What have we chatted about?

We take notes at all PITA meetups, because our memory is shocking.

 
randy silver randy silver

PITA 003

April Fool’s Day means HATS!

April Fool’s Day means HATS!

TOPIC 1:

Creating psychological safety - when everyone disagrees with the boss, but still likes them

  • Not an intervention

  • Arrange sessions discussing alternative ideas

  • Accelerate book

  • The Westrum Model: Measuring organizational culture

  • Motivation mapping for the boss - what are they trying to achieve?

  • Open anonymous forum, if the boss is strong enough, or externally facilitated

  • Radical Candor book

  • Aesop’s fable of Who Will Bell the Cat? - do it together

  • ‘If we only have opinion, we’ll go with mine” Steven Elop, ie challenge with data.

  • Also: go to a segmented roadmap, so you break down the strategy into segments owned by others as SMEs.

  • Externalise it - make it the team’s strategy as a whole, not his/her personal strategy decision

  • Also - just coz most of the team think they’re wrong doesn’t mean that _are_ wrong :-) Finding safe ways to [in]validate it helps everybody.

  • Strategy vs tactics 

  • Remove emotion from it where possible

  • Radical Acceptance talk from MTP (Making Smarter Decisions with Mental Models by Andy Ayim)

  •  perhaps find a person with "no stake" in the strategy and who has the bosses trust and have them communicate to the boss how shitty their strategy is

  • Translate strategy into OKRS… to highlight deployment ‘issues’

  • People under “the boss” should also try and encourage a more creative and autonomous environment, hopefully showing “the boss” the power of experience and knowledge coming from the specialists in each team. Try and encourage/suggest design thinking as well.

TOPIC 2:

When your design and engineering team work really well together - are you still useful?

  • Good job! Now move from tactical to strategic

  • Maybe it’s a change from looking in (within the team) to looking out?

  • Intercom has a good framing of 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years - move away from the immediate

  • Move to more research

  • Ask harder questions

  • Have more fun / mess with your team

  • It gives you room to innovate

  • Is everyone happy?

  • When you take your next role, who will take over, and do they have the skills?

TOPIC 3:

How to win business folks over and help them understand /prioritise data (notably folks that cannot conceptualise it without seeing it in a UI or Visualisation tool)

TOPIC 4:

Mentoring: sounds relevant in tough times to >> how to get started

  • Encourage mentorship from outside the team/organisation

  • Let the mentee lead the conversion, be open to non-work subjects (esp. now)

  • Try becoming a mentor in external environments/programmes as well

  • People don’t want to talk so much about work right now!

  • Not coming with an agenda / being non-judgemental

  • Not giving direct advice but leading them in a direction / to a conclusion

  • Be “friends” with your mentor - takes the pressure off and mentees should volunteer to help

  • Knowledge Officer

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randy silver randy silver

PITA 002

PITA 002

TOPIC 1: 

Remote games that you can play with your team or your friends?

  • https://kahoot.it/  (second appearance!)

  • http://jigsawpuzzles.io

  • freebingocards.com

  • Strava for indoors? Someone may need to invent this!

  • https://www.kidscreateabsurdity.com/ - but haven't found an online version yet

  • https://zombiesrungame.com/

  • Taskmaster daily challenge, follow https://twitter.com/AlexHorne https://twitter.com/AlexHorne/status/1242729749144915968?s=20

  • https://freehand.invisionapp.com/freehand/new

  • One camera on a board game, everybody joins in, one person acts as controller

TOPIC 2:

Selling Product Management  as freelance/consultant for startups

Context:

  • Offering PM freelance work to startups (have product-market-fit, 10-20ppl, pre-series-A)

  • Hiring 1st product person, often don’t know what kind of PM they want

Challenge: 

  • defining scope and measurable deliverables

  • Pricing: fixed vs. Time-material

Discussion: 

  • Discovery into problems (e.g. biz talking with engineering)

  • What’s the problem trying to solve, and what’s in 3-6 months. Target their perceived problem.

  • Focusing on priorities, relied on freelances at the beginning of setting up the product.

  • For UI work, was single jobs with fixed-price.

  • For UX and user research, was 1d of work a week, with a daily rate

  • Try the opposite: define better ways to filter out what they don’t think the problem is.

  • Create the job that you want to do and pick your clients based on that. 

  • Easier to sell UX research to a firm that knows what UX research is.

TOPIC 3:

How to start a new role - making initial connections and sizing up the dynamics remotely

  • https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/tools/

 TOPIC 4:

Shock doctrine: how can we use the crisis to push for changes we have been struggling with due to the “old guard” resisting and pushing back on it

  • https://www.amazon.com/Naomi-Klein-Doctrine-Capitalism-12-2-2006/dp/B00HTK37WC

  • Stockpile stories / case studies

  • Look into the data

  • Retest assumptions / re-validate personas

  • People changing because the are forced / vs because they like it

  • Be careful to stay true to your vision

And for product people who want to pitch in on the COVID-19 effort

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randy silver randy silver

Pita 001

PITA 001.jpg

 

We all want to work from THIS home office:

https://a.cl.ly/7KuRW6RD

 

And to complete the 30 day LEGO challenge: https://www.dropbox.com/s/516nnsrq9145bek/IMG_0528.png?dl=0

 

TOPIC 1: 

Digital workshops with clients - how? (I haven’t done it before and want to teach our business) 

  • https://kahoot.it/   For quizzes & icebreakers

  • Miro & Mural

  • Sli.do

  • Zoom

  • Whichever tool people use for the primary comms, try and have a backup in case of issues (e.g. if you’re using zoom, try also having a slack channel on the go where you can type to each other in case of problems)

  • funretro.io or parabol.co for retros

 

Workshops remotely

  • stick to tech people are comfortable with

  • get someone for tech facilitation while you're facilitating (or vice-versa)

  • prepare meetings as much as possible (pre-read = must?)

  • cut scope to what's really essential with everyone 'in the room'

  • rules of engagement 

 

 

TOPIC 2:

What business will look like when the epidemic settles - planning for “after” 

 

TOPIC 3:

Job hunting in a pandemic

 

 



 

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