Aswath Krishnan

It's now somewhat common best practice (inconsistently practiced though) for Product Managers to talk to customers and use the product regularly. The reasoning is pretty straightforward - if you aren't really understanding what customers need and experience, then how can you successfully prioritize what to build and build it well? But product leaders (PM Manager) can feel a push away from talking to customers directly or using the products as they take on more team management and strategy tasks (based on my true story). I'd posit that's going to hurt your effectiveness, especially if you are new to the domain or company. How are you going to set or vet the right team strategy, provide feedback, or take bold bets/changes if you aren't familiar with customers? How can you stop falling for availability bias (over-index on a limited set of user insights presented to you to develop an incorrect or incomplete model)? How are you going to stay connected to the ground reali...

I was upset and having a particularly rough day. We were meeting a few of our close friends couples that day. Not wanting to be a downer (and likely to avoid being judged), I covered it up and put on my regular act. But I couldn’t fully hide it towards the end of the day. One of my friends noticed something was off and when we had a moment, he  asked me if I was okay and even texted me later that day. I felt loved and supported, and it helped.  People around you may be silently suffering. If you want to help, you can’t expect them to express an ask…you have to pay attention, listen closely to pick cues, and care and act thoughtfully. And that can make a big difference. 

I was tasked with starting a "big bets" team at a startup I was working at. The goal of the team was loosely defined as to achieve step-level or 10X outcomes -- either in the core job-to-be-done or through a new job-to-be-done.  I was previously leading growth for the core product and I set this team's key performance indicator (KPI) or key result (KR in OKR) similarly -- X monthly active users.  And that was a mistake.  Done right, a KPI is a measure of the most important thing, provides directional guidance, and is a measure of progress. A wrong KPI can be useless, misleading, and demotivating.  For a new product area, the most important thing is to identify the problem space to play in and to achieve product-market fit. The goal of X monthly active users is a big step removed from that. It didn't provide us directional guidance, didn't provide a measure of progress to either the team or the execs, and it felt pretty demotivating to declare failure against that ...

I may have stumbled onto a life-changing practice on Twitter yesterday. I have only practiced it a couple of times so far and I feel a dramatic effect on happiness and equanimity each time.  Whenever a life-changing practice works out, it...well, changes your life. So well worth trying out strong recommendations.  Here's how it starts:  **** Hm well so all day I’m either talking to my parts or thinking “how can humanity become more alive” and diving into that question. That’s what my head is doing Body is doing whatever it feels like basically on autopilot — Nick Cammarata (@nickcammarata)  June 11, 2021 **** wait hold up. all day you're talking to your parts? can we get a monologue demonstration? — visa is doing final edits (99.2%) ✍🏾📖 (@visakanv)  June 11, 2021 **** I'm glad that Visa actually caught the casual mention and asks Nick for a demonstration (I'd probably have simply brushed through the tweet, so this is a good lesson in paying attention and being...