3 Lessons from Beyond the Grave

This post was a terrific collection of lessons learned from discontinued products. Boiling it down, there are a three themes that dominate (at least to me):

• Revenue. Don't just build solutions that people want. Build solutions that people will pay for.
• Corollary 1: Building anything costs money. Eventually you gotta pay for it.
• Corollary 2: Never underestimate the marketing power of "free".
• Usability. You always fail by making manual something that can be automated. (Or, put another way: Failing to automate is automatically failing.)
• Strategy. Don't build anything that doesn't advance your market strategy. Great ideas can still be distractions.
• Corollary: Opportunity cost is really, really important. On a related note, I'm reading a book right now about the prices of things that is tremendously eye-opening. I usually just do reviews on goodreads.com, but this one will be featured here, it's been so good.

The Tufnel-ization of America

Several people have suggested that November 11, 2011 be designated as "Nigel Tufnel" day, which makes complete sense for those of you who know what I'm talking about. Personally, I love the idea, but I think it's too late. Our country has already been Tufnel-ized.

Just last night, I was watching a basketball game. During a timeout, I was treated to commercials hawking movies and phone service. The movies, of course, relentlessly pointed out that they were in THREE-D, not that flat, pathetic two-d of your grandparent's ilk. And the phone service was FOUR-G, not that slow, pathetic 3G that your parents are probably saddled with.

Have we, as a nation, become so stupid that subtler differentiation plays are lost on us? Or are we all now so enslaved to software that we only understand "upgrades"? Do we accept, on faith, that something is better than its predecessor simply because it's "one louder"? At the risk of mixing my metaphors, there's something Orwellian about this and we should all remember to look behind the curtains.

A Land of Infinite Dimensions

Sorry for being silent for so long. I just finished my first full week of a new job and my brain is boggled. It's not like I haven't had new jobs before. Most of the people my age will have something like 6-8 jobs in their working lifetime. In my parents' time, the number was closer to 2. My children might change jobs every two years. The way things are changing, I suspect the very nature of the job will evolve into something I wouldn't recognize. Maybe they'll all be specialist contractors, each given some small slice of a larger project, but never allowed to see the whole. It'll be a bit like the world's funniest joke.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about today really does deal with change. For the past -- oh, let's say 20 -- years, I've dealt with on-premise technology solutions. That means products that are bought and installed in their environment by a buyer. It's a pretty simple proposition when you think about it -- you just have to know who the buyer is, what his problem is, how much money he has, and who else offers a solution. Work out the equation to your benefit and, whammo, your business grows.

History: Swivel

One of the things I find most valuable is the history of a thing. In virtually every organization I've worked with, history has been vital, but massively underappreciated. At the end of the day, organizations hemorrhage institutional knowledge -- they remember what decision was made, but not why. Often this is because they fail to appreciate the necessity of documentation and/or the importance of the reasoning behind the decision. Inevitably, they thrash through the same thought processes over and over again when they could be moving on to the next thing.

All of this is a way of saying that history is a reluctant teacher. It stands there in the corner, knowing the answers to many of your questions, but will only enlighten you if you ask. (Data is another reluctant teacher -- as many of our questions can be answered with data on hand if only we know how to ask, but that's another discussion entirely.)

Learning Visual Analytics

I've read enough stuff now to begin to understand how far I have to go. There are lots of resources out there and twice as many opinions. Visual Analytics is truly a nascent space with, in my opinion, more energy historically given to the "visual" than the "analytics".

That said, I am beginning to structure my education thusly:

• Technologies - What technologies must one master?
• Contributors - Who are the organizations and individuals that are contributing to this space?
• Economics - How the industry is shaping up in terms of monetization options, packages, margins, etc.?
• History - What has gone before and what we can learn from it?

First historical perspective next.

An Old Story, An Old Wound

In 1971, Atlanta was still very much a small town. The interstate highways were not completed, so a trip from Atlanta to Marietta took an hour or more. (It still does, but for different reasons.) I remember one leg of this journey required crossing a one-lane bridge. That's one lane total as in "You go, then I go".

