Lessons In Product Management: Recent Episodes
Path2Product
Path2Product's Mission is to bridge the gap in product management experience for aspiring product managers, so the Lessons In Product Management podcast is here to support that effort, as well as provide valuable insights to existing PMs and PM leaders. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/productmanagementlessons/support
On today’s episode, I got to speak with Stephanie Jerome, Product Manager at Akoya. Stephanie has a ton of experience managing internal products, and that was the focus of our conversation today. Stephanie also shared how she got her start in product management and lessons she’s learned along the way.
If you’re managing or considering managing internal products or looking to get your first shot at a PM job, this is a great episode to check out!
If you're looking to get into product management, you can get credible PM experience today at Path2Product
If you need a free and powerful tool to organize and manage your research and insights, try out ResearchRepo for free today
Outline:
0:00-0:35 - Episode Intro
0:35-6:50 - Stephanie’s Path to product management
6:50-8:10 - Stephanie’s experience with internal product management
8:10-10:55 - Key differences PMing internal products vs customer-facing products
10:55-15:10 - Biases and assumptions in internal research
15:10-18:30 - Using internal tools for internal tools (meta, I know)
18:30-21:50 - GTM and Customer Success for internal products
21:50-23:16 - Stephanie’s final thoughts on research for internal products
23:16-24:16 - Outro
On today’s episode, we have Emilia Kortrynska, Head of Marketing at UserPilot. In the discussion with Emilia, we talk about some incredibly interesting research that came out of UserPilot recently about how Sales Led Growth appears to beat Product Led Growth in many categories. Which to PLG evangelists like myself, really caught me off guard. But we discuss why quant data is only one piece of the story and why you need to balance quant with qual research and the benefits of research in general.
PLG vs SLG research data
If you're looking for a better way to tie research to your company goals, try out ResearchRepo for free
If you're trying to get into product management and need experience to accelerate your path to product, sign up at Path2Product and start getting experience today
Outline:
0:00-0:53 - Episode Introduction
0:53-2:35 - Emilia’s Background and Intro
2:35-7:48 Emilia’s Role In Research for Userpilot
7:48-10:59 Marketing’s Role in User Research and PM Collaboration
10:59-13:00 Product-Led SEO
13:00-15:25 Research Feedback loop on usage and user segmentation
15:25-16:10 The fallacy of category creation in positioning
16:10-26:54 Sales Led vs Product Led Success Rates
26:54-30:07 How can we make research matter more at our company
It's a hotly debated topic, whether you should always pay customers for their time when sourcing and conducting interviews.
Spoiler alert! I think you're doing yourself a huge disservice if you make it a habit of paying customers for feedback.
In this episode, we unpack all the reasons why you should never pay customers for interviews and the benefits you'll see as a result.
If you're looking to get into product management or interested in up-leveling your product sense through a portfolio project, check us out at Path2Product
For the article this episode is based on, check it out at the Path2Product Blog
There are pros and cons to preparing for user research. As they say, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. And the same is true with prepping for research.
On this episode, we break down the benefits of user interview preparation and the potential drawbacks if you let perfection become the enemy of progress.
If you're looking to get into product management but lack hands on experience, check out Path2Product where you get high-quality PM training AND the ability to put your learning into practice to get hands-on product management experience that you can show off in a portfolio project.
After taking a year off to focus on work and life, we're back and excited to be back!
We've been building ResearchRepo for Product teams to collaborate, consolidate, and communicate research that ties back to company goals and objectives.
I've started a new role as VP of Product at Terlumina
But we're doubling down on Path2Product to help aspiring and junior product managers get the experience and practice they need to land their first job or uplevel their product sense
This is a crazy and turbulent time in Tech. Companies are hitting financial hard times or restructuring as the economy is forcing extreme prioritization of resources. If you find yourself on the unfortunate end of these layoffs, I have someone on the show who has been through several and helped several others through this process. Don't miss the great advice on this week's episode of Lessons in Product Management!
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Dan Balcauski is a pricing expert and dropped by the pod to share key insights, hot takes, and practical advice for product teams and leaders to help unpack the pricing process, key variables, and mistakes to avoid.
Show notes:
0:00-0:30 - Episode Intro
0:30-1:55 - Dan’s Intro/Background
1:55-4:55 - From Engineer to Pricing Guru
4:55-6:42 - Biggest Pricing Pitfall
6:42-19:00 - Segmentation Myths and Realities
19:00-21:00 - defining value (3 Types)
21:00-26:35 - The Value Cascade
26:35-36:45 - How customers shape pricing
36:45-43:00 - Willingness to pay (WTP) (40:12)
43:00-47:30 - Pricing in B2B
47:30-56:50 - Freemium Good or Bad?
56:50-57:48 - Contact Dan
57:48-58:02 - Outro
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There are great frameworks for prioritizing features, but what if prioritizing features isn't the right approach? We dig into why opportunity costs are the most underrated variables in prioritizing Product decisions.
If you're looking to get into product management, come join us at Path2Product to gain the hands-on PM experience you need to land your first product role.
0:00-4:20 - Episode Intro
4:20-6:54 Opportunity Cost in Action
6:54-8:50 - Economics in Product Management?
8:50-17:52 - NFL Draft Example
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This week's lesson in product management is brought to you by Derek Osgood, Founder and CEO of Ignition. If your product launches are less than ideal, you should listen to what Derek has to say. Even if you're launches go well, there are great tips on how to optimization the success of your launches.
0:00-0:32 - Podcast intro
0:32-2:30 - Derek’s Intro
2:30-4:15 - Who is Ignition for?
4:15-4:40 - Where to find Ignition
4:40-8:40 - The PM/PMM Disconnect
8:40-10:23 - Aligning PM/PMM Teams
10:23-13:10 - Overlooked aspects of product launches
13:10-18:30 - Why Run Betas in B2B?
18:30-21:20 - How to price your new product?
21:20-24:00 - The future of software for PMs and PMMs
24:00-25:00 - Podcast Outro
If you want to connect with Derek, shoot him a request on LinkedIn
If you want to check out Ignition, go to their site
If you're looking to get into product management, get your hands dirty and gain real experience on Path2Product
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Many answers to the question of "why do you want to be a product manager" have some variation of "ideation." While ideation and solutioning are definitely part of product management, it's by far NOT the most important thing to get right.
If you're looking to get into product management, join us at Path2Product to streamline your path to product management
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Story time - your competitor launched a feature. They’re making a bunch of noise on all the social channels. An influencers Tie Tok of the new thing went viral. Your execs are screaming that you need to respond.
As the Product Manager, what do you do?
That's exactly the scenario we'll unpack on this week's lesson in product management.
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Andrew and I both had non-traditional paths into product management, and we've both experienced and seen how broken the talent acquisition process is for aspiring PMs. On this episode, you'll hear a passionate discussion of what problems we've noticed and some fun banter on how we'd fix the problem.
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On this episode of Lessons in Product Management, I sat down with Luke and Jakub from GetResponse as they shared their experiences launching products into new markets, what it takes to do it successfully, how to test into it, and how partnerships can be great and complicated at the same time.
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On today's episode, Eva Beasley shares her experience before and after getting into Product Management. One of the things she noticed about some of the PMs she interacted with was an anti-pattern that needed to be addressed, so we did so here.
If you're looking to get into Product Management, join us on Path2Product where we're bridging the gap in product management experience for aspiring PMs.
Episode Notes:
0:00-1:30 - Eva Beasley Intro
1:30-2:36 - Eva’s Role at UI Path
2:36-6:15 - Eva’s Path to Product
6:15-12:28 - Anti-Patterns of Good Product Management
12:28-15:00 - Finding Good Mentors and Help
15:00-18:10 - Leading Up and How Ego Hinders It
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Eric Perkins is the Director of Product at Entrata. And as Eric describes his career, it feels like he has a rocket attached to his back. In this discussion, Eric and I talk through how he got into product management, how he quickly rose into a leadership role, and what he's learned along the way.
Connect with Eric and follow him on Medium: https://medium.com/@ericsperkins
Join us at @Path 2 Product on Path2Productto accelerate your own path to product, mentor aspiring PMs, or find highly talented, Jr. Product Talent
0:00-1:35 - Episode Intro
1:35-9:43 - Eric’s Path to Product
9:43-12:52 - The tactics of transition
12:52-19:00 - Early Lessons Learned
19:00-21:30 - Helping empower product managers
21:30-25:00 - Advice To Senior PMs
25:00-27:15 - Advice to New PMs
27:15-29:15 - Eric’s Learning Resource Recommendations
29:15-29:46 - Connect with Eric
29:46-30:22 - Eric Outro
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On today's episode, I had the immense pleasure of speaking with Etienne Garbugli, Founder & CEO of Lean B2B and Author of Lean B2B, Solving Product, and Find Your Market.
Etienne is a brilliant product thinker and author with a varied and diverse background, all in and around product management. Etienne joined me to shed light on the Growth section of his book, Solving Product. He answered some of my questions, clarified my understanding, and dropped knowledge bombs the entire episode. Enjoy!
Connect with Etienne on LinkedIn
Grab His Books!
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On today's episode, we have JJ Rorie, CEO of Great Product Management and Author of 5 Immutable Truths of Great Product Management, and you're in for a treat! Don't miss out on this great episode as we dive deep into building high customer intelligence, the first Immutable Truth of Great Product Management
If you're looking to land your first job as a product manager, join us at Path2Product to streamline your path to product management
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On today's episode, we have Gopal Erinjippurath, Founder, CTO, and Head of Product at Sust Global. Gopal and I talked about:
- His product career
- The lifecycle of AI/ML
- Best use cases for Data Science and ML in products
- And how ML might impact your career in product management
Connect with Gopal on LinkedIn
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Nico joined the show to share his advice and experience on building strong product team relationships.
If you're looking to get into product management, you'll need experience. Start gaining tangible product manager experience today on your Path2Product
0:00-0:52 - Episode Intro
0:52-2:08 - Introducing Nico
2:08-4:20 - Defining Team Building
4:20-11:08 - Gaining Team Alignment
11:08-15:55 - Diversity of Thought
15:55-18:20 - Small Steps To Building Relationships
18:20-19:04 - Outro
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Making the transition into product management can be hard. Larry Imgrund shares how he did it, and he offers advice for anyone looking to get into Product or anyone who has recently made that transition.
If you're looking to get into product management, join us at Path2Product to start gaining the experience you need to land your first PM job: Path2Product
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Should users or customers drive your roadmap decisions? The answer is yes AND no. Like everything in product management, it depends... and Matt and I dive deep into the topic.
If you want to get into product management, join us at Path2Product to get the experience and visibility you need to land your first product job.
Check out UserVoice and start collecting more robust and actionable customer feedback today
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As you wrap up the last 30 days of your 30, 60, 90-day onboarding, it's time to start drafting strategy. In this episode I break down how to do that with a simple framework and how to shrink the timeline if you don't have 90 days to get it done in a new position.
Here's the episode with Randal Whitmore
Here's the link to the product strategy development course on YouTube
Join us on Path2Product if you're looking for the Product Management experience you need to land a PM job
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On this episode, we get "out of the building" to start learning about our customers and the markets we serve and want to serve. After understanding your business, objectives, and strategy, this is the next step before being ready enough to start mapping out a strategic direction for your team or organization.
If you're looking to get into product management, join us at Path2Product where you'll get the training and hands-on experience you need to streamline your path into product management.
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Getting back to the basics of product management, my goal in this multi-part series is to demystify product management for new and aspiring product managers.
If you're looking to break into product management, join us at Path2Product where you'll gain the experience you need to land your first product management job.
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On this cross-over episode, I joined JJ Rorie's Product Voices Podcast to share the last 5 chapters of my book, Never Assume - Ten Fatal Assumptions Great PMs Never Make
Be sure to subscribe to the Product Voices Podcast and follow JJ on Twitter at her handle above.
