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Popular Posts
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Friday was my last day at Amazon
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I’m Betting on Control4
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I sincerely tried, but I still hate Linux
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STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory
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Why Nobody Can Copy Apple
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Customer, Business, Technology, Organization (CBTO)
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Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins
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Merit Badges – A Mental Model for Success
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You are Thinking of Your Career Trajectory Wrong
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The 5 Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
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Windows Phone is Superior; Why Hasn’t it Taken Off?
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Paying Developers is A Bad Idea
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The Job Decision Matrix
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Be a Great Reader
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Concierge Home Technology
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Category Archives: Leadership
Kindel’s Law
I’m not sure how this law thing works. But I’m jealous of folks like Moore, Atwood, and Shannon. I think everyone should have a law named after them. Everyone should have a law named after themselves. Matt just entered the …Continue reading
Tools to Achieve Clarity of Thought
This post inventories the tools I use from my toolbox when I need to drive clear thinking in product development. I was inspired to write this based on a Twitter conversation in March: The more details you know, the better …Continue reading
Ownership
A strong bias towards ownership is important in org culture. The problem is, folks often over index on ‘I own this area, so I’m going to nail it!’ vs. ‘I am an owner on behalf of the entire company and …Continue reading
Clear Narratives Show Instead of Tell
This is yet-another-post on the topic of Amazon-style “six-page memos”, aka Narratives. This post focuses on the mantra: “Great narratives show, they don’t tell.” When writing things you believe to be facts, ask yourself: How do I know? How can …Continue reading
Customer, Business, Technology, Organization (CBTO)
April 21, 2018
CBTO = Customer + Business + Technology + OrganizationContinue reading
Merit Badges – A Mental Model for Success
Today I celebrated my 5th-year anniversary working at Amazon. Woot! It’s also the 5th anniversary of me announcing I was going to Amazon as an April Fool’s joke. Tee-hee. (Yellow Amazon employee badges indicate 5-year tenure) This milestone has caused …Continue reading
What it Means to Be Great Product Manager
A Tweetstorm of mine from earlier in the week: https://twitter.com/natbro/timelines/611337333711843330 Piling on a comment @natbro made about PMs: Besides customers, there are two groups of people involved in building tech products: Engineers and everyone else. Only the engineers actually produce …Continue reading
Attention is the Currency of Leadership
Great leaders optimize how they spend their attention. They are skilled at turning up the heat to get others to focus their attention on the right things at the right times. Attention is the currency of leadership and each person …Continue reading
Find Work That Does Not Feel Like Work
The first thing I ask people who are looking for a new job is “What work do you want to do in your ideal job?” It is interesting how few people answer this question. Almost everybody wants to answer different …Continue reading
Once I was Afraid
Once I was afraid to ride a bike. Then I did it. Once I was afraid to program in BASIC. Then I did it. Once I was afraid of getting married. Then I married Julie. Once I was afraid of …Continue reading
Be Excellent At Saying No
Steven Sinofski has written another great post on his “Learning by Shipping” blog. In this one, titled “8 steps for engineering leaders to keep the peace” he focuses on things an engineering leader can do when his or her ‘manager’ …Continue reading
Have a Plan
Yesterday someone asked me to share my thoughts on the secret to building excellent things. I summarized what I know as: “Put the customer first, have a plan, create a shared mission, get early victories, remove process, and make it …Continue reading
Businesses Buy Differently
My post on Why Nobody Can Copy Apple has become one of the most read posts I’ve ever written (thanks @gruber). Commenters are asking me “Can you describe more what the behaviors are that are different when building for business …Continue reading
"Write Once…" is Anti-Customer
February 21, 2013
Just as in the ’90s, there’s a bunch of hype these days around solving the cross-platform development problem. Mobile platform fragmentation is killing developers, and if only every device supported some common language or technology engine we could all Write …Continue reading
Why Nobody Can Copy Apple
Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled “Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple?”. As he points out, Apple is fairly unique in its command of vertical integration and many people point to that as the “why”. However, Horace also admits …Continue reading
Don’t Make Your Team Say No To You
In early-stage ventures, whether it’s a bootstrapped technology startup, or a new initiative within a big company, the leaders are often visionary “idea people”. The difference between success and failure is how good these leaders are at training their teams …Continue reading
Be as Excellent at Saying No as Saying Yes
December 3, 2012
While in Amman Jordan last month, I had the opportunity to speak at Amman Tech Tuesdays, a local startup event held every month there. I was asked to talk about what I’ve learned in my career to an audience of …Continue reading
Four Things I Learned in Jordan
I wrote a guest post for the Huffington Post on Dec 7, 2012. You can read the full post here, but here’s the TL;DR: If the Middle East can stay relatively stable for just 10-15 more years, entrepreneurship will have …Continue reading
Paying Developers is A Bad Idea
The companies that make the most profit are those who build virtuous platform cycles. There are no proof points in history of virtuous platform cycles being created when the platform provider incents developers to target the platform by paying them. …Continue reading
Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins
Tom’s Hardware is generally really solid. But they should stay focused on technology because this post is seriously absurd: “More than two years after the introduction of the iPad, Samsung appears to be very confident in the tablet market and …Continue reading
