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Kindle Notes & Highlights
If yours is a 30-minute meeting, a three-page narrative would therefore be more appropriate.
leave two-thirds of the meeting time for discussing what we’ve read.
When everyone has read the document, the presenter takes the floor.
Resist that temptation;
ask for high-level feedback,
Then the discussion begins, which essentially means that the audience members ask questions of the presenting team.
it’s also important that notes be taken on behalf of the entire audience, preferably by someone knowledgeable about the subject who is not the primary presenter.
It’s vital that we capture and record the salient points of the ensuing discussion, as those comments become part of the output of the narrative process.
You are not just commenting on a document, you’re helping to shape an idea, and thereby becoming a key team member for that business.
Jeff has an uncanny ability to read a narrative and consistently arrive at insights that no one else did,
asked him how he was able to do that.
he assumes each sentence he reads is wrong until he ca...
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He’s challenging the content of t...
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“Our customer-friendly returns policy allows returns up to 60 days from the time of purchase compared to the 30 days typically offered by our competitors.”
Critical thinking, separating facts from opinions and challenging content of opinions drawn from the facts. Example is adjective or descriptor before a noun. Typically subjective and indicates an assumption from facts or unfounded opinion
critical reader would challenge the implicit assumption being made, namely, that the longer allowable return duration makes the policy customer friendly.
The policy may be better than a competitor’s, but is it actually customer friendly?
Silence in the discussion stage is the equivalent of agreement with what is presented, but it carries the same weight as a full-blown critique.
the presenter and audience become integrally linked to the subsequent success or failure
of the initiative, or the correctness or incorrectness of a team’...
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Working Backwards is a systematic way to vet ideas and create new products. Its key tenet is to start by defining the customer experience, then iteratively work backwards from that point until the team achieves clarity of thought around what to build. Its principal tool is a second form of written narrative called the PR/FAQ,
We needed to improve each stage of these product meetings.
Jeff tried many different ideas,
and other approaches to visualizing the outcome of a project.
“Where are the mock-ups?”
Jeff was referring to the visual representations that would show exactly how the new service would look on the Amazon website.
To create a meaningful and informative mock-up you have to think through
every element of what the service will offer, what the experience will be for the customer, how all the features will work on the page.
exactly what we were going to build and how it would be better for customers than the competition.
half-baked mock-up was evidence of half-baked thinking.
It required us to be thorough and precise. We had to describe features, pricing, how the service would work, why consumers would want it.
Good starting point for customer discovery. Guess each of these as best you can with some market research and reading, assume they're inaccurate, and go test with customer interviews/supplier conversations/etc.
from the customer perspective.
When we wrote a Kindle press release and started working backwards, everything changed. We focused instead on what would be great for customers.
Internal FAQs are the questions that your team and the executive leadership will ask. “How can we make a 44-inch TV with an HD display that can retail for $1,999 at a 25 percent gross margin?” or “How will we make a Kindle reader that connects to carrier networks to download books without customers having to sign a contract with a carrier?” or “How many new software engineers and data scientists do we need to hire for this new initiative?”
the FAQ section is where the writer shares the details of the plan from a consumer point of view and addresses the various risks and challenges from internal operations, technical, product, marketing, legal, business development, and financial points of view.
The PR gives the reader the highlights of the customer experience. The FAQ provides all the salient details of the customer experience as well as a clear-eyed and thorough assessment of how expensive and challenging it will be for the company to build the product or create the service.
The press release (PR) portion is a few paragraphs, always less than one page. The frequently asked questions (FAQ) should be five pages or less.
restricting the length of the document is, to use a term that came up when describing the narratives, a forcing function—we have seen that it develops better thinkers and communicators.
You must include things like your pro forma P&L for a new business or product.
Often FAQs are divided into external (customer focused) and internal (focused on your company).
these questions are product specific, they are unique to an individual PR/FAQ.
For internal FAQs, there is a more standardized list of topics you will need to cover. Here are some of the typical areas to address.
Consumer Needs and Total Addressable...
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These consumer questions will enable you to identify the core customers by filtering out those who don’t meet the product constraints.
Economics and P&L
The consumer questions and economic analysis both have an effect on the product price point, and that price point, in turn, has an effect on the size of the total addressable market.
Some of the best new product proposals set a not-to-exceed price point because it forces the team to innovate within that constraint and face the tough trade-offs early on.
The problem(s) associated with achieving that price point should be fully explained and explored in the FAQ.
Dependencies
What third-party technologies are we dependent on for Melinda to function as promised?
A common mistake among less-seasoned product managers is to not fully consider how third parties who have their own agendas and incentives will interact with their product idea, or what potential regulatory or legal issues might arise.
