One Knight in Product

An interview with Dan Chapman. Dan is a British export to the US where he's busy building internal products to help make smart scientists more successful. Dan's strong on product principles but flexible on the details as he tries to transfer book talk into action for one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. We talk about a lot, including: His work with Merck, how there are actually two Mercks and a summary of the differences between them and why they diverged The challenges & opportunities of working in product management when your end users are hardcore scientists, and whether this is the one time you actually do need to be an industry expert to be an effective product manager Whether situations like the Theranos scandal loom large over the medical research industry, and how "move fast & break things" doesn't work when people's lives are on the line That tricky balancing act where you're trying to be agile and move fast whilst working for a company (and an industry) that values process, predictability & compliance Whether working for a big multinational means he's defaulted to having to use SAFe and why legacy waterfall companies are attracted to such frameworks Whether being an introvert in product management is a barrier or a superpower, and how to survive all the meetings & presentations when your natural tendency is not to want to be in the room Why idealistic product principles only get you so far, how to work out which ones matter, which don't, and why waterfall might actually be the better option sometimes (🤢) And much more! Contact Dan If you want to catch up with Dan, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn or on Twitter.

An interview with David Dylan Thomas. David is a product designer and self-taught expert in cognitive bias. He's now consulting with companies to help them make ethical product design decisions and is the author of "Design for Cognitive Bias", a book that aims to help us all understand the implicit biases that underpin our decision making when we design products. We talk about a lot, including: How he got into writing and consulting about cognitive biases in the first place, whether you need to go back to college to learn about this stuff and whether it's intimidating having your work reviewed by academic experts Why we have cognitive biases, how our brains are constantly lying to us, and how we'd struggle to cope with having to make a trillion decisions a day without them The importance of taking complicated scientific concepts back to a human level and making sure you can explain things like you would to a five-year-old How cognitive biases can manifest themselves when we're designing products, the most common biases that we might come across, and why the framing bias is by far the most dangerous bias of all Why it's sometimes important to insert speed bumps into our products rather than continuously trying to optimise for speedy decision making Some of the ways to interrupt cognitive biases in product design, including the red team / blue team approach and the Black Mirror test The importance of participatory design and giving the people most affected by bias the power to decide when something that affects them is actually ready to go And much more! Buy "Design For Cognitive Bias" "We humans are messy, illogical creatures who like to imagine we’re in control—but we blithely let our biases lead us astray. In Design for Cognitive Bias, David Dylan Thomas lays bare the irrational forces that shape our everyday decisions and, inevitably, inform the experiences we craft. " Visit the book website or check it out on Goodreads. Contact David If you want to catch up with David, you can reach out to him at https://www.daviddylanthomas.com

An interview with Moustapha Seck. Moustapha is a seasoned product professional and entrepreneur who cut his teeth in Canada before being inspired to go back to Africa to use his product management skills to build solutions for the poorest Africans. He's doing this with his new startup, Fluid, which aims to help derisk financial inclusion for marginalised communities. We speak about a lot, including: How he started out in engineering and moved into product management after finding that he got more joy out of working with & designing solutions for his users The core elements of product management, how they're not complicated individually but difficult to execute consistently, and how mentors can help you understand what's OK and what's not His journey from Canada to Africa to Canada to Africa and how the classic book Zero to One inspired him to tackle meaningful problems for Africa's poorest communities How Africa has a lot of opportunities to fix things as so many basic things don't work, how he identified the key problem to solve and the research he had to do to validate his idea The importance of leaving technology out of it when dealing with marginalised communities & how you have to do way more listening than talking in order to build trust His desire for entrepreneurs and investors to look across Africa, not just concentrate on the biggest markets and how to pick the right markets to enter into there Why it's important to enlist power users to build advocacy and help you co-create solutions in traditional industries that are not used to trying out new solutions The need to keep your power users close, but not too close as you try to work out how to build for the wider market and prepare to scale the business And much more! Check out Saeed Khan's episode Moustapha called out some mentors that have shaped his product management career, including my good friend & previous podcast guest Saeed Khan. Check out Check out Saeed's episode here! Check out Fluid If you're interested in Moustapha's company or the mission behind it, you can check out fluidfinance.co. Contact Moustapha You can find Moustapha on LinkedIn.

An interview with Holly Schroeder. Holly is a Senior UX Researcher and passionate accessibility advocate who wants us all to get better at including everyone in our product design choices. She's also a recent contributor to a new UX book, 97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know. We speak about a lot, including: Her life as a UX researcher, the tension between business needs & user needs and the need to be pragmatic when finding a balance between the two Her passion for making sure that we design our products with accessibility in mind, and how come we're still in a situation where people aren't thinking about accessibility as a matter of course How only 3% of websites have been verified as accessible by the accessibility organisation WebAIM, and how we would feel if only 3% of buildings had ramps or 3% of pavements had dropped kerbs or curb cuts Some of the worst offenders when talking about (lack of) accessible design, how people are failing to get even the simple things right, how it's not just about screen readers, and how accessibility overlays are just putting lipstick on a pig Why we shouldn't be surprised that people aren't learning about accessibility when coding courses & boot camps don't even mention accessibility in passing Whether it's fair enough for startups to make the choice to "go fast and break things" and ignore accessibility, why we might consider slowing things down, and whether this is all the fault of tiresome tech bros The importance of including people with disabilities in user testing, but how accessibility is everyone's problem and how we shouldn't just rely on disabled people to do our homework for us And much more! Buy "97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know" "Tap into the wisdom of experts to learn what every UX practitioner needs to know. With 97 short and extremely useful articles, you'll discover new approaches to old problems, pick up road-tested best practices, and hone your skills through sound advice." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Check out Holly's extensive library of a11y resources Holly has collated, and continues to maintain, an excellent list of accessibility resources. Check it out! Contact Holly You can find Holly on Twitter.

An interview with Matt Arbesfeld. Matt is a Thiel Fellow and founder of LogRocket, a platfom that helps you understand problems affecting your users, so that you can get back to building great software & great products. Matt is passionate about using data to drive product decisions & helping to align all of the parts of the product trio around what's important for the product. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind LogRocket, how they started out building a tool for developers before realising that product managers were coming and using it too How he went from a tech internships into company foundership, how this wasn't his first rodeo and how he's known his cofounder since he was 1 month old Whether they had trouble taking a developer-focused tool, abstracting just the right level of data for non-developer users, and why good UX isn't just for B2C apps How they validated the need for the product management use case and whether they tried to build everything with the same team or split everything by value stream The importance of being able to have data to monitor your product feature launches and the types of decisions you can quickly make if you have that data available How having one source of truth on your product can help to align all parts of the product trio and allow you to make good product decisions The story behind Thiel Fellowships and whether they help or hinder the tendency for tech firms to hire out of the same exclusive circles And much more! Check out LogRocket If you like the sound of LogRocket and want to check it out, try the LogRocket website? Contact Matt You can reach out to Matt on Twitter or LinkedIn.

An interview with Princess Akari. Princess is a product manager at Brass where she's helping to disrupt the Nigerian banking industry. She's also passionate about supporting local product managers & standing up for the very value of product management via her community PeopleInProduct, the "Alcoholics Anonymous of Product Management". We talk about a lot, including: Her day job as a product manager building mobile applications for a disruptive fintech, and how they're taking on the banking industry in Nigeria Why someone who starts out with a degree in civil engineering and a job as a structural engineer subsequently moves into product management Her journey into product management, how it was difficult to get community support to ease the transition and how this gave her the idea to start up her own community The mission behind PeopleInProduct and how they aim to be a warm, inclusive community where people can share their issues & doubts but also celebrate their successes The problem with many Nigerian product companies not really understanding the value of product management, and how that manifests itself in the financial packages and the respect they're given How she feels that there's a need product managers to be more explicit about the value they're creating for the company & standing up for themselves How everything's always worse for women, how they're discouraged from coding or design and forced into "easy" product management jobs, and then struggle to get their voices heard once they're in there And much more! Check out PeopleInProduct If you like the sound of PeopleInProduct and want to join in, or maybe use it as inspiration to set up your local version, why not check out PeopleInProduct? Contact Princess You can reach out to Princess on Twitter, LinkedIn. She also writes on Medium.

