. But our decisions can be overridden by lots of people. Or just ignored. But this leads to the insight that the skills that are 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘢 important for PMs are not technical, and not domain-specific, but those related to "navigating rounds of tradeoffs, constraints, and tough conversations," all in the interest of making sure the right thing is done. This means:  • Soft skills. • Persuasion skills. • Political skills. • Code-switching skills. • Sales skills. If you want to be a PM you'd better love that stuff. And if you want to be a 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 PM, you should focus on improving in those areas. Not learning SQL.

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PM Cowboy Podcast #39 [EN]  P39 Beware of Organizational Disfunction Guest: Scott Ambler & Mark Lines – Agile Icons, Founders of Disciplined Agile, PM Thought Leaders & PM Cowboys  Topic: "Introducing Disciplined Agile & the Future of Hybrid PM"

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My 2nd article for October includes one of my favorite jeff@ isms, though I didn't include the whole story. Ignore conflicting anecdotes at your own peril. Great PMs don’t sound like executives. They sound like customers. Not because they ignore strategy or business needs, but because strategy only works when it’s anchored in the experience of the people using your product. I wrote this piece for ProjectManagement.com about why the best product managers speak in customer terms, not corporate ones. When you can translate user pain into business impact, you stop being a messenger and start being a strategic voice. #PMI #projectmanagement https://lnkd.in/gbdsTNpC

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I couldn't agree more! I've seen these roles get blurred in nearly every industry I've worked in. The key takeaway here is that it’s CRUCIAL to clearly define each role within an organization to ensure alignment. When Product Managers and Project Managers have distinct responsibilities, it enables both functions to operate at their highest potential. 🔹 Product Manager: Focuses on the WHAT and WHY. Drives the vision, strategy, and ensures the product delivers customer value. 🔹 Project Manager: Focuses on the HOW and WHEN. Manages execution, timelines, and resources to bring that vision to life. When both roles are clearly defined and respected, the organization works more efficiently and effectively, ensuring strategy and execution align perfectly. Let’s continue advocating for clarity in these roles to maximize impact! #ProductManagement #ProjectManagement #Leadership #TeamAlignment #OrganizationalClarity #BusinessStrategy #Efficiency #Innovation #ClearRoles #PMRoles #StrategyExecution #ProductDevelopment

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One of the questions I get asked most often is, "How do I break into product if every PM role asks for experience?" It’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Most PM roles require experience, but how do you get experience if you’ve never had the job? My advice: don’t wait for the opportunity. Create it. It’s often easier than it sounds. Here are a few ways to build real product experience before you have the title: 1. Do a small consulting-style product project: Help a friend in product or partner with a founder at an early-stage startup who needs product help. Learn the business goals and KPIs. Dig into the core product. What’s working? What isn’t? Talk to users. Run a usability study. Do a competitive analysis. Synthesize what you learn. 2. Look for product problems around you: If you’re a student, your university is full of opportunities hiding in plain sight: a campus website or app, ticketing for athletic events, the admissions experience, or a local campus business trying to improve discovery or conversion. If you’re out of school, look around your neighborhood: a restaurant with a broken website, a small business struggling with online ordering, or a mom-and-pop shop that can’t be found on Google. 3. Use AI to help businesses work better: A huge number of small and mid-size businesses are exposed right now and don’t know where to start. You can help them get organized, whether it be cleaning up their site so AI tools can interpret it or setting them up with basic AI tools for internal workflows. 4. Analyze products you use every day: Apps you love. Apps you hate. Shopping, streaming, social, fitness. Why do they work? Where do they fall down? What would you prioritize if you owned the roadmap? Write it up with screenshots, tradeoffs, and reasoning. If you’re solving real problems for real people, you’re doing product work. And that absolutely counts as experience. Product experience isn’t just about the title you’ve had. It’s about the problems you’ve tackled, the decisions you’ve made, and how you think. And if you’re doing that, it belongs on your resume and LinkedIn. #ProductManagement  #Careers  #CareerSwitching  #TechCareers  #MBA

