SWLW #581: Product Managing to prevent Burnout, Everyday storytelling for Engineers, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week.

 

This Week's Favorite

Product Managing to Prevent Burnout
5 minutes read.

"With all this excitement, I’ve been thinking about a risk that—if I'm not careful—could severely hinder my team's ability to ship on time, celebrate success, and continue work after launch: burnout. I don't see burnout mentioned often when the work of product management is discussed, but I believe it should be taken much more seriously." -- Winston Hearn shares an interesting point of view as a Product Manager on creating a sustainable team that can execute well. This advice should be used more often and enforced by both product and engineering leaders: "If we agree there are no creative options, but the engineer does believe the requirement can be met within the timeline, the next question I ask is, "What do we need to shift to ensure there's recovery time after we ship?" This often means bumping timelines for future releases, so that the post-launch period is a recovery period and the next release does not also require stress. This practice of consent and reorganization allows for us to continue to be ambitious, while (hopefully) not harming anyone on the team's health or well-being."

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Culture

Facts (On Correlation and Causation)
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Zero-Sum vs. Positive-Sum Product Theory
5 minutes read.

"To give one last analogy, think about it this way: would you rather try to build the next YouTube or the next big YouTube channel? YouTube is the more zero-sum product and the channel on YouTube is the less zero-sum product." -- Interesting framing to consider for your product or side project. Most often, we're used to thinking about zero-sum products, which often lead to winner-take-all competition. I wonder if newer products can feel like positive-sum products, grabbing a niche and turning into zero-sum products over time.

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Everyday Storytelling for Engineers. The CAO Method.
5 minutes read.

"There are not many things in the world that are as important as being understood. From my experience, most engineers are not natural storytellers." -- I loved the CAO (Context, Actions, Outcomes) method by Tony Freed. Tell the story OCAO, starting with the outcomes to sell the upside (get people's attention) and only then go into the recommended flow. Starting with outcomes can get the audience to understand "what's in it for me?" so they'll lean in and offer constructive feedback during the Context and Actions parts, and maybe even create an alliance to help you achieve it.

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Negative Visualization in Practice
3 minutes read.

Many people have lost their jobs in the past two years, and companies shut down. Finding the courage to look deep into the skills we gained and feeling good about our capabilities when we look for a new position or being grateful for what we have today: "So that's what I'm doing when I charge at the merchants of complexity, working on tools and frameworks to empower the individual. I'm setting up my own situation for starting over from scratch with no capital, no staff, no advantages. Only the tools and the skills I've built and learned along the way."

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Peopleware

Should We Even Care About Using LLMs to Query Enterprise Data?
6 minutes read.

Jason Ganz wrote a fascinating read into possible scenarios where LLM can be used and the ecosystem around it to drive operational activities (agents) and not only information retrieval (assistant).

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On Writing at Work
6 minutes read.

Communicating effectively is a critical skill to master, and writing is a great way to practice it asynchronously: "Simple words do not reflect a simple mind; in fact, it is the opposite. A common misconception is that we have to use fancy words or sophisticated language - but this is not required. Simple sentences are easier to understand. Write as your brain thinks. It prefers to read words as if listening to a story." -- Michał Poczwardowski shares how he approaches it with PREP (WWW) -> TELL -> REMOVE.

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7 Challenges With Long-Term Projects and How to Manage Them
6 minutes read.

Raviraj Achar wrote one of my favorite posts on leading a large project. The section under "Dealing with Hidden Work" has fantastic insights on things to consider when dealing with large projects and great recommendations for delivering value on the go.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@shreyas: Candor is essential for truth seeking as a team. So one of your most important duties as a leader is to emphasize your expectation of candid dialogue amongst your team members and to consistently live this value yourself by demonstrating how to be candid while still being kind.

@nikitabier: Before launching a product, sit down and draft a murderboard: list out every possible criticism with the worst headline possible. Then, while preserving the core value proposition, reposition the product so it’s bulletproof against any criticism. Don’t delegate this: you own the product and you should know all possible ways it will be perceived.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.