Product Strategist: Go, Effectivity, and the Daily Win

Go was one of those games that didn't yield to minimax search back in AI class. In CGI, effectivity came to supersede ray tracing, as the light-rendering algorithm of choice in CGI applications. Then, effectivity found itself being applied to Go, and minimax fell by the wayside. Go was now much more computable.

Effectivity is an algorithm that sums the light reflected off of everything in the space. Effectivity accounts for the strange phenomena of how a room can have more light in it than is pumped into it.

In Go, the influence of a particular stone grows as its relationships with other stones grow. In the opening, you play for influence. You play four battles simultaneously. Each battle springs up around a single distant stone. A Go proverb says always make the largest move. The largest move forces you to spread out, to sketch broadly, to fill in later. Each stone in the proximity of the battle shapes the battle. Each stone contributes to the effectivity of the play, which in turn dictates the emerging outcome. Strategy sketches. Tactics delineate the details.

In Go, your opponent might play to take your stones, but the game is really played to control the largest area at the end of the game. In one scoring system captured stones matter not at all. Space is all that matters. Firms are like that.

In Go every stone has the same capabilities. Each stone is worth a single point. Still, every stone does not have the same amount of influence. Influence changes throughout the game. Influence emerges. Influence is built or destroyed. Staff is like that. Messaging is like that. Functionality is like that.

So Go presents us with many analogs for product management. We can define a stone as being one day's play, one day's outcome, one day's effort. We can define a stone as being one person somewhere in the value chain within the firm or without. We can define a stone as being one message. We can define a stone as being one feature. Or is it the bundle, the suite, the offer, the product line, the product roadmap, or the orchestration of several emergent technology roadmaps? Or is it the whole product, the API, the third-party developers and content providers, the communities of all sorts, the moments, the experiences, the user evangelism, the social objects, value-based services, the service-orchestration partners, the channels, the foreign-market distributors, or, anything in offer.

It's all of those things at some point in the lifecycle of a product manager. It's more. The games are many. You can't get to all of them everyday. But, someone can. A little enablement goes a long way. That little enablement expands the reach of your influence. That little enablement creates effective people whose effectivity persists, so you can set them down the road and rest assured that they will deliver what you ask. That little enablement delivers the effective stone freeing you to enable others.

You could play chess. You could plow into their back row with that over extended queen. You can lose the game that way. You can control, but only if what you want is small.

If you are not getting what you need from your team, let go. Then, take the largest move by enabling a team member today. Enable another tomorrow. Then, enable your bosses. Then, enable those beyond the walls of your firm. 

To get proactive, enable. To get effectivity, enable. Reach beyond your grasp.

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