About the Episode An interview with Dan Olsen. Dan's a product consultant, text adventure & interactive fiction fanatic and author of 2015's "The Lean Product Playbook", a book that aimed to help people innovate faster with minimum viable products and rapid customer feedback. We talk about a lot, and try to get as many tenuous 80s gaming references in as possible: Whether "The Lean Product Playbook", published in 2015, still holds up and how a new generation of product managers are finding it for the first time, and why it wasn't published as a Choose Your Own Adventure book Given that software is eating the world, whether it's good software and good product companies doing the eating, or whether there's a dastardly bad product Pac-Man on the loose How his passion for interactive fiction & text adventures was good practice for getting deep into the problem space, and whether product managers even belong there The need to develop a common vocabulary with users, being able to use the right words and ask the right questions to get the results you need from discovery and prototyping The key attributes you need on your Character Sheet to be a good product manager, and how a wide dynamic range of abilities can help you succeed in your quest What to do to battle HIPPOs when they come crashing through the door trying to derail your roadmaps and why it all stems from starting the quarter at 120% capacity and having no protection from incoming Asteroids The types of tasks that product managers should carry in their limited inventory, and why they need to advocate for the value of hiring other disciplines and not just fill in gaps And much more! Buy The Lean Product Playbook "The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice.." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Dan If you want to catch up with Dan, you can reach him on Twitter or his website dan-olsen.com.

An interview with Richard Awe. Richard is a Senior Business Analyst with the European Central Bank who got bored writing all those requirements documents & user stories, and decided to build a tool to help him do that at scale. He's now here with Requstory, a platform that aims to help people write user stories fast. A day in the life of a business analyst at the European Central Bank, the sorts of projects he's working on, and whether banks can ever be truly agile How he moved from training as a scientist and wannabe process engineer to business analyst because he loved being close to the users & engineers What a business analyst actually does and how similar it is or isn't to being a product manager or product owner on an agile team How working on a big project & having to write loads of user stories led him to build a no-code tool to help him do that quicker.. and how interest from friends & colleagues made him decide to make it ready for primetime How he's managing the user feedback and trying to keep focused on delivering real value rather than any niche feature that comes up Some of the characteristics of a good or bad user story and how the ultimate point is always to be something that starts off a discussion When user stories might not work for you, the different types of stories you can use, what some of the alternatives might be & whether they're really just interchangeable And much more! Contact Richard You can reach out to Richard on Twitter or check out Requstory.

An interview with Melissa Perri. Melissa is a product leader, educator, board member, consultant, coach and also the author of one of the best books on product management, "Escaping the Build Trap". These days she's an evangelist for the role of product operations and setting up CPOs for success in the executive suite. We talk about a lot, including: Revisiting Escaping the Build Trap, what the build trap is, why people find themselves there and why they struggle to get out How her thinking has evolved since the book, and why she believes that product operations is a critical lever for scaling organisations What product operations is, how it enables you to scale, and the three pillars of product ops transformation that companies tend to go through Whether it's fair to label product operations as the revenge of process people or whether that's a total misrepresentation Why we should always be looking to optimise how we're working, not just sticking to what has worked in the past because it worked in the past The need for strong CPOs so that product teams have a seat at the top table, why this is essential for product led companies and at what stage you need them What the CPO role actually involves, what product people need to do to get good at it, and the tendency for product people to lack the confidence for the top table And much more! Buy Escaping the Build Trap "To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. " Check it out on Amazon, or on Goodreads. You can also check out book website. Melissa's new book "Product Operations" Melissa is writing a new book on product operations with her friend & colleague Denise Tilles. Check out the progress on ProductOperations.com. Contact Melissa You can reach out to Melissa on Twitter or check out MelissaPerri.com.

An interview with Katerina Suchkova. Katerina is a product leadership coach with Ahead of Product. She's passionate about helping people up the product management career ladder, and helping them work out how to be their real selves. We talk about a lot, including: Her journey into coaching and how much joy it gives her to watch people getting better at what they do and elevating their confidence at work The product management career ladder, the transition points along the way and whether the ladder actually exists in most companies Whether the lack of real definition or understanding of the value of product management is actively blocking the existence of such a ladder The importance of taking a step back and understanding what your own motivations are, being what you want to be not what you think people think you should be How to manage the transition into product leadership, identifying your strengths & weaknesses and how to handle the conversation with your manager The importance of widening your perspective to make sure people see your potential for leadership rather than just seeing you as a good individual contributor The things you need to let go of to be a good leader, what you need to forget and let go of if you want to enable your teams to be the most effective they can be And much more! Contact Katerina You can reach out to Katerina on LinkedIn or check out Ahead of Product.

An interview with Holly Hester-Reilly. Holly is the founder of H2R Product Science, a consultancy that aims to help companies large & small build high growth products by following a scientific approach to product development. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind H2R Product Science, her belief that there's a science to building products and the types of problems she can help to solve How she got a gig as Head of Product & Engineering at YourBase, whether she thinks CPTOs are a positive trend and whether there are disadvantages to having combined tech & product leadership The five step Product Science success path, what those steps looks like and how not all companies start at the first step The timescale for impact from the Product Science process, how it's not a quick fix, and whether it fits with all companies' timescale expectations The need for strong product leadership to take up the baton when she moves on, and how Holly jumped the product leadership leadership chasm herself How life isn't like the books & whether product managers should just get on with it or try their best to drive transformative change through the companies they work for Using the "Built / Learned / Planning" product demo format to help build a ripple effect through the whole company and bed in the concept of a learning organisation And much more! Holly's book recommendation Holly's all about product discovery, but she hasn't written a book yet! I asked her to recommend a book on product discovery that was not Teresa Torres's book Continuous Discovery Habits. Holly recommends that book but also Lean UX. She also promises to write her own book one day. Contact Holly You can reach out to Holly on Twitter or check out H2R Product Science.

An interview with Derek Osgood. Derek is a former Playstation product manager who turned to product marketing and realised that there was a big problem keeping aligned with product management around go-to-market launches. He's now started Ignition, a go-to-market platform aiming to help solve this problem and get teams releasing products more effectively. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind his conpany Ignition and how they're trying to solve the problems many product marketing teams have getting products out to market How he chose the features for the MVP of his product, how he realised that this limited feature set wouldn't do the trick and why he had to go wide to cover a variety of smaller pain points to really win in the market Why he advocates white glove treatment and eschewing product led growth for early products in order to get good early customer feedback, but how you should still follow PLG principles to ensure you have a compelling user experience Why we still need go-to-market plans even when we're living in an agile world, and how product marketing is necessarily more waterfall Why it's so important to get product marketing up front to the beginning of the product development process so they know what's coming and why, and aren't just thrown a grenade at the last minute The impact that a lack of launch planning can have on a release, how people can end up spending too much or too little time on the wrong things, and the importance of having a coherent launch process What a perfect product launch plan looks like and why it involves the product marketing teams doing their own research to optimise their messaging, not just rewriting other people's product specs in a different style And much more! Contact Derek You can reach out to Derek on LinkedIn or check out his company Ignition.

