Obviously Awesome · April Dunford · 2019
April can communicate. I’ve seen her speak at a conference. She was truly captivating and this book shows she can translate it to the page too.
The key insight is to position your product from your customer's point of view. The boundary between product management and marketing is blurry, so get comfortable with positioning.
Key Takeaways
Positioning is context that enables people to figure out what’s important. Like the opening scene of a movie, that tells you where, what, why and who.
Context can transform how we think about a product. Great products, poorly positioned, can fail.
“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess.”
Warren Buffett
Two common positioning traps: 1) Being fixated on the idea of what you intended to build, even when your product has evolved into something else. 2) You designed your product for a specific market, but that market has since changed.
The most common failure is not deliberately positioning the product in the first place. Don’t stick with a “default” position if the product or market have changed.
Consider better ways to position your product. Repositioning can change both how your customer sees you, and how you see your product.
A positioning statement won’t help you. Despite being widely taught and referenced (e,g in Crossing the Chasm).
The five components of effective positioning:
Competitive alternatives: What your target customers would “use” or “do” if your product didn’t exist.
Unique attributes: The features and capabilities that you have and the alternatives lack.
Value (and proof): Value is the benefit you can deliver to customers because of your unique attributes (features).
Target market characteristics: the customers who care the most about the value your product delivers.
Market category: The market you describe yourself as being part of, to help customers understand your value.
Bonus: Relevant trends: Trends your target customers understand and are interested in that can help make your product feel more relevant right now.
How the components are linked
To identify unique attributes you have to compare to competitive alternatives.
Attributes drive the value, which determines who the best target customers are.
Target customers highlight which market frame of reference is the best.
Trends must be relevant to your target customers.
Define your components in this order: Alternatives → Attributes → Value → Target Market → Market Category → Trends.
The 10 step positioning process:
Understand customers who love your product
Form a positioning team
Align positioning vocabulary, let go of positioning baggage
List true competitive alternatives
Isolate unique attributes or features
Map attributes to value themes (Features → benefits → value)
Identify who values your product highly and target them narrowly.
Choose a market frame of reference that makes your value clear to your target.
Connect your product with a relevant market trend.
Share your positioning across your organisation to inform all activities.
Then translate your positioning into a sales story:
Definition of the problem that your solution is designed to solve
Describe how prospects are currently trying to solve the problems
Describe the perfect world - outline the features of the ideal solution
Introduce the product and position it in the market category
Discuss each of the value themes in more detail
Handling of common objections
Case study / list of current customers
Next Steps
Track and re-evaluate your positioning over time
Quick Links
How to Run Your Growth Team with Experiment and Hypothesis · Article
On selecting the right product metrics (KPIs)· Article
Split user stories using the hamburger method · Article
John Cutler on Bad Strategy · Article
The purpose alignment model · Paper
The original paper on SMART goals · Paper
Time shielding - how to do the things you actually want to do · Article
Unsettling fictional Wikipedia article on the future of human like AI · Story
Crossing the chasm visualisation. The core product vs the whole product. · Image
Make Mega Projects More Modular · Bent Flyvbjerg · 2021
“In conventional business and government megaprojects—such as hydroelectric dams, chemical-processing plants, or big-bang enterprise-resource-planning systems—the standard approach is to build something monolithic and customised. Such projects must be 100% complete before they can deliver benefits: Even when it’s 95% complete, a nuclear reactor is of no use. In this article, the author argues that two factors play a critical role in determining success or failure: modularity in design and speed in iteration. The article examines those factors by looking at well-known megaprojects, both successful ones and cautionary tales. It argues that "What's our LEGO?" is a key question for big projects. If you don't have a LEGO, you need to find one, or your project will be slow, expensive, and failure prone. If you have one, replicate and learn, over and over, to shorten delivery, bring down costs, and get to your revenues and benefits sooner.”
This concept isn't limited to mega projects. The idea of making things modular to release value earlier is crucial in many domains.
Book Highlights
Most products are exceptional only when we understand them within their best frame of reference.
April Dunford · Obviously Awesome
Sometimes, when we design for behaviour change, we secretly want more than to simply help our users: we also want them to be a certain type of virtuous person. We want them to learn all the important things we know, we want them to care about the things we care about, we want them to exert real effort toward their goal — to demonstrate their determination and commitment. However, these desires are about the behavioural designer, not about the user and what helps the user succeed. That’s why it’s vital to be clear about the end goal of the product.
Stephen Wendel · Designing for Behaviour Change
The first thing to keep in mind is that accountability is directly related to ambition. If the team was asked to be very ambitious and the attempts failed to generate the desired results, then that is largely expected… High‐integrity commitments are intended for situations where you have an important external commitment or a very important and substantial internal commitment.
Marty Cagan · Empowered
An org chart is always out of sync with reality.
Matthew Skelton, Manual Pais, Ruth Malan · Team Topologies
Best of X
Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner you’ll never become a graceful master.
Ed Latimore
I reviewed my notes from the business mentoring I did over the last year. I noticed I gave some advice repeatedly:
· Your prices are too low
· You’re betting too much
· Go find 5 people willing to put down a deposit
· Stop playing house (trademarks, patents, LLCs, offices, billing systems)
· Fire these customers
· Pursue something you’re passionate about
· I don’t think you can profitably find/serve customers
· There’s something you don’t know yet
· This isn’t a pain killer it’s a vitamin
· You’re asking a cat to bark (failing employee)
· You need to hire a staff recruiter
Michael Girdley
What I’m Listening to.
Left: Tony Montana
Right: Wonderkid
Measure progress periodically against key milestone metrics. If the delivery fails to achieve key targets, its time for a strategy rethink.
Gojko Adzic