🎾 NSA Competitor Intel Secrets, Tips for Strategy Preparation, Tactics for Applying Product Principles, How to Setup a User Panel, PMF Dos & Don’ts

+ GPT Code Interpreter Use Case Compilation & Midjourney Ideas For UI

Jul 16, 2023

Estimated read time: 2 minutes 27 seconds.

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Whether you have moved to a different company or even country and don’t have the same network as you used to. Whether you manage a product without having access to mentors, colleagues, and resources - I know it is challenging.

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This is Sunday 1-1-2-3 with George.

Welcome to the 88th edition.

Today we have:

How to Prepare for Strategy
How To Set & Apply Product Principles
Competitive Intelligence Secrets From an Ex-NSA Analyst
Step-by-Step Guide for Setting Up a User Panel
5 Do’s and Don’ts of Product Management Pre- Product/Market Fit
Stop Trying to Find “Product-Market-Fit”

+ Code Interpreter Is Coming, LLM Memory Explainer & Midjourney Tips

💾 How to Prepare for Strategy

Roger Martin (“Playing To Win”) says that any work a company does in advance to prepare for strategy, such as environmental scans, SWOT analysis, or customer research is wasted or dangerous.

He believes the best and only useful starting place for strategy is the mismatch of the desired outcomes of a company's historical choices with the actual outcomes.

He recommends collecting data to test hypotheses concerning potential remedies for gaps between current outcomes and desired outcomes.

The precise data based on specific logic and assumptions is what data collection and analytics should focus on.

☕️ How To Set & Apply Product Principles + Competitive Intelligence Secrets From an Ex-NSA Analyst

I normally don’t watch keynotes from conferences. Too salesy, too vague.

This talk by an SVP of Design from Slack blew me away, though.

Product principles is something I need to get better at. Where do you see them at all? We mostly talk about strategy, vision, mission, roadmap - but the principles can be way more accessible, and just as, if not more, powerful.

There are some great tactics and examples of how Slack uses them:

I am building a bootstrapped startup. So I have a collection of videos about successful bootstrapped startups.

Watching one of these videos, I chances upon a really crazy (if somewhat shady) strategy for collecting competitor intelligence (the video starts from that part).

One key callout they make here is that this data is dangerous for product people, but really powerful for marketers… I still feel like it would be a great dataset to have for a product leader. Competitors are so hard to know deeply… Just watch this with an open mind:

🍪 Quick Bites

🤖 AI

That's a wrap for today. Stay focused and see you next week! If you want more, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@nurijanian)

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Who's George?

I’m an underdog product manager.

Product management in New Zealand (where I live) is still a relatively immature discipline. I also came into it late via data science and UX. I may be older than others, but I often feel like a rookie.

To become better at my craft, I learn and explore new ideas relentlessly.

Then I share high-quality, tried-and-true ideas that can be used right away.

How I can help you:

If you want to feel smarter, I’ve compiled my best actionable finds in prodmgmt.world.
If you need to figure out prioritization in your role, get The Big Book of Prioritization.

See you next week.

— George.

Sunday 1-1-2-3 with George

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