eBay

Adjacency-and-Network Expansion Test

Prioritize marketplace expansion by adjacency and network reinforcement, not by the size of the adjacent TAM

Ad Strength Hole-in-the-Ship Diagnostic

Use Google's brand vs non-brand ad-strength report to find the one fix that lifts the whole account

April Dunford's Five-Step Positioning Framework

Position a product by starting from what you must beat, not from a market category.

Influence4 steps

Asking for Help Well

Ask for advice, not answers — the counterintuitive skill that separates who rises from who stalls.

Assessing Whether SEO Is Right for Your Product

Judge SEO fit by two signals — a large addressable market and existing domain authority.

Autonomy as Selfish Leadership

Let people bring themselves to the work; you trade a little visibility for higher velocity, morale, and results.

Bias Interrupters for Introvert-Safe Decisions

Design meetings so the loudest 20% can't take 80% of the air — vote offline, then go round the circle.

Innovation6 steps

Build Zero-to-One in the Dark

Inside a big company, new products die of attention. Ask for less scrutiny, fewer resources, and room to fail.

Candidate Market Fit

Position yourself as a narrow spear, not a net — three-to-four attributes the market actually wants.

Capacity-Red Headcount Justification

Add headcount only when a days-committed-vs-days-in-quarter calculator stays red after cutting low-value work

Cascade the Vision, Delegate the Work

Run a huge org on high-level objectives and tight feedback loops instead of cascading OKRs

Close the Loop: Intent-Signal Retention Engine

Turn every low-commitment user signal into a trigger you can legitimately fire later.

Context and Outcome over Pain and Gain

Study the context that makes the irrational rational, not just the pain to be relieved.

Culture Is What You Do

Make failure genuinely safe by rewarding bold-but-wrong bets in public, not by writing it on the wall

Finance3 steps

Dual-Sided ROI Equation

Price each acquisition to include the cost of acquiring the other side it needs, then push to your payback threshold

Editorial SEO Operating Model

Split the work: SEO manager picks topics and outlines, a domain-expert writer writes, then analyze.

Eigenquestions (Finding the Question That Drives the Answer)

Find the one or two questions whose answers collapse a complex decision into clear quadrants.

Leadership3 steps

Engineer-Owned Product

Collapse the product/engineering divide by giving ownership to whoever is closest to the problem

Evaluative User Research (Hunt for Reasons They Won't Use It)

Test prototypes to find every reason people won't use it — and never let the researcher go alone

Expected-Conversions Prioritization

Rank topics by search volume x topical authority x conversion intent, not by volume alone.

Fairer Marketplace Rating System Design

Fight rating inflation and averaging bias with renormed labels, priors, blind reviews, and the sound of silence.

Feature Team vs. Empowered Product Team Diagnostic

Tell in minutes whether your squad is handed features to ship or problems to solve

Freemium Decision Framework (What to Make Free)

Make a feature free if it drives your growth model; gate it if it creates friction for growth.

Mindset3 steps

Fundamentals-First Hype Filter

Engage the technology, run the real-world numbers, then reject the totalizing claim, not the tech

Growth Is a Game of Inches

Don't chase the step function. Ship 20 bets at 20% instead of 4 perfect ones — then raise the hit rate.

Guardrails Before Control

Set the quality bar, coach to it, then buy control only for the gaps that remain.

Hardest-Side-First (One-Player Mode)

Pre-PMF, ignore marketplace dynamics: own the hardest side and hack the other one.

Homogenize the Early Experience for Retention

Move retention by fixing unlucky bad first experiences, not by nudging people about to churn

Innovation5 steps

Hypothesis-Driven Experimentation: Learning as a Win

Reframe experiments from winners/losers to hypotheses; run more, run shorter, and carry priors forward.

Hypothesis-Driven SEO

Generate hypotheses by analyzing sites (and asking their SEO managers), then test to validate.

Incrementality via Conversion Lift & Geo Tests

Prove paid actually caused growth by withholding ads from a control group and measuring the lift

Internal Link Spread Optimization

Most sites starve their own pages of internal links; fixing spread is SEO's biggest quick win.

Influence3 steps

Job Mission with OKRs (Play to Win)

Write your own version of the role with OKRs and share it with the hiring manager to win the offer.

KPI + Narrative: The Two-Part Turnaround Drumbeat

Pair one north-star KPI with one relentlessly repeated narrative to reset how a company works.

Productivity5 steps

LNO Framework

Match your effort to each task's leverage, neutrality, or overhead

Manufacture the Story You Belong In

When you're too boring to cover directly, create the news, trend, or data others must cover — and live inside it.

Manufacture Your Own Supply

Find the asset blocking non-suppliers from supplying, then rent it to them with strings attached.

Marketplace Whack-a-Mole: Managing Winners and Losers

Most consequential marketplace changes create winners and losers; manage the trade, don't chase a metric.

