If you'd like to understand a little about me, this may help - a little.
I've created this site as a place to store some background work that might help to clarify my interests. At this point, it's an experiment. Thanks for stopping by.
Going where there be dragons.
MOOC Anyone -- Popular Culture and Online Educational Platform Development
This project was so "politically" hot it glowed in the dark. It had been failing for months, bleeding money, and making no progress. It landed in the hands of Promethean and they gave it to me to sort out. It's a long story, and worth a listen. There are a number of important lessons we can learn from it.
Here's the narrative:The idea was to deliver educational material through the lens of popular culture. Our MVP included a Star Trek based educational experience done in cooperation with CBS and the Smithsonian Institution.
Situation: A funded online learning initiative (MOOC) failed to make meaningful progress for several months. Partner contractual relationships were strained. Promethean was under board pressure to fix the problem.
Resolution: I started by confirming that the project made business sense. This involved both market and customer research as well as business modeling. All of that had to be done quickly. After confirming that a prima facia case existed it was time to organize and deliver.
I replaced most of the original team. To remain within the budget we hired a young, diverse, but generally inexperienced team. What agile stories/epics we had required a lot of rework. To inform our MVP, we interviewed potential customers, experts, and reviewed existing MOOC best practices. We combined countless perspectives and arrived at a workable vision. By the time we were done with this first part, we had re-imagined the entire experience. All epics/stories were rewritten, expanded, and prioritized into appropriate phases. The UI was scrapped and redesigned. The development team's priorities were aligned and we proceeded iteratively to successfully ship the product.
Outcomes: We shipped the product within our planned execution window and within two-percent of the original budget. We coordinated go-to-market with CBS and the Smithsonian Institution. We managed to reduce our anticipated acquisition costs sooner than expected (12-weeks ahead of schedule -- we assumed our costs would drop as we optimized our digital spend across channels and came to understand what was working and what was not). Conversion improved at the same time surpassing expectations by more than 25 percent. Customers loved it. Our social media properties rocked.
Operational Excellence -- Root Cause Analysis
Sometimes we overthink solutions. We become convinced that a particular approach is the only approach. We forget to question assumptions openly and honestly.
It's very difficult to see this problem when we are deeply involved in it. And once we invest time into an approach, loss aversion, or sometimes just "face-saving" will cause us to double or triple down before we take the time to re-evaluate (to begin the diverge/converge process again). But when we're not deeply involved, when we are new to an organization, it can become clear that this is happening. Such was the case at Agilysys and the "release" problem they were facing.
Situation: Agilysys had grown through acquisition. The company consisted of 12 "legacy" products and 4/5 new "true" SaaS products intended to eventually replace several of the legacy products. Largely independent teams worked the legacy products from different locations around the US and with remote development support. Tools, methodologies, and team maturity was radically inconsistent. The newer SaaS products all followed the same development and release methodology. The issues there were much different, but no less daunting. For example, the organization never reconciled the realities of agile development with executive-level financial planning. As a result, no standard release process was possible technically, and no one had any idea what was shipping, when, how and why - including customers. Sales, support, and marketing were rarely prepared for a release.
Several attempts had been made to fix the problem including costly (hundreds of thousands of dollars) project planning tools and even the development of an ambitious proprietary expert system. A lot of money had been spent. More was planned. Nothing had worked.
The failure can be attributed to believing that the release processes across products had to be brought into alignment before any release planning could be rationally pursued. Because it simply wasn't reasonable to insist on major changes across product development processes, the strategy had been to impose another layer of planning on top of them all. This additional layer was to act as a wrapper, hiding the underlying differences.
Resolution: Following the principles of lean/agile, and coupling them with a working knowledge of effective patterns in cross-functional communications, we designed a simple exception-driven notification mechanism, coupled with a single optional monthly meeting. This took the form of a structured email that listed every upcoming release. Next to each release were columns corresponding to each team requiring notification. We used colored Harvey Balls to describe the status of each department and required the department leads to update the color of their Harvey Ball for any release they were not prepared to support. (The structured portion of the email was a snapshot of a confluence page to which the players all had read/write access.