An interview with Merina Khanom. Merina is a Product Manager at BBC iPlayer, which she boldly names as the inspiration for Netflix, and a passionate advocate for increasing diversity & inclusion within product companies as well as the wider product community. We talk about a lot, including: Her work for BBC iPlayer, how she took her passion for mobile solutions into product management, and whether mobile product management is easier or harder than other types of product management How her CV doesn't look like anyone else's, how she took a non-linear path in product management, and the challenges of getting past recruitment filters when you have a different-sounding name How she felt when she found out she was the only hijab-wearing Muslim woman in the history of BBC iPlayer, and why it's reductive and lazy to blame that on a pipeline problem The problems with breaking into tech when you have no role models that look like you, and the problems you can have getting taken seriously if people have never seen someone that looks like you working in the role How the killing of George Floyd affected her personally & gave her the energy to speak up & take a stand for racial equality at work, and some of the challenges marginalised people can have opening up when they've been bullied into submission Some of the initiatives she helped kick off at work, and how she tried to work with product conferences & communities to challenge the lack of diversity on their rosters Why a lack of diversity & inclusion is everyone's responsibility, not just something for marginalised people to sort out or advocate for alone And much more! Contact Merina You can reach out to Merina on LinkedIn.

An interview with Crystal Parker. Crystal is a Product Manager at Spear Education and an entry-level career coach. She's using her personal experience of getting into product management to help others do the same through her coaching, where she aims to map out a strategy and work out their golden path to that first product management role. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Spear Education, what it's like building an analytics platform for dentists and how she built up her dental domain knowledge How she got into product management in the first place, why it's the perfect job for her and how she got past the interview process given that she had zero product management experience How she upped her product management game once she got in, how she managed to "finesse the rest", and the resources she used to build her product management skills Her passion for mentoring others & how it led her to start coaching those following her and help get people from non-traditional backgrounds into tech careers where they belong How she gets strategic with the people she's coaching to map out their path to success and how that's informing a new e-book which will allow the wider world to follow the Crystal Parker approach (™?) The sorts of things you shouldn't really waste your time on when trying to get that first product management role, and where to best focus your efforts instead Some of the gateway positions you could consider to get into a product company, get close to the product management team & eventually transfer into the role you're after And much more! Contact Crystal You can reach out to Crystal on Twitter or check out her website crystalaparker.com.

An interview with David Bland. David is a Lean consultant who aims to help you make good business decisions by testing your business ideas and making sure they're worth pursuing. He's doing this through his day job as founder of Precoil, and also as the co-author of "Testing Business Ideas", a desk reference with 44 different experimental techniques you can use to do the same. We talk about a lot, including: The story behind "Testing Business Ideas", the idea behind the visual design, and how it's part of a box set that will make you the ultimate businessperson Whether there's anything he would have change from his book based on his work since, and whether there are any new techniques that people should be considering Some of the preconditions you need to have in your organisation to enable an experimentation culture, and whether this can work at all stages of a company How to tackle the reluctance to experiment with customers, either because they're seen as too important or because the company leadership think they already know what they want The importance of ethical experiments, and making sure you're working with customers & not on them or against them How assumption mapping can help land the idea of risk of desirability, feasibility, viability risks and how this framing can help pierce leaders' reality distortion fields The importance of balancing discovery & delivery and ensuring that discovery & validation is part of the work, not an optional extra And much more! Buy "Testing Business Ideas" "7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder’s global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas." Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact David If you want to catch up with David, you can reach him on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also check out his work at Precoil.

An interview with Dan Balcauski. Dan is a pricing & packaging consultant who is aiming to demystify the world of high-volume SaaS pricing and support this via his own consultancy, Product Tranquility. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Product Tranquility, the problems they solve and some of the ways they can help you get your product packaging & pricing strategy right The pros & cons of the three main pricing models; cost plus, competition based pricing and value based pricing Why it can be dangerous to "herd", where everyone is following everyone else's pricing models but no one's done the research to see if that pricing's right Some of the early warning signals of bad pricing that you can look out for before you go bankrupt The 4-step plan a company should go through to identify its target market, the value the product brings, the competitive alternatives & the pricing model that can support it The importance of keeping packaging simple so that customers can understand what they're going to get & salespeople are able to sell it effectively Why freemium pricing is "almost always a bad idea" - some of the downsides of this approach and what you can do instead And much more! Contact Dan You can reach out to Dan on LinkedIn or check out his pricing blog on Product Tranquility.

An interview with Richie Lokay. Richie is the VP of Product Design & Services at Wunderkind, a "one-to-one performance marketing engine". Richie is passionate about the field of performance design and driving for a world where user experience meets customer experience. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Wunderkind, how they're balancing white glove services with products & tools to enable them to scale The importance of mixing big picture strategy with an understanding of how the sausages are made, and knowing when to hand over to people with more suitable skills The importance of having a good working dynamic between product, design & engineering teams, with each contributing their own unique skills to the mix Why you need to get designers up the front of the funnel and make them true partners, and how to weigh up strategic decision making with actually having time to do the design Whether it's possible for designers & developers to work well together in an agile, iterative fashion The importance of good design systems as enablers for scale and how they can enable the big picture work The concept of pioneers, settlers & town planners, what kind of mix you need in your team and who thrive in which environment And much more! Contact Richie You can reach out to Richie via email of all places [email protected]. He's social media averse!

An interview with Hanne Ockert-Axelsson. Hanne is a Senior Product Manager at accuRx, a UK-based Healthtech company revolutionising the world of General Practioners (GPs) in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Hanne formerly worked at various NGOs and health-focused organisations before seeking out digital product management to make a measurable impact quickly. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind accuRx, how their solution got into the hands of 98% of GP practices in the UK, and how healthcare providers deserve great products like the rest of us How she got her first product job without any experience, and used her passion for healthcare to become the first product hire at accuRx The resources she used to level up her game once she'd got that first job, and the one key book she'd recommend to other people making the move Her passion for high performing teams, what that means to her and some of the ways she tries to help build a performant culture The difference between Big Tech product management & other companies and why it's important to get in the trenches with your team Why you shouldn't fix what ain't broke when moving into a new team, to avoid demoralising people and losing their buy in to fix the real problems How to be a good team leader, the importance of identifying your leadership style, being your authentic self but the being best version of yourself where required And much more! Contact Hanne You can find Hanne at Twitter, LinkedIn or check out her writing on Medium.

An interview with Jonathon Hensley. Jonathon is a digital transformation consultant who has seen the problems of misalignment up close and wanted to help companies avoid it. He's the recent author of "Alignment", a book that aims to show how companies need to drive for alignment through the business to avoid internal sabotage costly product failure. We speak about a lot, including: How misalignment within companies represents a billion dollar problem and how this spurred him to write the book to help avoid that His definition of alignment, why it's not as simple as people think it is, and how he structures it into four pillars Some of the early warning signs of misalignment in a company, and why it all starts from having a measurable product strategy What happens when companies are misaligned, how toxic it can be to innovation, and how it can impact team morale How some companies seem permanently misaligned and whether it's even possible for misaligned companies to succeed The importance of aligning incentives & breaking out of solos, avoiding cognitive dissonance & aligning on a common language Why leaders need to be honest, open to new input, self-reflective and humble and why the HIPPO can't be the loudest voice driving a decision And much more! Buy "Alignment" " Alignment is the one thing you’ll find at the heart of every successful relationship, team, and organization in the world. When developed and leveraged, alignment can create the foundation for unparalleled product success." Visit Amazon for more info. Contact Jonathon You can find Jonathon at Emerge or LinkedIn.

An interview with Wolfgang Bremer. Wolfgang is the Head of Design at Elli, an electric vehicle company that is part of the Volkswagen group. Wolfgang wants to help make people's lives simpler through design, build true cross-functional relationships and is passionate about getting designers a seat at the table and making them valued business partners. We speak about a lot, including: The mission behind Elli and some of the considerations & challenges of creating physical products where you actually have to make things Why he tends to bounce from big company to small company and vice versa, the pros & cons of each type of company and whether, given Volkswagen own Elli, he's in a small company or a big company right now Some key considerations you need to think about when hiring designers depending on the size of your company and what you might optimise for The problems that silo thinking can bring, where you have designers, product and engineering throwing grenades backwards and forwards over the fence Why it's so important for designers to be true business partners and some of the problems it can cause when they're not Whether it's important to have a CXO representing the design team at the top table, or whether it really matters who the team reports through Some of the hallmarks of bad managers, how even small things can make a difference, and some principles to live by when trying to build effective teams And much more! Contact Wolfgang You can join Wolfgang's 20K followers (and counting) on Twitter or visit bremer.co.

