In my previous post, I made a couple of relatively obvious assertions:We are all tribal.As product managers, it is beneficial if we better understand the professional tribes we rely on. I also alluded to the observation that one of the consequences of being tribal is a kind of blindness about...
February 2010 Archives
Before we attempt to answer that question, an important point: you're already "native". We are all part of one professional tribe or another, whether we are aware of it or not. Our membership in our tribe not only drives relatively innocuous cultural symptoms, such as our workday lingo, but even...
Product managers are the central hub for products within companies. You deal with tribal dynamics within the organization and ultimately move a product from the company into the hands of the customer.You need to understand the company culture, the culture of the respective internal departments, the culture of the vendors,...
Heinz just launched a new ketchup packet. "We created the packet in 1968, consumer complaints started around 1969" said Dave Ciesinski, vice president of Heinz Ketchup. After 40 years of complaints, they now have a solution. In the 40 years since Heinz launched the ketchup packet, the company has seen...
The introduction of the Apple iPad has spawned a flurry of Tweets and reTweets of Steve Jobs' famous quote "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." Jobs is right. It...
