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Flow State, Empathy, and Product Management

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       Have you heard of flow state? It's a state of mind when  you're totally absorbed by and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction. When time sneaks up on you, it's likely because you were in a flow state of mind. It's like we wake up from a day dream and realize 2 hours have disappeared while you were busy doing what ever has kept your attention. Think back to a time when this happened, what was it? For me it's often admin tasks, like emails, roadmap tweaking, feature writing, slide design for my next presentation, and next thing I know. Boom, late for my next meeting because I lost track of time in a flow state.     Don't worry, I'm not here to critique your meeting attendance etiquette. I want to talk about this flow state within the practice of product management, and how it can remind you to bring others along. Product Perspective     Let's start with  Empathy. You've heard of this idea. The ability to under...
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How to Create a Meaningful Product Demo

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    A potential new user requests to see your product, you have a packaged demo showing all the features of said product. You, as the product manager, know each feature well. You can handle off the cuff questions and pivot as needed. This scenario should be familiar to almost any product manager. It's a product demo, we tend to approach them with the mentality of an "old pro" but I think that's wrong. I've encountered some amazing product demo's and they tend to have one thing in common. Storytelling The demo is a product     We spend countless hours drafting features and building a great product! Then the time comes to start showing users. We dive into demo's showing user after user how the product can make their life better. We spend a few minutes prepping, because we know it will be easy to show the product we know so well. I know I'm generalizing and some product managers do fantastic demos. They prepare fully and really think through what the user...
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The Currency of Product Managers

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It's the currency of product people. Without trust your relationships will struggle and your ability to execute the product vision will falter. I don't claim to be the best at building trust, but I have reaped many benefits by improving this skill. Frances Frei shared this career changing advice years ago. It changed how I operate as a product manager in a very good way. Please watch this if you want to start dealing in the most valuable currency a product person can acquire. When we apply this thinking to our stakeholders, customers, engineers and peers we will begin to make the vision real. As a product person you embody the product vision, without trust you will struggle to get others aligned and motivated towards this vision. Start with trust. This is the best advice I can give you. Take a look at this related article to learn more about how trust can bolster the 3 most important skills for product managers. Thanks for reading and don't forget to  subscribe  for...
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