What I’m Dedicating 2023 to: A Look at the Year Ahead
Intro
Keeping focus is definitely a challenge as a one-woman show. And that is why I put together this annual blog post: Because it helps me with exactly that. Gaining focus.
I come back to this post multiple times throughout the year and I sometimes use it when I have to politely explain to people why I can’t do what they want me to do (speak at a meetup, share my opinion on software they are developing, give them some advice, speak at their conference, write a chapter of their book, the list goes on and on!).
And I usually try to inspire my coachees to do something along these lines as well. You could journal and plan some time to reflect on your daily posts. Or you could start your personal “10 things I want to direct my attention to next year” entry in your notebook. Or you could inspire your product peers to share their learning goals in one of your next community sessions. Whatever it is, reflection helps us to set our course, mute distractions, and stay focused on the course we’ve defined.
So here’s me looking back at 2022 and looking forward into 2023.
Some 2022 Highlights: Happy Arne and Petra after our 3-day event marathon, me on stage at the leadership forum and during our leadership lunch.
2022 Retro
Let me take every one of my 2022 statement and lets see how I’ve been doing:
I’ll keep beating the drum of “people development is important”
→ Done. I’ve continued to talk about this topic on stage, on my blog and in many, many coaching sessions. And I kept selling the book, promoting my coaching cards and sharing my PM development frameworks like the PMwheel, and amplifying the other great people who have been talking about it.
I would like to dedicate more time to the topic of Communities of Practice
→ Oh that’s something I dedicated A LOT of time to. I helped four clients to start or mature their product Community of Practice and the Community Canvas I developed to provide structure for their community workshops has worked really well. I published parts of it here. I’ve interviewed 17 people on the topic and published 7 of these interviews. And I learned a ton about their community work and their challenges and successes.
I've conducted a survey on this and will be making my learnings available to the general public in the coming months.
I will focus on working with Product Leads, Product Coaches, and Product Ops professionals
→ Succeeded with this and solely worked with leadership folks this year.
I will change a few aspects about the way I do coaching
→ This is one thing that hasn't gone as planned. I was enrolled for University of California Berkeley’s Executive Coach Program and some months into 2022 I had to admit that I wouldn’t be able to do that. And I’m currently not planning to do this next year, either. Some more details can be found here: Why I’m Taking Two Months Off. But I still changed a lot regarding my coaching practice and how I run the group coaching sessions.
I would like to work with the following types of customers: education, healthcare, and sustainability.
→ I succeeded with that as well as I started larger coaching programs for two new clients in these fields.
I will focus on some things that make me happy:
Content production.
→ Not as much time went into this as I was hoping for. But I still managed to get some nice blog posts out and to write a chapter for the second edition of a German book called “Digitales Produktmanagement - Methoden, Instrumente, Praxisbeispiele”
→ Need to Pivot from Growth to Profitability? You’re Not Alone
→ Opportunity Assessment: Do We Want to Invest in Discovering This Idea?
→ Leadership Communication 101: How to Make Sure Your Messages Stick
→ KPI Trees: How to Bridge the Gap Between Customer Behavior, Product Metrics, and Company Goals (with Shaun Russell)MTP Engage Hamburg
→ Oh what a great event we had! After a two-year pandemic break, we were more than happy to be able to host the event in our new venue. The line-up was ace and the crowd made it such a special three-day event. You can learn more about our plans for the 2023 event here.Lectures Executive MBA Program Hamburg Media School (Summer Elective)
→ This year’s student group was rather small, but I still enjoyed helping these MBA candidates to learn some product management basics. And I especially liked that we’ve been able to enhance the syllabus with some interaction design/user research topics with the help of Mimi Scheibe.Making time for the things I love: my family, kitesurfing, and roaming around Europe.
→ Done! And that would not have worked out well if I hadn’t decided to block two months off for non-client-related work and spending time with my loved ones. I’m so happy I did!