The email was sent to every lead, and the executive team. A glance down the page told anyone where issues existed. All green Harvey Balls meant everyone was aware of every release and that there were no blocking issues. A red Harvey Ball signaled a potential issue. Hardly rocket science, hardly innovative, but entirely effective.
Outcome: By sending this email out weekly to the players, this ensured that everyone knew when a release was coming. Questions could be asked and planning conducted. This worked because the issue was not uniform release processes, it was simple awareness. Once the players were aware of what was coming, they could work together to prepare. Smart people, working together, can solve problems without a lot of unnecessary structure. By emailing everyone at once, no one had any excuse for claiming they were caught by surprise. We had one 30-minute scrum style meeting per month to list any outstanding significant issues.
Because the solution did not require another layer of planning, training on new tools, and literally no net new work (the hassles this simple solution avoided more than made up for the need to occasionally update a few Harvey Balls) it was relatively easy to obtain buy-in. The old thinking didn't go away without a struggle, but it did eventually fade away. Managing that process was one of the more challenging aspects of the project.
A Customer-Led Organization
So you want a "product-led" organization. No wait, a "sales-driven" organization. Hold on, maybe it's a "developer-driven" model. Or perhaps you're in that circle of hell where what's actually happening is the HiPPO led organization.
I've seen them all. I've seen them all twice. And I've seen the common patterns of dysfunction that inevitably follow each. Today there is only one model I even consider. It might be called a "customer-led" organization. Before you roll your eyes and turn the page, understand that each of the other types believes they're customer-focused. I've rarely found that to be true.
What constitutes a "customer-led" organization?
Talk to Teresa Torres.
I believe the model she popularized, and I now strive to implement everyw
here I go, represents the state of the art in product management. In sum, it's about continuous customer discovery undertaken by cross-functional teams, rich product-value based test and learn, and a heavy reliance upon the use of visual tools. A core tenet is that product managers must work with stakeholders of all stripes. Transparency and communication are key. Only then does actual buy-in, based upon an accurate shared understanding, happen. The nut there is "continuous customer discovery."
We're not talking about some upfront discussions and the occasional chit chat with the user group, even if that's coupled with the regular review of engagement data. It must be -- it has to be -- continuous and direct customer engagement both quantitatively and qualitatively. There is no substitute. There is no other way to get into the heads of your customers. And we do that in the context of continuous learning and adaptation. As Teresa will tell you:
"It's not just about continuously improving our products, it's about continuously improving our practices."
Does that mean we ignore internal audiences? No. In fact, bringing them into the process is essential. Communicating with them is a big part of the point of employing visual tools. Each constituency has a different perspective. Sales teams understand the buying persona best, for example. Success teams tend to understand the user's practical operational needs the best. Developers can see efficiencies in the implementation. Product managers, absent customer engagement, see only elegant solutions to imagined problems. And HiPPO's just know they're always right. Not one has the bigger picture. This is not a new problem.
By focusing on the customer and being inclusive, we can effectively reconcile the various perspectives before they become competitive perspectives. We help everyone come to grips with the various perspectives. In this way, we avoid missed opportunities and continually evolve to match our changing marketplaces. We become a learning organization. This is key because marketplaces change all the time and companies are rarely able to adapt. I'll address this phenomenon, describe how it manifests, and why it is so unbelievably hard to avoid, in another article.
This model, focused on the customer, makes the best use of the technology, and achieves the business outcomes we're all after.
A Learning for a Small World Landing Page Example
Since 2011 I've believed it is important for Product Managers to fully understand
the marketing process. If your experience includes e-commerce, the transition is very straightforward. Optimizing web experiences is almost identical to optimizing advertising. Employing the two in concert becomes a much more tractable problem.
Perhaps more importantly, all of the skills developed in e-commerce style website/UX optimization, advertising optimization, and as that integrates with overall sales pipeline management, are what it means to apply agile/lean/test-and-learn iterative methodologies. When we think of this in terms of fundamental product design, and incorporate gamification concepts, we have what we need to deliver product-led growth.
