The Productologist

It’s been a little over a month since I started using this new note-taking method and I wanted to provide some details on how it’s going for me. To be honest, it hasn’t been as easy to switch to this note-taking style as I thought it would be. I have struggled on a few fronts–

Paper

I’ve been listening to career-related podcasts on my commute to and from work lately and one of my favorites is Manager Tools. They are basically two management consultants (Mark Horstman and Michael Auzenne) who talk about tips and tricks to being a good manager, which if you have supervised others at work, you know is not as easy as it seems.

Steve Kaufmann posted an article over at Dumb Little Man about how not everything requires How-To manuals. The post covers a variety of areas, but one struck me as especially relevant for Product Managers–

“I worked for two large corporations in the 1970’s and 80’s. They were both established leaders in their field. Millions of dollars were spent in meetings, studies, Return on Investment(ROI) analysis and more studies, usually resulting in the decision not to go forward. Neither company exists today.” -Steve Kaufmann of LingQ

I was in a meeting a few days ago where we were discussing the schedule for the upcoming release of my product. To my knowledge, everyone in the room already knew what the schedule was, but we have an internal wiki that we use to track release dates and that page had TBD in several slots, hence the meeting. What was really driving the meeting was that members of the exec team had different dates in their heads and when this came to light, there was an immediate scramble to get everything reconciled.

I wouldn’t label myself an environmentalist, but I try to do my part. I recycle paper, aluminum and glass in my home. I make homemade notepads out of old printouts. I drive a Honda Civic on my workday commute. I use reusable containers instead of disposable ones. When I have to print documents at work, I print two-to-a-page and double-sided. I also fancy myself a new life re-user.

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