Measurements Are Not Insights (Instrumentation for Analytics)

Turn raw metrics into segmented, causal insights you actually act on.

Communication4 steps

Mochary's Script for Difficult Conversations

Defuse the amygdala by warning first, delivering the message, then letting the person release emotion.

NLX: Designing the Natural-Language Interface

Conversation is an interface with real constructs — design it, don't just let the model lead

Strategy2 steps

Observe Users, Don't Just Ask Them

Watch what users actually do, because watching your assumptions get crushed beats any interview

Paid Channel Sequencing Ladder

The order to adopt paid platforms: user-driven search first, disruptive media next, expensive targeting last

Pitch the Freelancer, Not the Editor

The hungriest, most reachable writer at an outlet is usually the freelancer — target them, not the busy staff editor.

PM Your Career Like You PM Your Product

Write a spec for your career: destination, metrics, milestones, and a measuring stick for every offer.

Predict vs. Decide: Think in Differentials

Prediction finds correlations; decisions need causal differences. Optimize the lift, not the level.

Press as a Trophy, Not a Megaphone

The value of coverage is often the 'as seen in' validation you deploy yourself — not the readership.

Communication3 steps

Problem-Solving Story Over Success Story

Editors reject polished wins — lead with the challenge you faced and how you got through it.

Productivity4 steps

Prompt Sets Are the New PRD

Communicate product ideas by building the prototype, not writing the doc — demos before memos

PSHE Career Growth Framework

Evaluate talent by how far up the Problem-Solution-How-Execution ladder they operate.

Rank, Don't Filter

Every user-facing filter silently carves out your supply — turn preferences into ranking signals.

Communication5 steps

Reframe Self-Promotion as Education

You make the light bulb but you sell light. Rename the act and the resistance disappears.

Reverse-Engineer the Publication's Mission

Editors serve their audience, not you — decode who each outlet serves, then fit your story to that mission.

Communication3 steps

Schedule Syncing (Managing Your Manager)

Never say no to your boss — show your timeboxed calendar and ask them to help you prioritize.

SEO Readiness Assessment

Two questions decide if SEO is worth investing in: is the market big, and do you have authority?

SERP Reverse-Engineering

To learn what page to build, read what Google already ranks for your target keywords.

Signals and Nudges for Choice Under Abundance

When every result is plausible, confidence beats relevance — surface glanceable signals, not more inventory.

Signal vs Noise Metric Selection

Let the campaign's single goal decide which metric is signal — everything else is noise

Small-Pond ICP Narrowing

Constrain your first ICP so tightly that customers talk to each other — then let word of mouth light the fire.

Solution-Weighted Discovery

Spend a little time validating the problem; spend most of it winning on the solution

Solve Before Scale

Run in a distinct 'solve' mode before you ever switch to 'scale' mode

Start Bespoke, Become a Marketplace Later

A marketplace never starts as a marketplace; win with a pre-liquidity value prop first.

The 10-Minute Rule (Surfing the Urge)

Beat any urge to get distracted by waiting ten minutes and riding the emotion until it subsides.

Leadership6 steps

The 30-60-90 Day Landing Plan

Listen for 30, align for 30, execute for 30 — and negotiate the listening time with your manager up front.

The 51-49 Decision Rule

When options are near-even, just pick one fast — more data won't meaningfully improve a close call.

The AI Expertise Layer

Don't outsource all AI to foundation models — keep expertise and measurement to break the quality glass ceiling.

Mindset4 steps

The Best-Teams Adoption Heuristic

Adopt a practice only if several of the best teams already use it — then strip the culture from the technique

The Design-Partner Pod Model

Give each cross-functional pod 6-12 real customers to co-build with, so features ship pre-validated.

The Diseases of a Devolving Product Company

Four diagnosable diseases that turn a great product company into a feature factory

The Effort Metric (Measure Attention, Not Completion)

Track 'did I do what I said for as long as I said without distraction' instead of whether you finished.

The Five-Legged Stool

Product, eng, design, insights, and marketing as one leadership team — with the PM accountable, not king.

Innovation5 steps

The Four Forces of Progress

Model demand as a tug-of-war: two forces push people to switch, two hold them back.

Influence4 steps

The Four Legs of the Negotiation Stool

Negotiate the resources you need to hit your OKRs before salary, then ask 'are you open to?'

The Four Marketplace Health Metrics

Track GMV, unit economics, liquidity, and share of wallet to know if a marketplace is truly healthy

The Four Product Risks and Their Owners

Valuable, usable, feasible, viable — any one fails and the product fails

The Four Things a Product Manager Brings to the Team

Prepare to contribute by mastering users, data, the business, and the competitive landscape.

Mindset3 steps

The Gardener Mindset for Marketplaces

Run a marketplace like a gardener with a light touch, not a construction worker building linear features

Strategy6 steps

The Growth Model Building Blocks

Build a spreadsheet formula of how your business grows, layer by layer, to find your real levers

Communication3 steps

The Human Customized Pitch Email

A short, human, story-first email that proves it was written for this one person — not a mass blast.

