Harvard Business Review

Anger as a Secondary Emotion

Before reacting in anger, name the fear or hurt beneath it — connecting emotions replace the distancing one

Influence4 steps

Asking for Help Well

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

Innovation3 steps

Backcasting & Reject the Premise

Stand in the future you designed and look back — don't forecast forward from today's constraints.

Strategy4 steps

Candidate Market Fit

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

Strategy4 steps

Category Design: Create Demand vs. Capture Demand

Design your own market category instead of competing for a slice of someone else's.

Productivity4 steps

Chaos Buffers: Planning Around Users Who Don't Owe You Time

Every plan carries a backup and a scope-sized buffer, because your users' real job always wins

Strategy3 steps

Damming the Demand

Compete category-to-category against the status quo, never product-to-product against a rival.

Leadership4 steps

Design the Job to Fit the Person

Stop hunting unicorns against made-up job descriptions; reshape roles around the good people you find

Self-Mastery5 steps

Energy Drivers and Energy Drains Audit

Mine your past for moments that energized or drained you, then turn them into job design requirements

Leadership4 steps

Engineers as Discovery Partners, Not Resources

Embed the tech lead in discovery so engineers own the why, not just the what

Self-Mastery4 steps

Equanimity as a Product Skill

Pause before reacting: manage your own reactions instead of trying to control the chaos

Strategy5 steps

Execution Beats Strategy

Perfect strategy with poor execution teaches you nothing. Good-enough strategy with perfect execution compounds.

Influence5 steps

Expand, Don't Shrink

Insert a step between receiving feedback and acting on it — then answer it by adding tools, never by getting smaller.

Communication6 steps

Feeling-First Product Metaphor

Pick the feeling, name where you last felt it, and let the metaphor make a thousand small decisions for you.

Marketing4 steps

Frame, Name, Claim the Problem (Languaging & Point of View)

Use new language to reframe a problem so people see it differently and want a new solution.

Leadership4 steps

Inquiry Before Advice (Be a Thought Partner)

Resist giving advice — explore first, keep the monkey on their back, and develop the person instead of the answer

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.

Self-Mastery4 steps

Job Prototyping via Informational Interviews

Treat yourself as a product: prototype many roles wide, interview people who hold them, then narrow

Mindset5 steps

Leader Emulators

Build runnable models of the sharpest people you've worked with, then boot the right one when you're stuck.

Marketing5 steps

Lightning Strike Go-to-Market (Supers, POV & Word of Mouth)

Concentrate firepower on super consumers with a reframing POV to ignite word of mouth.

Productivity3 steps

Meeting Priming Before Decision-Making

Every meeting has a priming phase and a decision phase; skipping or reversing them guarantees dysfunction

Communication6 steps

Mindful Communication: Converse in the Language of the Listener

Listening, not articulacy, is the core PM communication skill — and it has a method

Pinch Before Crunch

Raise small irritations early, while they're still a pinch, before they compound into a relationship-damaging crunch

Pushes and Pulls Compass

You only truly change jobs when a set of pushes builds enough energy and pulls point the direction

Self-Mastery5 steps

Putting On the Coat of the Job

Run the spreadsheet, then tear it up — and simulate a Tuesday in the job instead.

Communication4 steps

Repair: What Did You Hear Me Say?

When a response feels wildly off, ask 'what did you hear me say?' — then re-try from what they actually heard

Innovation3 steps

Reverse Engineering to Build Openness

Two reverse-engineering habits that let a conscientious brain manufacture the openness it lacks

Leadership3 steps

Role-Based Culture by Logical Deduction

Replace performative Mission-Vision-Values with a deduced 'role you play' that logically derives your standards

Communication4 steps

The 15% Rule

Step just 15% beyond your comfort zone to deepen relationships without triggering the danger zone

The Ability-Trust-Appeal Relationship Model

Every professional relationship rests on ability, trust, and appeal; the experience you are matters most

Peak Performance3 steps

The Alpha-Beta-Gamma Focus Grid

Map brain-wave states against motivation systems and deliberately spend ~25% of your year outside busy beta

The Art of Inquiry

Ask genuine what/when/where/how questions from real curiosity — never 'why', never to confirm a hypothesis

Strategy3 steps

The Believability Spectrum for Vision & Strategy

Every idea lands as believed, believable, conceivable, or inconceivable; your openness sets where the lines fall

Marketing3 steps

The Better Trap

A 'better' copy of an existing solution to a well-understood problem almost always fails.

The Brain's Three Systems (Safety, Reward, Purpose)

Diagnose which of three motivational systems is driving someone's behavior before you try to change it

Strategy5 steps

The Breaking News Dress Rehearsal

Script and run a fake crisis end-to-end to stress test your product and your people at once

Leadership6 steps

The Dinosaur Brain Product Review

Executives hold three facts. Bring a recommendation, not a catalogue — and leave with principles, not answers.

Communication5 steps

The Fascinating Reframe

Convert the visceral urge to be right into a question that harvests the information you're missing.

Self-Mastery5 steps

The Four Career Quests

Diagnose which of four job-change 'quests' you're on so you optimize the move correctly

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?'

Communication5 steps

The Four-Touchpoint Stakeholder Intake System

Four standing rituals that turn chaotic user requests into a governed product intake pipeline

Mindset5 steps

The Habit-Anchored Micro-Meditation

Attach full presence to something you already do daily instead of adding a new ritual

Strategy5 steps

The Hill Climb

Name whether you're optimising a local hill or crossing the valley to a bigger mountain — then price the valley.

The Job Search Council

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

Strategy4 steps

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 Pixar Career Story Template

Distill your career into a seven-line Pixar-style story that intrigues interviewers and clarifies your direction

Communication6 steps

The Six Characteristics of Exceptional Relationships

A diagnostic checklist of six qualities that mark how far a relationship sits along the contact-to-exceptional continuum

Communication4 steps

The Three Realities and the Net

Stay on your side of the net — speak only to behavior and your own reaction, never the other person's motives

Influence3 steps

Three Speeds of Influence + Choose Your Character

Pick an influence character that fits your personality, then choose slow, moderate, or fast based on the situation

Leadership6 steps

Toddler Soccer Goal Detangling

Goal every team on the same output metric and they swarm the ball. Detangle the customer journey into lanes.