During the deliver of one of our Product Strategy workshops during a recent quarterfinal rounds of the World Cup, some of the participants got into a heated debate regarding a match between Netherlands-Costa…
A few years ago I was contacted by a product manager in crisis. His recently-released product was languishing, and he was racked with guilt. He told me that although he had put all of his efforts into…
A senior business leader (and a reader of The Product Manager’s Desk Reference) recently reached out to me. He said that it was time to engage Sequent Learning Networks to deliver a Product Management…
I have always been amazed by how deftly the TV series Mad Men dramatizes the tension between creativity and efficiency. A scene from a recent episode stuck with me for days. Let me set the stage for you:…
There are many schools of thought as to how companies should organize themselves to most effectively manage a product’s life cycle. At Sequent, we clearly have a position on this: A product manager…
Business managers have tough jobs. They’re constantly being called upon to make decisions without the right amount of data – or the best quality data. I can tell you that I’ve made plenty of mistakes…
In my past I have done everything from financial planning to teaching people how to be the best salespeople in the country. When I became a product manager many years ago I was amazed by the similarity…
Reading about great inventors makes me nostalgic for a work environment that may have never existed. Take Albert Einstein. The man was a born and bred tinkerer. As a boy he often visited his father’s…
At its core strategy should be straightforward and uncomplicated, yet product managers talk about it like it’s some amorphous, elusive thing. So often, product managers will ask for help to improve…
We have all read an email, or text, Facebook post or Tweet that made us think the author was mad, or upset, or being rude? Have you ever been completely wrong in those feelings once you had a conversation…
Over the past 15-20 years, this once mysterious thing that we call Product Management has really come into its own. What once was a somewhat obscure, inconsistently applied, and often misunderstood function…