What I Learned from a Year of Product Management Blogging.
Write your Passion
There are many reasons why people start writing blogs. The most common is the need to promote a business. In my blog, this was not the case.
I started writing a blog about a year ago in order to express my thoughts. I noticed that when I mentor or consult people, I often repeat the same concepts, so I thought it may be good to put that out to the world.
This enabled me to not be constrained by the need for clicks, but rather write what I care about.
Pick a Theme
There are many blogs on product management and many of them I follow. I decided to focus on the soft side of product management.
Throughout my blog I try not to focus on recipes of how to do things because I believe it is different in every company.
Instead I focus on how to approach the different aspects of product management, so my readers can challenge their beliefs and find better ways to do the things they have already been doing.
Meet Great People
One bonus of writing a blog is that you get to hear from people you don’t know and many times get the opportunity to get to know them and extend your network.
There is no better satisfaction than when someone writes you that a post you wrote resonated with them or opened their mind.
The blog even resulted in me mentoring an amazing founder of a startup entering the product management world.
Improve Yourself
Writing a blog is not just about helping other people. By writing what I think, it required me to perfect my thoughts.
It made sure that I commit to this better approach also in my work. It has placed a better framework into things I have been doing intuitively.
Find the Right Place
Ten years ago there was not a lot of material about product management. This has changed. Today there is a lot of good material to learn from and many good people to follow in order to improve your product management practice.
Yet, by talking to many people I was astounded at how many companies are still working in very ineffective ways and not creating the right environment. Instead of giving their product managers the empowerment and autonomy they need, they constraint them in wrong processes and don’t let them work enough with both their development team and their customers.
I consider myself lucky working with great developers in an environment that understand the importance of good product management and give me the empowerment and autonomy to enable my team to do great things. I try to bring these aspects into the blog.
What's Next
For the last year I have been writing my blog, have been mentoring, and have even brought the blog into meetups. But there is much more to do.
While continuing the blog going I also started a new podcast (in Hebrew; apology for my English readers), which will bring the behind the scenes of product management.
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