Product development concepts come in handy every time you're developing something.
Whether that thing is software, product, or even a point of view.

The first sentence in this email is a point of view (POV). I want this point of view to be effective - I want people to understand what I mean, be intrigued by it, take action, and hopefully see me as a thought leader / expert in this space that they'll want to follow / listen to more.

It took me a while to develop this point of view. To carve a sculpture out of the rock that is my aggregated experiences with organizations.

And I'm still not sure it's effective.

Is it a relevant concept?

Is it the right language?

Does it resonate with the right people?

Even if it does - does it help them with an expensive top of mind problem so they might do something about it?

Would it help me create a win-win relationship with them to help them?

Should I mention Agile explicitly in the POV? Is it helping / neutral / hurting?

Is Agility better than Agile? Worse? How about Scrum? Flow? Kanban?

Is it better to talk about Sense and Respond?

In general - is it useful to talk to businesses using IT/tech references?

Should I leverage product language?

Developing anything in a field of uncertainty requires iteration. Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation. Building, Sensing, Responding.

How can you do that for a point of view?

You can start with a point-of-view slice.

Think It. Start with the problem you want the whole POV to address. The business outcome you want it to achieve for you. Create a hypothesis for who you believe it will affect and how (and how much).

Figure out what's the riskiest assumption behind the hypothesis - which you will want to test/validate first. This should be the POV slice.

For example - this email is a POV slice out of the bigger slice of "Develop your company operating system like a product" - which focuses on testing the notion that the "develop" notion resonates for business operators and leaders, outside of classic product development circles.

Build it. Develop the POV slice. Test it yourself - do you believe it will validate the hypothesis? If not - iterate on it. You can also ask AI to act as your desired audience and give you feedback on whether the POV resonates, changes outcomes.
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​Ship and Measure. Publish it. Get it in front of the right people. And inspect whether and how they engage with it. This email is an example of publishing this specific POV. But is it the right people? Do I have enough business operators and leaders on this email list? If not, how do I get it in front of the right audience to test it? Is Linkedin good enough? Depends on my circle of followers... Maybe worth trying a thought leadership ad to put it in front of business operators that don't currently follow me?

BTW this email was sent using an a/b test for its subject line to see which subject line performs better, to test an assumption about what language resonates better:
​Develop Your POV with Agility​
​Develop Your POV like a Product
​I'm skimping on my Kit license; otherwise, I would also test Craft instead of Develop...

Sense. See how it performs. Sense how it's doing. Is it creating the outcomes you hypothesized it would? What can you learn from the test?

Respond. If it's doing great, you can decide to move to an additional slice of the bigger POV. If not, iterate to adapt it, or go back to the drawing board with new insights.

At some point, you might have enough of a POV (Minimally Viable POV?) that will make it worthwhile to move it from experimentation mode (using in emails, social networks, one-off conversations) to your core channels (e.g. update your website, decide to create a lead magnet around it, plan a campaign around it, whatever makes sense)

The more slices you get out there, and the more frequently you do it, the faster you might work through point-of-view options and converge towards something that works.

After all...

Product development concepts come in handy every time you're developing something.
Whether that thing is software, a product, or even a point of view.

Here's a thought exercise for you, Reader: What's one thing in your business that's not what you would consider a product that you could develop like a product?