🎾 Quit Rewarding PM Theater, When to Blitzscale, Why Differentiation’s Tough, Change Company Meetings
+ 4 Ways To Write a CTA with AI
Estimated read time: 2 minutes 11 seconds.
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This is Sunday 1-1-2-3 with George.
Welcome to the 96th edition.
Today we have:
Why Differentiation Is So Difficult
When To Blitzscale + Decision Making Is a Process
Q: How Do You Drive Change in Company Meetings?
How to Assess a Company’s Continuous Discovery Habits
PMs Are Giving Up. Stop Rewarding the Academic Theater of PM Best Practices
+ 4 Ways To Write a CTA with AI
💾 Why Differentiation Is So Difficult by Brian Balfour
As some of us get into annual planning, a quick reminder from Brian Balfour (Reforge, Hubspot) about differentiation, and why it’s hard:
Q: Do you think every product needs to be differentiated?
What about products that are features, e.g. inside of a large organisation?
☕️ When To Blitzscale + Decision Making Is a Process
My friend and I are in the super early stages of conceptualizing a product.
Someone brought up Blitzscaling the other day on a forum, so my ears perked up. “Maybe this is what me and my friend need right now!”
This is a great video I found by the author Chris Yeh explaining the concept.
Our product is meant to have network effects, so maybe Blitzscaling is right for us. Check it out to learn more:
Something a bit different.
I’ve heard a few people grumble about the board of the company I work at. “They are just fat cats who make bad decisions.”
At the same time, I am interested in being on a board. So I looked into it.
I found a lot of interesting stuff, but what made me really curious is this video about decision-making at the board level.
It made me have instant empathy with the board members because I recognised how decision making goes wrong at all levels of the org.
Gavin (the person in the video) highlights that decision-making is a process, but we often think of decision-making as just the part when we make the call.
In fact, it’s more about all the stuff that comes before and even after.
(If you’re interested in this topic, I can highly recommend the book by Annie Duke called “How To Decide”)
🍪 Quick Bites
🤖 AI Corner
🔥 I’m working on an idea.
I think people in product lack good product-specific, deep AI prompts, like the one below:
📝 Give me 1 minute of your time to answer a few questions
🎁 I’ll give 1 of the lucky respondents a gift of a 1-month subscription to a paid Substack of your choice (up to $30 USD) (you’ll let me know which one if you follow the link below):
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.