Austin VOP #101: Murphy Tiggelar of AWS | Decision Making and Decision Understanding
Inspiring the next generation of Product Leaders
Austin Voice of Product
Murphy and I met at a ProductCamp Austin event a couple of years ago. I was taken by her passion and energy for product management. It was so great to reconnect with her and hear how far she has come in these few years. She shares great advice for PMs based on three Amazon leadership principles: customer obsession, ownership and bias for action.
Read more: Product Managers are Customer Obsessed
What I’m Reading
I love John Cutler’s The Beautiful Mess newsletter and a couple of weeks ago he wrote a great piece: Decision Making vs. Decision Understanding. We constantly are making decisions or are involved in decisions as product managers. I have been in the midst of what seems like an intense period of this at my company - we have new leadership and we are setting new directions. The phrase John uses below - Decision Drift - is so spot on!
Teams often talk about decision making challenges and what I call Decision Drift. Decision drift is when you decide something, but then your commitment drifts. Your team feels they are going back to the drawing board often. How are we supposed to fix decision drift? "Decide and commit!" Jeff Bezos tells us. "Identify the directly responsible individual!" says Apple. Run RACI. SMART goals. Roll out OKRs.
I've come to see it in another way. Teams (and framework makers) focus a lot of attention on making decisions, but not a lot of time on understanding decisions and each other.
Austin Product Events
May 26 — ProductTank Austin
Best Practices For Customer Discovery InterviewsJune 7 — The Product League
Stepping Stones To Product ManagementJune 16 — ProductHired Job Club
How to get promoted to be a Director of Product
More events on the Austin Product Events page.
In The Community
Annan Patel was promoted to Director of Product Management at WP Engine. 🙌 Read his interview: Product Managers Deliver on Outcomes
Aditya Rustgi started a new role as Senior Director of Product Management at The Knot. 👏 Read his interview: Your Responsibility Mentoring Future Product Leaders
Austin Product Positions
I share product positions posted by product leaders I know. Feel free to reach out to me for an intro or share with others.
Murphy’s team at AWS is hiring a Senior Product Manager for their Marketplace team.
My friends Andrew and Jenny at BravePath (product consulting and talent recruiting) are working with some leading companies to hire the following positions. Happy to make an intro if you or someone you know is a good fit.
Yours in product,
Reza