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The LearningforaSmallWorld project rocked. This is one of several of the most successful landing pages we designed. The design matched the site in all essentials. The ad's specific value proposition was reinforced generally on the site. No promises were made that were not realized fully and completely in the product. It was tested against countless alternatives. (It's interesting to note that it does violate some best practices -- and yet it still won out over the alternatives. "Best practices" are not in all cases and at all times, necessarily best.)
We employed unboounce.com for the landing page solution. This was both cost-effective and fast. I have to say that while I personally enjoy this exercise, I most only managed this effort and kept my fingers out of the specific design (okay, I admit I wrote the copy). The upwork.com contractor we employed for the hands-on was a rockstar that I'd work with again in a heartbeat.
(This is yet another story, but I will say that I've had great experiences employing Upwork.com/gig workers to fill in team gaps. The work is almost always remote, but with experience, that's not a drawback.)
And of course, all the images were cleared with the Smithsonian Institution and CBS. (Our graphics support was awesome.)
Paradigm-Shifting Innovation, Asking the Right Questions
A bit of history, but still instructive.
Here's the short take: we introduced a device-based speech solution well in advance of Siri that fundamentally changed the way people viewed the use of speech to interact with devices.
Situation: I was a product manager/business development type within the Microsoft Advanced Technologies division. Microsoft had just released the "AutoPC." For the release, BillG had attended the annual Detroit auto show. He delivered a vision of PCs embedded into the dashboard of automobiles. The automotive industry was far from impressed. In fact, the headlines the following day read "Microsoft will not own the dashboard." No orders were placed. Detroit, and the automakers around the world, had spurned Bill Gates. My job was simple: how do we get back into the automotive industry.
Resolution: My team took two roads simultaneously. On the one hand, we developed an automotive PC integration solution called Car.Net and marketed that to the second-tier device manufacturers. Essentially, we moved back in the supply chain to become an ingredient in an established process.
On the other hand, we went directly to customers to drive demand. To do this, we needed a hook. We decided mobile devices were the best platform to highlight what was possible and build consumer demand that would eventually force the automakers to relax limitations on dashboard access. But how?
We built a customer experience map and understood it in detail. We questioned basic mobile device assumptions. We discovered something that today seems obvious but was not apparent at the time. Mobile devices were in fact very hard to use when you were mobile. The more we looked, the more comical it seemed that in order to use a mobile device, you had to be stationary. We crafted a host of scenarios, tested each with customers, and came to the conclusion (again, obvious today) that any solution that made mobile devices safer/easier to use when they were actually moving, would delight customers.
So we developed an alternative UI for the Microsoft device platform. We called it variously the "thumb-based" UI, or the "glanceable" UI. It sported fixed corner location that could be used without looking at the device at all. It replaced the Windows menu with large icons. The Windows Mobile team came down hard on us. They told us that they "knew" customers wanted a mobile device UI that was identical to the desktop UI because it was familiar to them. There was no debating it with them. They had "survey responses" to prove their point. (This is a common problem. If you go into a research effort with established beliefs/conclusions you risk discovering exactly what you believed in the first place -- and only that.)
We also developed a speech-based solution that was unlike anything available in the industry at the time. Until then, speech UI's had been used only to activate menu commands. They were nothing more than mouse/keyboard alternatives. Our solution was fundamentally different. We supported only a handful of commands, but we were relatively flexible in terms of how those commands were spoken. Each command, however, accomplished a task rather than activating a menu option. For example, instead of saying "file", "open" to activate the file menu, our command was "Play [David Bowie]" or "What's my next appointment" saving many keystrokes and getting directly to the desired functionality.
This we were permitted to ship.
Outcome: Today we see this in Siri, Alexa, Cortana and elsewhere. We did it years ahead of the pack. (I suspect anyone on the Windows Mobile team that remembers the "thumb-based" UI wishes they'd gone for that as well. It was a best seller on Handango. It shipped on HP and other manufactures' devices. It changed the way the industry thought about
speech technology on devices. It rocked.
Just for Fun: Hunter or Gatherer
I've been studying human prehistory recently. (I do things like that.) No surprise, that's all related to hunter and gatherer lifestyles. So I was wondering which I felt I was more like: hunter or gatherer (cuz, well, I'm really not a farmer).
