Month: February 2012

Great Product Leaders Win Games

/ Adam Nash / 11 Comments

Being a great product leader is hard. Every organization and process is different, and in many cases you are responsible for the outcome without having the authority to enforce decisions. My recent blog post on Being a Great Product Leader was an attempt to capture the specifics of how to lead a great, cross-functional software team.

To scale a great team, however, you need more than just a list of roles and responsibilities. How you onboard new talent is as important for the long term health of your team as how you identify and hire them in the first place.

The Trials of Being a New Coach

When a sports team gets a new coach, there is some authority that comes with the role. You can immediately set standards for behavior & strategy – how the team is going to practice, what plays the team is going to run. That authority, however, tends to be short -lived. Before you know it, the team begins to focus on one thing: are we winning games?

Joining a new team as a product manager has the same dynamic. At most of the companies I’ve been a part of, there is this false sense of security that comes from process and organization. Sure, if you are technically fulfilling the role and responsibilities of a product manager, there is a certain amount of respect and authority initially. However, in the long term, teams want to win games, and in software that means products that people are proud of and products that move the needle.

So is there a pattern of behavior for new product managers that ensures long term success? I’ll argue yes, and for my new hires I boil it down to three phases:
2 weeks, 2 months, and 2 quarters.

Two Weeks

The first two weeks of a product manager are critical, because this is the window where a new leader can establish the most important aspect of the role: what game are we playing, and how do we keep score.

As a result, the first thing I lay out for new product manager is:

  • The company culture and organizational philosophy of the team. Why the company matters. Product/engineering partnership. Results oriented performance.
  • The current strategic frame for how their product fits into the overall strategy of the company.
  • The current metrics and milestones for the product they are taking over.
  • A set of frameworks for the roles & responsibilities of product managers. These include posts on being a great product leader, product prioritization, finding heat in design, etc.

In the first two weeks, a new product manager is expected to:

  • Thoroughly challenge and finalize the strategic frame for the area. Does the existing frame make sense, or is there a better game to be playing?
  • Thoroughly understand the existing product metrics, and identify new or different metrics needed to properly assess the success of the area (max: 3)
  • Reprioritize all existing and future ideas & concepts based on the above, a.k.a. the product roadmap.

In addition, the first two weeks is the time when a new product manager can physically sit down and meet all the other key product and engineering leaders in overlapping areas, to help them both have context for their product and more importantly establish communication channels across the company with other key leaders. Great product managers very often serve as efficient people routers, and knowing who to talk to is often as important as knowing what to do.

Two Months

Like medicine, theoretical knowledge will only get you so far as a product manager. At some point, you learn by doing. A team will tolerate theoretical discussion for a short while, but in the end, a new product manager needs to get their hands dirty.

Two months is too short a time to significantly move the needle, but it is enough time to run through a few release cycles. In the first two months, it’s crucial for a product manager to actually be responsible for something released to users. In addition, the first two months is the typical time frame for a new product manager to flesh out the “best idea” from the team on how to win.

Two months is enough time to:

  • Have identified key outstanding bugs or minor feature fixes that matter.
  • Led the design / specification of solutions to those issues, and see them go live.
  • Write their first product specification for a larger, more significant milestone for their area. This should be their highest priority project to “move the needle” as they’ve defined it for the team.

The first two months are crucial, because not only does it help the new team execute together and coalesce, but also put their stake in the ground on what their next big evolution will be. By leading the effort to place that bet, a product manager sets the team up for the type of success that hopefully will provide long term momentum for that product team.

Two Quarters

Six months is the window to get a cross-functional team into the positive, reinforcing cycle of ongoing success. At this point, the team has released both small and large features, and has meaningfully “moved the needle.”

This doesn’t mean, by the way, that the product manager led the launch of a single, monolithic all-or-nothing feature. In fact, what it most likely means is that the team launched a combination of iterative efforts to test out their theories and push through changes that in the aggregate validated the strategy and prioritization that had been put in place.

