Continue reading “Anti Pattern – Generalists over Specialists”
Alphachat (great podcast btw) had a recent episode on Labor market slack that raised some intriguing questions. The central question is how to define slack, what is the right metric. The end result was that slack means different things to different people – but there is one thread that I’d like to explore more.
Let’s start with the concept of NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment). Wikipedia defines it as “NAIRU refers to a level of unemployment below which inflation rises”. Central Bank Monetary policy is always and forever worried about inflation. The expected cycle is that as unemployment falls, wages will rise as supply of workers is constrained – less supply, more depends, prices i.e wages have to rise. When wages rise, input costs for producers rise which they will pass on the end consumers. Thus the general price level of the economy will rise hence leading to inflation. Continue reading “The GFC changed us as a generation – adventures in labour market slack”
RPA, if you haven’t heard about it yet, you will pretty soon. So what is it? Here is a video from IBM
Continue reading “Robots will solve everything | Don’t believe the RPA hype”
Product management is the new hotness. I regularly get asked advice on how to become a product manager. What follows are some tips!
Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory – Franklin Pierce Adams
We’ve all read about how culture eats strategy for lunch. The internet is jam-packed with a million blog posts on the superficialities of culture. Its time for some inside baseball with some actual actionable things to watch out for and prevent.
It is absolutely true that the culture of the company dictates how it can adapt to change and eventually succeed. Culture is hugely important, however along the journey from a small company to a midsize company to a large public company, the culture will change. At all these stages, different parts of the company will have different cultures and norms. In fact sometimes within the same team, you will have differences based on where the teams are located and their size.
Continue reading “Nostalgia kills | Practical tips for leaders”
It’s been 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. Astute observers will correct me and point out that the crisis actually started in early 2007 when the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit collapsed. This was the first collapse of a hedge fund that was loaded up to the gills with subprime CDO’s. If you were following FT Alphaville in late 2006/ early 2007, you’d be ahead of the game. The signs were there! Some great coverage to relive and re-read
So how does this relate to you, young product manager? Some obvious and simple lessons articulated below. Continue reading “Its been 10 long years | Lessons from the GFC”
Some books/podcast/blogs that i’m enjoying at the moment!
Betterment the Roboadvisor had an interesting product announcement – called Smart Saver. I was pretty psyched – was it a deposit account? Are they getting into the bank game?
Continue reading “Millennials, do financial service providers think you are dumb?”
I just finished reading the book Thinking in bets by Annie Duke. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand how to make better decisions. She talks about this amazing concept called resulting that blew my mind. In her own words
…was a victim of our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Poker players have a word for this: “resulting.” When I started playing poker, more experienced players warned me about the dangers of resulting, cautioning me to resist the temptation to change my strategy just because a few hands didn’t turn out well in the short run.
Continue reading “Results don’t matter | Tips for better decision quality”
Feedback is a gift, but not all gifts are useful :). Which feedback to listen to and what to discard? What is useful and what isn’t?
