BOOK REVIEWS
Staying Untrapped — A Review of “Untrapping Product Teams” by David Pereira
Find yourself working on autopilot occupied with “bullshit management”? If that sounds familiar, this book is for you!
How often have you found yourself running on autopilot, stuck in the daily grind without even noticing? It’s just another day at work…
David shines a light on the traps we stumble into at work, often without even realizing it. But he doesn’t stop there. He offers clever solutions to untrap yourself, backed by examples from his own experiences.
Break the autopilot mode
David provides context to what we think we know — because we heard about it over and over, doesn’t mean we comprehend it fully — and shutters our illusion of understanding. The fact that we know that outcomes should go over outputs, doesn’t mean we know how to create an outcome-based roadmap.
Let’s start from the sharp definition of “bullshit management” all that drains our energy and provides little to no value in day-to-day work.
“Whenever you don’t understand why you’re doing something or don’t see how that creates value, you’re probably doing bullshit management.”
David humorously dubs it an art — the art of doing things entirely unrelated to value creation. It’s a black hole for your time and energy. Not only will you create no value, but the more you occupy yourself with that, the less energy you’ll have for meaningful work.
David assists us in breaking this autopilot mode, prompting a conscious examination of our actions and suggesting small adjustments to get us back on track.
Unpopular ideas
David strikes me as both courageous and delightfully stubborn. During our chat, I asked him what personality traits got him where he is today — renowned Product Coach, Keynote Speaker, author, and CEO. He chuckled, “Stubborn? Maybe a little bit. I think life’s too short to do something we don’t like. When I go to work, I want it to connect to something valuable.”
David’s stories are filled with him challenging the status quo. He refuses to just implement a solution based on nothing more than a stakeholder’s opinion. He would go and interview the customers to learn their preferred ways of working like the car dealers who simply didn’t use their mobile phones to look for cars.
When bombarded with priority requests from stakeholders, David puts them all in a room and says, “Help me prioritize.” His secret? Show vulnerability — “I don’t know how to prioritize these” — and turn your problem into their problem. People can’t resist lending a hand.
The Courage to Say “No”
Those are all acts of courage and quite unpopular ways to work — admitting you don’t know something or refusing to settle for an opinion-driven solution.
Yet they show how insistently trying to look for better ways of working and fostering collaboration, can lead to great results.
It caught my attention because, we all know, in theory, how to build a product. We understand the theory of discovery and prioritizing outcomes over outputs, but we rarely get to practice what we preach.
David guides us through the whole product journey, from setting the vision and strategy of a product, through the discovery and implementation. He shares numerous examples from his career. Initially, he was a waiter-like Product Owner, catering to every whim. But over time, he evolved into a Product Manager who conducts like an orchestra maestro, and eventually, a jazz player improvising with finesse.
Carry Out Your Experiments With Untrapping Product Teams
The book is a treasure for everyone in the digital product realm. It offers a comprehensive, bird’s-eye view of the entire product lifecycle, presenting each phase as part of a coherent whole.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading David’s insights. I applied his exercises and practices to create a strategy and value proposition for my new project, Collaboration2.0: Beyond Frameworks.
You can test your ideas, and carry out your experiments with the book as your guide.
This is not just another book; it’s a roadmap to break free from the mundane and rediscover your purpose. ive in, and prepare to get untrapped! Happy experimenting!
Swing by my page some time — I’m creating a new project where we will focus on practices that really matter in today’s companies.
Collaboration2.0 Beyond Frameworks!