Great Product Leaders Win Games

Once teams have victories under their belt, in hyper-growth companies they gain both the desire to win again, and the confidence to execute on that desire. Creating that momentum is one of the hardest, and yet most valuable elements of cross-functional leadership.

This pattern has proven reliably consistent for my own product leadership efforts, as well as in differentiating the long term success of product managers I’ve hired and mentored.

In some ways, it’s really simple: great teams like winning, and great leaders reliably lead teams to great victories.

Now go out and win games.

How to Fix the Apple TV 2 “Blinking White Light of Death”

/ Adam Nash / 36 Comments

This is one of those public service announcement blog posts that I write whenever I run into a non-trivial technical problem.  My hope is always that the time I take to write this up will save someone time & money in the future.

The AppleTV 2 Blinking White Light of Death

Problem is simple: Your AppleTV 2 has a blinking white LED that never stops, and all it displays on the TV is an image instructing you to connect the device to iTunes.

Cause: Most likely, you interfered with a firmware update. In my case,  I had selected an option on my AppleTV 2 to update its firmware.  However, before it was complete, the power to the device was cut.

Mission: Find a Micro USB Cable

I didn’t realize it was possible to physically connect your AppleTV 2 to your computer.  This blog post was my first clue on what had caused my issue, and how to solve it.  Unfortunately, it sounded like he never was able to solve the problem directly.

It’s a bit strange that Apple decided to put a Micro USB port on the AppleTV 2.  However, after reading this support article on the Apple website, I was determined to try to fix it myself.

Finding a Micro USB cable turned out to be non-trivial.  To the casual observer, the Micro USB and the Mini USB look very similar.  The Mini USB is used by Blackerries, hard drives, and countless devices.  The Micro USB port is a bit smaller, flatter, and more oval.

Apple actually does not carry the cable in store, although you can get one online.  The trick was finding a device that uses the Micro USB.  In my case, I found them stocked next to the Sony eReader.

iTunes Saves the Day

I plugged the new Micro USB cable into a powered USB 2.0 hub.  Given some of the issues reported by others, I suspect that it’s possible that the power draw of the AppleTV might be a bit more than typical USB ports can handle.  In any case, the Apple TV showed up in iTunes 10.5.x.  I clicked the “Restore” button, and a couple of minutes later it was done.

No issues at all with the device – it was literally reset to a factory clean state.

Since an overwhelming number of support articles and comments I found online suggested that this didn’t or wouldn’t work, I thought I’d put this blog post out there.  Hopefully it will help someone in their hour of need.

 

 

Apple, Cisco, and Dow 15000

/ Adam Nash / 49 Comments

I was driving home on Sunday, listening to the radio, and it occurred to me how different the financial news would be if Apple ($AAPL) was in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI).

Of course, being who I am, I went home and built a spreadsheet to recalculate what would have happened if Dow Jones had decided to add Apple to the index instead of Cisco back in 2009.  Imagine my surprise to see that the Dow be over 2000 points higher.

In real life, the Dow closed at 12,874.04 on Feb 13, 2012.  However, if they had added Apple instead of Cisco, the Dow Jones would be at 14,926.95.  That’s over 800 points higher than the all-time high of 14,164 previously set on 4/7/2008.

Can you imagine what the daily financial news of this country would be if every day the Dow Jones was hitting an all-time high?  How would it change the tone of our politics? Would we all be counting the moments to Dow 15,000?

Why Cisco vs. Apple?

This isn’t a foolhardy exercise.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average is changed very rarely, in order to promote stability and comparability in the index.  However, on June 8, 2009, they made two changes to the index:

  • They replaced Citigroup with Travelers
  • They replaced General Motors with Cisco

The question I explored was simple – what would have happened if they had replaced General Motors with Apple on June 8, 2009.  After all, Apple was up over 80% off its lows post-crash.  The company had a large, but not overwhelming market capitalization.  The index is already filled with “big iron” tech stocks, like Intel, HP & IBM.  Why add Cisco?  Why not add a consumer tech name instead?

