First Post... What's in a name?

"Sharpening Stones...  Walking on Coals...  To improve your business acumen."  Its a fun little line from an obscure R.E.M. song called Exhuming McArthy off their Document album.

I used to listen to this album in my 1975 Audi Fox so much that I had to replace the cassette tape... twice.  To me, it is the best R.E.M album and the most influential work to come out of the late 80's alternative music scene.

Anyhow, once I joined the workforce out of college, I was issued a 386 PC that ran Windows 3.1.  We really only used the GUI Operating System to launch a 3270 terminal so we could access the IBM Mainframe and code our little COBOL and SQL routines.

The big thing at the time was to set up your screen saver on Windows to something cool.  We also played minesweeper.  My cube mate had this radical 3D tube generation screen saver that I could stare at for hours, especially when I got to work still partly drunk from the raucous consulting lifestyle we were living in the early 90s.

I really wanted my screen saver to be something deep and meaningful.  I could not think of anything for the longest time and then one day I was listening to my portable CD player with my third copy of Document playing (it was well worth the digital upgrade) and Exhuming McArthy came on.

As I reflected on the line "sharpening stones...  walking on coals...  to improve your business acumen", I could not help but feel that those words described my job.  I got up every day, tried to learn something new, did hard and scary things, all in order to be a little better at business.   That line is still my screen saver over 20 years later.  It still describes my job. (I know the song is satirical and pretty tongue in cheek.  Maybe that is part of what I like about the message too)

Today, I lead a seven person product management team that shepards eight software products.  Every day, I come in to work and try to make my team better, the products better, and myself better.  Every day is a scary struggle, but it is about running a great business and being great at business.

This blog is about my experiences over the last 20 years in product development and product management.  There are already tons of Product Management blogs out there.  I have read most of them and will reference some from time to time.  I do not intend to cover well trodden trails, but to instead talk about all the experiences I have personally had on this journey.  I will bounce around a lot.  One blog post may be about product architecture, the next about people, the next about the 90s, the next about 2025.  Do not look for linear trajectory here.  It is just an amalgamation.

My hope is that others can benefit from the thousands of mistakes and hundreds of wins I have had in my career and this will help people improve their business acumen.