My friend Jeff Lash e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago to let me know he had started a new blog on product management. Jeff is a good organizer, a former Usability guru, and now works as a product manager for a well-known international firm.
His blog is goodproductmanager.com, and he's doing an excellent job of maintaining it. That should come as no surprise, as Jeff has been blogging for a while on personal sites, as well as being one of the first people I knew who used internal blogs to communicate within a company.
Jeff answers several questions on what it takes to be a good product manager or a bad one, giving the no-so-secret thought processes behind those who make common mistakes and those who are successful. It takes a second to get used to, until you realize he's being ironic, and giving the pat answers you hear from those who justify bad product management processes. For example;
If you want to be a bad product manager, don’t give your sales staff a preview of product enhancements or new product launches. Their job is to sell the products that you produce, not to help create them — why would it matter what they think? Any time they spend talking with you is time that they’re not selling, and you don’t want to have a negative impact on their sales performance. Plus, if you did preview for them what you’re working on, they’d just go out and start selling that immediately, even though the work in progress may not be exactly what you’ll release. Since there’s potential to confuse or unintentionally mislead customers, it’s best not to show your sales staff anything until right before it’s ready for release.
The first time I read that, I was pretty shocked. If he really believed that, I might be forced to reevaluate my estimation of his talents. Of course, he was just setting the reader up, because he continues with his explanation of why a good product manager should involved the sales team.
I like it - it's a good format, and I look forward to seeing where this goes. More important, this is an example of a thought leadership blog, one where an employee sticks their neck out and tells the world how they would run things if they were in charge. We need more of these, certainly in St Louis, but globally, too. Jeff's blog isn't there to make money, or improve branding, or hire new people. It's there to make other product managers better at what they do and provide personal experience as a guide.
His company is lucky to have him. He's writing the model employee blog, that even the most cautious lawyer would hesitate to shut down. Keep it up Jeff, we'll be watching - and add me to the resource page, willya?
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