Two years of the Next Iteration

Lessons learned and some big wins

This is the product operations newsletter that’s not just for ops people

I wrote 17 articles in 2023 and, despite taking the first half of this year off from writing, still managed to send out 16 newsletters in 2024. I saw a 150% increase in subscribers over this year. Thank you so much for being one of them.

Here’s some data from the survey I send to new subscribers: You’re from companies of all shapes and sizes, about 65% based in the US, and just over 50% in product management or product leadership. 18% of you have a product operations job title.

This all continues to show that companies are trying to do product operations work without having people formally in the role. The vast majority of people interested in my work don’t have a product ops title.

A pie chart showing an even number of product managers at varying company sizes

Job categories of newsletter respondents: 31% product leadership, 21% product management, 18% product operations.

For the numbers geeks, this data has an 11% margin of error and a 95% confidence interval 🤓. For the AI geeks, you can see how I used AI to make my pie chart around job roles (hint: it’s makes my margin of error worse, but it gets close enough).

My top articles for the year, based on website traffic

Wondering if you missed something? Here’s what others found most interesting:

Teaching makes me happy: Mastering Product Operations returns this spring

This year I moved my product operations course over to Reforge. It’s been wonderful to be part of the Reforge community, and working with the team there forced me to improve my materials dramatically. (this is why I had to take the first half of the year off from writing)

This course is one of the most high-impact things I do. It gets dozens of companies outfitted with a path towards strategy-driven product operations roadmaps. This helps me make huge progress towards my goal of reducing the number of crappy product management jobs out there.

I ran two cohorts this year. Some students were product ops teams of one, others were one of dozens of product ops people at their company, and a few who weren’t in product ops at all. I was able to host case studies with product leaders like Sanchan Saxena (Airbnb, Coinbase, Atlassian), John Cutler (Amplitude, Toast) and Christine Itwaru (Pendo, Vitally, Beamer). I’ve got new guests in the pipeline for 2025 from more companies that you’ve heard of and admired.

There will be another round of this course, renamed “Mastering Product Operations”, coming this spring. This course benefits from the power of iteration – each time I teach, it gets a few steps better.

Product un-thinking: Go-to-market needs user research too

I launched a second course this year and it was a total flop. Turns out that I had neglected my user research for the marketing and positioning.

I originally developed my pricing and finance course for a private cohort with a company and they loved it – the overall rating was 4.9. I knew I had a great product, and had conducted lots of user research to make sure it was the right material.

Enrollment for my public course was abysmal, not even enough people to run it. I had done great user research to develop the course, and very little user research to launch it. Even the best product still needs great go-to-market in order to succeed.

The course is being repositioned towards user-centric business case development. I’ll have a full post coming out soon on what I learned, what kind of research I did to get prepared for the re-launch, and how I came up with new positioning.

Join the waitlist for User-Centric Business Case Development. Coming Q1 2025.

Operationalizing coaching: More value, faster

I invested in my advising program to improve its effectiveness and make it more scalable. I now have an opening workshop I do, the Product Culture Vision Workshop, to help jump-start a team’s creation of their product culture blueprint. It’s something I’ve been prototyping in the second half of this year, and I’m really excited to continue refining it in 2025.

The workshop lays the groundwork for a productive advising relationship, as it gives me an understanding of the company and team quite quickly. I’m able to synthesize the information and share it back with the people I coach via a customized Coda workspace – one centralized place for notes, articles, links, call recordings, and documents.

My coaching workspace has helped me deliver more value to every client.

The Coda workspace keeps me organized, which means my clients always know where to go for everything. If I develop new content, it’s easy for me to get it to all my clients, quickly. It’s a great example of how applying some basic operational thinking can go a long way.

And if you’re interested in coaching, please let me know – I’ve got two slots open starting in January.

Improving my own efficiency: My own operations

I hired a part-time assistant, Carlo, who has helped free up my time and mental space in all sorts of ways (he’s looking to bring on another client in 2025, so let me know if you’re looking for a VA).

He and I worked together to build out a pretty extensive Coda workspace to run my business (in addition to the coaching one above) – it has become my CRM, content management platform, client work hub, learning management system, and ticket management tool.

A little peek into all the different tasks that are part of running a business.

Having the right infrastructure in place to run my business has been essential for me to continue delivering value to my clients while developing courses, coaching, and raising two kids.

Lesson (re)learned: High-quality OKRs matter.

I dedicated a lot of time to LinkedIn this year. I set a goal for follower growth and only hit about 35% of my target. This was a good lesson in setting strong metrics.

Despite completely missing my goal, I got plenty of value from my activity on the platform. People were familiar with my work which made lead conversion easier. I made some new internet friends.

I chose to track follower growth because it was easy. It was a vanity metric. I should have figured out how to measure the other value I get from the platform.

Want to join the conversation? Follow me on LinkedIn.

Giving back: The prod ops jobs board

I launched the product ops jobs board just over a year ago. 171 job seekers signed up. They have the skills that can help product teams thrive.

The stats are a bit depressing: 29 people have found their next thing (congrats on your new role!)

That means that only 17% of job seekers have found a new role within a year. That’s not great. The person who has been on my board the longest and is still actively searching joined on November 29, 2023. It’s a really brutal market out there.

I’ve messaged every hiring manager I could about this board to help speed up the recruiting process. So if you’re on the hunt for a product ops professional, please reach out. I’ve got 142 amazing people waiting for you.

Not on the resume: Life outside of work

This year has been personally both rewarding and extremely challenging. I had a round of COVID earlier in the year that knocked me out for many weeks; when you work for yourself there is no such thing as PTO. I lost my best friend to illness and I miss her every single day.

I also got to start teaching my youngest to ski – I used to teach preschool skiing, so those first turns are very special to me. My older child is getting excited about reading and writing, and I think we’re going to see some big advancements soon.

I am on my local masters swim team, and have been working hard on my technique. My times finally started dropping significantly this fall. The key was recording video and watching it at ½ speed. Deliberate practice with a good coach is what helps you improve at something.

And I wouldn’t have gotten close to a year like this one without my partner. Nobody makes me laugh like him, and nobody has as much patience to listen to the minutiae of my work like he does. For that I’m beyond lucky.

Caught one amazing powder day in November

2025: The Year of Scale

If 2023 was about discovery and 2024 about operationalizing, I hope 2025 will be a year of scale. With the groundwork I’ve laid, I’m set up to scale so I can help even more companies eliminate those feature factory roles.

I hope to grow the number of coaching clients I work with at a time and to be more strategic with my consulting projects so I can make sure they’re targeted at high-impact opportunities.

With the right work put in place, I expect that I’ll see scale with my business case creation course (join the waitlist) and be able to introduce people to one of my very favorite products.

The final pillar of scale – Mastering Product Operations with Reforge. Given the way they changed their packaging, I think I’ll have much more opportunity to reach a wide number of companies with my course.

Thanks for being a part of this journey and looking forward to an exciting year ahead!