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Take A Week To Celebrate Your Independence

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week is a great week for you — I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume next week…

For my readers in the U.S., you know that this week is all about family, fireworks and general celebrating. The cause for all of this celebration is the signing of the U.S. deceleration of Independence. Now if only the work that we do could have the same type of impact 234 years later on!

For my international readers, pretty much all of the United States will be taking time off this week to celebrate the decision of our founding fathers to make their own decisions. For better or for worse, it’s what has gotten us to where we are today and we think that that’s a good thing.

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

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May This Be Your Best Year Ever!

It’s still the holiday season and I’m still on vacation!

This is the time of the year that we all make plans for what we want to accomplish in the upcoming year. This time around, take your time and give some thought to what you can do to make this your best year ever…!

Here’s hoping that you’ll have peace, love, happiness, and success in the upcoming year. The blog will be back next week…

- Dr. Jim Anderson

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Here's Hoping That You Name Shows Up On The "Nice" List This Year!

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming Christmas season week is a great week for you – I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume after the holidays…

Everyone seems to celebrate something different this week, but I’m hoping that no matter how you choose to spend your time, you will enjoy yourself. The world can wait, let’s spend time with friends and family and we’ll get back to the madness when the new year begins…

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk again next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson

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So what am I going to have to do in order to get you to subscribe to The Accidental Product Manager newsletter?

Is the issue cost? Well it’s free.

Is the issue spam? You’ll only get one email from me a week and it will be stuffed with Product Manager information — who wouldn’t want that?

Is the issue free stuff? Ah ha! That’s probably why you haven’t signed up yet. Ok, so here’s what I’m going to do — sign up now and I’ll give you a free copy of my Product Manager Career Guide. This 30-page report is packed with real-life stories and examples of just what product managers need to do in order to have a great career.

It’s available in both both a PDF file and an MP3 audio version — you’ll be able to download whichever one you want (or both!).

The newsletter is free and you can unsubscribe at any time. Your email address is safe with us – we don’t spam and we’ll never sell it. Go ahead and take the first step in securing the future that you want – subscribe to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter…

Hurry up – subscribe now!

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Here's Hoping That This Week Is Special For Everyone

Loyal readers & subscribers, here’s hoping that this upcoming week is a great week for you — I’m taking it off! Blogging will resume next week…

For my readers in the U.S., you know that this week is all about family, turkey, and of course football. I’m not sure what it is about turkey that always seems to make everyone fall asleep, but I’m hoping that when I wake up this year the global recession will be but a distant memory, gas will be under $2.50 / gallon, and just maybe the world will have settled down for awhile.

For my international readers, pretty much all of the United States will be taking time off this week to celebrate the arrival of Europeans into the New World. For better or for worse, it’s what has gotten us to where we are today and we think that that’s a good thing.

Have a happy and safe week no matter where you are and we’ll talk next week.

- Dr. Jim Anderson

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The question this past week was “Who gets more respect where you work Product Managers or Project Managers?“

It was a light week and in the end, it ended up being a dead heat. However, there’s something to be learned here: this clearly is not a hot topic. I must confess to being just a little surprised by this.

As a working product manager,  I can confess to always having been just a bit jealous of my project management brothers and sisters. They seem to have their act together just a bit more than we do. The “Project Management Professional” (PMP) certification seems to carry some weight and we have nothing similar.

Additionaly, everyone seems to know and understand just exactly what a project manager does. The same can’t be said for the profession of product manager!

This week’s poll question: “Do You Know Who Your Product’s Competition Is?” It should be a simple question, but these things never are…

Visit the blog, vote, and we’ll talk about the results next week!

P.S.: New Feature: I’ve come up with some real stinker poll questions lately and so I now know that I need your help! Drop by The Accidental Product Manager forum and suggest a question for next week. You just might become famous…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Related posts:

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The question this past week was “Do people read and take actions based on your emails?“

The take-away from your responses to this week’s question is two-fold: first, people are reading your emails (that’s the good part), secondly it sure looks like it’s a mixed bag as to your emails having the impact that you are looking for.