If you're looking to get into product management, come join us at Path2Product
If you're an experienced PM interested in helping provide feedback on the portfolio projects of aspiring PMs, please join us at Path2Product
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On this cross-over episode, I joined JJ Rorie's Product Voices Podcast to share the first 5 chapters of my book, Never Assume - Ten Fatal Assumptions Great PMs Never Make
Be sure to subscribe to the Product Voices Podcast and follow JJ on Twitter at her handle above.
If you're looking to get into product management, come join us at Path2Product
If you're an experienced PM interested in helping provide feedback on the portfolio projects of aspiring PMs, please join us at Path2Product
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So, today, I’m really excited for you to hear this conversation, because I have Irene Yu, Founder of Skiplevel, joining me to talk about how to become technical as a product manager. Irene was formally a developer at Amazon where she uncovered a pretty big problem that Skiplevel is helping to tackle.
Join Skip Level: Skiplevel Course
Follow Skip Level on Twitter: Skiplevel Twitter
Follow on LinkedIn Skiplevel LinkedIn
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On today's episode, we have the pleasure of learning from Tony Poon, Chief Product Officer at R-Zero. We tackle the difficult topic of ego, where it comes from, what the symptoms are, and what the effects of ego come to be.
To connect with Tony, request to connect on LinkedIn
If you're an aspiring PM, check out Path2Product to help you on your journey by building product management experience and a product portfolio to prove it
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- Great PMs are like sponges, they soak in info from anywhere
- We can’t assume we’re always right, we don’t have all information, and the info we have is not always perfect or correct
- We need allies - we can’t ship successful products on our own
However:
- We should have an opinion - we just don’t always have to express it in an argumentative fashion
- This doesn’t mean we say yes to everything - we can’t be order takers
- So, if we can’t say yes, then how do we say no… we don’t - the best way to not say yes is to ask questions
- Ask for clarification
- Ask for context
- Ask for data
It’s pointless to argue as a product manager. We have zero power, and we need allies across our company in order for our team’s work to be successful.
Next time you get tempted to argue, remember those six tips:
- Always accept and encourage feedback and counter-opinions
- Never assume you’re always correct - we rarely are
- You need allies, so don’t alienate them
- You should have an opinion but be tactful in expressing it
- Don’t say yes to everything
- But don’t say no to anything. Use questions to put the ball back in the court of the requestor
I hope these tips are helpful as you go about your week, and I’ll see you next week for another lesson in product management.
If you're looking to get into product management, love helping aspiring PMs, or looking for Jr. PM talent, come join the Path2Product Marketplace Beta:
Sign Up For Path2Product Beta
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You need experience to land a product job, but how do you get it? In this episode, I unpack two feasible ways of gaining and documenting tangible experience to help create your own path to product.
Check out our blog series on Path2Product:
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There is no easy path into product management, but there are 4 simple steps to get you there. We cover step 1 in today's lesson in product management, and it's all about learning first. Before you can do the job, you need to learn what the job entails and how to execute different skills within it. In today's episode, I share some free and inexpensive places to acquire the knowledge you'll need as a foundation for your path to product management.
Subscribe to the Path 2 Product YouTube Channel to see the video and get other exclusive content
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In this episode, I share 3 tactics for making better decisions in a group setting. Help your team and your organization take your decision-making capabilities to the next level. Your company and your customers will thank you.
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There's no shortage of debate as to whether individual or group ideation yields better results. We're not going to take sides. What we're going to do is explore how to make better decisions by generating better ideas, regardless of the setting you're in. In Part 1, we examine a few ways you can increase your decision success rate by generating better ideas.
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Most features never get adopted, and I'm betting these three tips will help shift your success ratio upward.
Be sure to rate and review the podcast!
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I get asked a lot about whether aspiring PMs need an MBA to land a Product Management job. The simple answer is no. But we dive into the nuance of why MBAs are valuable.
Here's the YouTube Video where we dive into how to go about hacking the MBA and some cost-effective MBA options
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Today’s Lesson in Product Management comes from Jonathon Hensley, Co-Founder and CEO of Emerge Interactive and Author of Alignment: Overcoming Internal Sabotage and Product Failure. When I first heard about Jonathon’s book, I ordered it immediately. Alignment is one of the hardest parts of my job as a product manager, and I’ve enjoyed putting his advice and frameworks into practice. In this conversation you’ll get to hear the origin story that drove Jonathon to write the book, how to build the foundations of alignment in your own company, and the pitfalls that you should be aware of as you do. And Be sure to grab the link to Jonathon’s book in the show notes before you close the podcast app.
Here's what we discussed:
1:18 Johnathon's Introduction
2:24 Origin story of Alignment
4:34 How Jonathon defines Alignment
6:45 The importance and definition of vision
8:35 How to build the foundation of alignment
11:05 Three themes of the book: Assumptions, Communication, and Strategy
13:24 The difference between reality and truth
17:30 The danger of the “fail fast fail often” mantra
19:57 The pillars of good strategy
25:08 Product Management hack to get unique customer insights
30:45 The four levels of alignment
32:00 Where alignment falls apart
38:30 The impact of written communication and documentation
43:00 Grab Jonathon’s book Alignment: Overcoming Internal Sabotage and Product Failure
Grab a copy of Alignment on Amazon
Connect with Jonathan and Emerge Interactive
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It’s funny how first releases have become synonymous with MVPs, but how many first releases have you seen that are able to stand on their own and sustain a business? In the early days it’s about testing and learning. You want Minimum TESTABLE Products
If you wait until you have something you think is a fully coded up MVP with what you believe to be the features that make the product minimally viable, you’re almost guaranteed to be wrong.
You can support the podcast for .99 a month by clicking the link below, and for exclusive video content, be sure to subscribe on our Path2Product YouTube Channel
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On today’s episode you’ll hear from Pranav Desai, Chief Product Officer at Reputation. We covered a ton of ground in the thirty minutes or so we talked, so don’t feel bad if you have to listen twice to take it all in. You’ll hear us talk about:
- Why one customer’s feedback isn’t the end all be all for decision making
- Why Product should own voice of the customer
- How to balance quantitative data with qualitative.
- How to distinguish between signals and noise
And so much more.
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There's an age-old debate about what's more important, a good product or great marketing? Brian Yam, Head of Marketing at Paragon, and I look to settle that debate. The answer might surprise you.
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You hear product people talk about feasibility, usability, and viability all the time as the three core variables product managers should care about. The typical definition of viability looks a lot like ROI, but today we challenge that narrow view of viability and expand the definition.
Follow us on the Path2Product YouTube Channelfor more content and access to the slides!
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OKRs are great, but they are NOT a replacement for strategy. To find the slides and subscribe, go to the Path2Product YouTube Channel
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On today's episode, we discuss the difference between doing strategic analysis and developing strategy. Too many people conflate and confuse the two things as one, but they are not.
If you want a deep dive into what product strategy development actually looks like, check out the free course on our YouTube Channel
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Welcome back to Lessons in Product Management. I’m your host, John Fontenot, and today we have a bit of a different episode, but it’s soooo relevant. With the pandemic, working from home, and Zoom fatigue, our jobs are hard enough but how do you know when it’s time to call it quits? John Garret, Product Manager at Therapixel, and I talk through all of this and more.
For free product management courses, join us on the Path 2 Product YouTube Channel!
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As we wrap up season 4 of Lessons in Product Management, we’re going to hear from Henry Latham, Founder and CEO of ProdMBA. Before starting ProdMBA, Henry served in UX and Product leadership roles for a variety of companies and has taken his experience and used it to produce a great book, “Product Leadership Starts With You,” as well as launch ProdMBA to fast track your career from PM to head of product. On this episode Henry and I break down product strategy and how it works in conjunction with product discovery. We’ve looked at product discovery from so many angels this season, and I’m excited to wrap it up with Henry and discuss one of my favorite topics, product strategy.
If you're an aspiring PM, join us at Path2Product for free product management resources, courses, and a chance to gain hands-on experience and build a portfolio project to help you get hired!
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Welcome back to Lessons in Product Management. it is November 22nd, 2021, and today we are chatting with Taylor Heyman, Product Manager at Lendio. Yes, we are co-workers, but I learned a lot about Taylor and his career in product that I didn’t know before this discussion. You see, Taylor’s PM career started in startups but how he get his start might surprise you.
Taylor’s shares his unique experience running discovery in startups and what he learned from those experiences and how to balance the need for discovery with the need to deliver value, while keeping in mind the law of unintended consequences.
For free product management resources and courses, exclusive content and AMAs, and a great community... join us at Path2Product
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On today’s episode, I sat down with Elena Leonova, VP of Product at BigCommerce. With a decade of product management experience, I really wanted to get Elena’s take on Product Discovery and how it’s perceived from a product leadership point of view
We discussed how Elena got into Product by accidentally taking a Business Analyst role. And after reading Marty Cagan and getting inspired, Elena decided she’d make a pivot from BA to PM. Now as a product leader, Elena works to create space for her PMs to focus on the important work of product discovery. We talked through what discovery is, why we should do it, and what gets in the way.
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On today’s episode we get to hear from Duy Pham, Product Manager at HREasily. We’ll hear about Duy’s really interesting path into product, how to create organizational alignment through discovery, and the 4 quadrants of discovery that need to be considered to get a holistic picture of your customer and the market at large.
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On today's episode, we get to learn from Austin Yang, Sr. PM at Landbot. Austin shared his journey from SDR to Sr. PM, his perspective on discovery, and the differences he's seen in Discovery between being a Core PM vs a Growth PM.
Join our Product Management community at Path2Product where you get access to free resources, courses, and exclusive content and AMAs. If you're an Aspiring PM, the courses will give you the hands on experience you need to land your first PM role.
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On today's episode, we get to hear from Jaudat Ali. Jaudat started as a startup founder before turning to PM, and now he works at Toggl Track as a Product Manager
One of my favorite quotes from this conversation is: “You can’t understand customer problems unless you talk to them.”
And we talk a little bit about how to get product management experience before you have the job.
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Jon shared a ton of great insights about discovery. Here are just a few of the points covered in this episode:
- The core skill to develop for discovery
- Using discovery to identify and enter new markets
- Balancing customer discovery w/ market discovery
- Build for markets, not for customers
- You’re not following the scientific method if you start with a hypothesis. You have to start with an observation. Hypotheses are only legit if they’re driven from an observation
- You can’t be emotionally attached to ideas. Invalidating hypotheses early is just as valuable as building good ideas
- Why “using data” is such a convoluted term
- Just because you found a pattern in data, it doesn’t mean you know why it exists or what to do about it
- You can’t have an ego as a PM, and you can’t take ego into discovery and expect to be successful
- How to successfully involve developers in the discovery process
If you're looking for free Product Management resources or have aspirations of becoming a Product Manager, join our free community and sign up for one of our free courses at Path2Product
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On today's episode, Courtney shares how she got into Product and how her love for discovery started in her career before she got into Product. We talked a lot about diverse inputs, and we talked about what good discovery is NOT. Enjoy!
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I would argue that Discovery is the MOST important part of product management, so I'm devoting a whole season to it. Let's go!
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How often do I need to remind stakeholders about the product strategy? Can my product strategy be changed or tweaked based on market and customers needs? These are great questions I was asked recently in the Path2Product Community after one of our members finished the Product Strategy Development Courseso I figured I'd share my answer with the entire Lessons in Product Management audience.
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Starting fast in your career or at a new company require you to know where to start. Join me in this episode to learn best practices on how to approach your first 30, 60, and 90 days as a PM at a new company.
For free courses on Product Management, and the Product Strategy Development course I mentioned in the episode, join us at Path2Product for free!