My grandfather lived in Marietta. He and my grandmother had divorced years earlier (an unusuality in the 1970's South) and we grandchildren trekked up to see him a couple of times a year. His was not an active presence in my life. He was distant, both physically and in my knowledge of him. But we lived with his shadow every day. Me with the idea of him built only from observations through small-child eyes; his children with the heavier memory of what might have been. He was short, trim, and drank Coca-Cola like a fiend. He was smart and well-read. From what they tell me of him, I would have liked him. I loved my grandmother with all my heart and I think I would have loved him, too.

This is how I envision what happened.

10 Thoughts About Finding A New Job

So, I have a new job lined up which I'll start late next week. But I wanted to reach this milestone before making a few observations about the process of finding a job (and the associated malady of being unemployed), which, in today's market, is not for those with weak constitutions.

1. Time of year matters. August was dead and September was surprisingly feeble. It wasn't until October (and Q4) rolled around that employers began to get serious about hiring. I imagine that late November and December will be wretched with a nice uptick at the start of the year. I further imagine it'll hum along ticketyboo until June, when it'll die down again during the summer. The good news is that there are jobs out there, more and more as the weeks wear on into winter.
   
2. Job search engines are largely worthless, even as search engines. There are one or two out there that are probably worth one (1) month's investment in their premium service, but I found them, in general, to be greedy (refusing to show you an employer's name without paying them) or wrong (linking to jobs that were no longer open). Often both.

Axioms of Visual Analytics

As I strive to learn more about the visual analytics space, I've tried talking to people in that industry to understand how the industry is structured and what skills are required to participate. On Friday, one of the smart folks over at Juice Analytics generously (and patiently) spent more than an hour with me answering questions about the space. Here are some of the things I've learned:

Axiom 1: Your data elements are not your children - you're not required to love them all equally. This is a famous-ish quote. What it means, essentially, is that just because you have data doesn't mean you're required to use it. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish. some of it might not be necessary. Which leads to...

Midnight Madness

I had a great meeting this morning with one of the folks over at Juice Analytics and walked away truly excited about the possibilities in the visual analytics field. In fact, I learned so much that I have to condense my thoughts into one or more posts. More on that next week.

Instead, I thought I'd close a blogless week by pointing out that today is the official start of the College Basketball season -- my favorite time of the year. Let's go Duke!

My First Four Analytics Lessons

I had a good meeting the other day with a very smart friend of mine (I have lots of friends who are way smarter than I am -- it's a secret to success). This buddy began his career as a graphic designer and is now a Brand Strategist for a well-known consumer product goods (CPG) company here in town. My intent was to pick his brain about his career -- what kind of training he needed to do his job, what did he look for in a job opportunity, what are the economics of his segment, how might one enter this segment, etc.

But our conversation, interestingly, swiftly turned its gaze towards analytics. I mentioned my interest in visual analytics and described what this field was. He was intrigued. We talked a lot about consumer marketing campaigns and how to measure their effectiveness, particularly when you start rolling social media into the mix. How do you know your marketing spend mix is optimized? How can you measure its impact when we're talking about hearts and minds?

Warren Buffet on Hiring

"In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you."

The Conversation Prism

Presented without comment, for now.

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

Now the work begins...

So I looked at all the bar graphs and spider charts and curving lines and symbols and meters and let them percolate for a while in my head and then suddenly I knew what I needed to do.

I've always been an intuitive decision-maker -- I just "know" when a decision is the right one for me. It's like I can feel the current of my life flowing around me, even though I can't see it.

My career-of-choice candidate is "Visual Analytics". You probably don't know what this is. I didn't either when I started this, so let me explain.

The Butterfly Circus

This movie came to my attention from another blog. It's 20 minutes long and very well made. It appealed to my creative side as all as my theme of finding one's true purpose. Now, I don't see myself as...disadvantaged...as the protagonist in this film, but I think, at one time or another, we all have felt that out of place. The best managers understand who people ARE, not who they'd like them to be. And success usually ensues.

Since I'm linking to their film, I feel compelled to suggest that you also consider donating to the Doorpost Film Project.

I should also point out that I've figured out what I want to do in five years. Now the real work begins. More on that later.

New Resources/Last Assessment

So I found a bunch of new "what do you want to be when you grow up" resources on the web yesterday (via LinkedIn, for those of you evaluating the effectiveness of social media channels).