The sad thing here is that if your emails are not causing the actions that you want / need to have happen, it sure looks like you’re going to have to follow-up in other ways in order to make sure that things get done. Who’s got the time for that?

It took me a long time, but my emails get results. It turns out that the secret to getting people to take action lies in how you write the email. It’s tricky — there’s not a single “silver bullet” that you can use, but rather a whole handful of techniques that together can turn your emails into a powerful tool.

If you are interested in having me spill my guts on how you can make your emails work for you, leave me a comment to this post saying that you want to know more and I’ll put something together.

This week’s poll question: “Who gets more respect where you work Product Managers or Project Managers?” People seem to get the titles confused all the time, do they also forget to give us the respect that we deserve?

Visit the blog, vote, and we’ll talk about the results next week!

P.S.: New Feature: I’ve come up with some real stinker poll questions lately and so I now know that I need your help! Drop by The Accidental Product Manager forum and suggest a question for next week. You just might become famous…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Related posts:

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The question this past week was “For your product, who gets to deal with angry customers?”

I suspect that there won’t be too much surprise to learn that the Customer Service team is on the front line when it comes to dealing with angry customers. However, the Sales and Product Management teams were in a strong second and third place.

In fact, when taken together, Sales and Product Management are dealing with almost as many angry customers as Customer Service is. Was that ever part of your job description?

This time around we’re going to focus on a product manger’s favorite way of communicating: “Do people read and take actions based on your emails?” Goodness knows we send enough of these things, but are they actually working for you?

Visit the blog, vote, and we’ll talk about the results next week!

P.S.: New Feature: I’ve come up with some real stinker poll questions lately and so I now know that I need your help! Drop by The Accidental Product Manager forum and suggest a question for next week. You just might become famous…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Related posts:

1. AccPM Poll Results: What part of being a product manger do you dislike the most? The question this past week was “What part of being...
2. New! AccPm Weekly Poll – Make Your Voice Heard! You’ve got opinions, lots of ‘em, but nobody at work...
3. AccPM Weekly Poll Results! The very first The Accidental Product Manger reader poll is...

The question this past week was “What part of being a product manger do you dislike the most?“

Talk about clustering! Only two of the possible answers got votes this week and they were neck-and-neck for most of the week.

In the end, my personal favorite won out: pricing is the most disliked task. Somewhat amusingly #2 was dealing with your management! I suspect that pricing is a real product management issue, the boss issue affects everyone out there no matter what their job is!

This time around we’re going to be asking “For your product, who gets to deal with angry customers?”

Visit the blog, vote, and we’ll talk about the results next week!

P.S.: New Feature: I’ve come up with some real stinker poll questions lately and so I now know that I need your help! Drop by The Accidental Product Manager forum and suggest a question for next week. You just might become famous…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Related posts:

1. New! AccPm Weekly Poll – Make Your Voice Heard! You’ve got opinions, lots of ‘em, but nobody at work...
2. AccPM Poll Results: How Did You Learn To Be A Product Manager? The question this past week was “How Did You Learn...
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The question this past week was “Have your customers started buying again?“

Ouch! Clearly nobody really cared about this question because only three of you took the time to answer. Hmm, looks like I got it wrong this week.

I don’t have enough data to draw any conclusions from this sample, but I’m a bit concerned. Since ultimately we Product Mangers live and die by the sales of our products, I thought that everyone would jump on this question.

(fill in the sound of crickets here)

Were there no replies because y’all don’t know or because y’all don’t care? Hopefully it was because everyone was too busy to take the poll, not because folks don’t know if their customers have started buying…

Thanks to all three of you who participated!

This week we’re going to get personal and find out just exactly how you feel about your product manger job:

“What part of being a product manger do you dislike the most?”

Visit the blog, vote, and we’ll talk about the results next week!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

Related posts:

1. AccPM Weekly Poll Results! The very first The Accidental Product Manger reader poll is...
2. New! AccPm Weekly Poll – Make Your Voice Heard! You’ve got opinions, lots of ‘em, but nobody at work...
3. AccPM Poll Results: What Industry Do You Work In? The question this past week was “What industry is your...