You can also find more content on our Path2Product YouTube Channel
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Most Product Managers hate constraints. In this episode of Lessons in Product Management, I break down why that is and why that mentality is wrong.
We also walk through some of the most commonly addressed constraints and the ones we probably don't spend enough time thinking through.
Let's all step up our game as PMs as we walk through this weighty topic!
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Check out Moshe's book: The Resurrector
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Grab a copy of Product Sense on Amazon
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To craft better solutions to customer problems, we have to precisely define the problems first. We discuss how to do this and why you need to tie the problems you choose to solve to the business objective you need to achieve.
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You don't manage stakeholders, but you NEED to management information and expectations. Period.
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Is the dev team confused about the PRD you just handed them? Is what gets built different than what you intended? Either way... it's YOUR fault. It's our responsibility to ensure what we intend to communicate is received as intended. In this episode, I talk through some of the reasons why developers don't interpret requirements as you intended and what you can do about it.
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After the last two Monday episodes, I saw a gap in the discussion on "Testing in Production." This episode should close the loop by giving another view into productive ways to ship and test in a production environment.
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Shipping to production without validating that you're solving the right problem, or that your solution might solve it, creates a ton of risk in your launches. We don't want to test in production when our launches are littered with assumptions, but there are meaningful and useful ways to test assumptions and gain additional validation and insights from testing in production. Be sure to subscribe, and leave us a rating and review on iTunes Check out the YouTube channel and subscribe there as well for exclusive video content You can support the podcast by donating as little as .99 a month
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If you're in the habit of simply prioritizing problems, coming up with solutions, and shipping those features, then you're missing a huge part of your job and putting your launches at greater risk of failure. Testing for desirability is key and knowing when to do it is vital!
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Deepti and I chat through our paths to product and how there's not one singular path to breaking into the field and how varied the role of product management can be.
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Ever feel like your roadmap prioritization keeps getting upended due to feedback from customers and stakeholders? Don't let it.
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This is the announcement of Season 3 of Lessons in Product Management!
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This episode is an excerpt from the Product Strategy Development course I built and published inside of the Path2Product platform. Enjoy!
Download the Product Strategy Template
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To stay updated and see early drafts of the upcoming book, join us at Path2Product!
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On today's episode, I welcome the one and only Bob Moesta to share how we can effectively align our organizations around the progress our customers are trying to make, that job to be done they hire our products for. Bob is a long-time builder and is famous for the work he did with Clay Christensen in building the jobs-to-be-done framework and today Bob is the President and CEO of the ReWired Group, Adjunct Lecturer in the Executive MBA program as Northwestern's Kellog School of Business, Research Fellow at Clayton Christensen Institute, and author of many wonderful books, some of which we'll talk about today.
Here's what we discussed:
- Bob has a long history in Product Development with innovation, engineering, and product management
- He worked with Clay Christensen on the Jobs-to-be-Done framework and was one of the earliest of JTBD pioneers
- Bob's newest book on Demand-Side Sales
- In September, Bob will be launching his newest book, Learn To Build, shedding light on his learnings over the years to give you a solid foundation as a fellow builder
- The pretty sweet setup that is Bob's office and his mentor wall
- How JTBD really comes from the idea that we're all trying to make progress and we hire products or services to help us make that progress
- Why context is so important. The who, where, when, and why is what frames a job
- Product Marketing and Positioning really revolves around the job or the context for the consumer
- How pricing comes down to positioning, which is informed by the job, so at the end of the day, pricing is informed by a customer's job to be done
- The danger of competitive analysis and poor pricing strategy and how it can create feature creep
- Bob's take on the sales funnel and why he flipped it upside down in his new book
- Why the debate between Sales-Led vs Product-Led really comes down how well you can educate the customer and whether that can be done in the product well-enough or not
- How the struggling moment changes at each stage of the funnel. Understanding what those stuggling moments are is key to addressing them
- The #1 way to align an org around jobs is to never mention jobs. Focus on the customer and the progress they're trying to make
- Defining the input and the output, because they make a difference! Knowing what you have to cause or what you can screen for is crucial!
- A fantastic way to create trust! And why you HAVE to empower your team, with known constraints, so they can create trust
- How to leverage the frame of "what progress they're trying to make" is the #1 way to align an organization around their goals and the progress the customer is trying to make
- Why you need to practice empathetic delivery
- The difference between a dictionary problem and a thesaurus problem
Bob is just an amazing, humble, human who is just looking to help people and has benefited from his generosity. I'm super grateful he joined the pod to share! Be sure to check out his latest and connect with him below!
Get Bob's book: Demand-side Sales 101
Watch out for "Learning to Build" coming this Fall!
Follow Bob or Connect on LinkedIn
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Here's what we discussed:
- Lance is a PM at Vitruvi in B2B SaaS focused on the Construction Market
- If you're not following through on success, you've really lost sight on why you build product to begin with
- The problem with trying to call something successful if you didn't establish a baseline
- Why it's still problematic, even when you grossly overachieve on your target
- How the key to following up and following through on launches comes down to learning
- The #1 method of avoiding the discomfort of not having answers when Leadership asks why you failed
- The role leadership plays in creating a culture of follow through
- Switching from celebrating failure to celebrating learning
- How there's not one specific tool to determining which metrics to track, but it's situation-specific
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Here's what we discussed:
- Rich's journey from Product Management at places like Disney, Johnson&Johnson, and startups to running his own Private Equity firm
- The value of communication skills and how leadership requires the ability to learn different languages. Not Spanish or French, but Finance, Marketing, etc.
- How Product demoing skills helps sell ideas to investors or Boards of Directors
- Why it's important to embrace failure and learning when taking educated risks
- Whether you're a PM or making investment decisions for VCs or Private Equity, you're still making bets with other people's money
- The methodology of testing, experimentation, and MVPs applies to any scenario where you're contemplating bigger investments
- Rich's approach to starting new jobs, especially in new industries and how to take your learnings and document them for continuity
- How leading through influence is an incredibly important skill in Acquisitions as well
- Why PMs are the future of Acquisition's specialists for Private Equity and why you should consider it
- The path to becoming a CEO can come more quickly through Acquisitions in a Private Equity firm
- My take on why Government officials should be required to have training as a PM
- Rich's definition of leadership and how leading by example, through competence and experience, makes a leader effective
Join A Product Fit for Mentorship
Connect With Rich on LinkedIn
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If you're an aspiring PM, be sure to sign up for Path2Productto get the hands-on experience you need to land your first PM role
Also, be sure to grab a copy of Ajit's book, "Price to Scale" at Amazon: Price to Scale Book
Here's what we discussed:
Ajit's role with Narvar and his tenure in Silicon Valley, mostly in the CX space, all in SaaS
At the end of the day, pricing really comes down to positioning
The practice of mapping use cases to features to inform product packaging
How Jobs-to-be-Done plays into pricing
Why you should almost NEVER use competitive-based pricing
The number of internal variables to consider and how company strategy plays a role as the anchor to your pricing strategy
Ajit's mentor and thought leader on Pricing
How practical Ajit's book is with a step by step guide to pricing
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Join us for the live podcast and AMA sessions at path2product.io
On today's episode, I had the pleasure of having Jorge Rodriguez Ramos, Head of Product at Femtasy, on the pod. We had a great chat about the characteristics of what makes a product great. This conversation stemmed from a fantastic article he wrote on the Mind the Product blog back in May of 2020, and I reached out to see if Jorge would be willing to connect and go deeper.
Here's what we discussed:
- Jorge took his love for art into Graphic Design which led to UX and from UX to PM
- His quick rise in the ranks of Product Management and his diverse experience across B2B and B2C
- Now Jorge serves as Head of Product at Femtasy
- Our thoughts on the future of which roles find themselves transitioning into Product
- The value of understanding the various skillsets of holistic product teams, even if you lean more toward one (business, technology, customer)
- Nuances between B2B and B2C Product Management and how your business market creates even more nuance in B2B
- The interview question that stumped Jorge, why, and what he did about it
- And a deep dive into Jorge's framework of what makes a great product
Article: "What Makes A Great Product"
Jorge's Mind The Product Profile
Jorge's LinkedIn
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Grab your copy of the Career Clarity Cards from Groove to step up your career conversations game
On today's episode, we decided to switch it up a bit. With the rise in popularity of platforms like Clubhouse and the popularity of AMA (ask me anything) sessions, I decided to start periodically running live podcast episodes with audience involvement. This was the first one, and I call these AMAA sessions (ask me almost) sessions, because we're going to focus on a particular topic. If you want to get involved in the live sessions, head over to Path2Product.io and sign up for free to join the community. But unlike Clubhouse, these are recorded and will be shared on this podcast and the Path2Product youtube channel. Let's jump into the conversation I had with Ryan Seamons, Founder at Groove who formerly worked at Degreed as Director of Product and was one of the first PMs at LinkedIn to work on what we now know as LinkedIn Learning.
Here's what we discussed:
- Ryan's path to Founding Groove and how his stops at LinkedIn, Degreed, and consulting led him there
- The three categories of conversations you should be having with your team
- How to lead up if your manager isn't having these conversations with you
- A fresh new take on the informal 360 review and leveraging that feedback to reflect and improve
- Why these conversations help facilitate cross-functional collaboration and alignment
- Advice on how to get PM experience that resonates with hiring managers, even before you formally get the job
- Ryan's book recommendation, "never split the difference" and the key question of "how can I make this work?"
- The three types of Product culture and what the work/life balance looks like at each
- How important a cover letter is, what it is, and the modern version of it
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If you're trying to break into Product Management, sign up for the April Cohort of Jae Taylor's PM Career Accelerator today!
On today's episode, I got to chat with Felix Watson Jr., Product Manager at Microsoft. With Microsoft's products being used by so many companies, I was curious to hear how Felix approached validating solutions at Scale, and he was kind enough to join the pod to discuss. And as an added bonus, Felix shared some killer advice for engineers looking to transition into Product as well as how Product Managers can work more effectively with their engineering counterparts.
Here's what we discussed:
- Felix started his career in computer engineering
- 5 years into his engineering career, Felix discovered Product Management
- The use case that sparked Felix's fire for Product and his desire to transition
- The path Felix took to make that leap from Engineer to Product
- Felix's first role as a PM for Microsoft with the Dynamics 365 product
- Now Felix works on the Azure team, supporting the support engineers with internal and customer-facing tools
- Felix's advice for transitioning into Product and how you don't necessarily need side projects to prove your abilities
- The ultimate example of leading by influence
- How important it is for engineers to understand the customer and the use cases (the "why") behind what you're working on
- The best insights come from qualitative research, which doesn't scale, but you can use quant data to validate the scale of the qual insight
- How Felix systematically leverages customers to ensure they're solving the right problem in the right way
- Why Felix didn't focus on industry-specific solutions rather on a horizontal solution to meet the scale and variety of customers Microsoft serves
- The risks of trying to validate solutions at scale
- What Felix would have done differently in validating qual insights with quant data
- How important it is to define success metrics upfront to know whether your effort was a success or failure
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As we celebrate International Women's Day today, I'm super excited to have a woman on the podcast who is making waves in the world of Customer Success. On this episode of Lessons in Product Management, I have Bhavika Kochhar, a Customer Success Manager at Algonomy and she has been in similar roles for the last 5 years. She also a founder at IncustomerSuccess, CSLadies, the Bhavika&Lotte CS Chat Show and has many other initiatives in the works in her continued dedication to the field of Customer Success. And today, we're going to discuss how impactful it can be when CS Managers and Product Managers collaborate well together
Here's what we discussed:
- The role of Customer Success
- How that role intersects with Product Management
- And how the Customer Success org can be a gold-mine of insights for the Product Team
- The benefit of a technical background in Customer Success and how PMs can help CS team develop those technical competencies
- Why Customer Success is an organizational job, not just the CSMs job
Connect with Bhavika on LinkedIn
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Don't forget to join the MentorMesh community for free and if you're looking to get into Product Management, sign up for the MentorMesh PM Career Accelerator!
