#2 Cagan's curse of knowledge
Disclamer: I’m a big fan of Marty’s work and the whole SVPG gang.
Marty Cagan's contributions to the Product world are unbeatable.
But it has cursed many people. I'm calling it the "Cagan's curse of knowledge" 😂
Inspired and Empowered are two must-reads for anyone building products. But here's the challenge:
For some, these books offer lots of great insights. Easy to understand, relate to, and apply.
But for others, it becomes their only bible which they religiously follow - without understanding it at a deeper level, without contextualizing the learnings to their own realities, without pursuing any further learning, considering different views, and remaining curious.
That's the curse. It's the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias rebranded to the Product folks!
Because of it, from what I've seen in Europe, this has almost caused more frustration than helped companies truly transform (a great challenge for you to address in the new book, Marty!).
My recommendation?
👉 Read Marty Cagan. But also John Cutler to understand that the Product world is messy and context is key. Read Teresa Torres and David Bland to expand your Discovery knowledge. Read Jeff Patton, Melissa Perri, Rich Mironov, you name it (check out my comment).
👉 Talk with designers. Search for their main sources of reference and inspiration to understand where they're coming from. Hopefully, if someone says "The PM owns discovery!", you'll know that some designers will need a bit more context here... and you'll know that in order to build great products consistently, collaboration is key.
👉 Talk with product people in successful organizations around you. They may not have Stripe's product culture or Netflix's, but you'll learn that people work in very different ways... They'll have different roles, they don't have some of the roles you'd think are crucial, they have different processes, report to different discipline leaders, etc. And surprise surprise? They're still successful and happy.
👉 Be critical and contextualize
As you move from stage 1 (enthusiasm) to 3 (enlightenment), you'll learn how to truly appreciate Cagan's work as you'll know the world of Product offers other views, sometimes less valuable to you, sometimes actually more helpful, and that your ability to contextualize all these learnings to your own context is what matters most.
And, remember, always with one goal in mind: create better value for your customers and your business, sooner, and with happier teams
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