An interview with Phyllis Njoroge. Phyllis is a product manager, cognitive scientist and now author of "From Fraud to Freedom". Phyllis wants us all to know that imposter syndrome is something that can be tackled, and wrote a book to help us examine how to tackle an issue that affects many product managers due to the ambiguity of our roles. We speak about a lot, including: Her book, from Fraud to Freedom, and how it digs into what Imposter Syndrome actually is and whether everyone has it Her journey into product management, and whether going into an industry she had no experience in made her imposter syndrome worse The problems of getting into self-reinforcing negative feedback loops and the ways you might intervene to stop you sabotaging yourself How imposter syndrome isn't just in your head but can be imposed on marginalised groups by a society that gives every impression that you don't belong there How imposter syndrome isn't something that goes away with seniority or perceived success, and how these might even make it worse Whether her background in cognitive sciences informed the book, and how she used that background to examine the cognitive biases that reinforce imposter syndrome Whether product managers are more prone to imposter syndrome due to the vague, ambiguous nature of many product management roles And much more! Buy From Fraud to Freedom "From Fraud to Freedom is a book about how we all play a part in contributing to or calming impostor syndrome. It’s a solution-oriented book that discusses methods for individuals, mentors, managers, and friends to manage their own impostor syndrome and helps others in the process too. Even though an estimated 70% of people experience impostor syndrome, the guidance in this book is not one-size-fits-all but filled with a range of intrapersonal and interpersonal methods to achieve your best self." Visit The Book Website for more info. Contact Phyllis You can find Phyllis on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Ebenezer Ikonne. Eb is an experienced product leader and social scientist who wanted to contribute to the product leadership community. To support this goal, he's recently published a book, "Becoming a Leader in Product Development" which aims to help us all take a long, hard look at our leadership practices and make us the best leaders we can be. We speak about a lot, including: How most leaders are winging it, with teams that are successful in spite of the leader in question, and how effective teams can hide ineffective managers The chain of leadership mediocrity; how people are left to work out leadership on their own, with their only role models being people that were left to work it out on their own Why the world needed another leadership book and how he sees it as the healthy alternative to "microwave thought leadership" & meaningless leadership memes Whether we need "assigned leaders" these days in this lean & agile world and whether it's really true that "everyone's a leader" What good leadership looks like, and why it should be more than whether the job got done but how the job got done The often discussed, poorly understood concept of servant leadership, what it really means, why it's important and whether it can be taken too far Why it's so important to take care of yourself as a product leader, how leadership is hard and how you can't be a good leader if you don't take care of yourself And much more! Buy Becoming A Leader in Product Development "It is becoming increasingly challenging for product development leaders to effectively lead as workplace demands continue to increase. The rate of change in technology, society, and business places immense pressure on leaders to ensure their groups move in the direction of their goals. What might have worked in the past no longer works." Visit Amazon or Goodreads for more info. Check out "Joy at Work" Eb has a YouTube channel! Check it out Joy at Work. Contact Eb You can find Eb on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Irene Yu. Irene is a former software developer for up-and-coming everything store Amazon, where she found herself mentoring non-technical product managers to help them get better at tech. Inspired by her success, she left to found Skiplevel, a technical training startup aimed at teach actually useful tech skills to product managers & non tech founders. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Skiplevel and how she's trying to provide a good and easy place to learn useful technical knowledge for non-engineering tech workers What being technical means, why being technical is helpful, and the importance of giving PMs and founders confidence to have constructive conversations with engineering The target audience for Skiplevel and whether it's suitable for the wider business or focused relentlessly on PMs and founders Why learning to code is not the best way to learn technical skills and how learning a broad set of technical concepts is superior The four pillars of technical knowledge that Skiplevel teaches and how they contribute to helping people go wide not deep Whether product managers even need to be technical, whether coding interviews are appropriate, and why companies use them The potential risks of people knowing enough to contribute but not enough to make decisions, but then trying to make them anyway And much more! Check out Skiplevel If you want to get better at tech & go beyond learning how to code toy apps for the sake of it, why not check out Skiplevel.co? Contact Irene You can reach out to Irene on Twitter.

An interview with Brian Shen. Brian is Product Director and head of Product Ops at ClickUp, an all-in-one productivity platform that you've definitely seen an advertisement for recently. ClickUp are taking aim at JIRA and other productivity platforms and aim to "save you one day a week". The company is on a hypergrowth path and Brian is trying to ensure the team remains effective along the way. We talk about a lot, including: What ClickUp does, how it's different from other productivity tools, and how they can "save you one day a week" How they can avoid becoming the next JIRA, and how they aim to keep UX at the centre & develop a fully integrated solution How they use Product Ops at ClickUp and whether it's fair to label Product Ops as merely "process people" or whether they're strategic enabler for the business How using ClickUp within the product team helps them to build a tool that helps product people build products using ClickUp Some of the challenges of running a product team during hypergrowth & some of the things they've had to change along the way The problems with "unintentional communication", why you have to vary your message for your audience and the importance of telling a coherent story How to prepare for a live talk to thousands of people at your company conferences and how stretch experiences like this help you become a better leader And much more! Check out ClickUp If ClickUp sounds good to you, and you want to see if you can save one day a week, why not check out ClickUp.com? Contact Brian You can reach out to Brian on LinkedIn.

An interview with Sigurd Seteklev. Sigurd is the co-founder of Y Combinator backed Kitemaker, a startup that is trying to enable true cross-team collaboration and empowered product development teams. He is keen to ensure that people have the ability to step beyond JIRA, and boldy claims to be the tool that "people who want to work like Marty Cagan says" should use. The story behind Kitemaker, the problems they're trying to solve, and why you need to step beyond bug trackers Why it's critical to empower cross-team collaboration and getting everyone into the same tool so they don't have to log in everywhere How they're hoping to use Kitemaker to help drive home "proper" product practices but how it's not possible to solve it with software alone Whether he's trying to force people to work in a very specific way or whether they believe in flexibility in the process The problem with dogmatically following product processes & going through the motions & the importance of cultural change How good product development teams all look different, whilst not good teams look similar, and some of the hallmarks of good teams How you might try to change a company that isn't working the way you want to work, and the importance of matching type of company to your interests And much more! Check out Kitemaker If Kitemaker sounds good to you, why not check out Kitemaker.co and see what the fuss is about? Contact Sigurd You can reach out to Sigurd on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Brendan McAdams. Brendan is a long time Enterprise SaaS salesman and author of "Sales Craft", a book he hopes will help salespeople and even tech founders get better at selling their products. Brendan is keen to stand up for the sales team, the value they add to customer relationships, and work out how we can make sure sales & product teams can work together more effectively. We speak about a lot, including: His book Sales Craft and how he wanted to write a very practical book to help to take the mystery out of sales The tension between sales & product management, some of the ways the sales team can bridge the gap, and why sales is a team sport Why it's important for salespeople to avoid Columbo "One More Thing" features and how they have to be prepared to walk away from a deal The problems with salespeople being prepared to go out, promise anything the client asks for and dumping a bag of manure on the product team's desk Why sales is like poker, having to play the hand you've been dealt, and how empowering it can be to say to no to a request you can't serve How sales discovery intersects with product discovery, the importance of getting product people into the field, and whether salespeople have a wide enough view of the market What Product-Led Growth means to him as a salesperson, and whether he thinks it's applicable to all stages of a product And much more! Buy Sales Craft "Sales Craft isn't like most sales books. It isn't proposing a new sales process or a system to 10X your income. Instead, it offers up a series of simple but thought-provoking tips and ideas about how to enhance your sales effectiveness." Visit Amazon or Goodreads for more info. Contact Brendan You can find Brendan on BrendanMcAdams.com or Twitter