On today's episode, I sat down with Phyllis Njoroge, Product Manager at Redfin and imposter syndrome connoisseur. Phyllis drops some great wisdom on what imposter syndrome is, where it comes from, the #1 way to combat it and how important it is to create a culture where imposter system can't exist much less thrive.
Here's what we discussed:
- The definition of imposter syndrome and self-doubt
- How imposter syndrome pops up when you find yourself in a new setting
- Where imposter syndrome comes from and how a growth mindset is the #1 way to fight it
- Why growth mindset needs to be applied universally and what that means
- How sometimes PM skills runs counter to how you personally live and who you inherently are
- The most qualified people aren't always the one who has to make the decision
- Your manager should be your ally and coach. Find a good one and get out of toxic environments if you're in one
- There is no failure in learning
- Why it's better to ask stupid questions than make stupid mistakes
- How to create the kind of culture where imposter syndrome doesn't exist
- Phyllis's top professional growth methods:
- The power of reflection upon your own experiences for learning
- Consuming great content from places like Audible or podcasts
- Produce your own content from your reflections
- Network with others who have gone before you
Connect with Phyllis on LinkedIn and if you're on Clubhouse, you'll probably see/hear her there too!
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Be sure to join the free community at MentorMesh.io and check out the PM Career Accelerator from MentorMesh.
On this episode, I dive into the topic of stakeholder empathy. Assuming stakeholder priorities is the antithesis to empathy. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to start building trust with stakeholders and creating alignment for your organization as a PM.
In this conversation I cover:
- Internal Stakeholders - the Product Team
- Internal Stakeholders - your Cross-Functional Partners
- External Stakeholders - your customers or users
And I give a few questions to be asking to each group to start generating empathy and aligning your efforts as a PM. Enjoy!
If you want to become a member of Path2Product.io, it's free to sign up. Just click the link and come on in!
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Don't forget to check out mentormesh.io and check out the PM Career Accelerator if you're looking to break into Product!
Here's what we discussed:
- How Jae started in Tech without a degree or connections and transitioned from engineering manager to Sr. PM at Microsoft to launch his PM career
- Why Jae started the MentorMesh.io platform and the goal of the community
- What an entrepreneurial mindset is and why it’s so important to PMs
- The need to start building something now and how impactful that is to landing your first PM role
- To get started as a PM before you become one, go find a problem and fix it
- How building an MVP doesn’t always require code
- The importance to always pursue growth. Always!
- Why the MentorMesh accelerator program is so powerful
- The importance of community
- And the power of curiosity and asking really good questions
Connect with Jae:
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Accelerate your path to product by joining us at Path2Product to get the hands-on experience you need to land your first Product job.
On this episode, I break down why you should never assume development effort. Save yourself some headache and heartache. Save your developers some stress. And save your cross-functional partners the disappointment.
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On today's episode, Zach Daley joins us again to share insights on the opportunities he sees for Product and UX to collaborate more effectively.
Here's what we discussed:
- Zach's role as a design lead and how it's structured like a "player-coach" type of role
- The overlap and collaborative nature of the UX and PM relationship
- And the differences between UX and PM and who "owns" which pieces
- Why UX and PM might share user research but why UX MUST lead it
- How UX should own and have the biggest stake in the overall User Experience
- The tricky balance between deadlines and the time it takes to validate good UX
- Why the agent/principle problem between product teams and executives/boards can create tensions
- How PMs can help their UX counterparts
- The need for PMs to have understanding of the UX practice and goals
- And why UX should care about business goals
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MentorMesh PM Career Accelerator - Join Today!
Okay, I know this might sound controversial, but hey... our jobs as PMs are not to be order-takers. Our jobs are to prioritize customer problems that align to driving business outcomes. If our executives press us to prioritize things that would limit our ability to do those two things, then we should push back. Enjoy the episode as I relate this topic to the first three and how to help prevent top-down dictates in your PM role.
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Identifying gaps in the market and building solutions to fill those gaps to solve customer problems is a key part of product management. On today's episode, Heather James, Founder of the Product-Led Alliance, dropped by the pod to share how and why she Founded the Product-Led Alliance, the gap she saw in the market, and how she and the PLA team are filling those gaps.
Here's what we discussed:
- The launch of PLA's new podcast, "For the Love of Product"
- What you'll get by joining the Product-Led Alliance community
- The gap in the market that PLA is setting out to fill
- How Heather views PLG, and how it's broader than traditional SaaS businesses
- Why it's important to PM your career with a roadmap for growth
- The stages/themes of the Product-Led Festival
- Diversity and why it's so critical for creating great products
- How Heather came to decide on a conference for Product Ops and how curiosity was the driver behind it
Connect with PLA:
Heather on LinkedIn
Product-Led Alliance
PLA Slack
Product-Led Festival
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On part 1 of "Never Assume Competitors Are Correct", I'll discuss the pitfalls of copying competitors and why it's never a good idea.
If you're looking to get into Product Management, be sure to check us out at path2product.io where you'll have the opportunity to gain the hands-on experience you need to break into your first role as a Product Manager
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Sign up today for the INDUSTRY conference and get 20% off using promo code: path2product20
The Industry Conference - Sign Up Here
On today's episode, I got to sit down with Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of Product Collective and Co-Organizer of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, and co-host of the Rocketship.fm podcast!
Here's what we discussed:
- Mike has been involved with early-stage startups since 2005
- Right now, Mike is the Co-Founder of Product Collective and the INDUSTRY conference
- Mike is the co-host of Rocketship.fm podcast. Check it out!
- And he also teaches as an Adjunct Professor
- What Jobs Theory is and Jobs-to-be-Done
- Why customers don't buy our products, they're hiring our products to solve a problem
- The influence of one of the inventors of Jobs-to-be-Done, Bob Moesta
- Baby steps you can take in your jobs-to-be-done journey
- The pushes and pulls of the "struggling moment"
- How anxiety and inertia plays a big role in hiring your product for their job
- Why Empathy drives the Jobs-to-be-done framework
Check our the resource Mike mentioned below:
The Wired Group for JTBD Training and Resources
Shape Up Book by Basecamp (free digitally or paperback option)
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As we continue the "Never Assume" bonus series, we're going to focus this week's episode on feature requests and why we should never assume the solutions customers propose are the right ones.
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You've heard it said that Product Managers and Companies as a whole should be data-driven, but did you know that too much data isn't a good thing? It's like a good wine. The right amount leads to a good time, but having too much can leave you drunk and hungover. On today's episode, Emily Reid, Product Manager at AgeRate comes on the pod to share the difference between being data-driven and data-drunk and how the difference will impact your business.
Here's what we discussed:
- Emily's role as a PM at AgeRate
- The evolution of where AgeRate is at and where they're looking to go
- Why the things that tick us off as PMs can be the best sources of innovation
- How the biggest problem with data is lack of data literacy inside of orgs
- The problems with over-tracking data
- Why data cleanup is necessary over time as old data becomes irrelevant
- Data only matters if it's relevant
- Why starting with why is critical when deciding what data to track
- How to leverage data to level up your career
- How to lead up in your company and democratize data literacy
- Get scrappy in your learning and dabble with tools that offer free trials
- The power of staying curious and continually learning
Emily's Medium
Brain Station Courses
Naked Statistics Book
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On the first episode of the Never Assume series, I break down why you should never assume you're correct. It's not our job to come up with ideas. It's our job to prioritize what we work on based on how it's going to reach our business objectives, and we'll never know we're on the right track unless we validate our assumptions and hypotheses!
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You always hear that Product Management requires leadership through influence, but have you ever considered being asked to influence the processes of other departments or the tools each department might use to get their jobs done? Well, on today's episode we get to hear from Tunde Oke, Product Manager of Developer Enablement & DevOps Experience @ Dell. Before working on Developer Enablement, Tunde was brought into Dell to lead and product manage a company-wide digital transformation And he came on the pod to share that experience with us.
Here's what we discussed:
- Tunde's role with Dell and what brought him from IBM to Dell
- How and why he founded Product Academy Africa to help mature the product discipline on the continent of Africa
- Tunde defined what Product Management means to him
- The mission behind Product Academy Africa and what drives Tunde as a person and a professional
- How Tunde transitioned from IBM to Dell to take on the task of digitally transforming the Product org
- Why digital transformation isn't just a technical challenge but an organizational one
- Strategy isn't one-size-fits-all and requires a clear understanding of your situation and challenge
- The middle status conformity effect and how change threatens existing competencies
- There needs to be a one-team mindset with a single company objective to align around
- How you prioritize objectives when going through major change or transformation
- The role of the evangelist in transformation
- Why you should think outside of money when thinking about incentivizing change
Connect with Tunde:
Connect with Product Academy Africa:
Product Academy Africa
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Huge shout out to this episode's sponsor, Jacobs Creative Services. Check them out at:
Jacobs Creative Services
On today's episode, I sat down with Abby Hehemann, Sr. Product Marketing Manager @ GetResponse where we explored what the ideal partnership looks like between Product Marketing and Product Management.
Here's what we discussed:
- How Abby got into Product Marketing, pivoting from Customer Success within her company
- The great culture of professional development and growth at GetResponse
- Abby sees the PMM (Product Marketing) role as being a "dot connector" within the org
- Pirate metrics and why you should care... AARRR!
- Where gaps can arise between product development to marketing and selling it
- The ideal working relationship between PMM and PM - this was GREAT! Huge take-away for me!
- Why building relationships is the cornerstone of quality collaboration
- How early the Product Marketing team SHOULD be involved in Product Development
- What GetReponse does to decide Go and No-Go decision for product prioritization
- If you can't market it, should you build it?
- How GetResponse optimizes their team structure by specializing on channels versus parts of the product
- If you're new to working with PMMs, how to get started in the most productive way
Connect with Abby:
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Here's what we discussed:
- What Difrent does as an organization
- Randal's role as Head of Growth
- Where Randal started his career and how he transitioned into Product Management
- How Difrent helped to quell the COVID storm in the UK
- The massive challenge that Randal was given to solve and the 7-day window he had to do it
- How the team approached the challenge and the massive team it took to tackle this hairy problem
- The process of developing and validating the MVP
- Why you'll likely always have to make some assumptions and why it's important to call those out and document them
- How the Design Sprint process was utilized brilliantly to tackle this challenge
- The initial launch of the product and how it scaled so quickly to all of the UK
- Support mechanisms Randal and his team put into place and the MVP process around the support infrastructure
- The culture and buy-in around the entire effort
- How crisis can help break down barriers that would typically be in place
- The personal driver behind Randal's passion in leading this product development effort
- How true user empathy leads to amazing outcomes
- The risks that Difrent identified early on and how they combined qual and quant data to validate the scale of the risk
- Why communication is such a vital skill for Product Managers
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Whether you're thinking about your target market or your target persona and their problem(s), coming to a precise definition of what problem you're trying to solve and who has that problem is absolutely key for developing concrete, valuable solutions.
