When I wrote ‘The Rise of The Ethical-Economy’, I covered the consumer-facing side of the coin — how the world is changing and making consumers more conscious of the products they buy, and the companies they purchase from.

This is something that comes up often for me — I get questions like:

“What’s the difference between a Product Designer and Product Manager?”….All valid questions but they all have one problem. They are all coming from an individual perspective, not a team one

Jeff Patton was one of the first people to challenge the notion of a linear backlog when he created — and then wrote the book — User Story Mapping (more on that later)…

Over the last decade or so we’ve witnessed the rise in the Experience-Economy — a battlefield where companies and products have been competing not on price or features, but rather on who can ‘woo’ their customers best.

Responsibility vs Accountability & The Trust Paradox of Self-Organising Teams. Yves Morieux, a Senior Partner at BCG, brilliantly provoked in his ted talk that “If you think about it, we pay more attention to knowing who to blame in case we fail, than to creating the conditions to succeed”

When you start to scale and have multiple products and/or teams, alignment becomes paramount. The general trap is to try and control things to stop misalignment from happening by adding many layers of bureaucracy. This stifles creativity, does very little to keep your people motivated and usually degrades team velocity.

IBM a few years back stated that 84% of Digital Transformations fail — although there is a lot of “grey” area around what constitutes as “failure” still 84% is a staggering number! What interests me the most is why this is the case? As a fellow coach Tanner Wortham brilliantly provoked “If this agile thing is so great, then why doesn’t it always stick?”

Similar to giving feedback, receiving feedback effectively is often a place where we struggle. If you’re anything like me, receiving feedback can be uncomfortable and often emotional, even with the best intentions for personal growth it can still be hard to stay objective and keep your cool.

What's the difference between Product Management and Product Ownership? Are they the same thing, or different?  It’s ok, no one seems to know. Rather we find the answer lies in where it all began - where they came from.

I would say we’re in a feedback crisis. Most people don’t give feedback, they give unsolicited advice…