Author: Meredith

Product managers – myself included – often fall into the trap of thinking that our own experience of the product will match how everyone experiences it.

Emi Tabb, from Mixpanel’s blog in To thrive, product teams need diverse talent – a former Uber product leader explains why

Optimizing is not impossible, but often leads to opportunistic decisions for short-term gains. By focusing on learning about the product you set yourself up for better future decisions and more effective tests.

Jan Overgoor, From Experiments at Airbnb

Getting strategy done well often calls for trade-offs between delivering short-term results and implementing foundational changes that require time.

Simon Horan, from Good Strategy Execution Requires Balancing 4 Tensions

If everyone is a leader, no one is. 

One of the mistakes people make when thinking about the future is to think that they are watching the final act of the play.

– Derek Thompson in “The Great Retail Apocalypse of 2017“

Emotionally competent teams don’t wear blinders; they have the emotional capacity to face potentially difficult information and actively seek opinions on their task processes, progress, and performance from the outside. 

– Vanessa Druskat & Steven Wolff in Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups

Business schools, business books, and managers themselves usually focus on managing organizations and people. But if you focus on managing progress, the management of people – and even if entire organizations – becomes much more feasible. You won’t have to figure out how to x-ray the inner work lives of subordinates; if you facilitate their steady progress in meaningful work, make that progress salient to them, and treat them well, they will experience the emotions, motivations, and perceptions necessary for great performance. Their superior work will contribute to organizational success. And here’s the beauty of it: They will love their jobs.

– Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer in The Power of Small Wins (2011)