# A user guide working with PTZ.

**Published by:** [PTZ](https://paragraph.com/@ptzee/)
**Published on:** 2022-05-09
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@ptzee/a-user-guide-working-with-ptz

## Content

IntroductionI’m a product manager that sees businesses as fascinating rubric cubes to solve. To create a great business you must work through a mind boggling amount of permutations of vision, strategy and execution to get it right. I love diving into the weeds of those permutations and finding the right one to go to market with. But I always find myself abstracting away from the doing and thinking through the process...Philosophies / Mantras that shape my thinking🤔 How I ThinkStrong Beliefs, Weakly HeldBalancing Systems Thinking & First PrinciplesWhat got us here won’t get us there.There's things that have the right to be complicatedSee both sides of the argument, and make your best effort to choose a side.Businesses are the hardest game to win🛠️ Ways of WorkingAlways be experimentingOutcome is more important that sticking to a processFocus on answering the right question, even if that means spending less time on answering - Principals over FrameworksDelivering the wrong feature faster still delivers no value.Better than best in class is necessary for core differentiation🤼 CultureIf not us, then who? If not now, then when?There is a false dichotomy between the culture of learning and a culture of resultsAccess to knowledge isn’t nearly as difficult as the desire to learnTake two managers. Manager A is 100% confident about their decision — just because. Manager B is 70% confident and explains why they’re at 70% and what they’re unsure about. Who do you believeHow I view success:Outcome - Properly defined, and makes sense for the vision of the company Bonding - Seeing how people work, and working through the trenches together to achieve a common goal Learnings - Can be done through success and failure. Ability to reflect does not necessarily result in learnings.How I communicate:I like to communicate in writing - as it's concrete and doesn't provide leeway for fast words to replace coherent thoughts. I like to abstract into visual doodles - that might make sense to me (because of internal monologues) but not make sense to people who see it without explanation. Direct - For 90% of my interactions, I like to stay objective and provide feedback and thoughts which are rationale in nature.Things I do that may annoy you or be misunderstood:Pushing the envelope into dangerous rabbit holes - I sometimes feel the need to understand nuances even if they don't seem relevant. It's usually because I'm trying to connect my own internal thoughts and may seem tedious and off-topic. I like to jump in my conversations - It's not necessarily because I've lost interest in the previous conversation, but rather I have come to a conclusion that has led me to the next topic. I often forget people can't read my thoughts and may lose people when I do this. Please stop me if something stops making sense. I like to skip small talk - It's not that I don't want to know you, it's just that when I'm focused on something in particular, other things can seem like less of a priority. My sense of camaraderie is not correlated with small talk, but rather my ability to trust your intuition and banter through work. I need the bigger picture - Because I like to solve undefined problems, if I'm given discrete tasks without the bigger picture, I have a tendency to assume the broader picture and solve for the discrete tasks with those assumptions in mind - leading to misalignment and potential re-work. I work much better in the 80/20 space. - Working through unknowns give me energy, filling in the blanks takes away energy. I don't have a sense of work/life balance - if my brain is on, I might message you during off-work hours. (I need to better respect other people's work/life balance).What gains and loses my trust:Gaining my trustWorking in the trenches together.Presenting your ideas & your thinking without filtersLosing my trustA clear misalignment between perceived knowledge and actual knowledgeAfraid of asking dumb questionsClear violation of transparency (taking advantage of opaqueness)My strengths:Ideating on how things can be betterProviding refinement in thinkingAsking questions that generate further discussionAbstracting away from the detail and understanding the broader processes, mindsets and constraints that can suppress potential step-change.My Weaknesses:Interest wains over time and follow through capability - Once I get uninterested, my brain goes onto autopilot mode and wonders towards unsolved, more interesting problems.Providing my rationale as definitive, even when they're not -I have strong beliefs on non-verified assumptions. It’s necessary to build towards a bigger picture. This does not mean I don’t want to hear evidence to the contrary.

## Publication Information

- [PTZ](https://paragraph.com/@ptzee/): Publication homepage
- [All Posts](https://paragraph.com/@ptzee/): More posts from this publication
- [RSS Feed](https://api.paragraph.com/blogs/rss/@ptzee): Subscribe to updates