Posted on August 29, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
Sometimes it sure seems like other people have all the luck and get all the breaks. They don’t seem to work any harder than you, they don’t appear to be more intelligent, and they certainly are not more handsome. So why do they get the breaks you long for? Robin Sharma, author of The Leader Who Had No Title, summed it up this way:
Lucky breaks are nothing more than unexpected rewards for intelligent choices we’ve chosen to make. Success doesn’t just happen because someone’s stars line up. Success, both in business and personally, is something that’s consciously created. Success is created through conscious choice.
Focus your mental energy on achieving success and you will see ‘lucky breaks’ come your way consistently.
Filed under: Learning | Tagged: success, choice, Robin Sharma | Leave a Comment »
Posted on August 19, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
For the past several months I’ve been immersed in the experience of working with top designers and learning how to take their work, write relevant requirements at breakneck speed and work closely with development to build our new products. We’re essentially changing the focus of the product from enterprise to consumer. Talk about a learning experience! It’s been nothing short of transformational.
The key for me has been a willingness to let go of past working habits — procedures I was very comfortable with — and embrace new ideas. One quick example: my main product serves a
two-sided network. Four months ago, the “customer” (in my mind) was the paying/enterprise customer. Today that view has completely changed. Now the ‘customer’ is the end user (sometimes called ‘consumer’) who comes to the web site to use the free service. My product management focus has shifted significantly to the experience of the end users. The change has resulted in an entirely different product that (two weeks into the beta) is showing positive signs.
Letting go of old habits and ideas is not easy and requires flexibility. Those who are open to change learn to trust themselves and others. Watch for opportunities to try new things and be flexible as you go. Letting go of old beliefs can lead to new visions.
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The Product Management Perspective: See above (and, of course, don’t get set in your ways or the change will be painful).
Filed under: Product Management / Marketing, Trust | Tagged: change, flexibility, requirements | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 14, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
“Trust agents have a desire to connect good people together.” Making connections and gaining people’s trust is the premise of the book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. The authors Chris Brogan and Julien Smith bring together a lot of great ideas that really strike a chord when you read them. I like the authors’ definition of trust: confidence and faith. Most of the ideas in the book are pretty obvious, such as “when you treat people well, they treat you well back.” However, the way Brogan and Smith weave the obvious ideas together is genius.
The authors focus on six characteristics of Trust Agents:
- Make your own game: There’s an established way to do things and a game changing way to do things. By making your own game and forcing your competitors to keep up, you leave them at a disadvantage at every turn.
- One of Us: Being One of Us is about belonging. Being seen as connected with others is very useful in any people-facing job. If you act like a good citizen, people will trust you.
- The Archimedes Effect: This is about understanding and using leverage. The Web is a great tool for leveraging the power of what you do. Leverage means never having to re-invent the wheel; it never goes out of style.
- Agent Zero: Trust agents are at the center of their networks. They connect people together and use their influence to find resources and complete projects faster. They work in positions that connect internal teams, external colleagues and more. “Have a wide network and you’ll never be in need of work.”
- Human Artist: This is about people skills, it’s about developing understanding of people you interact with. “In social media, human is the new black. People are the next revolution, and being active on the human-faced Web is your company’s best chance to grow its business in the coming years.”
- Build and Army: Leaders aren’t just good at doing their job, they help others grow and organize people’s skills to their command when necessary. Think of the army as a group of people you inspire and lead to do great things together that could not be accomplished otherwise.
The book is chock-full of sidebars with actionable ideas. For example, the first one (on page 11) gives you tools to help you get more involved in the Social Web. Others help you learn how to build relationships, leverage your position within your organization and make friends online. These short excerpts drive home the important points and give you a jumpstart to becoming trusted online.
Ultimately, to become a trusted “you need to be liked, and you start becoming likable by being worthy of being liked. Be kind. Be patient. Be humble, on time, and generous. Be that person you would like to be friends with. Likability and the related trait, intimacy, is one of the biggest factors in trust, and it’s also one of the easiest to develop with people online.”
It’s difficult for me to do justice to the quality and value of this book. The only way you will know what I’m trying to convey is to read the book. I HIGHLY recommend it!
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The Product Management Perspective: Nothing you do as a product manager is more important than being trusted. Take the necessary time to build relationships with the people you depend on to get your products out the door. While this book focuses primarily on building relationships online, the principles fit very nicely into the world we live in as product managers. I highly recommend it for your library.
Filed under: Leadership, Purpose, Trust | Tagged: Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, Trust Agents | 2 Comments »
Posted on August 11, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
Over the past few days it’s hit me squarely between the eyes that I have not been contributing enough to the online world. My excuse (and I’ve heard this from many product managers) is that I’ve been heads down on an intense product release and it’s sucking all my time and energy. While that is true, it’s no excuse.
Two things have jolted me back to reality and to a new desire to stop making excuses:
- Reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. This is an excellent book that lays out simple steps to become a person other people trust, especially online. I will write more about the book here soon.
