You’re excited. You’ve been put in the driver’s seat for a new project. You’ve looked at the data. Now you’re ready to talk to some users to validate your hypothesis from the data. You run to your user researcher with a list of asks. But your enthusiasm comes to a grinding halt when your request meets the reality of being slotted 39th in a long queue. Has this ever happened to you?

I sat down with my friend and former colleague, @Reed Townsend Jones, to understand this situation from the perspective of a user researcher. (In other words, I user researched a user researcher!) He shares the foolproof secret that will get you to the top of the queue with your user researcher every time.

Whether you’re on Team Biden or Team Trump, we can all agree that the past week could have been a plot on a show like the West Wing or House of Cards. In the middle of the night, the nation learns that POTUS has COVID and numerous others in his inner circle test positive. He’s helicoptered to the hospital, treated with experimental drugs, and then discharged and back at the White House within days.

As we’ve stayed abreast these developments throughout the past week, it’s been hard to know who or what to believe. For example, the White House physician later admitted to giving false and misleading information. Sometimes there are good reasons that leaders do not share the full story with their teams, but clearly this was a case of information sharing gone wrong. Read on to learn what we can take away from the White House’s example and how you can still be a transparent and authentic leader, even if you don’t share everything you know.

P.S. - Get out and vote! Schedule the time in your calendar to get to the polls on November 3rd or mail-in your ballot early

Previously, I wrote about how great UX makes technology “So easy a toddler can do it.” Now, I’m back with a distance learning edition! Read on to hear about what I’ve observed about distance learning and what we can learn from first graders about how to work more effectively.

What do you want to be when you “grow up”?

What are you doing to make it happen?

In today’s post, I’m sharing the Product Decagon framework that I created. It’s a tool for product managers to clarify your vision of what you want to be when you grow up, assess your skills and gaps, and plan your career development. I hope you’ll give the Product Decagon a try, and would love to hear what you think in the comments.

Prioritization is a key part of any Product Manager job. It seems like there have been a million+1 articles written about how to prioritize. Let’s have a little fun and talk about how NOT to prioritize. Read on to find out what’s in my top 3 “favorite” list.

How often do you watch an ENTIRE ad on YouTube, without hitting ‘Skip ad’ after the requisite five seconds of playback are up? For me, the answer was never… until I experienced Chris Hadfield’s ad for MasterClass. Read on to see why this ad captivated me, and what we, as product leaders, can learn from it about the power of telling a darn good story.