Trigger warning: Please be aware that this episode contains references to domestic abuse An interview with Eva PenzeyMoog. Eva is a designer and former volunteer rape crisis counselor, who wants to encourage us all to consider the harm that we may be inadvertently causing through our product design decisions. She's the author of new book "Design for Safety" as well as the founder of the Inclusive Safety Project. We speak about a lot, including: The core message of her new book, Design for Safety, and some of the surprising feedback she has gotten so far Whether there has been any negative feedback for the book from people who don't want to admit that there is any problem at all How difficult it was to research the book, the importance of validating survivors of abuse and ensuring they can share on their terms Some of the most common low-hanging fruit that people should look at in their products to start making them safer for users Whether responsibility for the harm caused by products belongs to the teams building them or the company leaders reaping the rewards How product teams can do a safety audit and start to bake safety into their ongoing product design processes How to help product design teams get into the habit of sensitively interviewing the right people to understand the safety implications of their products Whether there's any hope for big tech firms to self-regulate or whether governmental regulation is the only way And much more! Buy Design for Safety "'How will our product hurt people?' As web workers, we don’t often ask this question—but we should. Too often, we design for idealized circumstances, even though our users bring a range of complicated personal dynamics to every interaction. When we fail to explicitly design for vulnerable users, we unintentionally prioritize their abusers. Eva PenzeyMoog explains how even the most well-intentioned design can be weaponized for interpersonal harm. Through poignant, all-too-common examples, Eva demonstrates how to identify a design’s potential for abuse, how to avoid and mitigate the damage, and how to bake safety into every step of the design process. We can’t build good digital products unless we recognize that our users’ safety, and lives, are at stake." Visit the book website for more info. If you need further resources on safety If you want to learn more about some of the issues raised in this episode or in the book, Eva has curated a list of resources for designing for safety & related topics. Contact Eva You can find Eva at The Inclusive Safety Project or Twitter

An interview with Ian Peterman. Ian is the CEO at Peterman Design Firm, where he aims to help design more sustainable & ethical products. He's also trying to bring this thinking to the world with his podcast and new book, both called Conscious Design. He's also created the Peterman Method, aiming to put a process around the principles and ensure we leave legacies we can be proud of. We speak about a lot, including: The goals behind Peterman Design Firm, the problems they solve & why they lean towards physical products How being a very ethically focused company impacts the types of clients they attract and whether they have to turn anyone down The importance of enabling companies to take baby steps rather than limiting your impact by only focusing on companies that want to go all in Why he & his wife decided to write the Conscious Design book, and how their different professional backgrounds contributed to the thinking inside it What Conscious Design is, and how the four pillars of Conscious Design enable us to assess the environmental & social impact of our products The Peterman Method that he created and how it enables Conscious Design by putting a process on top of the pillars Why it's important for companies to be conscious of the legacy the they create for their product, their brand and the impact they have on the world And much more! Buy Conscious Design "If you are building products and brands with regeneration and sustainability in mind, we appreciate you! We hope this book will give you some ideas on how to implement Conscious Design by using the Peterman Method with your own project." Visit the book website for more info. Listen to the Conscious Design podcast If you have any time after listening to all of my episodes, why not try out Conscious Design Podcast and find out more about Ian's work? Contact Ian You can find Ian on Peterman Design Firm or LinkedIn

An interview with Radhika Dutt. Radhika is a product leader, consultant & author of "Radical Product Thinking". I spoke to Radhika a couple of months ago about some of the core themes of her book but we wanted to deep dive into some of her themes around digital pollution, product ethics, and how to take responsibility for the changes our products bring to the world. We speak about a lot, including: The reception for Radical Product Thinking, what people are taking from the book, and how it's resonated with people around the world How polarising it was to include a section on digital ethics in the book, and how a Silicon Valley heavyweight refused to write a foreward because of it The types of digital pollution, how they manifest themselves, what to look for in your own products and how it's not just about Big Tech How the free market "prisoners' dilemma" means that companies prioritise profit over all else and some of the ways we might persuade people to move to more ethical jobs Whether it's ok for tech companies to paint themselves as dumb pipes with no responsibility for the effects of their platforms Whether there's any hope to get companies to do the right thing, or whether the only answer is aggressive regulation to get companies to take this seriously The importance of the Product Hippocratic Oath and how we as product people need to take responsibility for the effects of our products And much more! Buy Radical Product Thinking "Iteration rules product development, but it isn't enough to produce dramatic results. This book champions Radical Product Thinking, a systematic methodology for building visionary, game-changing products." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Listen to Radhika's last episode We covered some of the broader themes from Radhika's book in our first episode Episode 82 - Curing Product Diseases with a Radical Product Vision. Contact Radhika You can find Radhika on Twitter or LinkedIn

An interview with Gabriele Musella. Gabriele is the CEO of Coinrule, a YCombinator backed startup that aims to democratise crypto trading and enable people to set up their own automations to manage their investments for them. He's also created the DDDT framework to drive product decision-making and bring design thinking to the crypto space. We speak about a lot, including: The idea behind Coinrule, the rise of automated crypto trading and whether automated trading is as high pressure as it looks in the movies Why being unregulated was a great way to build a trading startup and what the future might look like for crypto regulation Whether Coinrule is actually using blockchain technology itself, and whether this would have any benefit for them as a company How much of a crypto-fundamentalist he is, how he sees the space developing, and how blockchain energy usage chimes with his eco awareness His experience with YCombinator, what he got out of the process apart from money, and how he learned to "prioritise like hell" How Coinrule build products, the DDDT process he created and how it allows the company to Discover, Define, Design and Test products How they talk to at least 100 users a month and built a culture of user research, and what it's like doing user research with such a passionate community His mentorship work with Google Launchpad and how he's aiming to help early stage startups understand how to do UX better And much more! Contact Gabriele You can contact Gabriele on Twitter or coinrule.com.

An interview with Daniel Cooper. Daniel is an automation nerd and founder of Lolly Co, a company that aims to help founders of growing companies unlock growth through automation and enabling them to focus human effort on things that humans are best at. He's also the author of the upcoming book "Upgrade" that aims to bring these techniques to the world. We speak about a lot, including: The story behind Lolly Co, the problems they solve, and why process optimisation & automation is crucial for a scaling business The similarities between their consultative work and good product discovery. The importance of focusing on the goal, not the technology The importance of getting in early, working with founders, and enabling them to break through their growth ceiling to scale Why it's important to have processes, but not too much process, to make sure you can operate effectively The reason that he's doing this via consultancy rather than building a self-serve SaaS platform How the No Code craze has affected his work, whether his clients still need him or are actually prepared to build everything themselves His new book "Upgrade", coming out imminently, which aims to take some of the principles from his work to the masses And much more! Check out Upgrade "Like me, if you run a business then one thing is for sure - you're spinning a lot of plates. But, what if I could show you how to automate them and scale the number you can spin? Together let's put your business under the microscope and explore the strategies and techniques traditionally reserved for Silicon Valley and apply them to your business." Visit the book website. Contact Daniel You can contact Daniel on Twitter or check out his company at Lolly Co.

An interview with Anthony Marter. Anthony is a product & delivery consultant who is passionate about helping New Zealand companies build products more effectively by intercepting them at the right time to deliver change. He's taken his passion for the local product community into Product Aotearoa, a community aiming to support product practices across New Zealand. We speak about a lot, including: How he aims to use his consulting to "help influence companies on how they do product management at the right moment" and make sure the New Zealand product community are supported How Product Aotearoa got started, the mission behind it, and why it's important for the organisation to make some noise globally to attract speakers The current state of Māori and Pasifika inclusion within the New Zealand tech scene, the lack of product role models in these communities, and how he's trying to help bridge the gap The lack of product management leadership at the exec table in New Zealand, and how this has driven the trend for CPOs without product management backgrounds The problem with management-led feature definition, and how many New Zealand companies are just have product owners managing backlogs in feature factories, with no say on strategy Some of the ways he uses his consulting to try to sell the benefits of being product-led to sceptical company leaders to drive change The importance of product discovery and ensuring that companies stay ahead of the curve by taking HIPPOs along for the ride The problems with sales-led product development & services mindset, and how to drive change by using data to connect outcomes with non-product execs And much more! Contact Anthony You can contact Anthony on Twitter or LinkedIn.

