I recently finished watching series one of American Horror Story — twisted, sexy, and totally addictive. Towards the finale, one of the characters made a point that struck home.

< SPOILER WARNING >
This series is filled with surprises. I’m going to reveal some of those twists and turns to make a point about mentoring PMs. You have been warned!
< / SPOILER WARNING >

Ben is an ass, and everyone dies because of it

Ben (played by the all-too-often shirtless Dylan McDermott) is married to Vivien (Connie Britton) and they have a teenage daughter named Violet. The marriage is troubled and Ben’s solution is to start over, relocate the family to a new house in a new city.

Unfortunately, that new house is haunted.

Very haunted.

By lots and lots of ghosts.

And when you’re on their property, you can’t always tell the living from the dead: You can see them, hear them, and make out with them.

(Check out this great who’s who for more detail.)

Suffice it to say: Ben is so blinded by his own selfishness that he ignores obvious signs… fails his wife and daughter when they need him most… and, by the time he starts to realize the truth, it’s too little, too late.

Ben gets a clue after he commits his wife to a psychiatric hospital

Eventually Ben starts to see the house and its denizens for who they are.

When he confesses to his hot young maid Moira that he might have made a mistake putting his wife away, Moira replies:

“Congratulations, Dr. Harmon. You’re finally starting to see things as they are.”

Then, at long last, Ben sees Moira the way everyone else in the house sees her: as an old woman with a blind eye.

Which got me to thinking about mentoring

My default position, like many people’s, is to try and help if I can.

Mentoring a Product Manager is a big responsibility. I’ve had mentoring relationships that’ve worked great, and others that failed miserably.

Looking back now, I can see that too often I was thinking too much like Ben — in the sense that I was focused on one thing (mentoring the PM) when I should have been focused on something else (the PM mentee), and was too blind to know the difference.

Not all proteges are created equally

(Neither are all mentors, but hear me out.)

Before taking on a Product Manager mentee, I would normally question myself: Am I the right guy for this? Do I have the relevant experience? Do I have enough time to do right by them?

Those are the right questions to ask. But I now understand there are other questions I need to ask, and too often didn’t:

• Does the PM mentee have a clear picture of where they want to go?
• Are they really motivated to grow and change? This could be hard work. Are they up for it?
• How much work is realistically required? And do they agree with your assessment of where they are versus where they want to be?

If they don’t have a clear picture of where they want to go… don’t have the right drive and attitude… or disagree with how much work is going to be involved to get from A to B… can I reasonably expect to help them? Probably not. Although I might be able to get them a referral to a great psychiatric hospital.

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Bonus Content

Watch the official trailer for season one of American Horror Story:

Reflecting on the past year is a great way to gear up for the new year. A chance to review, to understand, to benefit from what we’ve learned.

But who has time for any of that?

We All Do

Because we have to. I now understand that on a very personal level.

The last 12+ months have been filled with major life lessons. A big one:

The best time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for one.

Conceptually, I understood the need for distance to see things clearly. In reality, I was always full steam ahead, the less stops the better.

So What Changed?

My wife said, “Enough.” Enough late nights at the office, enough putting work first (among other things).

I was stunned. Like I was on the wrong end of an RT+Y Takedown.

That conversation kicked off a year-long quest to understand myself and my various roles; how and why I was succeeding or failing in them; and what I wanted to do (or could do) about any of it.

Is That Process Done Yet?

No, I’m not “done” yet, and probably won’t ever be.

But I’m better off now than I was a year ago: marriage, career, personally, physically, spiritually…

And none of that would’ve happened without a frying pan to the head that made me stop, and reflect, before I did did did. (Thanks, Sarah.)