The most promising of these, whose depths I have yet to plumb, is InternsOver40 -- a blog about people making intentional and sharp career changes later in life.It's laid out a little capriciously, IMO, and somewhat hard to read, but the content makes it worthwhile. I look forward to following it.

As I began to explore the material on this blog, I found links to other sites with a similar theme which, in turn, linked me to things like skills assessment tests and the like. It's like...I don't know...a "web" or something.

"Control of the adjacencies"

I spent the next two days in a kind of Apple-induced thrall, thinking excitedly of what my new Mac laptop would do and when I could get it. I was thinking of all the new, non-PC things I could do when the spell began to fade and I realized I needed a counter-perspective.

So, I called one of my friends who once was a Mac devotee, but who moved his life over to the PC world. (Interesting note is that he blogged about this when he did it and got flaming, vituperative hate mail from Mac people he didn't even know. Everything has a dark side.)

Mr. Wood, Your Laptop is Ready...

So, after much debate, I got online the other day with the Apple Store Concierge and made a "Personal Shopping" appointment for last Thursday. I was still wrestling with this "PC vs. Mac" thing -- logic said PC, emotion said Mac. Which was the right decision?

I walked in at 11:00 am and was met promptly by Kristin, whose business card carries the title "Expert". I was very honest with her:

• Not gonna buy anything today.
• Struggling with why I should pay 2-3x for a MacBook Pro
• Wanting to understand the emotional geas that Apple had magically placed upon me.

Which version are you?

I had lunch with a friend of mine today who has become sort of an informal career counselor in his dotage. (OK, he's not that much older than I am.) I wanted to ask his advice about this My Next Hat project as he's thought about this sort of stuff way more than I have. Plus, it was good to catch up with him.

He has been a manager of Engineers for a long time now and, during our lunch, made the point that different Engineers are needed for different levels of product maturity.

Mac vs. PC

Mye portable difference engine be afflicted with aires and maladies of a moste nefarious sorte so that I fear to touch its keyboard with my sainted flesh. I do observe that its internal aire circulation device does stray now and again from the path of righteousness and that a stern tap is required to restore its gaze in the direction of the Almighty and cause the aire to flow freely once more. And it is similarly afflicted with the twin Curses of Sloweness and Insufficient RAM so that even the simplest piece of godly software does challenge it to its limit, causing internal grinding sounds that surely indicate the unholy presence of the Adversary's daemons. Yea, verily I do need a new one.

So, the question is, what to buy next? Mac or PC? The PC I'd like is probably going to run me about $1000. A similarly-equipped Mac would cost twice that much at least. No brainer, right?

Portfolio project

God, has it been a week since I last blogged? That's unforgivable. My sincere apologies to the 2-3 of you who are still reading this blog.

The reason for my delay is yet another project. This time, it relates to my portfolio.

You see, I think Product Managers ought to have a portfolio the same way that artists do. Nobody hires a painter or sculpter or even a home-improvement contractor without seeing something of their previous work. Why not expect the same of Product Managers?

Relator, not Realtor...

By far the most amazing thing I've learned from all these tests is that I have the RELATOR talent. What does that mean? Essentially, it means I tend to cultivate deep friendships easily AND I need those friendships to sustain me.

That flies in the face of everything I ever believed about myself as an introvert. About five years ago, I had a blog and I had several comments from readers that their favorite entry was titled "The Tyranny of the Extroverts". It was pretty funny. I'll see if I can dig it up and "re-print" for tomorrow.

Strengths Finder 2.0

I've already done several things on this journey of self-discovery, but the thing I think I've found the most valuable has been an exercise called Strengths Finder 2.0. This analysis model is based on more than 50 years of human observation by Gallup scientists and the premise is this:

• If you're in a job that plays to your strengths, you're far, far more likely to be good at it and to enjoy it.
• So, the first thing you need to do is identify those strengths.

Birkman Says...

Yesterday, I probably nauseated you with my description of the Birkman Method and what it told me about my behaviors and my interests. Today my plan is to make you actually vomit with a detailed description of what jobs I should have. That is, if you keep reading.

