Season 2 - Newsletter 06 --> Micro-edition | PM Mastermind Strategy Session

Friends,

This week I had the opportunity to speak at a Strategy Teardown Session on Apple hosted by the PM Mastermind Linkedin group. It was a ton of fun and one thing that really resonated with folks was my list of resources for Product Managers trying to get better / dive into strategy.

In this edition, I’ll run down a few key things to remember as product managers when thinking about strategy and will provide a list of resources, I would start with.

As always we appreciate you sharing this newsletter if you think it could help a peer of yours improve their product skillset.

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Q: What would be your advice for a Product Manager looking to get better at Strategy?

Before I recommend any community, tweet, or book, I would suggest that Product Managers really think through the following 3 points

1. Be Curious - There are several layers to this onion, the first, seeking to add to your wisdom and understanding by collecting as much knowledge as possible. The other layers that are not often mentioned but are just as important are to A/ reframe your hypothesis and challenge them continually. B/ Understand what focusing on your bets will mean to the other potential initiatives and C/ are your bets defendable, unique, or something repeatable.

2. Do It - Just start a document and share it with your peers and mentors. Product Managers and the community at large are incredible at providing feedback and wanting to build the discipline up. Chances are no matter how senior or good you think the person you are reaching out to is, you will both be learning something new on this exercise.

3. Dive In - It’s always good to see concrete examples of what current strategies look like. The best sources of that are public companies quarterly earning reports or those yet-to-be public companies’ S-1 filings.

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Q: What’s your best tip for a PM looking to build their strategy muscle?

The good news is that there are a ton of excellent resources today both online and elsewhere

• I would start with books, audio or otherwise

  • Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta is a great way for beginners and experts alike to understand Michael Porter’s treaties on strategy.

  • Good Strategy / Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt is the perfect companion to any Strategy journey. The real-world examples of both good and bad strategies are a great way to go beyond academic understanding of strategy.

  • Competing Against Clay Christensen is a duh classic. I usually say anything by the late Clay Christensen is worth your time but if you had to pick up only one book, I would select this one. Clay is the father of Jobs To Be Done and really helps you frame what needs your strategy should be going after.

  • Measures What Matters by John Doerr is the last book and key. Defining a strategy and measuring whether the strategy is successful should go hand in hand. John Doerr the father of modern-day OKRs provides a framework for success measurement.

• Folks to follow on Twitter

  • Shreyas Doshi - ex-Big Tech, Shreyas Doshi is our current favorite Product Manager SME on Twitter. Both his normal and Super follower levels are incredibly valuable but we do recommend the super follower level if you don’t mind paying for it.

  • Gibson Biddle - ex-Netflix Gibson not only has great insight into his time at Netflix but also on how to manage your PM career like a product,

  • Internal Tech Emails - a little-known account that surfaces emails from tech giants as gathered via various legal and congressional actions. These provide a direct insight into conversations mere mortals don’t get to be part of.

  • John Cutler - Amplitude Product Evangelist, John is a prolific writer who brings a much needed not-big-tech point of view to discussions on product management

• Communities

  • The PM Mastermind - A fast-growing community with great member support

  • Product Hustle Stack - Do I really need to answer why :-)

I’m sure I have committed resources, tweets, or other subject matter experts. But as with everything new, it’s not a bad idea to start somewhere small and constrained and grow from there.

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