Resolve to Drop the Ball

“Times Square ball” by Victoria Pickering via Flickr

If you’re getting writer’s block while drafting your New Year’s resolution, try flipping the problem and focus on failure over success. When we set our annual goals, we’ve been trained to look for success, and when that success doesn’t come we often just leave our goals behind. Defining success can be very hard even if you know tricks like SMART criteria, as shown by all the broken resolutions in February. So instead, make your goal to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough, so resolve to try your hardest and fail gloriously. Be like Times Square, and ‘Drop the Ball’ this year!

Picture the fear of failure that’s holding you back. Is it looking like a fool? Losing money on an investment? Finding out you don’t have the skills you thought? Then set a resolution to make your fear a reality. Make yourself a fool in front of a large audience. Take a risky bet. Try something totally new or return to a skill that’s rusty. If you succeed, you learn a lot about yourself along with new skills. Or, you fail to fail and end up with a win, and another broken resolution to add to your list of incomplete ‘success resolutions’ from prior years.

If you’re helping a new Product Manager set their own goals, creating goals to fail makes a safe space for learning, personal growth, and expanding boldly into their new multi-faceted role. Even if the final goal is written as a success, thinking about failure can jumpstart creative juices and lead to key steps to achieving success.

Good luck setting your resolution this year. Failure awaits!

Popcorn and Pints

"Beer & popcorn" by nadja robot via Flickr
“Beer & popcorn” by nadja robot via Flickr

Over the last month I’ve found a delicious new recipe for continuous learning – popcorn and pints! Each week a couple Product Owners and I get together for 30-60 minutes to watch product videos and discuss. We’ve started by checking out the Mind the Product video archive. It’s been a fantastic way to stress forever learning, have a chance to learn from some of the industry’s best, and bond as a Product Owner group.

If you want to try it out yourself, here’s some tips:

  • If you don’t have beer on tap at work, just call it ‘Product & Popcorn’
  • Schedule it for a regular time. We do Tuesdays from 3-4pm (that way folks can leave early or talk to their Team afterwards before the end of the day)
  • Get a variety of fun popcorns! I’ve had the best luck with Trader Joe’s popcorns which are all great and unusual. We rotate who buys the popcorn each week.
  • Have each person pick a drinking word before the video starts.
  • Take frequent breaks to discuss/laugh/cry about what you’re hearing.

Hopefully you and your Product team learn a lot from Popcorn & Pints. I hope to be sharing some of the best videos and thoughts here soon. If you have any suggestions for great places for Product Management videos, please let me know in the comments.