Productivize - Issue #19
Productivize - Issue #19
Featuring 3 product champions, resources, interesting products and a book you should read.
Hey there 👋 Happy Monday! Each week Productivize is something I look forward to as it allows me to sharpen my product mind and provide value to you all at the same time. Thank you for reading and learning with me 🙏
Here is what’s inside this issue:
Three Tips for Using Design Thinking in PM Activities
Finding Product Culture Fit by Sachin Rekhi
How fostering empathy helps us all build better products
Product champions you should follow - Roman Pichler, Steve Johnson, Rich Mironov
Interesting products you should try - Founderpath, Reconcile, Lindy Books
A book you should read - Good Strategy Bad Strategy
Before we dive in, I wanted to share an update about Shoutout:
After putting a bat signal 2 weeks ago and talking to multiple talented dev folks(who landed in my DMs), today I’m stoked to announce Curtis Cummings is joining Shoutout as a tech co-founder. I wrote a thread about why he fits perfectly in Shoutout’s ecosystem:
Thanks for reading the update and now let’s get started with this issue 👇
Three Tips for Using Design Thinking in PM Activities
Product managers must integrate design thinking into their product lifecycle process to foster a customer-focused approach for offerings. Otherwise they risk being too internally focused and out of touch with the market segments they serve. This article covers three tips that can help PMs better leverage design thinking principles as part of their activities. Read the full article here.
Finding Product Culture Fit
The product culture ultimately informs how a PM spends their time, how decisions are made, and the strengths and weaknesses of their product development approach relative to alternative cultures. Sachin in this article talks about finding product culture fit in startups that engineering-driven, data-driven, design-driven, and sales-driven product cultures. Read it here.
How fostering empathy helps us all build better products
Building empathy with your stakeholders is just as important as building empathy with users. In this video, Egan Cheung – Director of Product at Shopify, shares his thoughts on
Why empathy is a critical skill
Helping users adopt change
How empathy can help you become a better product leader
Roman Pichler
Roman is a product expert who has more than 15 years experience in teaching product managers, advising product leaders, and helping companies build successful products. He is the author of three books on product management, including How to Lead in Product Management. He shares tips on building effective product roadmap and product discovery strategies on twitter. Give him a follow here - @romanpichler
Steve Johnson
Steve is a product success coach, author and a speaker focused on removing the chaos from product planning. He uses modern methods to guide product teams from idea to market in only a few weeks. He tweets about product launch frameworks and teaches product fundamentals. Give him a follow - @sjohnson717
Rich Mironov
Rich is a relentless blogger, speaker, teacher and mentor on software strategy, product management, and aligning what-we-can-build with what-markets-will-pay-for. He is a champion when it comes to organizing the product teams, product leadership, tackling product-specific issues. Give him a follow here - @RichMironov
Founderpath
Where SaaS founders get funding.
Reconcile
A voice- controlled financial tracker.
Lindy Books
A Notion database of 100+ Psychology, Microeconomics, Game Theory, Philosophy, Management books.
A book you should read - Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The author clearly show how to recognize the good, reject the bad, and make good strategy a living force in your organization. Get it here.
That’s all for today. I’ll be back with new learnings and findings next week. My goal is to give you the best experience and value through Productivize and I hope you enjoyed reading this issue.
Lastly, I’m gathering feedback on how can I make Productivize better for you. I would love to know what you think. Tap on the below button and let me know. Thanks for reading!
Until next week,
Sharath