An interview with Anna Curzon. Anna is the Chief Product Officer at Xero, with long experience in business strategy & digital transformation. She's also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council, appointed by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Anna is passionate about creating a good working culture, and driving for diverse teams and working practices to support that goal. We speak about a lot, including: The origin story of Xero, how it came from the founder having a problem he couldn't solve, and how he started a company to solve it How they had to fire themselves as Xero users as they scaled out of their own target market, and how they stay in touch with customers How she moved from her career in banking into disruptive tech and how she was always "the freak in the phone book" The parallels between her original passion for anthropology & understanding humans has translated into her day-to-day work How she developed a passion for product management & how she approached her move into a CPO job without any direct product management experience Whether she had any pushback when taking over a team of product managers, and the approaches she's taken to be seen as just one of the team The importance of diversity on the teams and why people should be able to bring their true selves to work How they've managed to keep the Xero culture going and nurture it through massive scaling and acquisitions And much more! Contact Anna You can contact Anna on Twitter or LinkedIn.

An interview with Peter Johnston & Matt Breuer. Peter is the founder & CEO of new professional social network Polywork. Matt joined as Product Director and employee #9. They talk about the vision for Polywork, the pain points it was designed to overcome, the way they're building it as a team, and how to avoid HIPPO syndrome. We speak about a lot, including: The motivations behind Polywork, how it differs from other professional networking sites, and how they aim to "go beyond the job title" The personal pain points and collaboration issues that started the idea of Polywork and how it's more than just a reaction to LinkedIn How the dynamics work between a senior product professional & a vision-driven founder in an early stage startup and the importance of disagreeing but committing as a team How to manage upwards as a product leader, and tackle HIPPO disagreements by doing the product management work to validate your arguments The discovery work they did up front to turn the initial vision into a tangible product and the importance of thinking about the fundamental job to be done Whether they are worried about being a lockdown flash in the pan and suffering a collapse in user numbers post-pandemic The importance of maintaining focus for startups, not trying to chase every opportunity that looks good and how Peter learned this the hard way at a previous startup And much more! Check out Polywork If you don't have a Polywork account already you can sign up using this VIP link and check it out. Contact Matt & Peter You can contact Matt at Polywork and Peter either on Polywork or Twitter.

An interview with Steve Johnson. Steve is a product coach who has trained thousands of product teams across dozens of countries across 15 years. He's co-founder of Product Growth Leaders, a consortium of product consultancies & also co-author of the Quartz Open Framework which aims to help you build products your customers will love. We speak about a lot, including: How his consultancy got started, the problems he solves & how he aims to get people working on real products that resonate with their business, not toy examples Why he decided to help create Product Growth Leaders to solve the problems he can't, by creating a consortium of product consultancies that can get the job done Whether the proliferation of product owners as glorified business analysts is a positive trend, and the challenges of having at least three specific jobs that are all called product manager The problem with Purple Squirrel product manager job descriptions with impossible requirements and how there aren't many unicorn product managers around How he was once trained in SAFe by Dean Leffingwell, the creator of the framework, and whether SAFe is the solution to any of the problems in dysfunctional companies Why it's all about agility not agile, but the trouble of trying to sell this message to people who have never seen agile done right The origins of the Quartz Open Framework and how it enables you to take an idea through planning and into market, and why it was important to release it for free under Creative Commons Some of the issues with working with Sales, and why it's not good enough to put all the blame on them when we could do better to support them Check out Steve's music Steve's a published musician! Check his work out on Spotify. Contact Steve You can find Steve on Twitter or LinkedIn. His consultancy website is https://www.under10consulting.com/.

An interview with George Nurijanian. George is a former pricing analyst turned product manager, currently working as a Product Owner for design systems at New Zealand unicorn Xero. He's also now working to help demystify the world of resources we have available to us as product managers with his new side project prodmgmt.world. We speak about a lot, including: What Xero does as a company, and his work as a platform product owner working on a design system to enable coherent interfaces throughout a rapidly scaling company Whether working as a product owner on a design system means he needs to be a designer or a UX pro, or whether it's very similar to external product management The story behind prodmgmt.world and how he's trying to help product managers, marketers & indie hackers find the best product management frameworks in one place Whether he's just trying to be the Wikipedia of other people's product resources or whether he's aiming to create his own content for the community Whether he needs to curate it constantly, and his plans for a community aspect to help understand how people are using the frameworks to succeed His experience getting to #2 on Product Hunt and the effect this had on user numbers and buzz around the tool Some of the characteristics of product management culture in New Zealand, some of the differences from classic thinking, and some approaches that can be used to overcome legacy thinking And much more! Visit prodmgmt.world This site is a collection of techniques to empower entrepreneurial minds. Map your product challenge to the solution. Before: "I have no clue how to test if my idea is valuable." After: "I've got a full arsenal of techniques and frameworks." You can check out George's new side project at prodmgmt.world Contact George You can find George on Twitter or LinkedIn. His personal website is https://nurijanian.com/.

An interview with Rich Mironov. Rich is a smoke jumper CPO who gets thrown behind the fire to help solve some of the hardest problems in product management - trying to fix organisations to help them make products properly. He's worked with 175 companies and has experienced it all, and also distilled this into his Product Bytes blog & book "The Art of Product Management". We speak about a lot, including: What a "smoke jumper" CPO is and the types of problems he solves when he goes into the mind boggling number of companies he has worked with The difficulty that teams sometimes have landing a message with leadership & why they often need to hear the same message from a consultant The mistakes some companies make by prioritising domain expertise over product management, and how this leads to bad product behaviour & biases The importance of understanding other teams' motivations, and using your PM skills to work out what they actually need How agile was written by software guys, doesn't mention customers at all, and why we don't need PMs who aren't embarrassed about not speaking to customers The differences between B2B and B2C product thinking and some of the classic product advice doesn't translate to the world of B2B The importance of taking your product thinking discussions to the right level & not trying to persuade front line people The importance of building coalitions as a product leader to make sure you're not just seen as an outlier where good ideas go to die And much more! Buy The Art of Product Management "The Art of Product Management takes us inside the head of a product management thought leader. With color and humor, Rich Mironov gives us a taste of Silicon Valley's tireless pursuit of great technology and its creation of new products. He provides strategic advice to product managers and tech professionals about start-ups, big organizations, how to think like a customer, and what things should cost. He also reminds us to love our products and our teams." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Rich You can find Rich on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also check out Rich Mironov's Product Bytes here.

An interview with Jas Shah. Jas is a product consultant who works with fintech firms to help them out where their product teams are maybe lacking, or don't have the time to do the job. Jas predictably believes in outsourcing product management tasks to consultants, but not all of them, and only if it helps bring the team along and develop their skills. We speak about a lot, including: What problems he solves with his consultancy, the types of companies he consults for, and why he prefers startups to big banks Whether fintech is all disruption and sea change or whether there's value in making incremental change The difficulty of selling disruptive change to the mass market, why you have to take it in stages and meet people where they are not where you want them to be The time he felt compelled to leave a product management job because of lack of support for his product, and how long he stuck it out The concept of servitising product management, what that means in practice and what types of task can be servitised The importance of taking the teams along for the journey so they can be self-sufficient after you leave The product management cliché he dislikes the most, and advice for people trying to take their first steps into product management And much more! Contact Jas You can find Jas on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also check out his consultancy Bitsul.