That's what Aazar and I talk about on this episode, but here's some of the other things we discussed:
- How Aazar got started in his career and how he got started in startups in Germany
- His current role in UserPilot as Head of Growth
- The environmental shifts that opened a big opportunity for Aazar and the founding team of eComply
- Why it costs valuable time when starting with technology or opportunity versus a clearly defined problem
- How potential customers can overvalue what they currently have
- The best solutions are the ones where you remove tasks people don't want to do
- Why basing a business on a political/legal opportunity can kill you if the laws aren't enforced
- How to pivot when you face hurdles
- Finding Product-Market-Fit
- How sometimes it matters more about which market is ready for your solution versus which market you think you can serve better
Connect with Aazar:
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Here's what we discussed:
- The big problems in the employee experience that Anthony found first-hand
- How Anthony validated the scale of the problem across businesses
- The behavioral driver creating this problem and how that was the key challenge to overcome
- Why cultural issues are driven by old-school mindsets of HR and how those sands are shifting
- The data driving the value behind the E1B2 Collective
- How moving upstream to the root of the problem is how to maximize impact to change
- And key takeaways for how to manage organizational change
Connect with Anthony:
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Here's what we discussed:
- Randy shared what he does as an Agile coach, and how he's different from others
- The problem with falling in love with solutions rather than the problem
- Some of the forces that work against organizational agility
- How to shift from a silo'd organization to a collaborative product-led company
- Why the whole organization needs to be involved in product development to stay agile
- How to prioritize feature requests or potential problems to solve
- Why it's important to anchor what you do to your vision, mission, and goals
Check out the book recommendations from Randy!
Product Roadmaps Relaunched
Story mapping by Jeff Patton
Connect with Randy:
randy@signatureagile.com
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On today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Kayla Lee. Kayla is currently a Growth PM at IBM working in IBM's Quantum group and we had a great discussion on how IBM approaches go to market with cutting edge technologies like quantum computing and how reducing the barriers to entry is one of the most critical aspects of scaling adoption.
Here's what we discussed:
- Kayla's role with IBM and how she's helping to grow IBM's Quantum business through community building and partnerships
- Kayla dispells the myths of Quantum computing and why early entrants in the market are poised to dominate
- First movers won't always have the advantage when it comes to new tech. It's all about outcomes and the outcomes you can deliver
- With new products, but especially new technologies, barriers to adoption have to be super low to be successful
- Use cases should be developed and understood going into bringing new products to market, based on new tech. It's about outcomes!
- Part of democratizing Quantum is democratizing learning around it and making it easily understandable as an entry point
- A freemium model might be another great way to lower that barrier to entry and get people using new technologies
- Words can be scary, especially if they seem too new or out of reach, so being careful of the words you use is important as well to adoption
- Finding the right abstraction level and being able to meet people where they are
- To meet people where they are, you need to deeply understand user journeys
- How to get started in Quantum, whether you're interested in the deep tech of it or the product side of it
- The power of mentorship in your early days as a PM and as you grow in your Product career
Check out the book Kayla recommended:
Lean Startup - Eric Reis
If you want to learn more about IBM and Quantum:
Quantum Educators Program
Quantum Computing Course
IBM Quantum Experience system access
Qiskit Software Development Kit
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On today's episode, I spoke with Thane Ringler, speaker, author, podcast host, and development coach. Thane is a good friend, but this conversation isn't going to be your typical product management discussion. Thane doesn't have a PM background, but what he's about to share absolutely applies to you as a product manager. If product launches fail, it's on us and we MUST take ownership of the success or failure of our products. And we exist to make the lives of our customers and users better, so we should never settle for "okay" or "good enough".
Here's what we discussed:
- Thane's mission to help people live better and work more effectively through developing the mindset of a professional athlete
- Thane's life journey into marriage, moving, and building a family
- My thoughts on how sports helped shape my view of growth, leadership, and taking ownership
- Thane's definition of taking ownership
- Why failing isn't failing if you have a growth mindset
- How reflecting on our mistakes for how to not make them again is a muscle that must be exercised to see growth
- Finding someone to blame is easy. Owning outcomes is what leaders do.
- We HAVE to be able to lead ourselves well before we could ever lead others well
- How fragile culture can be and why you must fight to maintain a healthy culture
- The principle of "leading up" when you don't have a position of authority
- Even when things aren't our fault, there's always something we can do to improve the situation or could have done
- The difference between ownership and control and there are only two things we can truly control
- Why we can't define our identity by what we do
- How we don't have to be recognized to sleep well at night
- We don't have to take ownership for other people's actions
- Why leading out of love might sound soft but it's incredibly powerful
- What never settling looks like in a product sphere
- Why never settling and never stopping are two different things
- Why discipline equals freedom
Check out Thane's books and courses:
Book
Website
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On today's episode, I got to speak with Peter Knudson, Manager of Product Management at Unity. Before Unity, Peter was a PM at both Zynga and Activision, pretty much spending his entire career as a Product Manager. Peter shares his product career journey and some great lessons he's learned along the way.
Here's what we discussed:
- Peter's background and how he pretty much started his career in Product with Zynga
- Peter describes himself as a Gaming PM
- How Peter got involved in the Gamining industry as he interned for a wildly popular card game creator
- Why "growing up" as a PM at Zynga was such a catalyst to Peter's career
- How Unity is the company that helps other game companies create games
- The growth partnership between Facebook and Zynga
- How product goals and user experience can come into conflict
- Why the gaming industry is a lot like investing where you have to build a portfolio to get a couple of big winners
- How understanding your market is key to success and the importance of talking to customers, even in B2C settings
- The importance of soft launches to your brand
- How product management differs greatly from company to company
- The importance of data analysis in product
- Why the fundamentals are key regardless of the company, but exploring focuses as a PM is super important for your career
- How PMs can make the same mistakes as entreprenuers in not validating solution fit when trying to solve customer problems
- A common interview question Jr. PMs get
Adam Nash's Blog: 3 buckets of feature categorization
Ken Norton Blog
Andrew Chen Growth Blog
Hooked by Nir Eyal
Inspired by Marty Cagan
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On today's episode, I sat down with Preethi Sekar, Product Manager at L&T Technology Servies. On this episode Preethi shares the dangers of taking product requirements from internal stakeholders and not including users in the research and feedback to determine what those product requirements should be. Preethi's story highlights how industry experience does not guarantee you understand your customer.
Here's what we talked about:
- Preethi has a diverse 7 years of B2B and B2C product management, and today she's working in aerospace
- Before aerospace, Preethi was working in the automotive industry, where she learned great lessons about managing stakeholder feedback
- How Preethi was handcuffed by her executive stakeholders by not being allowed to work directly with the customer
- When the product launched to market, it was a failure, and it turned out that the stakeholders didn't fully understand the problem they were trying to solve
- Due to the failure, more than half the team was let go, but fortunately, Preethi survived and was tasked with fixing the problem
- The team scrapped the initial product and started from scratch
- One of the biggest stakeholder problems was how misaligned they all were
- Preethi put her foot down saying that every meeting with her stakeholders had to include all four stakeholders to ensure alignment
- Secondly, Preethi demanded to speak with users so they could understand, truly, where they failed the first time
- Preethi mobilized a feedback engine through emails, phone calls, and surveys to get a better understanding of the problem and the context of the customer
- The stakeholders didn't want to give up the power of determining requirements, but they eventually relented, knowing they didn't truly understand how to solve the problem
- After talking to the users, Preethi really understood the problem and where they missed the first time
- The re-release of the product was a success, and Preethi saw user engagement skyrocket after the new product launched
- Preethi ended the conversation by saying how talking to users is a must and user feedback should trump stakeholder feedback, even though stakeholder feedback is still valuable
Join us on one of the most active Facebook groups out there:
PM Facebook Group
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On today's episode, I sat down with Liyana Sulaiman, serial entrepreneur and Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder at Pollen. Pollen helps amplify brands by helping them convert social followers into a seller community. I love Liyana's story of how micro-failures can lead you through the necessary iterations to validate the market opportunity, your business model, and product market-fit. Liyana is super smart, thoughtful, and intentional in her work, and I'm excited for you to hear what she had to say. Here's what we discussed:
How Pollen is all about democratizing opportunity for citizens of Southeast Asia to earn extra income The origin story of Pollen and why Liyana and her best-friend co-founder started it Pollen went through several rounds of iterations, trying to validate various hypotheses for the business model How Liyana and Pollen went about validating how Pollen could create and capture value from both sides of the market Why solving one problem is often not enough and how quickly the scope of the problems you need to solve can grow How Liyana and her co-founder navigated the complex situations they found themselves in to identify where and when they needed to pivot Questions you need to ask yourself as a PM or a startup founder Why defining the problem space well helps you identify the right opportunity The process Liyana recommends when you're building something from scratch How the cornerstone of product success is identifying your actual customer and the right problems to solve for them Why you should even challenge your mission and vision early on to make sure you're pursuing the right thing, in the right context Where Pollen is at today and how they're now well-positioned for rapid growth
Here are the books Liyana Recommended: Lean Product Playbook - Dan Olsen My Product Management Toolkit - Marc Abraham
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On today's episode, I sat down with Evan Groom, Product Manager at Audio Technica. Throughout this series on why products fail, we've looked through the lens of startup founders and their experiences. Today, Evan shares lessons he's learned in a global company and industry leader. We talk about what pitfalls you might run into in well-established organizations that could inhibit the success of your product launches or kill them altogether. Excited for you to hear what Evan has to say, so let's get started.
Here's what we discussed:
- Audio Technica was a great fit for Evan's educational background as an Audio Engineer
- How Evan worked his way from packing and shipping to support and then into Product and has been a PM for 4 years now
- Why it's beneficial to have relationships with members of other departments as a PM and how his multiple roles with AT helped in his transition to Product
- What AT (Audio Technica) looks like from an organizational level, starting with how HQ is based in Japan
- How being a global company forces perspective changes due to the organic diversity
- There is software involved in AT products, but AT is primarily a hardware company
- Why we can never assume we perfectly know the market or the customer when making product decisions
- The combination of customer insight and data are key in making product decision
- How tools like Qualtrics can help gather quant data to aid in decision making
- Why data isn't the end all be all and data is only as the questions you ask and how well the data you're tracking aligns with the questions you're trying to have answered
- The importance of being scrappy as a PM to gather the right data
- How complex product documentation (PRDs) can inhibit the success of your products
- Any documentation needs to be a living and breathing thing versus something that never changes after the initial draft in "idea" phase
- Why you need to be willing to "burn the ships"
- How important mentorship is for new and aspiring PMs.
Check out AIPMM: AIPMM
Connect with Evan: Evan's LinkedIn
Connect with me: LinkedIn Email
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On today's episode, I sat down with Vytenis Pakenas, CEO of Lucid Agreements. His 15-year journey from multi-time startup founder to CEO is pretty amazing. Today, Vytenis stopped by the podcast to share some key learnings from his JobRely startup experience. From business model fit to finding the right value metrics to track, there's so much to take away from this conversation, so let's get started.
Here's what we discussed:
- How Lucid Agreements is helping to arrange meeting notes verbally, capture action
- items and assign tasks in tools like Jira and Asana
- Vytenis's journey from multi-time startup founder to CEO
- How JobRely got started and the inspiration of it
- The business model flaws when first launching JobRely
- How vanity metrics impaired the vision of JobRely early on and how they changed how they looked at data
- Why you shouldn't give too much away, because you have to capture value at some point to maintain a business
- Why marketing shouldn't be invested in until you have product-market-fit and a business model that leads to repeatable, predicatbale outcomes
- How overreliance on 3rd party tools can sink you business overnight
- Where the big pivot happened and why
- Why you should be thinking about profitability from day one and how that flies in the face of common startup advice
- The importance of tracking the right value metrics and why mentorship can help you figure that out
- How sci-fi novels can help you think bigger and broader toward disruptive innovation
- Why the ability to explain complex ideas concretely and concisely is a super-power in and of itself
- How listening to the market and your customers is the second super-power for product people
Connect with Vytenis: Vytenis LinkedIn
Connect with Lucid Agreements: Lucid Agreements LinkedIn
Sign up for early access: Early Access
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Here's what we discussed:
- How Mads was an entrepreneur since high school. At the young age of 16, Mads started his first business
- From Denmark and educated in London, Mads always knew he wanted to have his own company
- Living all over Europe, with a fascination in tech, Mads now lives in Bogota Columbia with his wife and is VP of Product at a FinTech company, OmniBnk
- After seeing the future in Crypto, Mads had friends who convinced him to jump in early and do something interesting with cryptocurrency
- None of his friends, and Mads included, were technical, so the team outsourced the initial site to a team in Nepal
- The concept was to be able to accept crypto to actually purchase products, and BitBrochure would aggregate products that could be purchased with crypto for crypto owners
- For the first two iterations of the product, there was zero user research
- After not seeing traction, Mads and his team started soliciting user feedback
- Outside of user testing, Mads and his team started benchmarking against competitors and really diving into the details of why they weren't getting traction
- The understanding of how crypto owners viewed their coins also influenced the number of users who actually wanted to cash in for physical goods
- Why the UX and visual interface of the site also impacted adoption
- How timing can impact the success or failure of your startup
- Great advice to wrap up the conversation!
