Lead on Purpose

Promoting Leadership Principles in Product Management

Category Archives: Purpose


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Why it’s important to think bigger, and play bigger

Creating great products and building successful companies takes a tremendous amount of work, insatiable initiative and a penchant for perseverance. It requires thinking differently than others think, and even differently than you have thought in the past.

To make big changes requires a whole new way of thinking, yet few college programs or study courses sow the seeds of innovation and creative thinking. You need to see the world differently, to think differently. To create winning products and companies you need to play bigger.

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Employee development on purpose

 

Recently companies have raised their focus on why customer success matters and how to delight increasingly demanding customers. At its core, creating happy customers requires happy employees—the front-line people who interact continually with customers.

What are companies doing to develop their employees? Do free lunches and game rooms provide the needed motivation to keep employees excited  and customers happy? What are you doing to improve employee engagement in your organization?

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Why small habits make a big difference

The word ‘habit’ generates different thoughts depending on your situation. For some it’s that thing they are addicted to. For others it brings to mind the things they’re not doing and invokes anxiety. For many in this audience, it connotes the path to accomplishment, the things they are doing—consistently—to move forward and create success.

For me, habits are an integral part of the processes I put in place to ensure I take the best actions and follow the right systems. For example, I love what exercising does for my body. Years ago, I developed the habit of running; I found things that make it enjoyable—e.g. listening to books and podcasts—that encourage me to keep doing it. Running has become a part of my life, a habit I enjoy that delivers positive results.

What would it take for you to achieve the change or to make the progress that deep down you’re seeking? How would you get started? Why does it matter?

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“Self-Made” is BS

Guest post by Rick Miller

The widely-held belief that success is available to everyone, simply with focus and hard work is one among many positive messages regularly reinforced in our Western culture.

But in my view, our “cowboy culture” also over-celebrates individual accomplishment, particularly in business. Too many romanticize the importance of a single individual’s ability to enable a big impact. This idea that denies the reality that teams of people, along with some good luck, always play big roles in enabling any company, or an individual for that matter, to register true success.

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Product manager or product maker?

Titles have a way of morphing over time. In some cases, they improve and become more popular. At times, because of the acts of certain, often high-profile, individuals, titles can lose value.

When you think about the title ‘product manager’ how does it make you feel? Does it still hold the value it had when you first started learning about it? What about when you took your first job as a product manager—do you feel the same today as you did in those first days and weeks?

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Developing Your Team Purpose

Guest post by John Izzo, PhD and Jeff Vanderwielen PhD

Today’s product managers wear many hats and are required to be motivators, counsellors, mentors, and enforcers. It’s difficult to balance competing job priorities and some leaders do a great job of truly engaging with their teams. And many others, despite their best efforts, manage to motivate the top performers but can’t seem to get the whole team rowing in the same direction. We found that to create a common goal, it’s vital to ramp up your purpose as an organization. Here, we will share from our book The Purpose Revolution: How Leaders Create Engagement and Competitive Advantage in an Age of Social Good  how to develop and polish your team purpose statement.

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How motivated leaders leave a legacy

The most successful companies have motivated leaders that inspire motivation at all levels of the organization. They are motivated for a real purpose, not just for money or other short-term rewards.

Is it possible to create an environment where great work just happens, and everyone is motivated?

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Turning your desires into purpose

Success depends as much on the desire of an individual as anything else. Hard work, persistence and intelligence also factor in, and depending on the endeavor, these may play a big role. However, without a burning inner desire, your chance of success is greatly diminished.

How do you channel your desires to successful outcomes? How do you turn your desires in to a burning purpose that will keep you going strong throughout your life?

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Creating your best year ever

“The future is in your hands, but only if you act today.”

Today starts a new year with new opportunities ahead. This time of year brings us to analyze what we accomplished in the past year and look ahead to what we want to undertake in the new year. It’s common to look ahead and set goals, or “new year’s resolutions,” for what we want to achieve.

The problem with this approach usually comes about two to three weeks into the first month. We get distracted and lose touch with what we planned for the year. By the time March comes around, the goals we set in January are long forgotten.

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Your Passion is Your Greatest Asset, Learn How to Harness It

Being an entrepreneur is not an easy job. The multitude of trials and setbacks are not for the faint-hearted. However, it can also be the most rewarding career, though you need to give you all that you’ve got to actually make your business a success.

Choosing to take the path of entrepreneurship can be very difficult – starting from obtaining legal documents to managing your workforce. The difficulties also rise to new heights as you progress, so it is only important that you have a burning passion for your company so that you can overcome those difficult situations graciously.

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