The thing to remember is that this analysis is not based solely on my interests. It's also based on how I like to work and what kinds of behaviors I exhibit in the workplace. Generally speaking, I tend to like to work alone and uninterrupted, but as part of a larger team and toward a greater goal. I like a lot of freedom in what I choose to do next though I can adapt to pretty radical change if given enough warning. I'm pretty good with other people, though I'm not at all interested in selling to them. I like to treat others as customers (not clients) and I like to make them happy.

The Birkman is Here! The Birkman is Here!

On Friday I met with a career consultant who walked me through the results of my recent Birkman test. For those of you who are not familiar with the Birkman (and, before taking it, I counted myself a member of that club), it's essentially a personality test that determines how you tend to behave. It was created in the 60's by Roger Birkman, a WWII bomber pilot who observed that, even though pilots all flew the same mission, their reactions to a mission were wildly different. He went on to become an operational psychologist and creator of the Birkman Method to try and explain, characterize, and measure these differences.

A Distraction

I haven't blogged in a day or two and I feel compelled to write down why and why not.

When I blog, I take it as a serious commitment. "Four to five entries a week," I tell myself, "or it's not worth doing." I believe strongly in honoring one's personal commitments, even if nobody else cares. If you're not true to yourself, you're really not going to be true to others. Or so I have come to believe over the years.

Miscellaneous Updates for Monday

1. On Saturday, Product Camp Atlanta was held at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. More than 250 Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers from Atlanta and nearby cities congregated to discuss techniques and meet each other. This was my first event and it was really excellent. It's an entirely volunteer event with corporate sponsors picking up the food tab. Volunteers proposed 44 sessions on various PM topics, the top 23 vote-getters of which are delivered. I was lucky enough to have mine selected ("The Four W's or How to Train Your CEO"). Small audience, but it was very well-received, I thought. A number of people asked if I would come in and do training.
   

Just Like Nietzsche...

Today's phase of self-discovery relates to my traits or personality type. There are lots of these personality tests and quite a bit of literature on the subject.

First of all, I did a quick and dirty little Meyers-Briggs test online (pretty sure this is not the official version). According to this test, I am an INTJ or, what Keirsey.com calls a "Mastermind". (It sounds wicked cool, but they've all got good names like that. Except for maybe the "Supervisor" -- that doesn't sound very cool). Anyway, my I, T, and J are all fairly strong. The N is mild (which makes me a borderline "Inspector").

Now, I will say this -- from what I can tell, INTJs are relatively rare (<<1% of the population) and yet a relatively large number of Product Managers are INTJs (see my previous post about personality disorders). In my previous company, all four of us on the PM team were INTJs. Either this is quite the statistical anomaly or there's something to this personality-driven career path thing.

A Few of My Favorite Things

OK, enough with the movie references. (But I do have to admit, the first 2/3 of "The Sound of Music" is a guilty pleasure. It's good up until that wretched Baroness leaves, then all the drama's gone faster than Sgt. Schultz can suck the meat out of a sausage casing. And I know Schultz was German while the von Trapps were Austrian, but go with it. I can't think of any overweight Austrian pop culture icons just now.)

Anyway, I promised to start my journey of self-exploration with a frank and honest list of things I like to do, so here goes.

The Personality Disorder of Product Management

I had intended to talk about the first item on my list from yesterday, "activities I like" and how this might inform my "what to do in five years" decision. But today's topic has been overtaken by events.Check back tomorrow if you don't want to hear me blather on about product management some more.

This morning, I got to meet another VP of Product Management in the technology industry over coffee and scones and the experience was transformational.

Kissing Your Elbow

How does one start? How do you figure out what you truly want? An old friend of mine once told me that understanding parts of your own heart was as hard as kissing the point on your elbow -- you just can't get far enough away to do it properly. (Try it.)

Still, you gotta start somewhere, so here's how I'm thinking about the problem.

Hello, My Name is Inigo Montoya.

My name is Mark. As of this writing I am 45 years old. I am married and have two children. I live in Atlanta and I have been a Product Manager in the Internet Technology space since, well, since the Internet really mattered. If you don't know what a Product Manager is, don't worry about it. Most people don't. My wife still has only the vaguest idea of what I do every day. Suffice it to say we are an important part of the process that creates all the hardware and software you rely on today and most people don't fully appreciate Product Management until it's no longer there (you know who you are, Engineering.) No, I’m not bitter about it.