Some Things To Think About

I’ve found these questions apply to business and real life…

• What were my goals last year?
• What am I most proud of achieving last year?
• What actions did I take, what strengths did I use, to achieve them?
• What was most challenging last year?
• How did I grow as a result of meeting those challenges?
• What am I most grateful for?
• To whom am I most grateful — and have I shown them my gratitude?
• What do I want to accomplish in the next year?
• What am I willing to do to make those accomplishments a reality?
• Who can I rely on for support?
• What’s the first step to achieving that first goal?

The unexamined life isn’t worth living, right? So… what are you thinking?

Keep The Good Times Rolling!

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Earlier this week, ProductCamp Boston held a Value Proposition workshop featuring Neil Baron of Baron Strategic Partners.

Neil’s lecture provided many insights into customer perception, product experience, and customer analysis. And he shook up my go-to value proposition framework.

Emotional Benefits

I’m most familiar with the kind of value proposition framework put forward by Harry Yang:

• For [user persona],
• [product brand name], a product of [frame of reference],
• provides [solution] for [user problem] by [distinct advantage].

However Neil’s presentation focused on a different kind of value proposition, relying more on the emotional benefits of using your particular product.

His approach was more like this:

• If I [use/purchase X]…
• Instead of [doing whatever I have been doing]…
• [the following good things will happen]
• I believe them because [endorsements, testimonials]

The Power Of Belief

I found the difference pretty striking.

And not just in a semantic way.

Consider these two different examples, following the two different frameworks…

Example 1

• For parents of autistic children who wander,
• SafetyNet, a product of LoJack,
• provides a personal tracking system that works directly with the police to find and rescue missing people.

Gets the point across. Sounds like a good product.

Now look at this same product through Neil’s framework…

Example 2

• If I purchase SafetyNet…
• Instead of investing in locks and sleeping with one eye open to monitor my autistic child…
• I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep or enjoy a night on the town while knowing my child is safe.
• I believe in SafetyNet because our sheriff endorsed the product, my child’s school recommended the product, and a local boy was saved because of this product.

Which value prop do you think will feel more compelling to the target customer?

Keep The Good Times Rolling!

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Adam Costa recently gave us some innovation lessons from Steve Jobs. It’s a good list, and you should read it.

As I’m sitting here thinking about how much of an impact Steve Jobs had on me and so many people, I’m thinking of other lessons Steve Jobs provided.

Three general — but critical — product management lessons I wanted to share with you…

Computer Science Is A Liberal Art

“In my perspective … science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that’s how we viewed computation and these computation devices.” – Steve Jobs, Fresh Air interview (1996)

Do products have souls?

My background is in online games, and I’m an English major. I can testify that you can absolutely tell when a game has been blessed with an animating spirit that is greater than the sum of its parts, more than just bits and bytes. This can also be applied more generally to any consumer product.

Apple under Steve Jobs exemplified this concept, consistently delivering products with a distinctive look and feel; a union of aesthetic and function that simply feels right in your hands.

Were they ever perfect? No; that’s what premium upgrade paths are for. But did they have a certain je ne c’est quoi? Absolument.

Focus And Simplicity

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs, BusinessWeek interview (1998)

My favorite utility app — Shazam — is my current poster child for this concept.

Shazam “listens” to a piece of music — say, something you like on the radio but don’t know the name of — analyzes it, identifies it, and provides a link to purchase it.

All you need to do: Hold your phone toward the source of the song and press a button.

Whoa.

There is a lot happening under the covers with Shazam but it’s insanely easy to use, and addresses a use case that applies to the target audience of “That song is cool; what is it called? Dammit, the DJ went straight to commercial without announcing the name.”

My Model For Business Is The Beatles

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” – Steve Jobs, 60 Minutes interview (2003)

I was tempted to go with the famous Jobs line about focus groups being a waste of time but decided to end this top three with The Beatles because it’s an even less obvious lesson (and maybe an ironic lesson from someone reported to be a micro-manager).

No successful PM is an island. Our success or failure lies in the hands of others.

You’re a domain expert, sure. But nobody is an expert in everything.