- Listening to Tribes by Seth Godin. I downloaded the audio book and started listening on a run (podcasts and audio books keep me running a lot of miles these days; you can follow me on Daily Mile) and was instantly drawn in to his discussion on leading ‘tribes’ of people in areas for which you have passion. More on this later too.
This recent jolt has made me realize I’ve neglected my friends in the online world (no product release is worth that). For those of you who have me on your RSS feeds: Thank you and I apologize sincerely. For those who just happened to stop by, welcome to Lead on Purpose.
I started this blog (in 2007) to promote leadership principles in product management. This is an important discipline that does not get enough attention. I’ve hopefully added at least a drop to the bucket.
My commitment: For the next six months (at a minimum) I will write at least one post a week. I will continue to learn and share and identify blogs, books and people who are doing great things in leadership and product management.
My appeal to you: Keep me honest. Leave comments and let me know how you feel, even (especially) if you disagree. I’m blogging to learn, not to make money. Comments, criticism, advice and opinions are welcome here.
Thank you, and please check back; I will.
Filed under: Leadership, Learning, Product Management / Marketing, Purpose | Tagged: commitment, Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, Trust Agents, Tribes, criticism | Leave a Comment »
Posted on July 19, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
I heard the statement “feedback is the breakfast of champions” while listening to a recent podcast. There is a lot of truth to that statement. After hearing it I started to break it down to see if I could come up with a new statement for Lead on Purpose readers:
- Feedback: The word feedback is a technical term meaning “a mechanism, process or signal that is looped back to control a system within itself.” The term has evolved in business language to mean receiving information from others — either verbally or through written means — about topics important to you. The key to benefitting from feedback is listening. If you want to improve, seek out feedback from others, listen to what they say and take action.
- Breakfast: Some say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day; I agree. It’s the fuel that gets you going in the morning. It’s the energy that drives you throughout the day. You receive power from eating.
- Champions: Usually associated with sports, the word champions identifies the ultimate winners. These are the people who have worked smart and hard to achieve a goal. They work together. They achieve what others do not. They may not be the most naturally talented at what they do, but they work harder and have more of a team mindset than those with whom they compete. They are the leaders.
So, after going through this exercise I’ve come up with the following Lead on Purpose adaptation to “feedback is the breakfast of champions”: Listening is the power of leaders. But it’s not only listening, it’s acting on what you hear. It’s making an effort to know what others are thinking. It’s working hard to improve based on others’ experiences. It’s knowing when to say “yes” and when to say “no.” Ultimately, it’s knowing that you or I do not have all the answers, but together we can know what is best.
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The Product Management Perspective: Recently I’ve received some great feedback from co-workers and customers. Through this process I’ve realized how important it is to listen and make decisions based on what you hear. I’ve always known this but at times have been blinded by own knowledge and experience. It’s a positive thing to receive feedback that — though painful at the time — gives you a new perspective on where your products are headed. To succeed as a product manager you need to hear what other have to say, apply the positive aspects, swallow your pride and move forward.
Filed under: Leadership | Tagged: champions, feedback, listening, process, success | 2 Comments »
Posted on June 14, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
“Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies–it happens when society adopts new behaviors.” Clay Shirky, author of the book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, provides an eye-opening look at how technology is changing the way we think, work and live. The book helped me understand more clearly how the Internet has changed the way we interact and get information. Here are several ideas I found incredibly insightful:
- “The tools that a society uses to create and maintain itself are as central to human life as a hive is to bee life.”
- “The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming ‘gather, then share’ to ‘share, then gather.’”
- The Internet is allowing amazing things to happen: “Large decreases in transaction costs create activities that can’t be taken on by businesses, or indeed by any institution, because no matter how cheap it becomes to perform a particular activity, there isn’t enough payoff to support the cost incurred by being an institution in the first place.”
- “The Web didn’t introduce a new competitor into the old ecosystem, the Web created a new ecosystem.”
- “In the same way you do not have to be a professional driver to drive, you no longer have to be a professional publisher to publish. Mass amateurization is a result of the radical spread of expressive capabilities, and the most obvious precedent is the one that gave birth to the modern world: the spread of the printing press five centuries ago.”
- Regarding Wikipedia: “If even only a few people care about a wiki, it becomes harder to harm it than to heal it.”
- On forming groups: “The net effect is that it’s easier to like people who are odd in the same ways you are odd, but it’s harder to find them.”
- “The most profound effects of social tools lag their invention by years, because it isn’t until they have a critical mass of adopters, adopters who take these tools for granted, that their real effects begin to appear.”
- “What is likely to happen to society as a whole with the spread of ridiculously easy group-forming? The most obvious change is that we are going to get more groups, many more groups, than have ever existed before.”
- “The dramatic improvement in our social tools, by contrast, means that our control over those tools is much more like steering a kayak. We are being pushed rapidly down a route largely determined by the technological environment.”
- “Anything that raises the cost of doing something reduces what gets done.”
Changes are happening at a breakneck pace; we can either embrace them and use them to our advantage, or ignore them to our peril. If you want to gain a much deeper understanding about how society adopts new behaviors, Here Comes Everybody is a must-read.