Self-Mastery4 steps

The Indistractable Model

The four-step system for controlling your attention: master triggers, make time, hack back, and pre-commit.

Leadership3 steps

The Indistractable Workplace (Three Traits)

Distraction is a symptom of dysfunction — fix it with psychological safety, a forum, and leaders who model it.

The Job Search Council

Run your job hunt as a committed 6-8 person peer group that flips anxiety into accountability.

The JTBD Switch Interview

Interrogate the story of a real purchase to recover the true causes of a switch.

Self-Mastery4 steps

The Learning-Impact Ladder

Alternate between roles where you have mastery and roles where you're the newbie — zigzag, don't climb.

The Manukan Two-Pager & Listening Tour

Draft what you want and don't want, then run structured listening-tour conversations to find your fit.

The Market Health Metric

Find the leading proxy that predicts liquidity, then find the threshold where it plateaus.

The Marketplace Fragmentation Test

A marketplace only works if the market is fragmented and the per-transaction dollars are small enough to keep it in the middle

The One-Quarter Empowered Team Experiment

Convert a single feature team into an empowered product team in one low-risk quarter

The Ops Cadence Spreadsheet

A rocks-and-pebbles spreadsheet that assigns every account task a defined weekly/biweekly/monthly rhythm

Marketing6 steps

The Peer Supply Engine

Pay your best suppliers to onboard and recruit the next ones, at a tenth of the cost.

The Press-as-Fundraising Filter

Only pursue press when you can name a specific business job it will do — same discipline as raising money.

Self-Mastery4 steps

The Product Manager's Four Areas of Homework

The four knowledge domains a PM must own because nobody else on the team can bring them

The Provenance Gate: Scaling Supply Without Diluting the Brand

Let sellers scale by outsourcing production — but only to a partner whose process they actually know.

The Research Coordinator Role

Borrow the recruiting-coordinator role to schedule all customer research, so PMs never lose time to logistics.

The Scaled-Liquidity Smell Test

Before calling yourself a marketplace, prove you have scaled liquidity on both sides.

The Signs of Life Test

Spend a tiny budget on a new platform to detect a positive signal before committing to a full campaign

Sales4 steps

The Six Phases of the Buying Timeline

Meet buyers where they are on their timeline instead of forcing them onto yours.

The Spiral Method for Learning Fast

Chain expert-to-expert referrals until you hear only repeats — that's how you know you've hit the bullseye.

Innovation3 steps

The Three B's of Behavior Change

Change user behavior by picking a specific Behavior, removing Barriers, and adding immediate Benefits.

The Three Dimensions of an Agent

Score any 'agent' on autonomy, complexity, and natural interaction — each a spectrum

Leadership3 steps

The Three-Hire Performance Team Sequence

Build a paid team in order: data-driven generalist, then creative, then a dedicated data scientist

The Three Pacts (Pre-Commitment Firewall)

Lock in your intentions ahead of time with an effort pact, a price pact, or an identity pact.

The Three Sacred Accesses

Delegate anything off the PM's plate except direct access to customers, engineers, and stakeholders

The Three-Signal Marketplace Screen

Fragmentation, uniform needs, high matchmaking barrier — no marketplace works without all three.

The Three Sources of Energy

Every purchase draws on functional, emotional, and social energy, not just utility.

The Three Types of SEO

Programmatic, editorial and technical SEO are different games; pick the one your queries reward.

The Transaction Tiebreaker for Marketplace Prioritization

Stop arguing supply vs demand — make the transaction itself the thing every team is accountable to.

The True Competition Metric

Use auction-insights math to tell a genuine competitive threat from a harmless close-variant accident

The Two-of-Three Inflection Test

Only build a new zero-to-one product when at least two of three inflections line up

Productivity4 steps

The Weekly Focus Ritual

Post what you're focused on this week, and whether last week's focus actually landed.

The Weekly State-of-Me Email

Write a self-initiated weekly note of what worked, what didn't, and what's blocked

Productivity4 steps

Timeboxing Your Values (Make Time for Traction)

Replace the to-do list with a weekly timeboxed calendar built from your values across three life domains.

Topical Authority Adjacency

Rank by starting where you're already known, then expand into semantically adjacent topics.

Topics Over Keywords

Modern Google ranks one page for a cluster of 200-2,000 keywords; target the topic, not the keyword.

Two Product-Market Fits

A marketplace must pass the disappointment test independently on each side.

Mindset4 steps

Update Your Priors: The AI Capability Arbitrage

Re-test what AI can do today and demand more of it — old scar tissue is leaving alpha on the table

Vertical Unbundling Criteria

Only carve a vertical out of a horizontal marketplace if it has high value or frequency and a self-contained network

Influence5 steps

Write What You Repeat

If you say it more than once, write it down — then get an accountability partner to enforce a monthly cadence.