Part of your job involves surrounding yourself with smart people, seeking out their advice and expertise, and incorporating their thoughts into your strategies and planning, and leveraging them for support and help in powering through obstacles to your product’s potential.

Jobs knew this. That’s why he trained Cook to be CEO, and hired Jonathan Ives for design, Phil Schiller for marketing, and Scott Forstall to oversee mobile software.

Who’s on your team — formally or informally — inside your office or outside your office — helping you make your core decisions?

One For The Record Books

Steve Jobs passed away this week, but his impact remains and he won’t be forgotten. The iconic CEO was smart, successful, and insightful. And he left many lessons for us to learn from…

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The streaming service will be called Netflix. The DVD service will be called Qwikster.

Unclear: Hastings names new service based on love of SpongeBob?

On one hand, the split makes sense

With two separate companies, it’ll be easier to wind down the DVD business and eventually spin it off or sell. In the meantime, the split allows the two very different beasts to be managed and marketed more effectively. I get that. It’s all about lifecycle, baby.

On the other hand, WTF

As a customer, I now have two separate businesses to deal with. That means:

• Two different accounts.
• Two different bills.
• Two different websites.
• Two different queues.

Rather than make things more convenient, the plan is to make it even harder for customers to manage their queues because now we’ll no longer know which DVDs waiting to be shipped are available for streaming.

Wait. Video games are coming to the DVD service?

Who cares? That’s value I wasn’t looking for. Which, you know, makes it not value.

Critiquing the apology

Reed’s apology was average — and this is coming from me, someone who knows a thing or two about apologies to customers.

Pros: He acknowledges his own pride and arrogance, explains his position, and uses pretty clear language and examples.

Cons: He fails to express any empathy for the customers and what they’ve experienced for the last several months. And then, on top of that, he repeats the same actions that caused the mess in the first place.

No, they didn’t raise prices again. But what he outlined makes things worse for customers without offering any real value in return. That’s the core customer complaint from Round 1 and Netflix repeats it again in Round 2.

The impact on me, as a consumer

To date, I’ve held onto the DVD portion of my Netflix package. But this has convinced me to drop the DVDs and, at least for now, hold onto the streaming.

New Around Here?

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Once I decided whether or not I was going to stick with the combined plan or just go with streaming for $7.99/month, I got to thinking: Where is this price hike coming from? Is Netflix just covering costs or is there something greater in play?

“Deliberately creating dissatisfaction”

Eric Garland — CEO of Big Champagne — told CNET he believes Netflix is doing this to pressure the studios into licensing more streaming content:

[Netflix CEO Reed Hastings] is deliberately creating dissatisfaction.

He’s creating dissonance precisely because that title availability, those first-run titles, needs to be available more immediately and more widely as a (video on demand) or as a streamed offering. So this is a leverage play.

Netflix is wagering that if all parties are dissatisfied; if Netflix is unhappy because Netflix customers are unhappy and if Hollywood is unhappy and if everyone is unhappy then we’re going to speed the clock on new solutions.

From my own experience, it’s certainly true that I use the DVD rental as backfill for when I can’t get that same title streaming.

Does removing the legacy DVD product kill off DVDs faster, bringing industry change faster, or does it cause current customers to jump to a competing service?

Have you ever played chicken with your subscriber base against a third party for a greater cause?

Would you dare?

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ProdMgmt Talk is a weekly Twitter event where product management professionals lead discussions on a particular topic via the #prodmgmttalk hashtag. I recently guest-starred on a talk about a topic near and dear to my heart: gamification. Topics included…

• Which companies have you observed tapping into people’s everyday activities to enable new levels of user engagement?
• Have you had discussions about integrating gamification into your own products or marketing plans?
• How do you decide which game mechanics are right for your products or services?

Check out the transcript here or share your thoughts below.

New Around Here?

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I’m still having trouble processing this for reasons I touch on here but did want to share one thought about how Sladen’s approach to her character can teach us something about product management.

