Weekly Mix #166 - Being a Great CEO, PMs, Making Better Decisions & SaaS Business Sales

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I hope you had a great weekend!

This week I’m starting to write 30 mini essays in 30 days as part of my friend Dickie Bush’s Ship 30 for 30. If you’d like to read them, I’ll be posting them in this Twitter thread.

I’ve been thinking about starting to do some YouTube videos…if you’d be interested, just hit reply and let me know which topics you’d like to see covered.

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In this week’s newsletter:

Blog Post: What Makes a Great Product Manager?​

Book Notes: The Great CEO Within - Matt Mochary​

Podcast: Annie Duke - How to Make Better Decisions - Modern Wisdom​

Resource: Dickie’s Favorite Podcasts​

Articles​I sold Baremetrics - Josh Pigford​

​Dr. Opiod - HuffPost - Chris Pomorski​

Tweet: Alex Trebek swearing during promo shoot​

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Have a wonderful week!

Graham

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Blog Post I Wrote: What Makes a Great Product Manager?​

In this post, I outline 15 qualities that make a great product manager. This was built from a combination of research and personal observation, and was meant as a reminder for myself for some of the things I need to work on. Some example qualities of great PMs:

They simplify

They live the problem

They communicate well

They are fluent with data

They can zoom in and out

I’ve included some of the most valuable further reading on the topic at the end.

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Book Notes I Added: The Great CEO Within - Matt Mochary​

This book is a summary of all the most useful information for founders of early-stage startups. I would say it’s most useful for founders with startups really starting to go quickly, but there are lessons in there for everyone who works in tech or business. Here are some:

There are many reasons to create a company, but only one good one: to deeply understand real customers (living humans!) and their problem, and then solve that problem.

Startups don’t usually fail because they grow too late. They usually fail because they grow too early.

Use the Getting Things Done framework for personal productivity.

Check your inbox twice per day. Organize it according to Andreas Klinger’s blog post.

Schedule two hours each day to work on your top goal only. Do this every single work day. The earlier the better.

Be on time. Be present.

Whenever you say something twice, write it down.

Use gratitude to help have fun and feel good about yourself. This is when you perform best. Use it to help others too.

Do an energy audit each month, marking things that give you energy, and things that drain you. Do this until 75%+ of your time is doing things that give you energy.

Aim to do things in your Zone of Genius: the things you are uniquely good at, and that you love to do.

Get enough sleep. Experiment with your sleeping setup. Throw money at the problem.

For decisions involving lots of stakeholders, use the RAPID method. brian_armstrong emiliemc

To resolve conflict, make the other person feel heard. Keep summarizing what they said (“I think I heard you say…” until they say “That’s right!”

Don’t underestimate the value of fun. People will spend more time and energy when having fun.

If your team members are hanging out with each other outside of work, you’re creating good culture.

Your culture is the behavioral norms of your company. Be intentional about them. Document them, model them, hire for them, and enforce them.

Use OKRs.

Make money, have fun, do good.

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Podcast: Annie Duke - How to Make Better Decisions - Modern Wisdom​

Annie is a former professional poker player who studies decision-making, and there were some very useful lessons in this episode. I put together another Twitter thread with all my takeaways, but here are some of my top:

McGill’s razor: when faced with two equal choices, choose the one which allows the most luck (or, alternatively, the most optionality).

A great decision-making process should produce the same decision when given the same inputs. In other words, it should be repeatable.

Time is our most valuable commodity. We should be spending time on questions like:

If the downside of something is small, you should just go fast and learn quickly.

To help make quicker decisions, time travel: will I care about this in a year?

Split options into good and bad, and then choose quickly. Among the good options, choose the one that is easiest to quit (or reverse), or the paths you can pursue in parallel.

A warning sign of poor decision-making: not being specific. Using vague words or natural language (“good” outcome, “high” probability) should be a flag.

Be grateful for being wrong. You get to learn.

Be grateful for being challenged. You get to teach. You will often find your own beliefs aren’t as well articulated as you thought.

Two ways I’ve been applying these lessons in my own life:

Making sure that I use specific language when describing things, and ensuring I get other people to as well. This has immediately helped clarity of communication.

Thinking about whether this should be a “fast” or “slow” decision, based on the downside and whether spending more time will really help me make the decision or not (often, I’m just procrastinating).

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Resource: Dickie’s Favorite Podcasts​

My friend Dickie has put together a list of his 75 top podcasts ever, on all kinds of topics. He’s planning to sell the more detailed resource, but you can get the list for free for a limited time.

If you like this newsletter, you’ll enjoy the podcasts.

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Articles:

​I sold Baremetrics - Josh Pigford - Josh has been someone I’ve followed for a long time on Twitter, because he was radically transparent about Baremetrics, his SaaS company. He just sold it, and in true transparent terms, disclosed the details, and why. I love stories like these:

​Dr. Opiod - HuffPost - Chris Pomorski - I read this as an entertainment piece, but it quickly became a vivid illustration of the issues and pressures that can be caused by a consumerist society. This sentence from the closing paragraph says it all:

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Tweet of the Week: Alex Trebek swearing during promo shoot​

Really this makes me like him even more.

Alex Trebeck shooting promos for the phone version of Jeopardy and cussing like a sailor is just what I needed today...pic.twitter.com/6CalbTJPhy

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) November 11, 2020

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