This has been frequently requested of me ever since my earlier post about ‘The Six Month Conversation’ resonated with so many people. This follow up is about the framework Alexis and I devised with hopes of guiding our life journey together independently and as a couple. I know this post is arriving several years late, after tons of requests, so thanks everybody for your patience!
What is it? Do I need it? Where does it fit in the org? I've also heard of Sales Enablement; is it different? How do I do it right? What career paths get you to Sales Ops and where can you go from there? Is Sales Ops leadership the same as Sales leadership? So many questions. So few good answers.
Product development/management is tough as hell. Thankfully there is an amazing community of practitioners. The book, Product Leadership (website, Amazon), has so many nuggets of wisdom encoded in it. Check it out :)
Here are some quotes I found noteworthy and strive to commit to my DNA:
Great product people will ask questions about the product, the market, and the business. Not only this, they show an interest in all aspects of the team they work with, from unified vision to individual communication styles. Understand that producing great products can be difficult and frustrating, but still want to do the work.
Ultimately, the job of the product manager is to get results through other people.
What is common in high-performance teams is that…
It is important to know one's value/worth as a worker.
A quick reality check of evaluating oneself in the broader organization is to ask the question: Do I Add, Subtract, Multiply, or Divide value to the social fabric which I am woven into? Do not be a subtracter and divider. Best is to be a multiplier (Note on multipliers: they amplify their environment, so they make sense in positive constructive environments).
Your compensation needs to be relative the value you provide for a business and you need to take ownership of negotiating the compensation you want. Nobody knows your situation as well as you do and nearly everybody is more worried about their situation than yours.
A few rules of thumb:
In the public sector:
Ones 'market value' increases by between 3k-5k per year for the majority of roles
Individual Contributor roles cap at 75k-110k, depending on skills requirements
For specialist roles, compensation is usually 70-80% of private market rate
In the private sector:
Ones 'market value' increases by between 3k-7k per year
For specialist skillsets, market value increases by between 8k-15k per year
Individual Contributor roles cap at 90k-130k, and then one is required to contribute to business development (i.e. originating sales, generating net new revenue, fundraising)
The sectors that do not subscribe to the above are those which contribute value in a scalable manner or are poorly understood (note: this is fleeting): Business Development, Management Consulting, Capital Markets, and Technological Specialists (non-operational roles).
Past Joshua made note of some book excerpts. Can't remember why... but I'm typing them out here in case I remember, then Future Joshua can write the blog post he intended to :)
Edit: ohhh, these are from Drive, by Daniel Pink (link below)
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A startup engineer must be all things -- he (or she) is a full time software developer and part time product manager/customer support guru/internal systems maven. As a company grows, an engineer spends less time building the things he personally wants in the product. Our hope is that 20% time gives engineers back dedicated stack time -- of their own direction -- to spend on product innovation, features, plugins, fixes or additions that they think are the most important…
Having attended about dozen events as a guest speaker / professional delegate since 2017 started, I've noticed a pattern that feels like it should be talked about: people do not ask for what they want and do not follow up properly.
I am reminded of this quote, which I first saw at 14 years old on a poster in my highschool hallway, and which I have tried to live by ever since: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take in life...
This will be a very short post, and it's mostly my thinking around a puzzle-me-this notion.
I've recently encountered a number of situations where people acted highly irrationally. In some cases, their behaviour was very clearly against their own self-interest. The behaviour, if continued, would negatively impact their lives in a significant way. And the thing is, most of the time they know this is the case and can't take the steps to remedy their situation.
To what extent does an individual's surroundings influence their judgment? How long is enough for a person to wallow in their misery? How can an external party impact the person who's struggling? What is getting in the way of the individual taking steps to make a change?
To efficiently operate a computer, using only the keyboard.
This was a goal I pursued for the first few years in my early 20s, during my then-search for high levels of personal efficiency. During this earlier phase of my life, I often evaluated software based on whether they had hotkeys (i.e. keyboard shortcuts) available. Along the way, I learned some tricks for navigating the programs I used most often, including a local version of Microsoft Excel.
This post is to share some of the hotkeys I found helpful. As more come to mind, I will include them here :) feel free to bookmark this page if you find it helpful!
Getting the right people on board (for whatever type of organization) is a topic I've been wanting to cover for a while now, either via blog or podcast. The problem is that I hadn't found a good way to put it concisely, given my tendency towards long-winded pieces.
A friend recently lent me a copy Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, where Collins describes: (1) how companies transition from being good companies to great organizations, (2) how most companies fail to make the transition, and then (3) offers some practical suggestions to implement these ourselves.
This is the final of three (3) posts about this experience, detailing my advice/suggestions to people who want to give Vipassana a try. If you haven't already, I suggest first taking a look at Part 1 (general overview, some logistical questions), and Part 2 (specifics about my experience before, during, and after).
My partner did it together with me; here's Part 1 and Part 2 of what she wrote.
