September 21, 2021
Back in March 2020 days before the pandemic hit, a hedge fund – Elliott Management – launched an activist campaign against Twitter, trying to take over the board and oust CEO Jack Dorsey. Just this month in Delaware a shareholder lawsuit moved forward containing damning accusations against the “dirty” and unfair methods of Elliott.
Yesterday, I launched my first three-part Positive Politics workshop, which teaches members how to navigate inside companies and play politics in a way that helps bring about positive change for customers, teams, and others.
What do the shareholder lawsuit and my workshop have to do with each other?
Not much *except* the issue of unfairness.
Many people recognize that the world is unfair in the abstract, but when the unfairness affects them directly they can get caught off-guard and even shocked.
That first happened to me at age 10 when my family fell apart. I was very young and had not yet experienced any real unfairness (except on occasion when my sister got an ice cream cone and I did not).
After that, life smacked me around teaching me lesson after lesson about unfairness. And that surprisingly (to me) has given me an advantage over many Council members.
I know the world is unfair.
I don’t get shocked or thrown as much.
Instead, I have learned to accept the fact that it’s unfair while, at the same time, working to bring about small positive changes.
Nonetheless, the level of unfairness in the world can still be shocking even to me.
Take that Twitter/Elliott lawsuit.
The plaintiffs allege that Twitter’s Board folded too early and gave Elliott (and their partner Silver Lake) too much money due to Elliott’s threatened “dirty” tactics.
A board advisor had warned Twitter —
Their [Elliott’s] MO is essentially to play dirty, hire private investigators to dig into the most sensitive aspects of your lives to drum up personal attacks…
Holy cow! PI’s rooting through your garbage, upending your personal life, and threatening smear campaigns?
I have some sympathy for the Twitter Board members wanting to avoid such an experience. And frankly, it seems unfair to me that after navigating that whole episode, they now have a shareholder lawsuit to deal with.
Further, while I have been dimly aware of some hedge fund’s dirty tactics, the allegations in this lawsuit still shocked me.
And, obviously, these allegations, if true, represent unfair behavior.
But once you understand that something is unfair, then what do you do?
Too many do not ask that question and just remain outraged (and get played).
For example, several participants in yesterday’s Positive Politics workshop talked about how they had been passed over for promotions or undermined by others.
Nevertheless, they did not want to have to do anything.
They felt that their work should simply speak for itself, that they are “doers” and shouldn’t have to play politics, even in a positive way.
I call this “doerism” and actually hypothetically agree with them. Their work should speak for itself. But it often doesn’t.
So then the question becomes: what do you do?
And are you willing to learn to play politics, but in a different way, in a positive way that advances your products, your customers, your colleagues, and your company?
I hope your answer is yes, but while doing so will help – and I’ve seen it have a big impact – it will not necessarily protect you against a hedge fund coming out of nowhere and threatening to upend your life.
Sometimes, no matter what you do, life is just unfair…
Phyl
P.S. There’s a strong connection between the so-called Great Resignation and the lack of positive political skill. Too often I see an employee react to an unfair incident (or a difficult boss) and then jump to a new company only to discover that the move backfired – that they have jumped right out of that frying pan and into yet another political quagmire.
Fall Keynote
- The What & Why of Continuous Discovery – Tue, Sep 28 @4pm ET
Teresa Torres, Author, Speaker, and Product Discovery Coach
Talk Type: Product
Audience/Roles: All Roles
To register: Click here to email Britany Chism (register your teams to join too!)
Most product teams are starting to adopt discovery best practices (e.g. interviewing customers, usability testing, experimenting). However, many of us are still stuck in a project world. We do research to kick off a project, we usability test right before we hand off to engineers, and our primary means for experimenting is a/b testing. These methods are better than nothing, but the best product teams are shifting from a project mindset to a continuous mindset. In this talk, we’ll explore the key differences between project-based discovery and continuous discovery and give your team a clear benchmark to aspire to.
Bio: Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, coach, and longtime friend of the Councils (she was a moderator of one of our Product Councils at one point). She’s coached hundreds of teams at companies of all sizes, from early-stage start-ups to global enterprises, in a variety of industries and has taught more than 7,000 through her Product Talk Academy. She’s the author of the recently published book, Continuous Discovery Habits, and blogs at ProductTalk.org.
Recent Talks and Activity Recordings
- Clubhouse and the Audio Revolution (not recorded)
Jonathan Ehrlich, Partner, Foundation Capital
Talk Type: In the Moment
Audience/Roles: All Roles
Two things to know about Jonathan Ehrlich:
1) he co-led the seed round in Clubhouse and was thus the first venture capitalist to spot its potential;
2) he’s a Councils alum with an interesting career arc.We held an informal conversation with Jonathan about Clubhouse, the future of audio, and Jonathan’s career journey from a mostly offline retailer in Canada to relocating to Silicon Valley and reinventing himself.—
Bio
—Jonathan Ehrlich is a Partner at Foundation Capital who invests in early early-stage consumer, marketplace, commerce, and SaaS startups and technologies. He joined Foundation Capital in 2013 as a partner after spending nine months with the firm as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Before joining Foundation Capital, Jonathan spent 17 years as an operator during which he founded three companies, built a $100M+ revenue business, and ran marketing for Facebook. He is the first institutional investor in Clubhouse and currently sits on the board of Bulletin and Chord. His Foundation and personal investments include Shelf Engine, Mainstreet, Truepill, Hooked, WayUp, League, Front, and Flexport. When not working, he can be found on his bike or chasing his four kids around.