An interview with Radhika Dutt. Radhika is a product leader, consultant & author of "Radical Product Thinking" who has decided it is time to step away from building products incrementally & flying by the seat of your pants. Instead, she advocated creating a radical product vision, aligning the company around it and defining where you want to go and not how fast you get there. We speak about a lot, including: The story of the book, some of the early feedback she's received and how rewarding it is to see it landing with non-product people and product people alike How she set out to create a book that mixed vision with practicality, and bringing a truly global perspective rather than just another Silicon Valley tech bro book How seeing the same problems again & again led her to create a free framework to help solve them, and how this spurred the need for a book The audience for her book, the vision she had in mind, and how she wants people not to just prioritise the speed of their car but also where they're driving to Whether she has a problem with the Lean Startup (!), whether her book replaces it or is a compliment to it, and why you only really get a few pivots The importance of going beyond the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, creating a detailed vision up front and aligning your team around it The list of "product diseases", whether a radical product vision cures them all, and some examples of how they can afflict a business How to make sure everyone, including leadership, is behind the vision; the tools you can use to drive this, and the concept of vision debt The product hippocratic oath - how we as a product professionals need to ensure we do no harm and actively work to create better change in the world And much more! Buy Radical Product Thinking "Iteration rules product development, but it isn't enough to produce dramatic results. This book champions Radical Product Thinking, a systematic methodology for building visionary, game-changing products." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Radhika You can find Radhika on Twitter or LinkedIn

An interview with Adam Thomas. Adam is a passionate product leader & product coach who wants to help you drive organisational alignment. By day he's Lead Product Manager for a recruiting platform, and by night he's the hero that Gotham needs with product consultancy Approaching One. We speak about a lot, including: His work with Approaching One and how he's trying to help product managers & product leaders get better How he started out as a mainframe programmer, and ended up falling into product management when a mentor realised how unhappy he was The story of his two startups, whether they succeeded or failed, and some of the lessons he learned from the experience His journey from individual contributor to leadership, the resources he used and how he mixed mentorship with repeated mistakes to get good The importance of driving organisational alignment, the types of negative & positive feedback you can get due to misalignment Why alignment is the product manager's job, how you should never assume anything, and have to do the work Some of the warning signs of misalignment, techniques you can use to get back on track and why you should trust but verify The importance of having a compelling story around your product that you can align your team around Survival Metrics - what they are & how you can use them to decide whether to pivot, double down or give up on an initiative And much more! More on Survival Metrics Why not visit the website to find out more about Survival Metrics? Contact Adam You can find Adam on Twitter. He's also got a Substack mailing list and his website is theadamthomas.com

An interview with Giff Constable. Giff is an entrepreneur and product leader who was most recently CPO at Meetup during the WeWork acquisition & divestment. He's also the author of "Talking to Humans" & "Testing with Humans" - books that aim to help teams make good product decisions. We speak about a lot, including: The origin story for "Talking to Humans", why he wrote it back in 2014, whether he'd change anything now, and whether other books on discovery are riding his coattails Why he felt compelled to write a follow up, "Testing with Humans" and why good experimentation is essential to solution validation How his books made it into the worldwide education system and whether it was just as simple as him putting cartoons in them What life was like during his time at Meetup, a company going through a tumultuous period being acquired (and later divested) by WeWork Some of the challenges when two business cultures collide, and the mistakes he made taking over a dysfunctional team Why you shouldn't go in all guns blazing on day one, no matter what dysfunction you see, and why you need to validate the team first The importance of being transparent, open & honest during testing times, without being so open that you drag everyone down with you The tricky path to product leadership and how prospective leaders need mentoring, coaching and guidance to succeed And much more! Buy Talking to Humans "Talking to Humans is a practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development, an indispensable skill for vetting and improving any new startup or innovation. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action." Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Buy Testing with Humans "Testing with Humans, the sequel to bestseller Talking to Humans, teaches entrepreneurs, innovation teams, and product teams how to run effective experiments. An experiment is a test designed to help you answer the questions "Should we do this?" or "Am I right about this?" If you are open to learning, the insights from your experiments will help you refine your creation and improve your odds of success." Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Giff You can contact Giff on Twitter or LinkedIn. He also has a blog at GiffConstable.com.

An interview with Natalie Furness. Natalie is a marketing consultant and company founder. Initially frustrated by not being a coder, she embraced the thriving No-Code community and realised that she could solve customer problems and build solutions anyway. Now she's started Minimum Viable Stack as an umbrella firm for a growing number of No-Code products. We speak about a lot, including: How she got started in marketing, where her entrepreneurial streak came from, and whether it's easier to market your own products or products by other people Her constant need to invent new things & how she balances this with focusing on what can truly make an impact The origin story behind Minimum Viable Stack and how she met her co-founder on Twitter (and who has the most followers) How her time marketing blockchain products gave her experience with disruptive tech and ensuring the message was focused on the users not the tech How she thought you needed to be able to code to build a tech business, and how a chance introduction to the No-Code community on Twitter made her realise this was not true The passion for automating repetitive tasks that led her to create two No-Code SaaS solutions, UXFramed and ScopeDone Whether you need to explore the entire universe of No-Code tools & whether she has settled on her own minimum viable stack Any barriers with No-Code solutions, and how working in No-Code has actually helped her learn to code Advice on how to get into building No-Code solutions yourself, and the importance of validating that you're solving real user problems And much more! Contact Natalie You can contact Natalie on Twitter or LinkedIn (although for the latter, please say that you've come from OKIP podcast otherwise she might not accept you!). You can check out her work at Minimum Viable Stack.

An interview with Michele Hansen. Michele is the founder of Geocodio, a startup she founded without taking external funding. She is also the author of "Deploy Empathy", a book that aims to help product teams & founders to get better at user research & get the insights they need. We speak about a lot, including: Why now was the time for a new book on customer interviewing skills, how it's different to other books on discovery How the book has gone down, some of the feedback that she's gotten so far, and how she knew it had done the job she wanted it to How to introduce customer research into companies which aren't currently up for it & sell the idea to leadership Whether the techniques in the book constitute manipulation and whether she's worried they could be used for evil Whether the book teaches you to be truly empathetic or is a guide to fake it till you make it, and whether this matters How you don't need users to have empathy with you, and have to channel your inner rubber duck to make sure they open up to you The importance of validating not just hypotheses but also validating your users by resisting the urge to correct their mistakes Why you shouldn't use customer discovery interviews to try to sneak in sales or directly try to stop people churning And much more! Buy Deploy Empathy "Deploy Empathy will help you learn the skill of talking to your customers—learning to truly listen to them—so that you can pull out their hidden needs, desires, and processes. Empathy is a skill that anyone can learn. Armed with the tactics you’ll learn in this book and the toolbox of scripts and phrases, you'll be able to sell more of your existing product, build the right features that will delight your customers, and stop churn in its tracks." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Michele You can contact Michele on Twitter or check out deployempathy.com.

An interview with Carlos Lastres. Carlos is the Creative & Marketing Director at Kaiyan Medical, a Chinese company creating light therapy products. Carlos is obviously an advocate for light therapy but also an engineer turned designer who is loving life in China. We talk about a lot, including: Light therapy - what the heck is it? Does it really work? How he became a convert to light therapy by chance when working on a design brief for Kaiyan Medical and why he decided to stay Some of the differences and similarities between creating digital products & hardware products How 3D printing makes all the difference when trying to get an MVP out of a hardware product How his frustration with badly designed software applications as a developer led him to pursue a career in product design How he went from an MBA and software development background to developing the design hard skills he needed How Chinese startups build products and how is it so different from how Western countries do it Whether Chinese users appreciate the constant flow of limited MVPs or whether it limits the ability to truly learn How he got involved with TEDx, how it went, and why you shouldn't follow your dreams And much more! Contact Carlos You can reach out to Carlos on LinkedIn or LastresCarlos.com. You can check out Kaiyan Medical on KaiyanMedical.com.

