Retrospective
As you probably know, teams that do regular retrospectives tend to be a lot more productive and do a better job of achieving their missions. So, even though I’m a team of one (so far) I am hoping this will be true for me as well.
The canonical retrospective structure is to answer three questions:
- What went well and we should continue doing?
- What went badly and we should stop doing?
- What new things do we want to try?
Well, that’s at least one of the canonical formats. But we’ll stick with that for now.
What went well
- It happened. Coming up with – and then articulating – meaningful topics that are worth your time to read is high bar for me, but I feel I’m meeting that bar with each issue.
- There were 18 issues since July. That’s more often than biweekly, but less than weekly.
- Building an online home for the newsletter: I started putting the issues up on the Secrets of PM website. The most recent few are accessible at secretsofpm.com/blog. I will work on getting the rest of them up there.
- The topics ranged widely, but there were some commonalities:
- The importance of stories.
- The potentials of AI for multiplying your value.
- Some mindset work.
- A few newsletters about resumes – as you know this is mostly what I do in my business, help product (managers and others) with their resumes.
What didn’t go well?
- Consistency was not good.
- I have not yet moved the first 15 issues onto the website, so there is no way to review them.
- I would like the issues to be more actionable. Some achieved this bar, but others did not.
Goals for this newsletter for the new year
I’m not even going to say “consistency.” That might happen, but to be honest it’s low on my priorities.
Usefulness. I want this newsletter to give you something you can use, every week (or, realistically, every issue). Whether it’s a mindset, or a mental model, or a technique. These will focus on the unique needs of product managers but will often be applicable to anyone.
More “how to” – I have started a list of useful things I can share how to do in this newsletter, things which are valuable and which I don’t see many other people teaching. Like how to elicit a customer’s success story in a way that makes it a powerful tool for going to market. How to validate if a product idea is worth spending effort on. How to start a writing practice (which is a really good habit if you want to create content for the world).
And, most importantly, what you want to hear more of. Or read more about. What challenges are you facing as a PM? What problems are you struggling to solve? Hit reply to this email or send me a note at nils@nilsdavis.com. Your questions and ideas will shape future issues.
See you in 2025
I hope you have great New Year celebration, and here’s also to a great 2025!
There will be challenges.
But there will be a lot of wins for you individually, and for product management as a discipline, and hopefully for the world as a whole.
We’ll see.
Nils
nils@nilsdavis.com