Connect with Mads: LinkedIn
Check out the book: Martin Dawes - wake up and sell the coffee
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On today's episode, I had a great conversation with Piyush Madhukar, Senior Product Manager at ServiceNow. Piyush founded a startup back in 2012 called Shopnrelax. Through this failed startup experience, Piyush learned some very valuable lessons that he's carried into his product and senior product management roles. I'm so grateful Piyush came on to share what he learned, so let's get started.
Here's what we discussed:
- The inspiration for Shopnrelax and how his family's professional background impacted it
- How two seemingly very different target industries, grocery stores and libraries, had very similar problems
- The cultural nuance and mental models that prevented acceptance of online purchases
- Why solving a problems half-way can sometimes be just as bad as not solving it at all
- 2012 was still early days for India in the mass adoption of online payments and fraud was frequent in online shopping
- How he uncovered the "touch and feel" culture for grocery shopping and how that key insight showed why they couldn't scale their grocery offering
- What he would have done differently
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Welcome back to Prodcast as we continue our "Why Products Fail" series. On today's episode, I spoke with Aditya Kakrania, multi-time startup founder. We talked through Aditya's first startup, Foomore, how it grew through clever growth hacks and community building but how timing and environmental issues brought Foomore to its knees. This is a great lesson in why startups need to consider the fragility of its business, especially when the business is overly reliant on a very specific market. We also talked about the important topic of knowing when to give up pivot or persevere and the importance of having a strong founding team to navigate what could be a very emotional and challenging decision. Let's get started.
Here's what we discussed:
- How Aditya got started in entrepreneurship and his family legacy
- Aditya's fascination with numbers and why he majored in finance and got his CA license (similar to CPA in the US)
- Why he started his current startup, Scoar and the problem he's trying to solve in helping shape career paths for aspiring professionals in India primarily
- The first startup that Aditya launched, starting with a food truck
- How Aditya and an old friend decided to disrupt the in-dining experience in India
- Why the best marketing to land the initial restaurants was free, focused on social proofing
- The undisputed importance of talking to your customers or prospective customers
- Why you need to understand who your "customer" actually is and how it might span wider than the initial customer you have in mind
- The impact that major competitors and brands can have on your success or failure
- How Aditya tried to fend off major competitors and extreme environmental challenges
- The importance of team and how personal relationships can be a hinderance, even when you think they would be an advantage
- The difficulty of trying to run a startup part-time
- How Aditya pivoted from the FoodTech space to EdTech
Connect with Aditya:
Aditya's LinkedIn
Scoar LinkedIn Page
Scoar Website
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This is episode two of the Why Products Fail series and on this episode, I sat down with Max de Melo and Patrick Niederdrenk, Co-Owners of America One Luxury Real Estate, to talk about how to successfully break into crowded markets and why so many fail trying. Whether you're launching a startup or in a product team trying to introduce a new product into an existing and crowded market, you'll be glad you took the time to listen.
Here's what we talked about:
- Both originally from Germany, Max and Patrick knew they wanted to work together and knew that real estate is where they wanted to focus
- How they landed on Arizona as the geographic market to pursue and how a vacation to Scottsdale solidified Arizona as that key location they would focus on
- The level of due diligence before diving into the market
- How you need to immerse yourself in the world you're breaking into so you can know the ins and outs of it before ever stepping into it
- Why Max and Patrick started with homes in the lower price points early on and why their "luxury" name doesn't prevent them from still working in the lower price point homes
- The way they re-framed their thinking of the term "luxury" and how it has shaped their customer service strategy
- What went into their decision to completely integrate their business vertically
- How personalization is factored into every aspect of their offering
- Why it's so important to truly understand your customer to serve them well
- How important it is to check the expectations you have going into a crowded market and how that impacts success and failure rates
- Any new business or product needs to have a long-term view rather than setting expectations strictly on short-term successes or results
- The importance of spending money (wisely) to make money. Reinvesting in yourself and the business is a MUST
- And the importance of building and maintaining a quality reputation for sustained success
Connect with Max and Patrick:
https://americaonerealestate.com
https://www.maxandpatrick.com/
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On today's episode, I sat down with Kevin Garret, Founder and CEO of Food4All. What started out as volunteer work in urban farming turned into a passion-based business to help lower-income families develop a livelihood around the world. Kevin learned many lessons on his startup journey, and what he learned from key, early failures helped to shape his startup's success today.
Here's what we talked about:
- The origin story of how urban farming in the Bay Area turned into an ag-tech startup for the developing world
- After realizing this could be a business, Kevin and his team jouned an incubator that helped develop the idea and transition into an accelerator
- How his time in the accelerator helped prepare him for the rigor of running a startup
- Why his first big sale turned into his first big failure
- How Kevin's attempt to reinvent himself reinvigorated the business
- What the pivot looked like and what the aha moment was
- How Kevin leveraged his network from previous work engagements to open new opportunities and revenue models for his startup
- Why removing barriers for your customers are critical
- The challenges of bootstrapping and why approaching your boostrapped startup WILL look different than a startup with VC funds
- The power of reframing, contextualizing customer problems and how they're solving those problems today
Follow Kevin and Food4All:
Food4AllGlobal
Download the app
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This is the announcement of our new series kicking off on September 6th called "Why Products Fail"
Also announcing a new platform to democratize product management experience for aspiring product managers that will be launching at the end of September! Stay tuned for more details and updates and the platform progresses toward release!
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On today's episode, I sat down with Kristy Olinger, Portfolio Optimization Manager at Citizens Bank, and former SVP of Product at Bank of America. In Kristy's experience, with or without direct authority, it's vital for Product Managers and Product Leaders to gain buyin through influence, and Kristy has found storytelling to be the #1 tool for earning company-wide buyin. That's what we're going to dig into today, so let's get started.
Here's what we talked about:
- The underappreciated skill of corporate story-telling
- Kristy's podcast "the opposite of small talk"
- How different companies function in terms of how much authority PMs have
- Why even when you have authority, sociliting feedback is crucial for buy in and better decision making
- Even without direct authority, PMs have direct responsibility for outcomes
- Knowing when to stand your ground since the buck ultimately does stop with you
- Why the best strategy fails if you fail to consider and nurture implementation
- How the jobs we have are complex, and it's our job to make what we're doing simple, understandable, and compelling
- There's always more than one path we CAN take, so getting buy-in is critical for the path you've chosen
- How storytelling is the #1 way to gain that buy-in
- Why understanding your audience is key to telling the right story the right way
Get started with corporate storytelling at: kristyolinger.com/prodcastfreebie
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On today's episode, I sat down with Nikki Anderson, User Research Lead at Zalando and Founder of User Research Academy. Nikki started her user research career about 7 years ago, with a foundation in quantitative research but has since shifted focus to specialize in qualitative user research where Nikki has worked in B2B, B2C, B2B2C and has both worked as a freelancer and worked in corporate settings. After having started her career in New York, Nikki has since moved to Germany where Zalando is based. With such a robust and diverse background in user research Nikki had a ton of great advice and insight to share.
Here's what we discussed:
- Some of the biggest misconceptions of user research
- Why quant or qual data alone is not enough to make decisions
- The trust cost of doing user research and the cost of not doing it
- Low cost ways to source user feedback
- What Nikki has learned throughout her career that she wants other user researchers to know
- The difference between user research and UX design
- Why planning and purpose are essential to the value of research
- How to influence executives to care about user research
- What a great partnership looks like between user research and product management in setting priority for what you build
- How to know if you're doing user research right in a well-resourced company
- Ways to get scrappy if you're a user research team of one
- How Product Managers can do user research on their own
Here's the resources:
-
Google's Heart Framework
-
Podcasts: Awkward Silences, Dollars to Donuts & Mixed Methods
-
Books: Just Enough Research by Erika Hall; Practical Empathy by Indi Young; Quantifying the User Experience by Jeff Sauros
-
Recommended resources for user researchers
- Important concepts, processes, and terminology
- User Research Academy
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On today's episode, I sat down with Dan Griffith, President of Griffith Growth Consulting, where Dan helps early stage B2B software and services companies by helping them find and engage their target market, and sell their product. In Dan's experience, there are key mistakes that early stage startups make that inhibit their ability to grow, and he was kind enough to jump on the podcast to share. And I'll note, this advice is absolutely applicable to established organizations who are launches new products.
Here's what we discussed:
- Why not knowing your customer or who your target market is has to be the single biggest mistake a company can make when developing and launching a product
- How to optimize your product development and launches
- The question of, "How do you prioritize features in your product if you have no clue who you're building it for?"
- Why the customer should always trump the "coolness" of the technology
- How identifying your target market before developing your product creates a shorter path to revenue
- Why hiring sales people should be a low priority early in the lifecycle of brand new products
- How implementation and execution is even more important than the technology, the product, or the strategy
- The difference in approach between blue ocean versus red ocean markets
- The catch 22 of industry research
- Why it's so important to work closely with customer success
- How PMs should develop a competency for sales and understand their organization's sales process
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On today's episode, I sat down with Nick Sonnenberg, CEO of Leverage. getleverage.com Before Leverage, Nick was a high frequency trader on Wall Street, building algorithms to programmatically trade stock at micro-second speed. Back in May, Nick published an article on Inc. called "How to remove emotion from your decision making". I loved the article and thought of how relevant it was to product management so, I had to have Nick on to dive a bit deeper into the topic.
Here's what we discussed:
- Why emotional decisions can be more informed than you think
- How your gut decisions are never random
- Why you should reduce the number of critical decisions you make
- How subconscious logic can drive quick decisions
- What factor risk plays in the decision making process
- Understanding probability can help you decide how much thought to give to a particular decision
- When to check your emotions to avoid disregarding key information or making angry or frustrated decisions
- A great framework for decision making and when to delegate or put off decisions
- How to leverage design thinking and tools like Miro to make group decisions
- Why having core values or organizational principles are key anchors in critical decision making
- How to leverage OKRs to create organizational alignment on individual decision making
Check out the book on decision making that Nick recommended:
https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Solved-Decisions-Confidence-Conviction/dp/163265086X
Follow up with Nick at https://getleverage.com/
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On today's episode, I sat down with Lolita Guarin, Author, Speaker, and Stress Management Coach. Originally from Lithuania, Lolita moved to the States to pursue her American dream. She landed in Texas and quickly began climbing up the corporate ladder. Afraid to say no, Lolita quickly saw her health decline and work/life balance come undone. After learning some natural ways to reduce and overcome stress, Lolita started giving advice to friends and colleagues until eventually seeing stress management coaching as her calling and getting certified. Today, Lolita is going to share how we can more effectively manage stress in our day to day as product managers. Here's what we talked about:
- The first and most critical aspect of managing stress is by removing ambiguity. We have to know what our goals are, first and foremost
- Secondly, we have to know and feel that we are competent to do the task at hand
- Asking for help when you don't know how to do something isn't weakness, it's smart
- Why taking breaks are so important, even if you feel like it'll interrupt "flow"
- Breathing techniques that work and how you can couple them with your breaks
- The negative aspects of stress and the real impact to your health and productivity
- Even if you're strapped for time, you can practice a 60 second technique to reduce stress
- How something as simple as drinking enough water can keep your mind sharp and reduce your stress
- Why guarding your thoughts and letting go of the things you can't control are such powerful mental tools
- How prepartion is one of the best ways to mitigate stress
- Why you should celebrate little victories and keep a journal of your accomplishments
- The myth of performing better under stress
- Why you have to have stress in your life to grow, but you can have too much
- How stress lingers even after the cause of the stress goes away
Check out Lolita's book. "Crush Stress While You Work: Tips and Tricks To Stay Energized, Organized and Happy in Your Work Environment":
https://www.amazon.com/Crush-Stress-While-You-Work/dp/1542609798
Check out her courses with the promo code: halfoff
https://lolitaguarinsm.teachable.com/courses
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On today's episode, I sat down with Nicholas Hinrichsen & Chris Coleman, former Directors of Product at Carvana and Co-Founders of WithClutch.
