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 Feature
When you really put yourself out on the web, even without a grand strategy, good things sometimes follow.
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By Peter Longini
St. Louis-based product manager Jeff Lash doesn’t consider himself a particularly outgoing person. But as an early adopter of new technologies and a confirmed Internet enthusiast with professional credentials in providing web-based services, he has become both comfortable and proficient in trying out new Internet-enabled networking tools.
As a result, over the past few years, he has built a blog devoted to offering advice about good product management practices, a sister blog devoted to answering questions about product management, a personal website emphasizing his availability as a vibraphone artist, a FaceBook site to showcase his friends and personal enthusiasms, a LinkedIn site including his career profile and hundreds of professional connections, a presence on Twitter for exchanging short notes with friends, and more. But he insists it wasn’t all part of some grand scheme to elevate his career.
“I didn’t start the blog with the intention of ‘oh, I’m going to get a new job or show that I’m an expert’,” he claims. “It was more a way to network with other people; I’ve always been the type of person that learns best when I share what I’ve learned with other people.”
Part of his motivation came from the somewhat isolated nature of his work. “In my roles at a lot of organizations, I wasn’t in a big group with lots of other people like me,” Lash explained. “It’s more likely I’d be the only person in the company that’s doing something like this. So I thought well, if I don’t have a peer group within my company, I can at least develop one within the geographic area or the industry. And that’s how it started out.”
But that’s not how it ended. And for Lash’s career, the results have been rewarding. “It’s been fantastic in that respect because it’s given me a lot of opportunities” he said. “The product management community, in general, is pretty open and there are lots of people who, if you send them an email and say hey, I’ve got a question, would you mind helping me, a lot of them will help you out. In my case it’s been a great way to develop relationships, so I’ve got a nice group of people I can turn to if I have a question. I’ve also had a lot of people find me through my blog or through LinkedIn, people whom I probably would not have met otherwise.”
Sometimes the unintended consequences can also turn out very nicely. Several years ago Lash launched his blog for product managers as a way to share what he had learned and develop connections to learn from product managers in other companies. “When I started to blog, I didn’t really tell anyone within my company about it,” he recalled. “Not because I was trying to hide it or because I felt that they were going to think what I was writing about was based on a meeting we had last week, it’s just that it wasn’t about my company as much as it was about product management in general.
“But some people I worked with found out and then a lot of people from within the company started saying ‘hey, this is really useful!’ Some people even said ‘look, I’m not a product manager but the stuff you’re writing about is really relevant to something I’m working on.’ So I didn’t start it thinking that this is going to help me find a new job or promote myself within the company. But it ended up that people within the organization thought it was a really good, helpful resource, which was a side effect I wouldn’t have expected.”
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About the Author
Peter Longini is the Managing Editor
for Inside Product Strategy™.
He can be reached at:
editor@productstrategynetwork.com
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The Lash Internet
Toolkit
Product Manager Jeff Lash is at home on the Internet where he has created a series of online profiles for different purposes. Some of his primary sites are listed below; the addresses of others, including a blog about his five-month old baby, are restricted to family and friends.
jefflash.com Begun about ten years ago, Lash initially considered using his personal website to host the product manager blog which he began some time later, but then he reconsidered. Today his personal website, which includes career highlights, largely focuses on his musical interests, including a number of MP3 files which can be downloaded for free.
goodproductmanager.com
ask.goodproductmanager.com
Two related professional blogs that Lash created and maintains both concern product management. Information from the blogs is freely available to others under a minimally restrictive creative commons license.
Primarily personal, Lash uses his FaceBook account to keep in touch with friends as well as current and former colleagues.
With a detailed resume going back eight years and references from 23 associates, Lash uses LinkedIn to keep track of former colleagues, network with other product managers in St. Louis, reconnect with old acquaintances, and help make connections for others.
Lash claims to find himself using Twitter, a free multi-platform service that encourages brevity and spontaneity, more often these days.
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