“I’d defend the programme to anyone.”

Sladen always took Sarah Jane seriously, and treated her character and Doctor Who with respect.

When the show was off the air and best remembered for the weird guy with the long scarf, the cardboard sets, and wooden acting, Sladen reminded people that Who had “lovely layers” and would “defend the programme to anyone.”

That’s brand management in action

It would’ve been easy for Sladen to dismiss her character as something in her past, or the show as silly kid stuff. But she didn’t. She defended it, and explained her rationale.

She consistently defended the brand against naysayers and eventually resurrected the character when Doctor Who returned to the air — and even managed to spin the character off into her own highly-rated kid show for CBBC.

We know what product managers are good for.

Product managers are responsible for identifying and launching profitable solutions that meet market needs and achieve corporate objectives. We talk about ourselves like we’re strategic. But how often do we get involved with things like brand management?

Brand management isn’t just replying to people on Twitter

Sure, brand management involve public relations, advertising, and social media — but those are just the tactical elements.

What drives those marketing programs?

What drives those product requirements?

It’s not just customer feedback and market needs. Another critical and legitimate driving force is the brand. The brand has strategic value.

Elisabeth Sladen wasn’t a product manager.

But she understood, at least inherently, the value of the character and the program and the brands she’d invested so much of herself into, and she was willing to defend them. Brand has a big impact on what we do, and we have a big impact on our brands.

You can deploy a great product and still potentially detract from your brand if the two don’t align. On the flip side, many savvy companies have leveraged a popular brand against an average product to create more value in customers’ eyes.

In your approach to product management, what role does brand management play?

New Around Here?

Subscribe to the feed to receive future updates; listen to our product management podcast; and follow me on Twitter to keep the discussion going!

New Around Here?

Subscribe to the feed to receive future updates; follow me on Twitter to keep the discussion going!

Today: We’re using that recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: Dealing with bad apples, bullies, and crazy people at work.

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl is weird, offensive, and insanely hyper-violent. It’s the kind of film you’d expect to not even exist except in some kind of fever dream.

Gallons of spurting blood… multiple graphic depictions of limbs being severed… exploding heads… a school-sponsored Wrist Cutters Club… blackface for no reason except to offend…

Director Yoshihiro Nishimura packs VGvFG with so many WTF moments that by the time the insane school principal (in full Kabuki gear, mind you) starts singing while playing guitar made from a spinal column, you’re either numb from shock or howling from laughter.

And that’s kind of the point.

VGvFG lampoons pretty much everything it touches, taking everything over the top.

Nishimura lives in a world where a severed artery can spray like a firehose and every human body contains approximately 100 gallons of blood. That’s his vision, and he’s sticking to it.

Some people at work are like that, too.

Just over the top. Everything is *so* dramatic, and they want to drag you into their personal soap opera.

Or maybe they’re a bully, using dirty tricks to distract you and achieve their own goals.

Or maybe you’re dealing with someone who has a screw loose, running hot and cold, so you never know where you stand with them.

What do you do as a Product Manager dealing with those types of personalities? How do you get work done with them or through them?

You embrace it.

Now, I don’t mean you respond in kind: If they’re acting like a jerk, you shouldn’t act like a jerk back. You’re a PM; you need to be better than that.

Much like Yoshihiro Nishimura, stay true to your vision of who you are and what you bring to the table. If you let your emotions take over, or you let yourself get pulled into the drama, you’re going to get distracted and make mistakes.

Stay calm. Keep focused. Expose the underhanded stuff to people who can do something about it. Stand up for yourself. And remember:

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger.”
– Proverbs 15:1

Except in the most extreme cases, personal experience has taught me that if you meet craziness with calmness (instead of fear or equal craziness), you’ll be able to find the win-win scenario that works for the two of you and the business, as well.

And yes, for those keeping score at home…

I just combined J-horror, business psychology, and a little scripture into a single blog post. That’s me being true to my vision of me

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