If you need to refinance your car or want to check out what thy're working on, head over to withclutch.com
Here's what we discussed:
- Who the product manager is in a startup versus a mature company
- What differs in product priority at these different stages
- How communication goes from informal to more formal the more your company matures
- Why innovation seems to slow down as companies grow
- One of the reasons breaking into product management is so difficult
- When product managers are the mini-CEO and when they're not
- The mindset shift when going from a PM in a startup to a mature organization and vice versa
- A very interesting interview question to find where you best fit as an aspiring product manager
- Why you have to know what company and industry you're in before you try to "move fast and break things"
- How to take on risk without risking the brand of an established organization
- Why there's always risk, but defining it helps you make better decisions on what level of risk you're willing to take on
- How to balance shipping fast and risking embarrassment in an established product or org
- Why in Blue Ocean markets, value trumps design but why things change in competitive markets
- And what is true about product management, regardless whether you work in a startup or an established org
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On today's episode, I sat down with John Garratt, Product Manager at Perspectum Diagnostics.
Here's what we talked about:
- How John first discovered the need for combining empthic design into the product discovery and delivery process
- Why it's so important to take an empathetic approach to product and ux design
- How in many industries, the experience of the user is still an afterthought
- How empathy starts with connecting and engaging with your users
- The trends in experience personalization
- Why everyone who touches the customer in an organization should be collecting and sharing customer needs and insights
- How you should be getting on-site with your users to see how they are actually usingyour products
- Why what people say, think, and feel might be counter to what they do
- How product managers can and should be developing personas and shouldn't leave personas to the marketing department
- Why you should do research before talking to users so you sound more informed and can ask more relavant questions
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For today's episode, i sat down with Dinesh Rajasekharan, Director of Product at Salesforce. Dinesh shared how he develops personas, performs validation with customers, and prioritizes around his primary personas.
Here's what we've discussed:
- The first law of product management
- How to expand your view of who your customer is and the range of personas you serve
- Why personas are even more critical in highly technical products
- How to prioritize the personas you build for
- What core aspects of product management that don't change, regardless of your product or industry
- How to prioritize your core focus as a product team and as an organization as a whole
- Why UX matters, even in more technical products, but why it's approached differently
- How UX goes beyond the UI, especially in more technical products
- The two key checkpoints for customer validation
- Why you should start with user feedback before architectural decisions are made
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On today's episode, I sat down with Zia Mohammad, Senior Product Manager at IBM,
Zia has had amazing career growth while at IBM and after speaking with him, you can tell why. Zia is incredibly passionate about product management and has a wealth of insight to share.
Here are some of the things we discussed:
- What Zia does at IBM and the products he focuses on.
- What a day in the life looks like at IBM as a PM and the scope of the role.
- We recorded on a Friday, so Zia played back what his week looked like to give great insight into the specifics of his day to day.
- How you can't be the voice of the customer if you never talk to users.
- How and why your day to day should never look the same. If you feel like things are monotonous, you're not doing product right.
- Why you should bring sales and marketing into the early stages of product development
- Why it doesn't matter what your background is when trying to break into Product
- What questions you HAVE to be asking to be a good PM and the pillars to success in Product
- How to prioritize, especially in times of uncertainty
- What type of user engagement is most impactful
- One of the best questions to ask at the end of user interviews
- and how early to involve users in new product/feature development efforts and why you should bring them through the entire process
- The role that Product Managers play in go-to-market planning at IBM
- Lastly, we talked about what excites Zia with AI and the future of the technology.
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On today's episode, I sat down with Raoul Friedrich Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Building Radar
Here's what we discussed:
- How Raoul pivoted from engineering to product and founded Building Radar
- Why feature requests should never be taken at face value
- How you can train other departments such as sales and customer support to deliver more valuable feedback
- Why you should throw out your feature backlog and substitute it for a problem backlog
- Focusing on outcomes versus outputs
- How features get outdated but problems never do and how to prioritize which problems you focus on solving
- How to differentiate from your competitors with better solutions that truly get at solving your customer problems, based on the real "why" of the customer's problem
Don't forget to subscribe, so you don't miss an episode! I'd also love to hear from you, so feel free to rate and review the podcast or reach out to me at jfontenot@jobreadi.com with any feedback!
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On today's episode, I sat down with Zach Daley, UX Product Design Lead at Overstock.com to chat about what a day in the life of a UX Design Lead looks like and how PMs can work more effective with their UX Leads.
Here's some of the things we discussed:
- What a day in the life of a UX Design Lead looks like, from leadership to individual contributions
- The biggest challenges UX Design Leads face and how much it intersects with the same core challenges Product Managers face
- Some of the biggest misconceptions about UX Design and how Product Managers and organizations should view UX Design
- How ubiquitous UX is throughout the organization
- The ways in which UX should be leveraged more but is grossly underutilized
- What a solid working relationship looks like between UX and Product from the UX perspective and the overlap that exists in the role
- What can make things break down between PMs and UX and the product development process
- How to go from observation to hypothesis to outcome-focused experimentation
- Where PMs can help UX develop the business case for the iterative nature of UX to executives who might not understand the value of the time you'll need to invest to get things right
- How in-depth discovery work and mitigate the risk of building the wrong things.
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On today's episode, I sat down with Jeff Pease, Sr. Product Designer @ SwipeClock. Jeff has been in design his whole career, but he's had to evolve as industry trends led him into new territories. But even with the digital disruption of the 21st Century, one thing has remained constant for Jeff, the need to include developers early on in the design process.
Here's what we discussed:
- Jeff shares how he's in daily discussions with developers, regardless of what stage of the product development lifecycle his team may be in.
- Daily discussions are essential in a true agile environment.
- The unique perspective developers bring to design discussions.
- How these upfront discussions can save a ton of time and money!
- A simple design might not be as simple to implement.
- Why technical constraints should be considered before initial wire frames and how they should inform them
- How these early conversations help uncover assumptions that could lead to design roadblocks
- On the flip side of roadblocks, these early discussions can show where we aren't as constrained as we might assume we are
- Why there should always be a clear line of communication between UX and Dev
- How developers can be incredibly creative and assist in the design process
- Jeff's pet peeve about working with product as a UX Designer
- Why you should always respect the crafts of your co-workers, regardless of what role they're in
- And the benefit of PMs doing early wire frames and mockups to help share the vision with the UX and Dev teams
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On today's episode, I sat down with Chris Bee, Senior Director of Product Development at Zillow.
Before going to Zillow, Chris spent time as a PM and Product Leader at Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber. Now, Chris leads the core product team and product strategy for Zillow's core consumer experience on Zillow.com
On today's episode, Chris and I had a great chat around product strategy, and cascading product strategy throughout the organization.
Here's some of what we discussed:
- What strategy actually is and what product strategy is specifically
- How to develop product strategy and what considerations you might have going into strategic planning
- How top-level strategy influences product-strategy and strategy at the individual team level
- Why it's so important to align team product strategy to top-level strategy and how it impacts the morale of the organization
- Why disagreement should be encouraged, but the need to disagree and commit once a decision has been made
- Strategy is always a hypothesis, so there will always be a bit of subjectivity involved
- What your role is as a PM or a PM leader in the strategy development process and how you can influence top-level strategy
- What a product strategy doc is and what benefit it delivers to your team and the executives. Slide 16 captures the outline of what you would include in the product strategy doc: https://medium.com/@chrisbee/presentation-video-and-slides-getting-your-teams-running-like-clockwork-e107554b9e01
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Don't forget to sign up for the Product-Led Festival! https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n∾=M1F29xXu
Use promo code Prodcast20 for 20% off of individual and team passes!
On today's episode, I sat down with George Dita, CEO of WiseUp, a product innovation company focused on helping established companies build and launch cutting edge products
Here's what we discussed:
- George's background and what his company, WiseUp is all about
- His experience in working with a broad and diverse set of executives from numerous companies
- What you need to remember about executives when communicating with them
- What executives value most and how to speak that language
- How to increase your odds of getting executive sponsorship on your product initiatives
- Why executives care more about quantitative data than qualitative
- How executives vet projects and how to set yourself apart from your peers
- How to leverage small requests to executives to lead to buyoff on larger projects
- The biggest mistake you can make with executives
- Why you should push information to executives versus waiting for them to ask for it and what information they want to know from you
- The sure sign that your project went well in the eyes of executives
Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes or the Apple Podcast App. It would make my week!
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Don't forget to register for the Product-Led Festival! Click the link below and use the promo code: Prodcast20 https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n∾=M1F29xXu Today's episode is inspired by the frequently asked question of "what frameworks should I use in product management; what's the best practice?" First off, I hate the term best practice. Secondly, this episode explores two highly popular frameworks for product development and innovation with Jobs Theory and Design Thinking. Often times, we can look at these frameworks as competing processes, but there is so much to be gained by combining these two frameworks and leveraging the best parts of both. On this episode, I'll share how I do it, and I hope there's at least one take away you can put into practice from it!
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Sign up for the Product-Led Festival here: https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n∾=M1F29xXu
Don't forget to use the promo code Prodcast20 for 20% off individual and team passes!
On today's episode, I sat down with the CEO and Founder of Product School, Carlos Gonzales de Villaumbrosia
Carlos founded Product School with the passion to help train the next generation of Product Managers. Product School provides certifications in Product Management to professionals across 20 campuses worldwide, and they offer the same courses live online. All Product School instructors are senior-level product managers working at top technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Airbnb, PayPal, LinkedIn, and Netflix.
On this episode, Carlos shares with us how to land a PM job and how to grow in your PM career
Here's what we discussed:
- How Carlos stumbled into Product Management, and how his early PM experiences created the empathy
- Why aspiring PMs don't need to have an engineering degree or an MBA
- The best learning is by doing, so build something to get the experience you need!
- PM roles, by nature, are not "entry-level"
- Don't get stuck on titles or specific companies when trying to break into product
- Don't try to switch industries AND roles at the same time. Try one, but not both.
- The most important things to do first when landing that first PM role
- The difference between a PM and a Senior PM and how to make that jump!
- What you need to know before getting into Product Leadership and why the skills are completely different than what you need as a PM
- The impact that continuing education and lifelong learning has on your career and when you should be learning what skills
Connect with Carlos and Product School at: https://www.productschool.com/
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Register for the Product-Led Festival here: https://festival.productledalliance.com/?sc=youEcs1n∾=M1F29xXu
Use my promo code Prodcast20 for 20% off individual and team passes!
On this episode, I sat down with Bill Masur, Group Product Manager at SwipeClock.
Bill has experience working for large brands and startups, working in multiple types of business models, and now finds himself leading a product team for a highly profitable and growing software company in Utah.
