In this post we'll run through a few of the factors that are unique to running a department, and how you should navigate them | Continue reading
If you want to get promoted as a manager, or are considering whether to promote someone on your team, check out our guide on how to be a senior leader at a fast-growing company. | Continue reading
One of the joys of putting content out into the universe is the feedback we’ve gotten, both positive and critical. The latter, in particular, has been useful in refining our ideas. Herein lies some notes and errata - things we got wrong or not quite right. | Continue reading
Over many years in industry, you start to see patterns that are suspiciously correlated with lower performance. Here are some small performance cues to look out for. | Continue reading
In my time observing managers, one observation seems to repeat again and again: good managers write well, and bad managers write poorly. In fact, the best managers I’ve ever had were not just good writers, they were terrific. And the worst managers I’ve ever had were not just bad … | Continue reading
As companies grow, context can become a scarce resource. As more variables, people, teams, products, customers, and coworkers create an increasingly infinite combination of possible ways to move forward, deep context on what to do and how to do it should be thought of explicitly, … | Continue reading
Articulate The Value Of What Candidates Care About | Continue reading
The challenge of how to increase the critical metric of gross margin is a multiple choice question, not free response. Here's how to do it. | Continue reading
Your lead PM just quit. These are the steps that absolutely cannot be skipped, and an approach to tackling them that can hopefully be executed by someone who is busy, distracted, or otherwise not a trained PM. | Continue reading
Merge code every week. That’s what you should be saying to your new Software Engineer hire. Let’s discuss. | Continue reading
SaaS growth is a multiple choice question rather than a free-response essay. Learn the standard ways to grow your SaaS business here. | Continue reading
In any organization, working across departments comes with a lot of interesting challenges. Below, find a guide to navigating some common challenges in cross-departmental coordination. | Continue reading
In this post we'll lay out some of the most important enterprise features to add to your product. The activities listed here will help you move up-market, as surely as brushing your teeth and having good hygeine will help you land a hot date. | Continue reading
Instead, fix your production issues. | Continue reading
If you want to be excellent at fielding a diverse array of business needs you must field a diverse team. Staffing a wide array of skills and experience makes it much more likely that your PM team will have a qualified person for any given need. | Continue reading
A person has got to have a code. | Continue reading
Many intangible attributes go into building a great company that are just as important as hard skills. Identifying and harnessing hard-to-measure skills allows you to capitalize on the most special traits on your team. | Continue reading
Managers should be optimizing people’s job satisfaction, not their happiness. Trying to make a job facilitate happiness leads to perverse incentives and unattainable goals. It’s at best a distraction. At its worst it causes teams and companies to fall apart. | Continue reading
Your most important data is Small Data. Let’s learn how to use it. | Continue reading
Growing fast requires making decisions and executing fast. One of the quickest ways to make and follow through on important choices is to figure out the areas of your business where you can imitate industry best practices, and where you'll need to innovate. | Continue reading
If you want to scale a product team quickly, one of the best ways to move fast is to convert talent from other vocations. One of my favorite sources for SaaS product managers is your own post-sales team – particularly recruiting PMs from customer success. | Continue reading
Giving people something to look at can be the difference between an awkward chat and an amazing conversation. | Continue reading
You can look for mentors, but that ain't fun - so just think of a question to ask someone. | Continue reading
A primer on managing engineering managers. | Continue reading
As a product leader, you can accelerate your company's sales growth by steering development in ways that reinforce the central narrative of your product. There are four common narratives that drive a buyer's decision to open up their wallet. Let's go through each, explain what th … | Continue reading
A guide to scaling product & engineering teams from $0 to past $100M ARR | Continue reading
You might find yourself - especially with the resignation in all the news - with a bunch of team members that leave all at once. Here’s some things you can do about it. | Continue reading
Tech has a standard set of leadership profiles that are discussed regularly. However, that set is missing a number of common personas, whose time is limited. | Continue reading
Here's a quick playbook that I use whenever I'm pulled into a situation, particularly to resolve a misalignment | Continue reading
10x people exist. There are people that have 10 times the productivity and impact of their peers. | Continue reading
One organizational wart that can occur is an unhappy team that loves their manager. Let’s explore how this situation arises and how to fix it. | Continue reading
A guide to scaling product & engineering teams from $0 to past $100M ARR | Continue reading
A guide to scaling product & engineering teams from $0 to past $100M ARR | Continue reading
In my experience, most professional software engineers in industry have little to no experience doing competitive analysis. That’s a shame, because competitive analysis is one of the most useful skills that an engineer can have. | Continue reading
These are the two most important traits for evaluating product manager resumes. | Continue reading
Small issues become big ones. | Continue reading
Using machine learning to differentiate your product is like driving a fancy sports car to stand out when picking someone up for a date. | Continue reading
Teams, especially at growth companies, often have a pattern of taking two steps forward and one step back. Let’s explore how teams often unknowingly slip after growing and try to prevent it. Only forward steps! | Continue reading