A big thank you and can you help me out?
It has been right about 2 years since I embarked on this journey of "thinking out loud" with this blog. It's not my first "blog rodeo" but it's the one I've been most consistent about, plus is linked to what I do professionally (whereas the previous attempts were more on the hobby / personal interest alley).
I believe that pragmatism are not at odds with theory, quite on the contrary, a real practical person is only capable of handling whatever comes their way by informing practice with (good) theory. It's the very reason why I decided to call this Conceptual Leader, as explained on the very first post.
When I wrote a note for the first anniversary, last year, I talked about how I do it primarily for my own sake (not in a selfish manner; I think you get what I mean with it…): it has helped me shape my thinking and how to better articulate things. It's much more payoff than I could think of, when I got started.
It's sort of nice getting some sense of people appreciating it, and finding it useful, insightful, whatever good feeling it might occur to someone when reading. Because of that, a BIG THANK YOU is (and will always be) due.
This, by itself, would be more than good enough reason to write this, and I can't quite stress enough in words how I feel when I get feedback somehow (even as simple as people subscribing). I also have done some benchmarking, and my current open rate of ~35% is quite good actually, above average as far as I can tell. Again, a BIG THANK YOU!
There's one more thing though… Because it hit me after writting the last piece on focusing on demand-side. I know what I am capable of, and therefore what it is well on my alley to talk about (and that wouldn't require too much of my time to write about) – but that's focusing on supply-side. I can exercise some, I guess we could call it, self-empathetic perspective on what I would like have seen more written about, and hope that's useful to others. That's a lot what I try, one way or another, doing on an ongoing basis, even just intuitively.
It would be super helpful though to hear more from you, actual readers, so that I can learn more about what would inspire you, or just be insightful, so I could focus more on that. So could you do me a quick favor and just hit comments sharing some of your perspective!? What would you find useful I do more or elss of, in these posts?
If you find a bit daunting the idea of pouting yourself out there in the comments, you can consider writing me a private note via LinkedIn (link below), for instance. Even if that is troubling for you, and you want to be able to provide an insight anonymously, you can use this form. I'm providing several options hoping that can reduce the barrier for you to consider helping me out!
Maybe this can further help to tease you: I would happy to spend some time with anyone who helped with providing feedback and would like to take the opportunity (as I in fact already did with some people who engaged with me because of some post before). We can discuss anything that you'd like my insight on. As the meme goes…
By Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect, I'm happy to engage and interact. If I can be of further utility to you or your organization in getting better at working with product development, I am available for part-time advisory, consulting or contract-based engagements.
I love the meme you choose to use :). I can't provide more feedback than that. We've worked together previously and so what I find the most interesting of course is your perspective on how you see things now that you are at Nike. You know how we work in your old employer :). Keep writing would be my request. Your thoughts sometimes provoke me to think about things differently. I'm now a Technical Program Manager representing Operations and working closely with multiple Engineering teams to create new tools and processes. I think a lot of the theory of how things should work fall by the way side because you need to be nimble and practical to enable things.