The topic of today's episode is Product Leadership Through Peace Time Versus War Time. Even without the global pandemic, Bill found himself in a position of product leadership and identified his organization's situation as being in war time. Bill breaks down how he identified that, the difference between leading through peace time versus war time, and what product managers can do to help their organization lead through challenging times.
Here's some of the things we discussed:
- Much of the thought leadership that PMs learn come from organizations and Product thought leaders who operate during peace times
- Peace time doesn't necessarily mean "easy" but it does allow for a different approach than you have to take during war times
- The luxuries you lose during war times that most PMs really enjoy during peace times
- The signs of peace time
- The signs of war time
- Some of the most underappreciated aspects of business
- Why our customers shouldn't be the only ones who receive our empathy
- The path to peace time has to come through the messiness of war time
- How to lead through war times to quickly get back to peace times
Connect with Bill at: wmasur@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmasur/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/futureinmindd
Or for mentorship: ProductMastery.com
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On today's episode, I sat down with Frank Spillers, Chief Experience Officer and Founder of Experience Dynamics, a consulting firm in Portland Oregon, focused on User Experience and User Research. Frank is a subject matter expert in the field of UX, and he joined the podcast to share with us what we wish we knew about usability testing. This is an absolute treat, and I guarantee that listening to this episode will give you a competitive advantage against most other organizations out there.
Frank got his start in UX back in the mid-90s working with VR. He worked through the dot-com era in e-commerce, the launch of mobile apps, and he's continued to innovate in the field of UX.
On this episode, Frank discusses:
- The relationship between Product and UX
- The two pillars of UX and how these two pillars play into the product development lifecycle
- The most critical aspect of what you should be measuring in usability tests
- Pro-tips on how to moderate your usability tests
- The value of "broken prototypes"
- How to handle users when they get frustrated during the test
- Why we need to leave emotion and visual or audible empathy at the door
- The "5 User Myth" and what nobody understands about Jakob Nielden's 5 User Model
- The benefit of larger sample sizes in usability tests and field studies
- What a usability test plan is and why it's critical to the success of usability tests
- How to know what tasks you should be testing for usability
Connect with Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankspillers/
Connect with Experience Dynamics: https://www.experiencedynamics.com/
Check out Frank's "5 User Myth" Article: https://www.experiencedynamics.com/blog/2019/03/5-user-sample-size-myth-how-many-users-should-you-really-test-your-ux
Check out Frank and Laurie Faulkner's work: https://www.experiencedynamics.com/blog/2019/10/how-many-users-should-you-test-user-testing
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On today's episode, I sat down with Rich Sanchez, Product Manager at InStride.
Rich has a background in IT but soon found himself transitioning into Product Management for companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Disney, and now InStride.
This episode is all about how to find new opportunities as a PM by up-leveling how you think
On this episode we discussed:
- How Rich fell in love with Product while at Johnson and Johnson
- It was after Johnson and Johnson that Rich found out how to stand out from others to get where you want to go in your career
- How to up-level quickly as a PM when you're just starting out
- Why we need to take a step back and think differently to be an effective PM
- How to build deep, lasting relationships by leveraging sources of value you can offer
- The origins of the book, Think and Grow Rich. I thought this was a really cool history lesson
- The ancillary aspects of what makes a great product manager, outside of the traditional thinking
- How your thoughts either enable success or block it
- Why improving your personal live will improve your professional life as a PM
- Why PMs more than anyone else should have a roadmap for their lives and the benefits of doing it
- Rich shares his 8 "Fs" which are pure gold, and I totally stole them
Connect with Rich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richesanchez/
Rich's Teachable site is now live! https://aproductfit.teachable.com/p/steps-for-becoming-product-manager-and-founder
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On today's episode, I sat down with Greg Prickril, Founder of Career.PM and Prickril Consulting and former Senior PM at IBM, Microsoft and SAP.
In this discussion, Greg shares why PMs should be much more involved with architecture than we probably think we should. Here's some of the points we discussed:
- Architecture impacts the business in ways we won't know until it happens
- We can miss out on doing the things we should be doing in our products if we haven't given architecture the consideration upfront that we should have
- How to get involved in architecture whether it's a new product or an existing one
- Greg considers the architecture of our products as analgous to the frame of a house. If it's not right, the whole thing will eventually crumble
- How to get started in understanding architecture, even if you're not technical
- The most underutilized resource in your building
- How to have the most productive conversations with architects
Go to pmfont.com to find great resources on architecture to get started. You'll find many other great resources there too!
Don't forget to check out career.pm and the great resources there!
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregprickril/
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On today's episode, I sat down with Clement Kao to discuss how the best PMs have side hustles
Here's what we discussed:
- Clement shared how he accidentally fell into product management with no experience, and his steep learning curve created the empathy for what he does now in his side projects
- Clement has published over 60 articles, read by over 200K PMs across the world, on PMHQ, the product manager community he helped co-found on Slack.
- There's a lot of passion behind Clement's drive to share knowledge and see other PMs and aspiring PMs benefit from his shared learnings.
- The power of communities and what the benefits are for joining and engaging in a PM community.
- Why learning from other people's experiences and sharing your own experiences with other helps to crystalize your knowledge and accelerates your growth.
- The tangible and subtle benefits of side hustles or extracirricular projects
- How to choose which communities to be part of and how to benefit most from communities
- Why having a side hustle, regardless of what it is, should be treated like we treat our products: iteratively
To find Clement's articles and join the PMHQ Community: https://www.productmanagerhq.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clement-kao/
Clement's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Into-Product-Management-Manager/dp/1670792714/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0 _encoding=UTF8&qid=1586443511&sr=8-1
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On today's episode, I sat down with Tommi Forsstrom, VP of Product @ Teachable. While working in Venture Capital with growth-stage companies, Tommi discovered the power of having a strong sales organization and the need for product management to collaborate closer with sales
Some of the topics we cover include:
- Why PMs need to take ownership and proactive steps toward deeper engagements with sales
- In B2B, it's hard to be good at your product role, unless you have a deep understanding of your customer.
- As PMs, we stress the need for empathy with our customers, but we also need to have empathy with other departments in our orgs
- To start working more closely with sales, we need to learn how to speak the sales language and empathize with their needs and their concerns.
- We can help our sales teams by clarifying our product's value prop and where the value lies in the various segmentations of our market
- Our sales teams can help us get closer to our customers, but they won't take you on sales calls if they don't trust you or they don't know what is in it for them
- And we can help Sales avoid over-promising by clarifying what is in-bounds to talk about for our short-term roadmap and what they should not be talking about with customers to be realistic
- If you're struggling to engage with sales, working with your product marketing team to develop great sales enablement tools will go a long way in building relationships with sales
To find Tommi's article and to follow him on Medium: https://medium.com/@forssto/product-folk-love-you-sales-buddies-b034a1967f49
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On today's episode, I sit down with Alex Mitchell, Chief Product Officer at ICX Media
Alex is an avid blogger on Medium and over the last year, Alex's posts have gotten over
one million views.
Before COVID-19, Alex had worked in several companies that had a heavy remote component, but
this is the first time Alex would be working from home full-time.
To help others who might be going through the unknowns of working from home for the first
time, Alex wrote a great Medium article on how to be a great remote product manager:
https://blog.usejournal.com/how-to-be-a-great-remote-product-manager-37d29f13d332
Here's what we discussed on this episode:
- Alex shares how communication needs to be taken to a whole new level when working remote. You lose a lot of the "watercooler" talk you get in the office, so you'll need to increase the number of meetings you have.
- You can lose touch with your manager or your direct reports, so your need for more frequent one-on-one's becomes more critical
- Alex shared a remote work hack, that he didn't share in the article, to help keep culture alive. You should steal it! I will.
- All the extra meetings could be frustrating, so Alex shares how to optimize the work from home meeting experience.
- Even without the quarantine, for full-time remote product managers, it's still critical to get face-to-face with your team to build a more human bond.
- Alex shared great advice of how to optimize that face-to-face meet-up when you are a full-time remote product manager, and it might not be what you expected.
- We even talked about how working remote, even if it's temporary, is a great opportunity to build your remote network.
- Lastly, Alex shares how he published the second edition of "Building Digital Products" aproduct management handbook for professionals looking to get into Product or PMs looking to level up.
Here's the link to the book:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1672858437/ref=ox_sc_
saved_title_4?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
The second book Alex recently published is "Disrupting Yourself" which is all about how to
not just survive but to thrive in the new economy.
Here's the link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1712469223/ref=ox_sc_saved_
title_6?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
Here's how to follow Alex on Medium: https://medium.com/@Amitch5903
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On today's episode, I sat down with Tanay Agrawal, former PM @ Atlan and Graduate Student at Carnegie Mellon University
Tanay had spent the first two years of his career as a software developer but quickly made the transition to product management. After two years as a PM, Tanay decided to pursue his Master's in Product Management at Carnegie Mellon University.
While studying to become a better PM, Tanay started blogging. His blog is a mental download of all the things he learned in his two years as a PM and the things he wish he knew when he started.
On today's episode, we dive into one of his Medium articles, "You need to unlearn your product every day as a product manager"
https://productcoalition.com/you-need-to-unlearn-your-product-every-day-as-a-product-manager-dbe01d15d4e8
Tanay shares how PMs often fall into the trap of what I call the "omniscient" product manager. We know our products inside and out, and our in-depth product knowledge can often disconnect us from the experience of first-time users. To avoid this disconnect, we must unlearn our product with each new feature.
Each new feature launch should create a delightful experience. Customers should be excited to use your feature, not dread HAVING to use it. Slack ingeniously executed this with their Google Drive integration through "contextual onboarding"
We also discussed the "pricing conundrum" that we can find ourselves in as our products grow and evolve. Tanay shared why more features don't necessarily mean more value and how pricing should be leveraged with customers through their lifetime with your product.
In the same way we need to unlearn our products with new features, we need to take a step back from our product's pricing tiers from time to time as well. Pricing complexity can be a big barrier for new customers, but it doesn't have to be.
Another issue with pricing pertains to growth levers. Many companies focus on user acquisition to drive growth, but not enough companies look to leverage existing customers as sources of revenue growth.
The third pricing issue happens when companies under-price their products to gain market share.
Pricing and feature strategy should coincide to help users are they progress through their journey with your product.
Tanay shares why it's so hard to maintain a consistent "voice" within your product as your company and your team grows. Even documented guidelines can be ineffective, so Tanay shares how to prevent this disconnect in your product.
Follow Tanay on Medium, LinkedIn, and Twitter:
Medium - https://productcoalition.com/@tanayagrawal19
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanayagrawal19/
Twitter - @tanayagrawal19
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On this episode of Prodcast, I sat down with Susan Stavitzski, Director of Product @ Hatch!
Susan shared how and why she made the transition from Product Marketing to Product Management and how her background as a product marketer has not only helped in her roles in product, but it's also given her a unique perspective on the relationship between the two roles.
She also explained the three different types of product managers:
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Technical PM
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User-Focused PM
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Business-Minded PM
Susan believes that regardless of what your background is, being a product manager is ultimately about having vision and the ability
to execute on that vision.
She shares the differences between product marketing and product management and what the
ideal working relationship looks like between the two roles
And if you're not sure where to start in bridging the gap between your team and product marketing, invite your product
marketer to be part of your processes early on. It actually makes their job easier, not harder.
Lastly, we talked about how user-experience is everyone's job, and tighter cross-functional collaboration helps to
improve the overall user experience.
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You can connect with Susan at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-stavitzski/
If you have feedback about the podcast, send me a note at jfontenot@jobreadi.com
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Shawn shares how to create opportunities in your career and take advantage of the ones in front of you. We also discuss what type of opportunities you should pursue and when to say no.
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