- No Ego, Part 2 (not recorded)
Cy Wakeman, Best-selling Author and CEO
Talk Type: Leadership Development, Culture
Audience/Roles: All Roles
We had a follow-up session with Cy last Friday that was amazing. We did NOT record it due to confidentiality. We will be planning more.
In the meantime, you can watch the spring keynote with Cy, which was a GREAT session. Members loved it. I collected live case studies from members, which I anonymously shared with Cy to get her reaction on what was to be done. You gotta watch to see her great answers.
Cy Wakeman is a drama researcher, global thought-leader, and New York Times best-selling author who is recognized for cultivating a counter-intuitive, reality-based approach to leadership. Backed by over 20 years of unparalleled experience, Wakeman’s philosophy offers a new lens through which employees and executives alike, can shift their attention inward, sharpen their focus on personal accountability, and uncover their natural state of innovation simply by ditching the drama.
Deemed “the secret weapon to restoring sanity to the workplace,” Wakeman has helped companies such as Google, Facebook, Viacom, Uber, NBC Universal, NASA, Pfizer, Johns Hopkins, Stanford Health Care, Keurig Dr. Pepper, AMC Theatres, White Castle, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and countless others learn to navigate our rapidly changing world using good mental processes to harness energy wasted in workplace drama and reinvest that effort into achieving profound business results.
- Battle Buddies – A Way to Support Your Teams
Craig Hopkins, CIO, City of San Antonio
Talk Type: Leadership Development; Skill Builder/Practitioner
Audience/Roles: All Roles
We ran a short QnA-focused webinar with Craig to introduce an idea that has taken off in his org, the City of San Antonio, where he is the CIO.It’s called Battle Buddies. So, what is a Battle Buddy?Adapted from the US Army, a battle buddy is a partner assigned to an employee in an organization who is expected to assist his or her partner.Even though we are not in military combat, Craig says our corporate responsibilities can feel just as stressful and overwhelming at times.A battle buddy is not only intended for comradery and support, but also to help reduce stress, provide professional and leadership guidance, and at times, get into the trenches together to get things done. Since we will each be watching each other’s actions, we are all battle buddies to each other, as partners and as a leadership team, driven by our mission while adhering to our Core Values.Craig talked about how this has worked in his organization and how to set it up in yours.
- JTBD in Large Distributed Environments
Jay Haynes, Founder & CEO, thrv.com
Talk Type: Product; Skill Builder/Practitioner
Audience/Roles: All Roles
Jobs To Be Done has proven to be an effective methodology for building much better holistic end-to-end products and customer experiences.
*But* CG Council member companies with large distributed environments are finding it difficult to apply JTBD in effective ways.
Jay Haynes, CEO of thrv, and a global expert on JTBD will come and speak to the Councils community on this specific challenge of using the methodology in large, complex technology environments.
- Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products
Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin, co-Authors of Groundwork
Talk Type: Product
Audience/Roles: All Roles
Product leaders are all too familiar with the one to two-year period it typically takes to train and coach PMs. Product leaders hire smart people and then work with them individually, guiding them through how to think about product management, and watching them develop. Vidya Dinamani and Heather Samarin wanted a much faster way to help cultivate efficient and effective product managers that consistently create products that delight customers, regardless of the industry, the environment, and the development methodology that the team employed. They took years of experience as product executives and working with hundreds of teams as product coaches to create a framework to Get Better at Making Better Products.
The design philosophy and methodology behind Groundwork was created to help product leaders be confident that their teams were committed to solving the right customer problems, minimizing costly rework by using individualized needs, and leveraging actionable personas in big and small product decisions. Vidya and Heather want Groundwork to help product teams have a much higher chance of success in the market—and help every product manager shine.
Join Vidya and Heather as they share the background, principles, and methodology behind the Groundwork to help you, and your team, get better at making better products.
- Making the Case for Empowering Your People
Marty Cagan, Partner, Silicon Valley Product Group
Talk Type: Product, Leadership Development, Culture
Audience/Roles: All Roles
From Marty: “I have long been interested in the difference between how the best companies work, and the rest. Working with both types of organizations for so many years, there are many differences ranging from culture to process to staffing to roles to techniques. But at its core, strong product companies empower their people, and most of the rest do not. My focus over the past few years has been tackling this issue head-on, which means the product leadership. In this talk, we’ll discuss why this model consistently yields better results, and what’s necessary to transform to work like the best.”
Marty’s Bio: Marty Cagan is the founding partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group, which he created to pursue his interests in helping others create successful products through his writing, speaking, advising and coaching. Before starting SVPG, Marty served as an executive responsible for defining and building products for some of the most successful companies in the world, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, and eBay.As part of his work with SVPG, Marty advises tech companies of all sizes and stages, stretching far beyond Silicon Valley. Marty is the author of the industry-leading book for product teams, INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love, and the upcoming book EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products. Marty is an invited speaker at major conferences and top companies across the globe.
- See talks from the last month and beyond here.
