Why PMs are superior beings and I am the best of the lot

People often ask me “why are you so incredibly awesome, Nick?”

Yes, why am I so incredible? I guess I knew it from a young age. I was special, I was brilliant, I was a PM.

The best presentations in the class. Facilitating blue sky thinking on the playground. Debate team champion. Getting science geeks to do my math homework for me. Raising the flag and driving it. #Winning

Every day I walk in the office I see engineers without direction, lost, hoping for friends on facebook that never come. My product requirements addictive, my vision an experience that will blow their puny little minds. #PMBlood

Need a product out faster? No problem. Just slowly whisper in your dev’s ear to “think faster” and remind them that studies have proven that humans only use a small part of their brains and that you are tired of them holding out on you.

Enlightening experience. Lives changed.

Are they whining about “blockers” in standup? Just yell “Cojones”.

Are they whining about unclear requirements? Reprimand them for lack of vision and call it an opportunity for creativity.

Metrics look poor, compare it with the approval ratings drop of Berlusconi and say that “at the end of the day, in comparison, we are doing great”.

Need search query share? No problem. As I told the Qi-man, “I got this, I am on it”. All in a day’s work. #BingBeatsGoogle

User research, behavioural analysis, relevance… that is for mere mortals. I just *will* users to love my product. I decided it. Done. #Winning #AdonisDNA

Torpedoes of truth. Booyah! I am a PM.. #PMgod

Shared Experiences

Tonight I was stuck on a train that was not moving… for an hour and a half… very full and squished together with the heating full blast on the first warm day in ages.

The driver did not know what was going on and could give no expected time when we would get moving again. He also mumbled and spoke very silently so you could only catch every second word.

Slowly you could feel everyone in the carriage getting more and more annoyed, at the situation mostly but also at each other. Small annoyances become “big issues”. One woman started complaining loudly that she could not hear what the driver had said as “people didn’t stop talking on the phone”. The guy sitting next to here being the only one on the phone. Another one started complaining about the smell and several heavily sweating guys felt singled out.

When we get the news the train will not continue on but go back to London, the fever reaches is pitch.

Then all of a sudden the train starts moving in the right direction. The mood shifts completely. Everyone is elated. The horror of having to return to London and finding another train is gone. We will all reach the station in 10-15 minutes.

People start joking and sharing stories. And unlike any of the other fellow commuters I see every day, I honestly think I am more likely to start a conversation with the people sitting around me today than any others.

It is the power of shared experiences.

I know this phenomenon all too well from people you work with in tough software releases or fellow alumni of companies you worked for. You may not have that much in common… heck, you may not even have liked them that much and / or gotten annoyed by little things they did when you worked together… but once it is all over…

They are your bros. Your fellow veterans of release wars. Your fellow survivors of C-level madness.

Strange how it works that way.

A different kind of productive

As we decided not to travel home for Christmas, I have had lots of free time during the holidays. It is an interesting feeling. Normally during a typical work week, you struggle to find an hour or two of free time where you still have energy to actually do something and here are hours and hours of free time staring at you. And then my mind starts chirping away: well, dude, you wanted that free time for ever…here it is… how are you going to use it?

Good question, my beloved but babbling mind. How do you use holidays where you are not travelling or attending family functions? Do you just chill and let the days glide by? Do you catch up on email or work projects you have been delaying for ever? Or something else?

Aside of a rigid schedule of midday naps, I have tried to come up with some worthwhile activities that don’t fit into small timeslots in a busy week. Here is what I came up with:

• Read a book cover to cover in a day. Yes, you can make good progress on a book in smaller time chunks (especially when you are a commuter like I am) but there is nothing like some really dedicated quiet time to tackle an interesting book in one day with undivided attention and taking notes while you go along. In my case, I read Seth Godin’s Linchpin as I have been a fan of his blog for some time now.
• Trying out new software and websites. I am a typical geek and could spend oceans of time here all year long if I let myself. Well, I indulged myself during the holidays. My first selection was Axure RP Pro which is UX mock up tool. Main reason is my longstanding jealousy of the skills of User Experience Designers.  I want them too! I am also watching video tutorials on FileMaker Pro as well as recently signed up for Quora which is an interesting new competitor for Yahoo! Answers.
• Learn something new just for fun. I bought a game of Go ages ago but never really played it much. Well, there are some really great software versions now where you can learn the game by yourself. I use Many Faces of Go 12. Very difficult game but intriguing.
• Get your financials & taxes straight. Moving jobs and countries can make your financial picture quite muddled. Lots of free time takes away a lot of excuses to actually update your personal financial “dashboard” and make sure you won’t get a call from the tax man any time soon.
• Watch a whole season of a TV series you missed but everyone is raving about. When I launched my first “solo” product in my career (ExtraTerm, now known as MultiTerm Extract), I bought a season of 24 on DVD and just watched it until I passed out. I still love to do that (except for the passing out, I am getting older). Currently, I am watching “Rome”.
• Review your GTD system & do a really in-depth weekly review. As many of you know, I am a big fan of GTD and it is great to have a large chunk of time to maintain & review your entire system: try out new software, get your inbox to zero, get all your projects pristine and take a look again at all your levels of horizon.
• Cook something new. I tend to get stuck doing the same recipes over and over again. The holidays is a great time to find some new recipes and try some new things without having to rush (except on the main holidays itself where you want proven success).

Well, that is all I can think of. How do you use big blocks of free time? I still have some days left on my holidays so any other activities you would recommend?

Incisive action or non-action

One of the ideas that I find intriguing in the Tao Te Ching is that of Non-Action (“Wu Wei”).

It is translated and interpreted in many ways but the interpretation that stuck with me was that of avoiding unnecessary or harmful action. I see strong and direct implications here to our professional (as well as personal) lives.

Too often we try to solve every problem by doing something, by action; and also often by trying to be clever, by following the latest management models or tricks.

Doesn’t however a lot of clever action sometimes cause more problems than it solves? Was stepping into the project and correcting a perceived problem really the best thing to do? Maybe interfering in the project caused lack of engagement as people felt micro-managed or sensed a lack of trust.

It doesn’t come for free but trying to be really aware and deeply understand a situation can make one small action (or no action at all) so much more effective and incisive than a lot of action or cleverness ever will.