An interview with Peter Knudson & Braxton Bragg. Peter & Braxton are co-authors of new book "Product Sense", with which they hope to help the next generation of product managers discover their product superpower and land that next big product management role. We speak about a lot, including: Their shared history as product managers in the gaming industry, why Peter stayed in it and why Braxton spread his wings How the book has been received, how they took an iterative approach to book writing, and why they decided to write a book together in the first place How the book is different to some of the other classic "get a product job" books and whether it's a compliment or a replacement The importance of bringing your authentic self to product manager interviews, and whether it's ever OK to fake it till you make it How they define product sense, whether everyone already has it, and whether people who don't have it can be taught it The concept of a product manager superpower, being T-shaped, and using your expertise and passion to stand out from the crowd Why they created the Compass Framework, why it's needed and how it helps give a structured response to interview questions Whether you need an MBA to be a product manager, whether it's totally unnecessary, and how in either case it can be very tricky to get into product And much more! Buy Product Sense "Product Sense is a comprehensive and accessible, guidebook for what it means to solve problems as product manager, and ace complicated PM interviews." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Peter & Braxton You can contact Peter or Braxton on LinkedIn.

An interview with Rand Fishkin. Rand was the founder and CEO of SEO firm Moz. He documented the highs & lows of VC-backed entrepreneurship in his 2018 book "Lost and Founder", in which he detailed lessons learned, fought back against tech clichés, and pondered how he'd do it differently next time. Now it's next time and he's back with new firm SparkToro, looking to build truly sustainable businesses and a more caring, responsible capitalism. We speak about a lot, including: His new startup SparkToro, what it does, how it's different to his previous firm and how it's going these days Whether calling out thought leaders in his book led to any trouble, and why it's ok to make philosophical enemies How he pushes back against the inevitable retort that, rather than hustle culture being a problem, maybe he's just not that good at it The fallacy of meritocracy and how it's impossible for privileged founders (and the people that back them) to understand that opportunity is not distributed equally How the VC industry is furthering inequality, blinded by survivorship bias, and why it's so important to give underserved groups a hand up How the "growth at all costs" VC culture is forcing founders to make bad product decisions to make the numbers look good, and ignoring the real lifetime value of a user The surprising way that SparkToro handles cancellations proactively, and why churning a few extra % is better than having unhappy, locked in customers The problems with MVP culture, how people have taken the Lean Startup too far, and why great products are rarely minimally viable How founders and product leaders should truly put the customer first, not be blinded by their own egos and defending a possibly meaningless strategic roadmap at all costs And much more! Buy Lost and Founder "Everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go: a young, brilliant entrepreneur has an cool idea, drops out of college, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes billions and becomes the envy of the technology world. This is not that story." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Rand You can contact Rand on Twitter or check out sparktoro.com.

An interview with Paul Meinshausen. Paul is the co-founder of Aampe, a startup that uses automated, rapid learning to personalise notifications and drive customer engagement. Paul started out in academia before doing a tour in Afghanistan and using data where the stakes couldn't be higher. He then went on to found and invest in multiple startups. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Aampe, the problems they're trying to solve, and the importance of sticking to solving those problems and not getting bogged down building stuff that's already a commodity Whether the company is at product/market fit stage or whether product/market fit is even a thing as far as they're concerned How we need to step away from mobile notifications being a marketing channel, rather a proactive UI and entry point to apps The impact of Big Tech privacy controls on mobile technology, the impact on engagement, and whether it's a threat or an opportunity The journey from academia to multiple entrepreneur, and whether it's unfair to label data scientists as primarily academic with no business sense Some of the ways data scientists can build those business muscles and make sure they are solving real problems in a meaningful way How a tour in Afghanistan shook Paul out of his academic mindset and made him realise that this stuff needs to work in the real world Why it's critically important not to just have data, but to know where it comes from and truly understand how it's feeding your models and algorithms The impact of bad data on your business and how you need to be hypervigilant to make sure you're not caught napping Check out Aampe If you want to find out more about Paul's company, check out aampe.com. Contact Paul You can catch up with Paul on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Ramli John. Ramli is the Managing Director of ProductLed, the Robin to Wes Bush's Batman, and the author of "Product-Led Onboarding", a book that aims to shine a light on getting users to value sooner and ensuring you retain them long term. We speak about a lot, including: The mission behind ProductLed, and how the pandemic has really focused people's minds on ensuring their tools are seen as valuable What the Managing Director of ProductLed does, and whether he's really the Robin to Wes Bush's Batman How Ramli went from studying mathematics & being an analyst for a massive FMCG company into marketing & product-led growth, and why it excites him so much Why we needed a new book dedicated to Product-Led onboarding given that it was covered in Wes's book originally, and what publishers said when they pitched it Why he put his personal email address in the front and back of the book for queries, and how much spam he's received since he did that The importance of first impressions when it comes to product onboarding, and ensuring quick time to value to drive retention Who owns product-led onboarding, whether it matters, and the importance of true cross-functional teams Why product-led onboarding is more about free trials and guides, and more to do with an obsessive focus on user success, and why you need to define what that "success" really is The EUREKA framework the book proposes to help you establish your onboarding team, understand, refine and analyse (and whether he came up with it in the bath) How time to value can actually be too short and some of the things you can do about this Whether product-led growth is truly anything new, or just a buzzword to sell attractive yellow books And much more! Buy Product-Led Onboarding "Just like dating, your company's growth depends on first impressions. If their first date with your product is anything but silky-smooth, you risk losing out to the competition. Add to that a few, unfairly poor reviews and you’ll be more than just stuck. In this book, you’ll learn the simple 6-step strategy used by giants like Mixpanel, Ubisoft, and Outsystems that will get you more loyal clients in a fraction of the time." Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Ramli You can contact Ramli on Twitter, LinkedIn or productled.com. More from ProductLed If you want to hear Wes Bush's interview on this very podcast, why not check out Wes Bush's interview on this very podcast?

An interview with Abisoye Falabi. Abisoye is a passionate technologist, community builder and educator who is currently Senior Product Manager at TradeDepot, a Nigerian commerce and fintech platform. We talk about a lot, including: His work with TradeDepot, the problems they solve and their plans to go pan-African Some of the challenges of moving across borders into new territories and how this affects scaling How he started out in tech and moved to product management after seeing how developers were disconnected from customers & stakeholders His various roles spanning tech & product, and whether he agrees that having a CPTO is good or not Why it's important for Africans to make software solutions for Africans, and how they have to be 100x better than established solutions Some of the challenges in building products for the African market, and how they might be addressed Some of the common mistakes VC firms make when investing in African tech, and some of the opportunities they are missing His passion for education, how he teaches to learn, and some of his work with community building and working on courses for Pluralsight And much more! Contact Abisoye You can reach out to Abisoye on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Teresa Torres. Teresa is a product discovery coach who works with a variety of organisations to help bed in good product discovery practices. Her coaching experience led her to write a book on the same topic, which she hopes will inspire product teams around the world to build fast feedback loops and defeat stakeholder bias. We talk about a lot, including: Why she decided to write Continuous Discovery Habits, and the feedback she's received so far What the concept of continuous discovery means in practical terms, and why it's important to stay on top of shifting customer needs The target audience for the book, and whether it's for product leaders or the sceptical exec team How ideological battles are not going to win the war for product discovery, and the importance of showing and not telling How her history in human-centred design, and disappointment at working practices in the real world, ignited her passion for discovery How cognitive biases can lead to bad product decisions, but how this isn't just down to stakeholders but also affects product teams themselves The importance of stakeholder management, addressing their own gaps, and using story mapping to uncover those gaps and assumptions Why you should follow through with an impact analysis when you're inevitably overruled, and uncover their (or your) gaps in understanding How continuous discovery can work with any type of addressable market, and how few people is too few The ideal frequency of customer contact, and why the longer you leave it, the more risky your decisions The critical importance of getting engineers into discovery early and using their knowledge & experience to get to the right solution And much more! Buy Continuous Discovery Habits "In this book, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right. " Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Contact Teresa You can find out more about Teresa's coaching & education efforts on producttalk.org. If you want to catch up with Teresa, you can Twitter or on LinkedIn.