The question might be more revealing than it initially sounds. Evolution is a thing, and if we were hunters and gatherers for the vast majority of our history as a species (and in our predecessor species), it would be shocking if our brains didn't evolve to meet the need.
As an aside, it's common to think of "ancient history" as something the Greeks did, or maybe the Egyptians. But those folks were relatively - no they were very, very - late to the party. The vast majority of human "history" happened before the Greeks. In fact, long before any written accounts.
So what are the differences between hunters and gatherers?
First, we should understand that both "gather." One gathers animals, the other gathers plants. And when we say hunter, we should understand that "hunting" was actually fishing most of the time.
What each gathers share some common attributes. Both plants and animals are found in the same places over time. Mushrooms, for example, reappear every year in the same locations. Apple trees are unlikely to pick up and relocate. Similarly, the animals we hunt, like the hunters themselves, are all creatures of habit. Fish are found in pools, behind rocks in riffles, along shade lines, and under shorelines. Animals follow the same path to water every day. Like gatherers, they move to locations that offer them food and that food can be found in predictable locations.
Therefore, we're unlikely to distinguish between hunters and gatherers based upon the similarities in what they bring home. What about the differences?
We know that gatherers have the potential to find more than 400 different edible or otherwise useful plants. That's a lot to learn and keep in mind in a society without iPhone apps. Distinguishing between them, and poisonous look-a-likes, is serious business. On the other hand, once you find them, "capturing" them is relatively straightforward. (Although handling could be tricky. Poison Oak, for instance, had several uses and was doubtless collected.)
It's challenging to discover an accurate number of animal species targeted by ancient hunters. It seems safe to assume the number was similar to the number of plant species gatherers had to catalog and pursue. Imagine, for example, all rodent and bird species. It does seem likely that there could be little/no confusion about what was edible and what was not. In terms of other animals, our palette is quite flexible.
However, it does seem certain that hunters faced objective physical dangers to a degree not experienced by gatherers. It's challenging to run down a deer. That's even more the case when you're doing so in competition with other predators. Where there is prey, there will be predators. And some prey (buffulo for example), are dangerous in their own right. Animals in flight, animals panicked, can sometimes react in unpredictable ways. In the absence of EMTs and emergency rooms, any injury can be life-threatening. Here's a fun urban legend that describes how something as seemingly harmless as a deer can be dangerous. Legend maybe, but I'm not messing with one: https://darwinawards.com/legends/legends2007-02.html
In terms of innovation, I don't see a difference between the pressures placed on either group. Yes, new hunting techniques could be a boon to the tribe. But so could new gathering, storage, and preparation strategies.
So in sum, we have only the following differences:
Gatherers were pressured to memorize hundreds of plant species and to understand them in detail sufficient to avoid mistaking them for poisonous look-a-likes. This sounds much like "attention to detail." Creativity would not be at a premium in the gatherer role -- in the prep maybe, but not the gathering itself.
Hunters faced unpredictable, even novel, life-threatening situations. They might well develop an improved assessment of risk and even see physical adaptations due to the pressures their more dangerous targets brought to bear. Creativity and composure would be rewarded. These sound a bit like startup characteristics but clearly have a place in any environment where innovation, where test and learn methodologies, are the day-to-day.
Me? Well, I'm fine with detail, but I'm unlikely to set any records. I would not call it out as a personally defining characteristic. So I'm going to have to go with hunter on this one.
Human "wiring" is a little wonky - and it can Lead to Product Management traps
I will bring this around to product management. Promise.
What do the following statements have in common:
- Trump supporters are fascists.
- Trump supporters are white supremacists.
- Democrats are socialists.
- Democrats want open borders.
Answer: they are all widely held beliefs. They are also false.
But, they are not 100 percent false. It's hard to say precisely how false they are. Doubtless, it varies somewhat from claim to claim. Nevertheless, any review of social media, of mass media, will present a subset of them -- depending upon the target customer/faction, as true -- as representing the whole truth. Visit the Ben Shapiro forum on Facebook if this is in any way in doubt. The John Oliver forum provides a thematically similar view.
