Better Product Managers, and Product Management

“Remember that an engaged customer is a highly valuable one.”  10 Ways to Measure Social Media Success
“Rushing into social-computing initiatives without clearly defined benefits for both the company and customer will be the biggest cause of failure…” Gartner Says Companies Need to Pursue Four Steps to Harness Social Computing in CRM

I’m hearing a lot of two extremes right now: social media is useless fluff, and social media is the magic bullet.  The truth is somewhere in the middle, and depends on your business, your industry, and your customers.

Put it into action today: Think about one thing you’d like for your audience to know about your company/product, and put it into a blog post, a tweet, or even one phone call to one person.

“What’s” are the specific things a business needs to accomplish, as opposed to the process they typically use to accomplish it. Some are high value; some are not. Understanding the difference can give you great insights into where you can safely pare away and where you should leave well enough alone.  A Better Way to Cut Costs

Put it into action today: Brainstorm the “what’s”.  Work with your team to figure where you’re creating value for your customers.  (Then go validate it through a quick and dirty survey)

“Stop looking at your member count to determine whether your community is successful, and don’t expect (or even ask for) rapid growth. Real relationships take time to develop, and if you want a real community based on real relationships, you need to be in it for the long haul.”  Member Count Not a Measure of Community Success

Put it into action today: Think of a question that you’re afraid to know the answer to, and ask it.  On your forum or blog would be great, but if you’re not ready for that, ask via private mail.  But take the first step towards ceding control.

” to a larger extent than you probably realize, your environment dictates your actions… So don’t fight yourself to change your behavior in the midst of the wrong environment; just change the environment.”  The Easiest Way to Change People’s Behavior

Put it into action today: Think about a result you want (a co-worker to stop doing something, a customer to start doing something, etc.) and brainstorm “How can I make it as easy as possible for this person to do this thing that I want?”

It could be asking a multiple-choice question instead of an open-ended one to your users (reduce their thinking time).  It could be proposing 6 meeting times instead of 2 to a customer (increases the odds that their calendar will be open for one).  It could be walking through a whiteboard exercise with someone instead of waiting for them to do it on their own (reduces their chance for procrastination, interactivity increases the odds of you getting exactly what you need.)

If there is an overarching theme to the slew of Web 2.0 companies, it seems to be “pick a tiny thing, and do it really, really well.”

As a consumer, how could I complain?  It’s not hard to bookmark a half-dozen sites in order to get free access to incredibly useful tools like Tadalists, Posterous, Twitter, or Dropbox.

As a product manager, I think it’s a tempting way to paint your company into a corner.  I’ve talked before about always asking yourself “what’s the alternative to using our product?” Understanding that is a good way to understand the value you provide relative to the friction of asking consumers to change their behavior.   But on its own, it may paint too rosy a picture.

Let’s take the example of an online to-do list:

Alternatives: not making a list, writing lists on paper, entering tasks on online calendar or PDA

Friction: need to bookmark a site but setup and learning curve minimal

The alternatives are not that attractive (not making a list means I’ll forget things, writing lists on paper means I have to remember to carry that paper around and not lose it, entering tasks into an online calendar means putting personal stuff into Outlook or maintaining multiple online calendars…) and the friction is not very high.  This is a recipe for pretty decent consumer adoption!

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One of the hardest things for me in my transition from interaction designer to product manager was learning to care less about design.

Should applications look clean and professional?  Absolutely – things like good spacing and a consistent color palette helps you earn credibility with your audience.  Should text be legible and forms readable?  Absolutely again – visual cues must work with the kind of rapid ’scanning’ that web users perform in order to speed processing time and reduce errors.  But beyond a minimum level of competence, design has to be treated like any other competitive advantage.  Will this drive more usage, more customer adoption, nudge my product towards being a de facto standard?

The answer is often “no”.

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