ParTeeGuys

Both in Golf and Product Management, having *character* in environments where fast-learning and fast-adapting is critical. You can get annoyed at self-inflicted mistakes or externalities, but only for a moment. Then, you take whatever you can learn and crack on. Eyes forward. And magic things can happen. It's not easy, and it doesn't always work. That's why it's called a "practice." What comes up for you? https://lnkd.in/eby_RCip

Don't get attached to Outcomes. it's both Zen Buddhist and Greek Stoicism. And a valuable practice. It's healthy and useful to attach to or fully commit to Intention(s). And equally valuable to not lose our shit when Outcomes don't manifest precisely (or even remotely) how we intended them. What's healthy is to learn... fast... and adapt to those learnings. It turns out golf serves as a microcosm for many things. This is one. At any time things can go fully pear-shaped, or marginally awry. And how we handle it -- our mindset and practices -- determine whether we can learn and adapt quick to ultimately manifest a valuable Outcome. Or Impact. Here's an example. https://lnkd.in/ecBu9MGu

A simple practice for life or commerce or relationships. Certainly for product management. It also happens to work well for golf. ⛳️ 😎

The Early Bird gets the Birdie. Especially when the set of practices (my shot recipe) I've crafted and committed to to be "shot obsessed" seems to be working "always better, never best." I shot an 85 (14 over) that day. Feels like I'm on the verge of a breakthrough. We'll see. My Inputs (practices and techniques) and Outputs (rounds played and practice sessions) seem to be increasingly connecting to Outcomes (Scores and HCP). Certainly true for sub-round objectives -- e.g. stretches of par golf -- and verging on round-level objectives (i.e. score for full 9 or 18 holes) and HCP (now a 15) https://lnkd.in/eR8r66tb

As is often true in product management, we solve one problem only to find another underneath. Or perhaps remove one impediment important to get to a more (or equally) valuable underlying or adjacent problem. Such as it has been for me in my "Journey to Par". My consistency off the tee and in the fairway has been spotty. And I developed a recipe -- a routine -- for setting up and executing shots cobbled together from learnings from fittings and YouTube. And it seems to be working. "Better, never best", anyway. And it's magnifying the gap in my short game, which is consistent with a "blindspot" in what we're doing to unlock value for customer and company. We get so focused on the forest, we forget that key tree that unlocks the health of the forest (not a great metaphor, but you get what I mean) In this case, it was my consistency putting "in the zone" of 6 feet or under. It's ... well... not there. It's like getting to the one-yard line in American football more often and then fumbling. In this outing, across 9 holes it was literally 5.5 inches of misses (Input: putting practice) that cost me 5 strokes in Outcome (score). I have most definitely forgone putting practice in favour of practising "putting myself in a position to score" vs "actually scoring (via the putts inside the zone)". All good. Just part of the journey! And, wow, is it an interesting journey. 😎 https://lnkd.in/ee4APX8d

File this under "Failing Fast". Golf is said to be "a game of misses." In product management, we fail more than we succeed—it's just the nature of learning. And we want to learn fast and cheap. In golf, everything is hyper-accelerated. We are best served doing retrospectives in seconds or minutes, instead of hours or days or weeks. Decide what we've learned, what to practice in the future for similar situations, assess our current situation, and then crack on fresh. Leave the emotion and ego behind. It is easier to say than do in either the golf or product management context. Thus, the "always better, never best" mindset. The "fairway bunker" miss is often dreaded in golf. For soooo many reasons, most of which relate to "lost opportunity". I almost look forward to them. Almost. 😅 It doesn't always work out... and yet leaning into it as an opportunity versus a curse is no doubt an optimal mindset. Just like hashtag #fails in product development! 😎 https://lnkd.in/eAW7AVqY

Product principles applied to golf: learning to Draw. My customer is the ball, and it hasn't been happy off the tee box. All it wants is to move from sitting on a little tee to 250+ yards into a biiiiig open fairway. That's the job it needs me to do for it. Alas, I all to often push-fade (ahem... slice) my customer off to the right into all manner of predicaments. I set out to fix that job for my customer using a series of rapid on-course experiments -- that is, play several rounds of golf with every hole focused ONLY on drawing the ball (moving the ball from right to left). No other purpose on those rounds. EVERY hole focused on experiments to repeatably and predictably manifest that single outcome. No thoughts of scores, numbers of putts, handicaps... a single outcome-- drawing the ball (i.e. moving it from right to left). Here's one experiment that worked. And the repeatability is improving. Always better, never best. https://lnkd.in/ePNNKD87

*The Ball is My Customer* I know it may be obvious to others who have played golf longer than I... I'm just a beginner. Though my so-far short Journey to Par has been predicated on a belief and hypothesis that product management principles can be used to hasten my "always better, never best" improvements. I presume the journey is different for everyone, and there are archetypical elements true for us all. I am enjoyed the process of Discovery very much! In Product Management, there is the practice that only one Outcome matters: Customer Behaviour. Above all others. That is, the demonstrable, measurable changes in from:to behaviour of the intended recipients and users of the product. All Impact (e.g. revenue, profitability, etc) comes from that, and all the Inputs and Outputs we invest are predicated on believing they will precipitate our desired or intended changes in Customer Behaviours. i.e. the primary Outcome. It occurred to me on this day in this round of golf practicing how to "draw the ball" (move it from right to left) that the ONLY Outcomes that really matter in golf are the micro-outcomes of individual shots. All the equipment, techniques and practices that came before are simply Inputs and Outputs intended to precipitate a string of "outcomes" -- individual shots. Some good, some not as good. And at each time-slice in the round, they are individual outcomes -- how the ball behaves in the environment going from one state (where it lies) to another (where it ends up). And then adapting to what observably, verifiably happens in reality, vs. our shot-by-shot hypotheses. My evolutionary hypothesis at this juncture in my golf game evolution is that the ball is my customer. 😎 I'm now "shot obsessed." https://lnkd.in/e2ZSPzVp

Pairing for Par with Purpose -- an Earth Week Special Edition! https://lnkd.in/e4gYt_wv Michael Dowling and I paired up to challenge Callippe Preserve Golf Course to raise money for Neighborhood Forest (NHF) ahead of their record-breaking year of putting trees in the hands of kids and families to plant and nurture. The episode is replete with an interview with NHF Founder Vikas Narula, who generously took time out of literally the busiest week of his year to share some astounding information about the mission and progress. The interview is on Hole #7, where I contextually drove my ball right—you guessed it—into a tree! (I'm pretty sure he had one of the kids plant it 10-15 years ago, setting it up for this day-- that's how long he's been at this, and the tree was just about the right size for that time frame!) If you'd like to add your own few bucks to the cause, you can here: https://lnkd.in/gY4KAn6a Remember to LIKE the video and SUBSCRIBE to the ParTeeGuys channel so we can do more of these for diverse purposes with interesting people! 🙏🏽

A new first. And an intermediate 2024 objective was achieved along my longer-term journey to shooting one round of 18 hole par golf. https://lnkd.in/evvRx4-Z