In fact, there is no readily obvious justification for adding Cisco to the index in 2009 instead of Apple.

The Basics of the Dow Jones Industrial Average

Look, I’m just going to say it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is ridiculous.

You may not realize this, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the “Dow” that everyone quotes as representative of the US stock market, and sometimes even a barometer of the US economy, is a mathematical farce.

Just thirty stocks, hand picked by committee by Dow Jones, with no rigorous requirements.  Worse, it’s a “price-weighted” index, which is mathematically nonsensical.  When calculating the Dow Jones Industrial Average, they take the actual stock prices of each stock, add them together, and divide them by a “Dow Divisor“.  They don’t take into account how many shares outstanding; they don’t assess the market capitalization of each company.  When a stock splits, they actually change the divisor for the whole index.  It’s completely unclear what this index is designed to measure, other than financial illiteracy.

In fact, there is only one justification for the Dow Jones Industrial Average being calculated this way.  Dow Jones explains it in this post on why Apple & Google are not included in the index.  To save you some time, I’ll summarize: they have always done it this way, and if they change it, then they won’t be able to compare today’s nonsensical index to the nonsensical index from the last 100+ years.

So what? Does it really matter?

It’s a fair critique.  Look, with 20/20 hindsight, there are limitless number of changes we could make to the index to change its value.  Imagine adding Microsoft and Intel to the index in 1991 instead of 1999?

I don’t think this exercise is that trivial in this case.  The Dow already decided to make a change in 2009.  They decided to replace a manufacturing company (GM) with a large hardware technology company (CSCO).  They could have easily picked Apple instead.

The end result?  People talk about the stock market still being “significantly off its highs” of 2008.  In truth, no one should be reporting the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  But they do, and therefore it matters.  As a result, the choices of the Dow Jones committee matter, and unfortunately, there seems to be no accountability for those choices.

Appendix: The Numbers

I’ve provided below the actual tables used for my calculations.  Please note that all security prices are calculated as of market close on Monday, Feb 13, 2012.  The new Dow Divisor for the alternate reality with AAPL in the index was calculated by recalculating the appropriate Dow Divisor for the 6/8/2009 switch of AAPL for CSCO, and a recalculated adjustment for the VZ spinoff on 7/2/2010.

Real DJIA DJIA w/ AAPL on 6/8/09
Company 2/13/2012 Company 2/13/2012
MMM 88.03 MMM 88.03
AA 10.33 AA 10.33
AXP 52.07 AXP 52.07
T 30.04 T 30.04
BAC 8.25 BAC 8.25
BA 74.85 BA 74.85
CAT 113.70 CAT 113.70
CVX 106.38 CVX 106.38
CSCO 20.03 AAPL 502.60
KO 68.44 KO 68.44
DD 50.60 DD 50.60
XOM 84.42 XOM 84.42
GE 19.07 GE 19.07
HPQ 28.75 HPQ 28.75
HD 45.93 HD 45.93
INTC 26.70 INTC 26.70
IBM 192.62 IBM 192.62
JNJ 64.68 JNJ 64.68
JPM 38.30 JPM 38.30
KFT 38.40 KFT 38.40
MCD 99.65 MCD 99.65
MRK 38.11 MRK 38.11
MSFT 30.58 MSFT 30.58
PFE 21.30 PFE 21.30
PG 64.23 PG 64.23
TRV 58.99 TRV 58.99
UTX 84.88 UTX 84.88
VZ 38.13 VZ 38.13
WMT 61.79 WMT 61.79
DIS 41.79 DIS 41.79
Total 1701.04 Total 2183.61
Divisor 0.13212949 Divisor 0.146286415
Index 12874.04 Index 14926.95

Calculating the “alternate divisor” requires getting the daily stock quotes for the days where the index changed, and recalculating to make sure that the new divisor with the new stocks gives the same price for the day. It’s a bit messy, and depends on public quote data, so please feel free to check my math if I made a mistake.

