Listening, *really* listening, is a rare superpower.

I was a bad listener most of my life.

Then I fixed that a few years ago.

Night & day difference in my leadership ability.

I learned that we can learn to listen well.

A thread on listening (and learning it from movies🎞️)
👇🏾

A B2B Product Management Story: on discovering problems that customers actually care about

Very visual story thread👇🏾

Our story starts with a new product idea

PM diligently talks to customers about whether this product will solve their problems

Customers say yes!

PM reports findings to the executive team

There's excitement

Staffing obtained 🙌🏾

🎉🎊

Why does Your Manager’s Manager (YMM) request a deck/doc during a meeting, says it’s urgent, and then doesn’t respond for days after you create & send it?

Or, why does YMM often respond with trivial feedback (e.g. formatting) & not substantive feedback?

Answers in this thread👇🏾

Have you set an entirely new password on a site & said to yourself: “surely, I’ll remember it becos this site is so important for me”. Have you then gone on to forget that password the very next week?

Me too.

The reason for YMM’s odd behavior & my password optimism is the same.

That reason is the Focusing Illusion, first described by Daniel Kahneman.

The Focusing Illusion:
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.

When YMM asked you to create that doc as one of the follow up actions during the Product Review, YMM fell prey to the Focusing Illusion.

Trust me, YMM had no intention of making you do busywork.

YMM truly believed that it was very impt & urgent to create that doc & review it.

This was YMM’s conception of how much of their future time was appropriate to spend on the item for which they requested that doc (Item A):

A thread of product management frameworks:

(this might be useful if you are a product manager, product leader, or founder)

Before we jump in:

Frameworks will not fix all your problems.

Used right, they should help you
1) better understand your context
2) create structure for problems
3) communicate ideas & solutions

I often use these frameworks in my product work, sometimes without realizing it.

1/
3X framework (Kent Beck)

A product can be in one of 3 stages
1. Explore
2. Expand
3. Extract

For product leaders this is the most vital framework to understand because almost every important decision should account for the stage your product is

Examples of decisions you can make more rigorously with the 3X framework:
- optimize for inputs, outputs, or outcomes?
- set more qualitative or quantitative goals?
- how to measure progress?
- what skills to look for?
- how to evaluate PMs'

2/
5Qs for product rigor

1) Who is the customer?
2) What is the problem/opportunity?
3) What is the main customer benefit?
4) How do you know customers want this?
5) What is the customer experience?

This framework provides useful structure for product proposals, reviews, etc.

A surprisingly high % of stupid arguments & fights on Twitter are rooted in a tiny number of fairly obvious fallacies.

Stupid arguments & the fallacies that feed them, a thread:

Fallacy 1/

Just because it’s true that all squares are rectangles, you argued that all rectangles must be squares. (And you did it with so much swagger.)

Example of Fallacy 1

X says: Successful people aren’t afraid of hard work.

Y argues: That’s BS. I work 90 hours a week at Tech Co and am still stuck in this dead-end job.

Fallacy 2/

Just because you found an exception to a general pattern, you argued that the entire pattern is false.

Example of Fallacy 2

X says: Venture capital is useful for startups.

Y argues: Not true. Foo’s startup took VC money and they crashed & burned.

Z piles on: I agree with Y. In fact, Bar’s startup did not take VC money and it’s worth a bajillion.

Your Most PRECIOUS Currencies:

-Energy

-Time

-Attention

-Trust

-Love

-Loyalty

-Respect

Only give these currencies to high value people. Never spend these currencies on low value shitheads eg: trolls, weasels, snakes, naysayers etc.

'Wait, I thought money was the most important currency?'

Nah.

Once you adopt abundance mentality, you realize their is no shortage of money.

Making the dollars your most important currency will have you leading an empty life.

Time to flip your perspective.

👇

▪Energy

When you strip yourself to the core, you are an emotional creature.

Emotions are your internal worlds energy.

Harnessing that energy is crucial for leveraging yourself to obtain whatever you want.

You have a finite amount everyday, so spend it wisely.

▪Time

A second that is lost will never be returned.

You start valuing the hell out of this currency the more you mature.

As the years start adding up, you realize time is precious.

You must always have a scarcity mindset towards time.

Once you do so, you will not be lazy.

▪Attention

You can be here, but not present.

Attention is completely mental.

Giving someone your attention means you are clearing up mental bandwidth to make room for them.

Only give your attention to people who help you grow.

For the negative ones?

Ignore their existence

I'm just back for a COMPLETELY NECESSARY trip to a supermarket.

And... something dramatic happened.

So, okay, looks like we're going to have a little bit of a THREAD.

Buckle up for an unbelievable anecdote that gets to the heart of London life in this nightmarish pandemic.

(I won't name the supermarket, NOT because I don't want to shame the members of staff [I will be doing that privately by reporting their actions to the police later today - as soon as I've finished tweeting this thread], but because I don't want to give them free advertising.)

Okay, right. I'm still shaking so I'm struggling to write this out. I've opened a bottle of Campo Viejo Rioja (an underrated affordable offering which is currently on special offer at Tesco) to steady my nerves. No shame in that.

So. Yes. I was walking down the dairy aisle...

I saw a northerner.

(apologies for the delay, I'm on the phone to an upset friend - her husband of 15 years has just confessed to an affair with her own sister. It's not really the sort of situation where you can say, "Excuse me Julie, awfully sorry but I'm writing an incredible thread on twitter!")

Three years ago today, I was icing my knuckles because I’d beaten the fuck out of a man who had groped me in a club a couple of nights before. I wrote about it in my new essay https://t.co/SqzluTtJKb 📷 @rerutled #IBeatMyAssaulter

After I explained to a club manager what had happened, he ooked at my Beloved and asked me “Why didn’t you let your husband take care of it?” I almost beat him up too.

“First of all, he’s not my husband. Also, this is my body, I take care of it.”

Patriarchy enables and protects men who sexually assault women, and it demands that only other men “protect” us.

As long as we obey and behave in ways it approves of, of course. Protection is conditional.Because if we disobey, ha! I don't want to be protected. I want to be free

I started #IBeatMyAssaulter and women from around the world shared stories.

Five days earlier, I had started #MosqueMeToo to talk about being sexually assaulted during pilgrimage and women from around the world shared stories 🎥 @rerutled

And between the two #, men were showing me how easily the goal posts can move.

Under #MosqueMeToo men asked me, “Why didn’t you make more of a fuss?” Under #IBeatMyAssaulter men said, “You made too much of a fuss. You were too violent. Don’t you think you overreacted?”

10 Common Money Myths

That Could be Costing you $1,000's

// Thread //

1. YOLO

It's true that you only live once.

It's NOT true that you should:

- Live in debt
- Work until you die
- Live paycheck to paycheck

What you can do is:

- Live in the moment
- Save for your future
- Start investing today

Balance is the key.

YOLO is not.

2. LLC's are for the rich

You don't have to earn $100,000s to form an LLC.

An LLC:

- Offers tax advantages
- Limits personal liability
- Avoids double taxation

If you have a business and want to earn money, then it's time to consider forming an LLC.

3. I'll be Poor Forever

What you believe determines your future.

The journey to wealth won't be easy.
If it were easy, everyone would be wealthy.

Getting there will take:

- Discipline
- Hard work
- Consistency
- Determination

Change your mindset, Change your reality.

4. Buying a House is Better than Renting

Homeownership means:

- Less flexibility
- High upfront costs
- Long term commitment
- Unexpected additional costs

This may not work for your personal situation.

Make sure you’re financially and emotionally fit to make a home purchase.