The Beautiful Mess

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TBM 328: Beyond Firmographic-Based ICPs
How does a product manager/leader new to a company (a startup) start to form a mental model around segmenting customers and gradually converging on an…
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John Cutler
1
TBM 327: Hot Takes and Parochial Altruism
I've encountered several examples lately where people involved in tech share caustic, divisive messages that combine 1) in-group signaling alongside 2…
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John Cutler
2
TBM 326: Adhocracies and Bureaucracies
Rapid-growth tech companies often operate as adhocracies—they do whatever it takes to grow, move quickly, etc. The 0-1 stage is characterized by a lot…
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John Cutler
5
TBM 325: Skeptoptimism – Thinking Slow, Acting Fast
Skeptoptimists assume shit will happen but are also optimistic that the team will eventually prevail.
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John Cutler
3

November 2024

TBM 324: Goal-O-Rama
Anti-goals (aka NOKRs) explicitly state what you aren't trying to do. They help set expectations and clarify your strategy. A good exercise for setting…
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John Cutler
4
TBM 323: Quick Tool Tips
I have been thinking a lot lately about how teams buy, adopt, and customize road mapping, goal setting/tracking, and strategy deployment tools.
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John Cutler
2
TBM 322: Work Shape Mix
In this post, we're going to discuss work "shape" mix and why it matters. As with most things, this is an oversimplification, but let's imagine three…
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John Cutler
3
systems *doing* and complexity *doing*
Here is what systems *doing* and complexity *doing* looks like:
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John Cutler
TBM 321: "Reducing Complexity"
Should we be trying to “reduce complexity?” An executive walks into a meeting room, clearly exasperated. It's been a long day of back-to-back meetings…
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John Cutler
11
TBM 320: From Fluffy Concepts to Concrete Outcomes & Behaviors
In product, we're bombarded by high-level concepts like empowerment, data-driven, product-led, customer-focused, accountability, getting into the…
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John Cutler
3
TBM 319: Surfing Inertia and Pendulum Swings
Recently, I have been thinking deeply about what it would take to "dampen" some of the harsh pendulum swings we are experiencing in the industry.
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John Cutler
2

October 2024

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