And while the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been one of the most tragic and disturbing events of 2022, I was grateful to everyone who decided to chip in and donate the cost of the DIY 52 Questions card deck. Thanks to your generosity, I’ve been able to donate more than €1,200 to UNICEF to support their efforts in Ukraine.
Some more 2022 Highlights: Boye 2022, On stage with Arne and my daughter at the end of this year's conference and us saying ‘hi’ to the leadership forum attendees.
2023 Outlook
I want to be even more focused in 2023, so I’ve narrowed my professional life down to two areas:
The Product at Heart Conference next June
And working with product leads.
In other words, I’d like to continue my coaching business at the 2022 level (as the amount of hours I spent with clients and the types of engagements have just been perfect.)
Here are some more details that I would like to share:
Product at Heart
The biggest news for 2023—and something that just manifested in the last few months— what has been MTP Engage Hamburg will become Product at Heart: A conference for curious product people! Long-time co-hosts of MTP Engage Hamburg Arne Kittler and I are thrilled to announce that we’ll now be running this event independently and under a new name. So we are no longer “only” taking care of curation, event management, and moderation. Now we are basically running the whole thing. We founded a company (!!!), and will need to take care of sponsoring, marketing, and branding as well. That will eat up a big chunk of my time next year and I couldn't be more excited to once again be celebrating our craft with the product community. We live in times where real human connections are rare and we definitely want the magic of human interaction to unfold in our events.
Coaching Product Leads
In addition to that, I will keep running my product leadership coaching business.
I hope to continue the work that I’ve just started with several clients and might make room for one or two new ones.
I’m planning for some more group coaching sessions and I will be able to accept a few new coachees for 1:1 leadership coaching.
I would love to help more clients with starting or maturing their product Communities of Practice.
A Book Birthday
I will celebrate the second birthday of my book STRONG Product People in January. And this definitely means a lot to me. More than 4,600 product leads have bought a copy of STRONG Product People. If every reader just improved one thing in their leadership practice, the impact would already be enormous! If the average product org size a leader runs is 10 people, that would make a second-order effect on nearly 50k product folks. It would have been impossible for me to reach the same amount of people with coaching or training alone. So I hopefully contributed to my goal of making a positive impact on a larger number of product leaders and product managers.You can still book me for a book club or just recommend the book to some of your peers to celebrate this milestone with me.
Life in General
And on the personal side: I want to keep some time in my calendar free to recharge, learn, spend time with my family, and most likely to learn Wing Foiling. After 15 years of kitesurfing, let’s see if the old dog can learn some new tricks!
Wing Foiling… bring it on 2023!
And if you’re considering doing a personal retro as well, Stephan Ango published 40 great questions that get you in reflection mode and I just wanted to share them with all of you.
40 Questions That Help You Reflect on the Last 12 Months
Questions I’ve used since 2016 to get into reflection mode. Not all of them are obviously helpful each year, but Stephan’s list helps me each and every year to bring things back to mind that I would otherwise have overlooked.
What did you do this year that you’d never done before?
Did you keep your new year’s resolutions?
Did anyone close to you give birth?
Did anyone close to you die?
What cities/states/countries did you visit?
What would you like to have next year that you lacked this year?
What date(s) from this year will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
What was your biggest failure?
What other hardships did you face?
Did you suffer illness or injury?
What was the best thing you bought?
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Whose behavior made you appalled?
Where did most of your money go?
What did you get really, really, really excited about?
What song will always remind you of this year?
Compared to this time last year, are you: happier or sadder? Thinner or fatter? Richer or poorer?
What do you wish you’d done more of?
What do you wish you’d done less of?
How are you spending Christmas?
Did you fall in love this year?
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
What was your favorite show?
What was the best book you read?
What was your greatest musical discovery of the year?
What was your favorite film?
What was your favorite meal?
What did you want and get?
What did you want and not get?
What did you do on your birthday?
What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
How would you describe your personal fashion this year?
What kept you sane?
Which celebrity/public figure did you admire the most?
What political issue stirred you the most?
Who did you miss?
Who was the best new person you met?
What valuable life lesson did you learn this year?
What is a quote that sums up your year?