I collected my favorite quotes about product management:
We need teams of missionaries, not teams of mercenaries.
Marty Cagan, Inspired
It doesn’t matter how good your engineering team is if they are not given something worthwhile to build.
Marty Cagan, Inspired
The use of OKRs in most companies is a mess - because it’s a framework that originated in an empowered team environment - and most companies applying it today don’t have empowered teams.
Marty Cagan
As director of product you are only as strong as your weakest product manager.
Marty Cagan
The MVP should be a prototype, not a product.
Marty Cagan, Inspired
Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.
Jeff Bezos
What’s dangerous is not to evolve.
Jeff Bezos
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
Jeff Bezos
If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.
Jeff Bezos
The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.
Jeff Bezos
No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program.
Jeff Bezos (myth that listen to your customers results in great products)
We will continue to focus on hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees, and continue to weight their compensation to stock options rather than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner.
Jeff Bezos
Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right.
Jeff Bezos
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs
I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.
Steve Jobs
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs
…the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused…
Steve Jobs about people in the enterprise and their buying decisions
That’s been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
Steve Jobs
The value is in what gets used, not in what gets built.
Kris Gale
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Reid Hoffman
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
Stephen Covey
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
Peter Drucker