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The Product Management Perspective: What can you say when your boss walks in and throws a new book on your desk? My answer was something like “sure, I’ll read it when I have some time.” And soon after I started, I found the time. Shirky’s book is an excellent read for product managers. He challenges assumptions such as how you make money on products: “If a large enough population of users is trying things, then the happy accidents have a much higher chance of being discovered.” He causes you to dig a lot deeper to find answers to your perplexing product problems: “In business, the investment cost of producing anything can create a bias toward accepting the substandard.” He tells us (something we already know of course) about our product: “it must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do.”
This last quote sums up nicely the role of product manager: “Because of transaction costs, organizations cannot afford to hire employees who only make one important contribution–they need to hire people who have good ideas day after day.” That’s our job…good ideas day after day.
Filed under: Innovation, Market-driven, Product Management / Marketing, Techology | Tagged: behavior, Clay Shirky, invention, social media | Leave a Comment »
Posted on May 31, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
I ran across a great audio blog post by Mark Sanborn where he poses five questions we should ask ourselves at the beginning of each week. These questions serve as a guide to live by design and not just react to things as they come. They will improve your personal and professional situation.
Here are the questions:
- What will I learn this week? Identify what you need to learn, want to learn and how you will learn it. Growth and development rarely happen accidentally.
- What relationship will I improve? What relationship needs repair or nurture? Think in terms of both who and how.
- What problem will I address or avoid? Look for a problem that is looming on your horizon and head it off.
- What opportunity will I seize? Too often we’re fixated on our problems and miss our opportunities. Look for opportunities in the midst of challenges, struggles and difficulties; they’re out there.
- How will I increase my value? Think in terms of what you can do to increase your value to your employer, your customer, to your family. Providing more value than you consume makes you a producer.
To improve your business or life, ask yourself these questions and then act on the answers. “Do business by design rather than by default.”
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The Product Management Perspective: We will improve our effectiveness and our ability to work with others by giving careful thought to these questions. As product leaders we need to plan and then move forward with focus and energy.
Filed under: Knowledge, Leadership, Learning, Product Management / Marketing | Tagged: design, learn, Mark Sanborn, opportunity, value | 6 Comments »
Posted on May 18, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
One of the most amazing sports records in the history of all sports is 401 wins and 9 losses. This is the career record of Larry Gelwix, coach of the
Highland High rugby team (Salt Lake City) for more than three decades. This team was featured in the recent movie
Forever Strong. Larry recently recorded a
podcast with my friend
Dr. Paul on
Live on Purpose Radio. During this conversation Larry shares the strategies that have made his teams successful through the years.
What struck me the first time I listened to this podcast is how beautifully these principles apply to product management, to leadership and to life in general. They have obviously worked for Larry and his rugby teams throughout the years.
Here are the five championship strategies:
- Choose what team you’re going to play for. Decide what ‘jersey’ you’re going to wear in life, in love, in business, in relationships. Where is your loyalty? Where is your heart? Figure it out, make a decision and don’t look back.
- Don’t play with snakes. Every situation has a right and wrong; choose the right.
- Hit the field running. Attitude and effort are more important than natural ability. Attitude and effort are more important than natural smarts. Attitude and effort separate the champs from the chumps. Attitude follows behavior; if you want to change your attitude, change your behavior.
- Expect to win. Larry spells ‘win’ as an acronym, W.I.N., which stands for “what’s important now.” Look at every situation and ask, “what do I need to accomplish?” Then ask, “what’s important now?” We need to look ahead and have goals for future success, and make choices right now that take us in that direction.
- Focus on the final score. Focus on the end game; focus on who you want to be; focus on what you ultimately want to achieve. In life we all write the script of the final person we want to be. If my final score is who I want to be — a man or woman of integrity, of honesty, of virtue, of hard work, of ethics — then I can sustain setbacks and difficulties that come.
Living these five championship strategies will make an incredible difference in your success. As Larry says: “these strategies work!” He has proven this as a coach and as a successful CEO. Don’t miss this podcast; you’ll be glad you listened.
Filed under: Integrity, Leadership, Team Building | Tagged: attitude, behavior, Dr. Paul, effort, Forever Strong, Larry Gelwix, loyalty, success, win | Leave a Comment »
Posted on May 8, 2010 by Michael Ray Hopkin
One of the key tenets of leadership is the learning. Great leaders are learners. They read voraciously. They write and teach what they learn. Learning is as much a part of their life as eating. These are a few of my favorite quotes that illustrate the importance of learning:
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. -Eric Hoffer
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. -John F. Kennedy
Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty and persistence. -Colin Powell
Make it your objective to be a life-long learner; every aspect of your life will benefit.
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The Product Management Perspective: Technology continues to evolve ever more rapidly. Markets change quickly. User interests come on speedily and then change overnight. How can you — the product manager — keep up? You have to be a learner. You read books, magazines and other resources that provide relevant information. You read blogs and follow thought-leaders on Twitter; you watch what they are talking about learn as much as you can. Most importantly, you open the door to new ideas and new ways of doing your job.
Filed under: Knowledge, Leadership, Learning, Product Management / Marketing | Tagged: Learning, loyalty, persistence | Leave a Comment »