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CEO: “We need to replace our entire product team” Me: “Um, ok, let’s talk about this for a moment…” As a CPO and product advisor I’ve met plenty of CEOs and execs who are frustrated with the results they see from their product teams. Often they feel like all they need to do is replace the existing team with more experienced, “better” PMs.  But really they're blaming PMs for some of their own shortcomings as leaders. Results from a product team depend on putting great PMs in a great environment. If you don’t have a great environment, it doesn’t matter how good your PMs are, you’ll still be disappointed with the results. Maybe your PMs really are awful, but before you fire them all and hire new ones, I’d make sure you fix the environment: a) It’s much faster, cheaper and less painful b) You’ll have to do it anyway c) You’ll be surprised by what you can get from your existing team So how do you create a great environment for PMs as a leader? 🎯 Have consistent goals Of course you want to be agile, but try not to change the priorities all the time. Every quarter is ok, but every week or two and your teams will never get going. 🛡 Minimize distractions Progress is inversely correlated to the number of initiatives you have. Make sure your teams aren’t getting distracted by execs’ pet projects, internal requests or customer feedback. Have a very small (1-2) number of priorities for them to focus on. 🗺 Explain the context Spend the time up front to explain your goals and the features you’re asking for. If all you’re doing is demanding widgets from your product team, likely they’ll have a very different idea from you of what they are building and why. 💰 Talk about the money You can’t expect your PMs to make commercial decisions if they don’t have visibility of the business financials. Make this a part of every discussion (but just a part - it’s not everything!) 🛑 Be explicit where you will take risk Teams are usually quite conservative when it comes to risk, because when the site goes down they get blamed. If you want to move quickly, be very clear about the risks that you are willing to take. 👥 Manage their role breadth PMs can be excellent at lots of things - comms, analysis, delivery, user interviews… pretty much whatever you need them to, but they can’t do it all at the same time - there are only so many hours in the day. Make sure tasks as split evenly across design, engineering and data. 📄 Agree a lightweight reporting process As a leader you need status updates. To fly blind would be reckless. But bloated reporting burns many hours each week. Take 1-2 hours up front to co-create a reporting process with your PMs (i.e. tell them what you really need, and let them figure out the best way to deliver it) and you’ll save them huge amounts of time going forward. Hustle Badger offers practical, comprehensive support to upskill your product team. DM me for private programs, workshops and advice.

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Best Practices Are Overrated. Context is Everything. I constantly see entrepreneurs copy-pasting "best practices" (e.g., Scrum, OKRs, specific meeting structures) without checking if they fit their current stage. The problem with 'Best Practices': They assume average context. If you're a 5-person startup, a process designed for a 500-person enterprise will kill your momentum. Actionable Tip: Always ask, "Is this process optimized for our constraints, our team size, and our immediate goal?" If the answer is no, build a better practice for your current reality.

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We spend millions on performance management systems that everyone knows are broken. I used to think we could fix them with better tech or cleaner rating scales. I was wrong. The issue is these systems weren’t built for actual humans. The moment you tie feedback to compensation, people go into threat mode. - Brains shut down - Learning stops - Managers inflate ratings to avoid conflict And innovation dies quietly in the corner. Here’s the shift I push leaders to make: Stop trying to measure people better. Start making better decisions about them. Ask: Who created real impact? Who’s ready for more? Who actually needs support? When you separate pay discussions from development, everything gets clearer, and more human. Performance management isn’t just outdated. It’s built on the wrong assumptions about how people work. Leaders have a choice: keep managing by myth or start leading by design. Which part of your system needs to go first?

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This morning I asked if your product team was collecting requirements or solving problems. Now let's talk about how to change it. The good news is that it doesn't require restructuring your team or overhauling your process. It starts with three mindset changes that the best product teams have quietly made. From "what do you need?" to "what problem are we solving?" The question your team leads with changes everything. The moment you anchor every conversation to the problem rather than the solution, you stop accumulating requests and start filtering for what actually matters. This one shift alone improves the team's efficiency significantly. From sign-off to shared understanding. Most teams treat stakeholder sign-off as the goal. High-performing teams treat it as a by-product. When stakeholders genuinely understand the problem being solved and have been part of shaping the approach, sign-off stops being a hurdle and becomes a natural next step. From delivery metrics to impact metrics. What gets measured shapes what gets prioritised. If your team only tracks what ships, you will always be optimising for volume. Start asking what changed for the user after something shipped, and let that answer guide what gets built next. These aren't radical ideas. But in teams where pressure is high and timelines are tight, they are the first things to go. The teams that protect them are the ones that build products people actually use. Tomorrow I'll be talking about something most product teams never want to admit Now is a good time to follow me and repost this.....so that this valuable content can reach others who need to see it🤗🤗

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