So how does a fringe perspective successfully masquerade as the consensus view among politically polarized groups? Part of the answer is the nature of membership, the nature of tribal affiliations. The other part relates to the dynamics of contemporary media -- professional and user-generated social media.
In some circles, it's widely recognized that online politically focused forums lead to escalating displays of membership. Each member signals their party/tribal loyalty through public recitations of the tribal narrative. This is often accompanied by other more dramatic displays.
Consider the following example:
- Member 1) Those people don't understand the ramifications of their actions.
- Member 2) It's like dealing with children.
- Member 1) Children are innocent. These people are not.
- Member 2) No, they're bad for the nation.
- Member 1) At least. They should all be tried for treason.
- Member 2) They should just be taken out and shot -- they're not destroying the country while I'm alive.
- Member 1) I'm with you there. If good men do nothing... We have to be ready.
This scenario is played out countless times, in countless forums, on all sides of every issue, every day -- likely every minute.
At the same time, we know a few things about the nature of human attention. First, we know that negativity is the most reliable way to capture our attention. It's intuitively obvious, but also a subject of much research. We can turn on the evening news, or browse the most popular social media feeds to see it in action. Science refers to the phenomenon as the negativity bias. The term was made popular by psychologists Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman in 2001.
Many theories address the specifics with some of the more compelling relating to the evolutionary advantage such a bias would offer. Dramatic action in response to threats may sometimes be overkill, but inattention to threats will kill you. Especially if that threat is a growl in the dark and you happen to be a hunter-gatherer. And our brains evolved to support hunting and gathering, not political policymaking. Contemporary civilization is a very recent phenomenon. We truly are equipped with brains evolved for life in the forest and on the savannah. And it shows.
That explains our tendency to tune in the frightening, the threatening, and to focus relatively more of our attention on negative presentations. Now, if your business is based upon capturing attention and reselling it for advertising, or for subscription revenue, your customer acquisition and retention policies will align with these facts. This is the situation for all mass media players. It's inescapable. Any story of interest to the specific customer base that promises to capture attention, and hold it, will find it's way to the "front page."
The process of tracking story virality and promoting those stories that capture the greatest attention guarantees this outcome. And if your industry is highly competitive, the tendency is towards more and more outrageous headlines and associated content. And they've no lack of content of this sort.
The sources for this content are the outliers, the fringe populations. They represent people that are both vocal and volatile. Prior to social media, fringe platforms remained fringe. We were insulated from them. The social cost of subscribing to fringe newspapers, for example, could have been significant. Today, however, anything can appear in our feed and never make it to our coffee table or the attention of our neighbors. Social media has become an outlet for fringe views that makes them instantly available. Always vocal, but previously distant, fringe voices are now right in our faces.
If you're an editor looking for compelling content, you look to the radical fringes, not to the majority consensus views. By definition, the consensus is not at issue - it represents agreement and is, therefore, less interesting. In this way, our personal content spaces, our bubbles, fill with increasing amounts of more and more negative, ever more violent, and most importantly, ever more *fringe* content.
The issues, the conflict, the passion, exist at the fringes, among the radical outliers. And so the fringes gradually come to define the argument when in fact they are the farthest from the majority or consensus views. "Tribal" fear fantasies are quickly becoming articles of mass faith.
Okay, so how does this relate to product management? Ever heard that squeaky wheels get the grease? When, for example, we place overmuch focus on support tickets and sales input to guide feature identification and development, we are falling into the same trap. The voice of the customer must represent the reconciliation of many perspectives. Primary among them are the existing customers AND the next generation of customers.
Google Display -- Data-based Campaign Creation and Analysis
I've included only a few examples of the thousands of ads created for this e-commerce company. I was not responsible for the photos themselves. I used the photos to craft the ads. I, along with my teams, have put together countless ads over the years in support of launch efforts, growth efforts, and sometimes just because we were good at it. Several of the social ads were really quite effective.
In fact, I took this role specifically to gain experience in digital marketing campaign design and execution. The company was over the top buttoned-up in terms of data-based analysis of the e-commerce operation generally. My own predisposition to look at things in that fashion fit in well. It worked out great. We had some really awesome quarters together.