My 2024 Mid-Year Review

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PUBLISHED

Jun 28, 2024

READING TIME

5 min & 20 sec

This is the last newsletter before my annual summer writing break. I will return on August 16th after next week's issue. In the meantime, follow me on LinkedIn for more hands-on content. ☀️

Dear Reader,

I first encountered the concept of a mid-year review via Tiago Forte a few years back. After I published 7 Things I Learned from Writing a Weekly Product Management Newsletter for 7 Years, many of you asked for more behind-the-scenes stories and insights. So, here we go.

What I focused on in the first half of 2024

Piloting my series of in-person Workshops in Berlin. It’s been a while since I hosted in-person workshops outside of conferences, but this experiment worked amazingly (even though it was exhausting). So much that I will repeat it (read on for more details).

Bringing the Structure of my Book to Life and Making Real Progress (hint hint). I embarked on the book-writing journey last October and finally saw the pieces coming together in the year's first half. I got fantastic feedback from beta readers on one chapter and am excited to “ship” another one to readers before my summer break. For those who wonder, the working title is Real Progress—How to Connect the Dots of Product Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery. I’ll have more to share as I near committing to a reliable release date sometime next year.

Making my First Angel Investment. When Malte approached me about joining Airfocus as an Angel investor, I didn’t need to think too hard about it, especially since some of my most valued German product colleagues were also in.

Establishing more “Treat Practices like Products” Thinking with Clients. Besides my ongoing client coaching and workshop engagements, the concept of treating your ways of working as a product clicked for a lot of teams. It helped them clarify their WHY and focus on the value of a practice rather than the cadence or format. One of my connection highlights was when a workshop participant recognized my passion for coffee from the Japanese mug I was drinking from–because he had the same.

Prioritizing Efficiency over Novelty in BAU Activities. Contrary to my usual way of working, I didn’t play around with too many new tools or concepts regarding LinkedIn and this newsletter. Instead, I focused on pragmatic content delivered in a “good enough” way—all with the goal of preserving as much creative thinking capacity as possible for the book.

On a personal note, the definitive highlights of this year so far were getting married in March and a beautiful city trip to Vienna with my best friend.

What I will focus on in the second half of 2024

Bringing my book into a theoretically pre-orderable state. That means finishing the other two drafts for the major parts, "handing them in” to beta readers and iterating based on the feedback I have received. From there, it will be all about putting things together coherently and thinking about the release.

Preparing and delivering my Keynote at Product at Heart 2024. I’m honored and excited to deliver one of the Keynotes at this year’s Product at Heart in Hamburg. The lineup is fantastic, so you should make sure to get one of the remaining tickets. Will I see you in September?

Spreading the Word about my next series of in-person Workshops in Berlin. As mentioned, I was thrilled with how my in-person workshops played out. I’m excited to share that tickets for January 2025 are now available (including Early Bird and Group Discounts).

Delivering value in my ongoing and new client relationships. Like the first half of the year, I look forward to continuing to work with existing and newly formed client relationships, emphasizing the ‘why’ behind the pragmatic application of proven tactics rather than promoting a single "golden" method. A particular highlight I'm looking forward to is my first client engagement in the US in October.

I’m excited for what’s to come and sharing the journey with you.

Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Do reply. It's motivating. I'm not a robot; I read and respond to every subscriber email I get (just ask around). If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

Tim

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Content I found Practical This Week

Tripadvisor Product Strategy Example

Tripadvisor is a complicated product that offers reviews, prices, and booking capabilities across all of the things a traveler may want: hotels, flights, restaurants, attractions, cruises, vacation rentals, and more. It’s a bit like Trivago, Kayak, Yelp, and Viator all rolled into one. This broad set of offerings underpinned Tripadvisor’s SEO strategy. Powered by user reviews, Tripadvisor’s offerings show up in the top 3-5 results across millions of Google searches. As a result, hundreds of millions of travelers come to Tripadvisor every month.

Read it here

OKRs ≠ Strategy

This pattern is what I see play out time and time again in companies when it comes to OKRs. While OKRs exist in the strategy layer, they're not the same. OKRs are simply one layer in the whole thing. Don't make the mistake of communicating your OKRs without context. And don’t make the mistake of mistaking goal-setting (OKRs) for strategy.

Read it here

Don’t Use Generative AI to Replace Discovery with Real Humans

Along the way, we might create interview snapshots, experience maps, opportunity solution trees, story maps, KPI trees, or other visual artifacts. But these artifacts are not the end goal. They are tools that help us think through what we know. They help us uncover customer value and business value. They help us explore the diverse perspectives on our cross-functional team and then align around a shared understanding. These visuals are not the discovery work; they are the by-product of discovery work. Too many generative AI tools miss this point. They think the artifact is the end goal. It’s why we now have tools that generate interview transcripts from synthetic customers, fictional interview snapshots and opportunity solution trees, and detailed story maps.

Read it here