All Articles

What You Should Clarify and Communicate as a Product Leader

On Monday, I outlined what I think are the three pillars of building great products: a clear vision, sound decision making, and developing the right team. Today, I want to take a closer look at what I mean by a clear vision. It’s easy for us to go about

The Three Pillars of Building Great Products

Do you know what it takes to build great products? Are you so confident in your approach that you know that your product will be a success? I’m not. I’m often filled with doubt. Even when things are going well, I wake up at night worried that it’

My Favorite Tools of the Trade

I used to be a productivity nerd. Until I realized that I was spending more time playing around with systems than I did actually doing work. This is pretty common. I’ve outgrown that stage. But I still love to hear about how other people work. And i’m always

A Hat Tip to Some Great Bloggers

Last year, Daniel Pink shared his favorite books, blogs, and resources in a New Year’s Day webinar. It was so good, I still remember most of the things he shared. I’m stealing the idea. Today, I’ll share some of my favorite blogs. And on Thursday, I’ll

My Top Reads from 2013

I try to read a book a week and I was right on target reading 50 books in 2013. These were the best of the crop. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others If you have an aversion to sales, don’t think of a used-car salesman.

The Best of Product Talk in 2013

2013 was a great year for Product Talk. I published 52 posts (including this one), I met a number of readers at meet ups, the Startup Product Summit, and at ProductCampSF, and I met so many more of you virtually through office hours and email. I started this blog to

How To Develop Your Active Listening Skills

Have you ever found yourself disagreeing with someone about what was said? Perhaps you and one of your coworkers watched a user interview and you walked away with two different interpretations. Why does this happen? We’ve already been introduced to the ladder of inference when we discussed finding common

Wow, When Something Resonates ...

"Startups don’t die when they run out of money, they die when their founders let go. I ultimately stepped away from Sonar when I came to the conclusion that, despite all that we had invested, everyone stood a better chance starting anew. It’s difficult to accept, but

Do You Have What It Takes To Work On A Remote Team?

This post was written for Startup Edition in response to the question: How do you effectively work with remote teams? If you aren't already, it's only a matter of time before you'll be asked to consider working with a remote team. For most startups,

A Small Favor: Please Take The 2014 Product Talk Survey

Product Talk just passed it's second anniversary. As we prepare for 2014, I want to make sure that Product Talk continues to serve its audience. I'd love your help. Please take 5 minutes to fill out a quick survey. I truly appreciate it. Thanks, Teresa

How to Craft Your Personal Story to Land Your Next Product Job

You know that feeling you get when you come across a product that just works? Maybe you got it the first time you used Square. Or the first time Tripit saved you money on airfare. Or maybe it was watching Netflix on your Roku. I'm sure you know

3 Ways to Learn About a Company and Impress the Hiring Manager

In the last few posts, we talked about not sending your resume to anyone and everyone, and instead narrowing your market. Today, we'll look at how you can research your market and your specific target companies. Let's continue with our example. Suppose you defined your market

Why Defining Your Market is Essential to Finding a Product Job

You've already learned to stop sending your resume to everyone and anyone. Right? If you haven't already, stop and read, how not to find a product job. This post will build off of that one. We've learned the best way to find a job

How Not To Find a Product Job

Far and away the most common question I get is: * How do you find a product job? Before we tackle answering this question, let's look at what most of us do when we try to find a job. We start by working on our resume. We list out

Read Decisive and Make Better Product Decisions

Over the past 3 months, I've written a number of posts inspired by the book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath. I'm a big fan of their work and so much of the research from Decisive is directly applicable to building great products. I highly recommend

Don't Make Snap Product Decisions

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. Do you ever find yourself making snap decisions? An engineer asks you for more detail on how a feature should work. You hadn't considered that specific use case before. So you come up with a solution

Don't Overcommit to a Bad Idea

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. At the World Domination Summit 2013, Jia Jiang gave an amazing talk about his experience following his dreams. When he was young, he saw Bill Gates speak, and he dreamed of starting a company someday. But like many

You Probably Suck at Estimating (And What You Can Do About It)

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. You probably estimate every day. How long will it take to build a given feature? What impact will it have on your customer base? How will it impact business outcomes? It's too bad you probably aren&

Help Others Make Good Product Decisions Too

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. You've got a clear vision of where your product is headed. You can describe it three months out, six months out, maybe even ten years out. As you start to see success, you need to grow

You Only Prefer It That Way Because It's Familiar

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. Tell me how many times you've experienced the following: You've just introduced a new concept design - maybe it's a new way of doing an old feature or maybe it's

How the 10/10/10 Rule can Lead to Better Product Decisions

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. Three customers are at risk today. You don't have a feature they want and your sales team is concerned they will switch to your competitor's product who does have the requested feature. What do

Is Your Idea a Viable Business?

This post was written for Startup Edition. Almost everyone has at one point in their life thought, someone should make a something or another, or why doesn't this product exist in the world. This is exactly how products are born. It really is that simple. It always starts

Turn Your Inside View Outward

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. One of the most common questions I get at my company, is why don't we have a mobile app. We are in the age of mobile, how can we possibly survive without a mobile app? There

Why You Only See What You Want to See

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. You arrive at the office one morning, excited to tell your team about a new idea you had the night before. They look at you nonchalantly. One of them says, "that might work." You were expecting

Find Someone Else Who Has Solved Your Problem Before

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. I was recently working with our interaction designer on the design of our job posting creation form. Like many job services, we ask for the location of the job, but the design of this section wasn't