Pinterest & LinkedIn: Identity of Taste vs. Expertise

/ Adam Nash / 4 Comments

It’s hard to go three feet in Silicon Valley these days without someone commenting on the phenomenal engagement and growth being seen from Pinterest and other curation-based social platforms.  What’s a bit surprising to me, however, is how many people refer to this demand as a growing interest and search for “expertise”.

As I have a passion for finding a more human understanding for what drives engagement in real life and then mapping it to online behavior, I think the use of the term “expertise” here is misleading.  Instead, I believe what we are seeing is an explosion of activity around an incredibly powerful form of identity and reputation: the identity of taste.

Expertise is Empirical

If you go to LinkedIn, you see a site that is rich with the identity of expertise.  LinkedIn has rich structured data around sources of expertise: degrees, schools, companies, titles, patents, published content, skills.  They also have rich sources of unstructured content about job responsibilities, specialties, questions & answers, group participation, status updates and comments.  There are even implicit indications of expertise related to other online identities (like Twitter) and relationships to other people with expertise (connections).

This expertise can be tapped by using LinkedIn’s incredibly powerful search engine, either on site or via API, or by browsing the talent graph displayed in catalog form on LinkedIn Skills.  Github has created a powerful identity for developers based on their actual interests and contributions in code.  Blogs, Tumblr, Quora and Twitter have helped people create identities based on the content they create and share.

The power of identity based on expertise is that it is concretely demonstrated.  Education, experience, content and relationships are all very structured and concrete methods for measuring and assessing expertise.  However, in some ways, expertise is limited by it’s literal nature.  Factual. Demonstrable. Empirical.

Taste is Inspiring

Pinterest, however, has unlocked an incredibly powerful form of reputation and identity that exists in the offline world – an identity of taste.  People don’t care about the expertise of people who are assembling pinboards.  They care about how those combinations make them feel – the concept, the aggregation, the flow of additions.  The Pinboard graph begins for most people with their friends, but people quickly learn to hop based on sources to people they don’t know, finding beautiful, interesting, intriguing or inspiring collections of images.

This isn’t an identity based on expertise, really.  It’s not even clear how closely related it is to a graph of interests. Curation-based social platforms evoke a different phenomenon, and with it, some very powerful emotions and social behaviors.

Taste is different than expertise.  Taste does not imply that you are a good person or a deep well of expertise on the domain.  Taste is not universal, although there are certainly those with a predilection for influencing and/or predicting the changes in taste for many.  But when we as human beings find people whose taste inspires us, it’s a powerful relationship.  We map positive attributes to them, ranging from kindness to intelligence to even authority.  Fame & taste are often intertwined.

You Are What You Curate

Curation-based social platforms are based on the interaction of three key factors:

  1. A rich, visual identity and reputation based on curated content
  2. An asymmetric graph based on not only following people, but specific feeds of curated content
  3. A rich, visual activity stream of curation activity

It’s the first item that I seem to see most under-appreciated.  Vanity, as one of the most common deadly sins in social software, drives an incredible amount of engagement and activity.  As people are inspired by those who create beautiful identities of curated content, they also become keenly aware of how their curated identity looks.  When people signal an appreciation for their taste, it triggers power social impulses, likely built up at an early age.

This, more than anything else, reflects the major step function in engagement of this generation of curation over previous attempts (anyone remember Amazon Lists?)

How Does Taste Factor into Your Experience?

I always like to translate these insights into actionable questions for product designers.  In this case, these are some good starting points:

  • How does taste factor into your experience?
  • Is the identity in your product better served by reputation based on taste or expertise?
  • Are the relationships in your product between users based on taste or expertise?
  • Are you creating an identity visually and emotionally powerful enough to trigger curation activity?
  • Are you flowing curation activity through your experience in a way that stimulates discovery and the creation of an identity of taste?

Don’t underestimate the power of good taste.