Welcome to The Lens, a newsletter on Product Management and related topics.
Compassionate Leadership
In the 2018 Grinch film, Cindy Lou needs help from her friends to execute a plan. Rather than demanding compliance, she appeals to friendship: "I did it because you are my friend, and when something matters to you, that matters to me."
That's compassionate leadership. It prioritizes emotional connection and shared purpose over transactional relationships.
Colonel Nicole Malachowski offers a military example of the same principle. When team members made mistakes, instead of punishment, she created "Steel Sharpens Steel" — a voluntary forum where team members shared their own mistakes and what they learned from them. By normalizing error-sharing at every level, she shifted organizational culture without requiring massive time investment. The compounding effect of that culture change far outweighed any individual correction.
To Be Strategic
"Strategy" is used so loosely in organizations that it loses meaning. Michael Porter, who essentially founded modern business strategy thinking, defines it as: "a competitive position, deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value."
Jeff Weiner distinguishes strategy from mission and from operational tactics. They're related, but different. Operational excellence is doing what you do better. Strategy is choosing what to do — and what to decline.
Julie Zhou reduces strategy to three components: 1. Establishing alignment around how you define success 2. Identifying the specific problem and the specific audience 3. Prioritization — which means explicitly saying no to things
Synthesized: Know what makes you unique for your customers, and do more of it — proactively, and by constantly re-evaluating whether it still holds.