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Product Practice Newsletter

1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes.

Featured Post

🛠️ Do You Actually Measure OKR Progress? (Most Don't)

Product Practice #342 The OKR Trap:Reporting vs. Progress READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 12, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 04 sec Dear Reader, Similar to being focused on Discovery motions, but missing Discovery decisions, simply filling in OKR templates will lead to reporting, but not measuring progress. OKRs that report numbers try to get a template-based Objective right and define a Key Result as something with a number. OKRs that measure progress take care of the hard conversations through...

Product Practice #341 The Context Matrix READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 8, 2024 READING TIME 2 min & 11 sec Dear Reader, Every level of product management involves two areas: creating context and making sense of it. While creating the context partially depends on the environment you work in, making sense of the context mainly depends on the hard skills a product team has. For Product Strategy, the context consists of internal and external data points about the market, your capabilities, how...

Product Practice #340 How to Navigate Product Discovery Like a Map READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 1, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 51 sec Dear Reader, “We need to complete all six Discovery phases in order." "Let's perfect that JTBD statement before we talk to users." "Our process requires detailed one-pagers before any customer interviews." Does this sound familiar? These are examples of dogmatic defaults: Teams cycling through the same tools in the same order, regardless of context. While...

Product Practice #339 How to predict the future of your OKRs (and why it matters) READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 25, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 32 sec Dear Reader, Ever sat in an OKR review meeting feeling like you're just going through the motions or reporting without meaning? You're not alone. As a Head of Product, I've been there too. But what if I told you there's a way to make your OKRs truly useful for decision-making? Let's dive in. The power of predicting the future One of my favorite...

Product Practice #338 Product at Heart 2024Keynote Recording and Slides READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 18, 2024 READING TIME 2 min & 17 sec Dear Reader, Stepping on stage at Product at Heart 2024 five weeks ago was a definitive highlight of my year so far. I loved bringing a message I deeply care about to an audience I also care about. Without further ado, I'm happy to share the full recording of this keynote with you: Watch the Video You can also get the slides and templates I shared during...

Product Practice #337 How to Know if Your Product Strategy Has Worked READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 11, 2024 READING TIME 4 min & 16 sec Dear Reader, Your Strategy can be perfectly thought-out, based on well-researched insights, co-created by Individual Contributors and Leadership, and contain sustainable advantages over alternatives. But if nobody understands it and you can't integrate it into teams' decision-making processes, the value of Product Strategy will remain locked. The degree to...

Product Practice #336 How to Build a Product Strategy That Fits Your Company’s Focus READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 4, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 14 sec Dear Reader, Besides being decisive, another attribute that can determine the value of your Product Strategy is how layered it is. The best way to think of the interplay between the Company and Product layers is the magnitude of overlap between each of them: Is the audience you chose for your Product part of the prioritized audience by the...

Product Practice #335 How to Stop Saying Yes to Everything in Your Product Strategy READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Sep 27, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 35 sec Dear Reader, Three weeks ago, I shared with you Why you don’t get Value from your Product Strategy. Today, we're going to talk about the How. Making your Product Strategy decisive means making choices that help answer "What does this allow us to say no to?" Imagine a b2b SaaS Analytics software called Analytico. If your Product Strategy says...

Product Practice #334 How I use OKRs to Write my Book READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Sep 20, 2024 READING TIME 3 min & 59 sec Dear Reader, When thinking about measuring the success of writing a book, it's relatively easy to land on metrics like No. of copies sold within a period of time The average ratings on amazon The no. of people pre-ordering or signing up to be notified upon book launch Generated indirect revenue from inquiries or follow-up products sold The problem with these metrics is...

Product Practice #333 You’re Not a Better Product Manager Because… READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Sep 13, 2024 READING TIME 2 min & 32 sec Dear Reader, Are you at Product at Heart today? Find me for a chat whenever you're in the mood. I love meeting readers in real life. Short one from me this week. Let's get it! I'm a big fan of getting better in context over working towards an absolute "best." But what helps you get better comes in different shapes and forms. Here's where some of these forms...