Weekend Podcast – Context is What You Need!*
“I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.” — John Dewey, philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer The world of Artificial Intelligence is rapidly evolving, and with it, the way we...
Weekend Reading – Utility is the Key to Product Value
“What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or a service does for the customer.” – Peter Drucker, Consultant & Author Two weeks ago I conducted Product Management training for a team in a legacy...
Weekend Reading – 3 Videos to Help You Weather the Storm
" 'Unlearn' – To move away from the mindsets and behaviors that were effective in the past, but now limit our success." Barry O'Reilly – Business Advisor and Venture Builder Dear all, with a storm raging over large parts of Europe, I thought it might be a nice idea to...
Year End Reading – Time to Become Product-Led
Dear all, The year is almost over. The time to take stock and reflect. The good news: Despite the challenges posed by the environment (the dreaded virus continues to impose too many constraints upon all of us!), many of our clients have made a lot of progress this...
Weekend Reading – We are Still Getting Agile Wrong
“No plan survives the contact with the enemy” – Helmuth von Moltke Dear all, it's amazing. More than 20 years after the Agile Manifesto we are still discussing what Agile is. And – to my mind – often are getting it wrong. Some of the "wrongness" is out of convenience....
Weekend Reading – Product Decisions Come First!
Dear all, hope your weekend has been as sunny as ours! While walking Moritz, our dog, in the snow (we do already have quite a bit of snow up here in the valleys!) yesterday, I came to the conclusion that we often think product development backwards. An example:...
Weekend Reading – Most Product or Feature Ideas are Worthless
"Ideas are a commodity." (Michael Dell) Dear all, this morning‘s German Business daily “Handelsblatt” claimed that one of the two key questions the CHRO of a well-known Bavarian carmaker asks candidates is "How do I make an idea big and scale it?" Maybe it's because I...
Weekend Reading – Root Out Mediocrity in Ideation: Lessons from Facebook, Amazon and PIXAR
Dear all, 10 years after the publication of Eric Ries' seminal "The Lean Startup", the idea seems to have become an orthodoxy in startup- and tech circles. Research suggests that >80% + of all Silicon Valley startups more or less follow the concept. Talking about...
Weekend Reading – My Favorite Product Management Blogs
Dear all, it's been a few weeks since I wrote the last Weekend Reading. Just too much going on. We have done a few Product Management-related projects recently. As Product Management is still somewhat less understood in Europe (some of our definitions here) – I have...
On delegating decision making so it’s safe to be risky
On this episode of "Voices of OKR", gtmhub's VP of Product Management Jenny Herald interviews Godehard. He shares how he persuades traditional European companies to build products with intent, adopt OKRs, and release their leadership grip to allow teams on lower...
Weekend Reading – What is Product Management after All?
Dear all, over the past few weeks I have touched on a number of aspects of Product Management, but never defined the subject as such. This is not because I am shying away from this rapidly evolving field (as some of you are aware I have built and run sizeable –...
Digitization – 5 Things that Need to Change
(By popular demand: the English translation of last week's German post.) If it’s not about the climate, digitization is everywhere. At least it feels like it is. Digitization changes everything, needs new infrastructures, threatens jobs. If you believe Google Trends,...
Digitalisierung – 5 Dinge die sich ändern müssen
Wenn's mal nicht ums Klima geht, ist Digitalisierung überall. Zumindest gefühlt. Sie verändert alles, braucht neue Infrastrukturen, bedroht Arbeitsplätze. Glaubt man Google Trends, ist sie inzwischen wichtiger als die Dauerbrenner "Industrie 4.0", 5G Netzwerke und...
The Agile Working Model Podcast: Product Management Insights
Godehard discussing Product Management with Roman Paeske in Roman's "The Agile Working Model Podcast"...
12 Reasons for OKRs to Fail
We start our journey to our dreams by wanting, but we arrive by focusing, planning and learning. (Christina Wodtke) Recently discussing OKR learnings with a team of OKR coaches from a corporate client, we arrived at 12 reasons for OKRs to fail: 1. Using OKRs without a...