Author Archives: Dan Schmidt

Extracting every ounce of learning from your actions is critical to solving hard problems. Every time you poke at the world is an opportunity to discover something new about the dynamics of a problem space. Even for a small team, maximizing learning is hard. It requires discipline to routinely loop back to your previous endeavorsContinue reading “A Vision for Learning at Scale”

Innovation requires a combination of work and meta-work. By “work” I mean doing things that tangibly impact your product; designing, coding, marketing, etc.. “Meta-work,” in contrast, involves improving how you’re working. This often looks like meetings to synchronize the activities between teams or applying frameworks like OKRs or lean startup. Over-emphasizing work, while neglecting meta-work, turnsContinue reading “The Significance of Meta-Work Tools”

Introduction Making the transition from hands-on product management to leading a PM team can be disorienting. On the one hand, if you get overly involved with projects, you’ll stifle the creativity of the team. And it’s unsustainable to be on top of every detail, especially with products that require heavy domain knowledge. On the otherContinue reading “Minimum Viable Control: A Framework for Product Leadership”

The tools we use to make products shape how we think. If you look at the saturated market of product development tools, the majority revolve around the planning and execution leading up to a launch. The apps cross a spectrum covering engineering workflow (e.g., GitHub), project management (e.g., Jira, Pivotal Tracker), cross-functional handoff (e.g., InVision),Continue reading “The Post-Launch Gap in Product Tools”

Note: This is my latest in a series of posts on innovation theory inspired by the philosophy of Levi Bryant. Marshall McLuhan, with his famous quote, “the medium is the message,” makes the point that the content of a message is less significant than the medium used. McLuhan’s principle has profound implications for how to run a company.Continue reading “With Strategy, the Medium is the Message”

Note: This is my latest in a series of posts on innovation theory inspired by the philosophy of Levi Bryant. For a few years now, I’ve been obsessed with critiquing the notion that the great creators bend reality to their will. Some think that Steve Jobs, ignoring naysayers and customer feedback, changed the world toContinue reading “The Threat of Hylomorphic Design Thinking”

The vision of my project, Double-Loop, is to enable companies to leverage their history of learning to make better bets moving forward. We’ve made some good progress building the web app and Slack bot. Lots more is still to come, but I’d love for you to check out the demo video and share your thoughtsContinue reading “Double-Loop demo video”

Your team’s Slack account has many of the same psychic qualities as a physical office. Some conversations take place “out the open,” in public channels. Others happen “behind closed doors,” in private channels or DMs. In an office, rampant closed-door sessions, filled with complaints about folks not in the room, breed a culture of distrust andContinue reading “A Slack technique for managers: Avoiding the Danger of Closed Doors”

Analytics tools are limited by the fact that they don’t include (1) a visual history of the apps we’re developing and (2) a record of the team intentions behind launches. Analytics tools are useful for understanding how the live version of an app is performing. If you wonder how many people are clicking a button,Continue reading “A Vision for Unlocking the Value of Historical Analytics”

My side project, Double-Loop, is an app and Slack bot for recording and sharing the story of your build-measure learn loops. While anyone can try it (click the above link), I’m looking specifically to test and craft Double-Loop with a small number of post product-market fit companies. If you’re interested, fill out the below form. SelectedContinue reading “Do you work for a post product-market fit company?”