Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

How product managers can master product design & development Watch on YouTube TLDR This article explores the crucial role of product design in product management, focusing on ideation and concept design tools. It covers various ideation techniques such as SCAMPER, brainstorming, mind mapping, storyboarding, brainwriting, Six Thinking Hats, Delphi, ethnography, Day in the Life, empathy analysis, personas, and customer journey maps. The article also delves into concept design, discussing the Kano Method for classifying product requirements and identifying customer perceptions. By understanding and applying these tools, product managers can create customer-centric products that drive satisfaction, differentiation, and competitive advantage. Introduction Product design is a critical aspect of product management, as it directly impacts the success of a product in the market. To create products that customers love, product managers must have a deep understanding of their target audience and employ various tools and techniques to generate ideas, validate concepts, and optimize the user experience (UX). In this episode, we will explore the essential product design tools that every product manager should know, focusing on ideation and concept design. Ideation Tools Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas. It is an essential part of the product development process, particularly in the early stages when product managers are looking to identify customer needs and develop innovative solutions. Here are some powerful ideation tools that can help product managers in their quest for product innovation:   SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. This tool helps generate new ideas by prompting product managers to think about their product in different ways. By applying each of these actions to their product, they can come up with creative solutions and improvements. Traditional brainstorming involves gathering a group of people to generate a large number of ideas in a short period. However, research has shown that this method may not be the most effective. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is an improved version of brainstorming that incorporates individual reflection time before the group discussion, leading to better quality ideas. Mind Mapping is a visual tool that starts with a central idea and builds a web of relationships around it. This tool is particularly useful for collaborative ideation sessions, as it allows team members to see the connections between different ideas and build upon them. Storyboarding focuses on developing a story to understand the problems or issues customers face when using a product. By visually representing the key elements of the story, product managers can gain insights into the customer journey and identify areas for improvement. Brainwriting is a variation of NGT that involves individual writing and idea sharing. Participants write down their ideas and then pass them to the next person, who builds upon them. This process continues until everyone has had a chance to contribute, resulting in a diverse set of ideas. Six Thinking Hats encourages team members to examine a problem or topic from multiple perspectives. Each hat represents a different way of thinking, such as facts, emotions, or creative ideas. By wearing different hats, product managers can approach a problem from various angles and generate more comprehensive solutions. The Delphi method utilizes a panel of experts to provide insights and scenario planning. Through a series of surveys, experts independently share their thoughts on a specific topic. The results are then synthesized and shared back with the group for further refinement. This process helps product managers make informed decisions based on expert opinions. Ethnography involves observing users in their natural environment to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and behaviors. By combining ethnography with interviews, product managers can uncover valuable insights that may not be apparent through other research methods. The Day in the Life method helps product managers uncover the routines, behaviors, and challenges customers face when using a product. This can be done through remote user observation, such as video submissions, allowing product managers to gather data from a diverse set of users. Empathy Analysis is crucial for creating customer-centric products. By immersing themselves in the user’s world, product managers can better understand their problems and develop solutions that address their needs. Empathy analysis should be a fundamental part of any product design process. Personas are fictional characters based on real customer interactions. They help product managers understand their target audience by incorporating demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data. By adding jobs-to-be-done to personas, product ma

How product managers can master product process Watch on YouTube TLDR – The Product Innovation Charter (PIC) is a short document that provides direction and alignment for a product development project. – Stage-Gate and Agile Stage-Gate are popular product development processes that manage risk and incorporate Agile elements. – Jobs-to-be-Done theory focuses on understanding the customer’s underlying needs and the jobs they are trying to accomplish with a product. Introduction In today’s competitive market, creating products that customers love is crucial for the success of any organization. Product managers and innovators play a vital role in delivering value to customers by effectively managing the product innovation process. In this article, we will explore the seven knowledge areas for product mastery. These knowledge areas are based on the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) body of knowledge, which has been curated since 1976. The Seven Knowledge Areas for Product Mastery Product Innovation Management: Maximizing the return from product innovation through application of sound management practices throughout the product life cycle Strategy: Provides the context, goals, and direction for product innovation and ongoing product management Portfolio Management: Establishes and maintains balance of new and existing product innovation projects aligned with the business strategy Process: Provides an approach, which is commonly understood and accepted by the whole organization, for developing new products or improving existing products Design & Development: Efficiently and effectively evolve a product from initial idea to a developed, manufactured, and “market-ready” form Market Research: Provide market-related information to underpin decision-making in all aspects of strategy development, portfolio management, the product innovation process, and life cycle management Culture & Teams: Essential to forming and maintaining an innovative environment that enables, encourages, and rewards product innovation processes and practices. In this article, we will focus on the New Product Process knowledge area, which covers various product innovation processes and methodologies. The Product Innovation Charter (PIC) The PIC is a short document (1-3 pages) that serves as the heart of any organized effort to commercialize a new product. It consists of four sections: Background: Provides context for the project, including why the company is pursuing it, the scope, the project team’s role, and any constraints or key technologies involved. Focus Arena: Identifies the target market, key technologies, marketing aspects, and competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Goals and Objectives: Outlines specific and measurable goals related to the project’s contribution to business strategy, operational goals, and project-specific objectives. Special Guidelines: Covers team communication and accountability, reporting requirements, project expenditure responsibilities, external agencies, and product quality or launch constraints. A helpful acronym to remember these sections is “BAGG” (Background, Arena, Goals, Guidelines). The PIC is a valuable collaboration tool that ensures everyone involved in the project has the same vision and understanding of the product’s purpose, target market, and objectives. Many companies do not start projects with a clear, concise document like the PIC, which can lead to confusion and misalignment among team members and stakeholders. Product Development Processes There are numerous product development processes and methodologies covered in the New Products Process knowledge area. Some of the most notable include: Stage-Gate Waterfall Concurrent Engineering Integrated Product Development (IPD) Agile Product Innovation Agile Stage-Gate Systems Engineering Design Thinking Lean Product Innovation Lean Startup Jobs-to-be-Done Stage-Gate and Agile Stage-Gate The Stage-Gate process, developed by Dr. Robert G. Cooper, is a widely adopted product development process that manages risk by breaking the process into stages separated by decision gates. The five stages are: Discovery: Identifying new product ideas and opportunities. Scoping: Conducting a quick assessment of the market opportunity, technical requirements, and organizational capabilities. Business Case: Justifying the project to the organization by evaluating the market, the proposed solution, and the business viability. Development: Designing, prototyping, and preparing for the product launch. Testing and Validation: Assessing all aspects of the product and launch plans, potentially involving customer trials or market tests. Agile Stage-Gate incorporates Agile elements, such as Sprints and time-boxing, into the Stage-Gate process to promote faster learning cycles and adaptability. By breaking down the work in each stage into time-boxed Sprints, teams can focus on d

How product managers can master product portfolio management Watch on YouTube   TLDR Portfolio management is a crucial aspect of product development that helps organizations strategically allocate resources, balance projects, and align their product innovation efforts with overall business goals. By understanding the essentials of portfolio management, product managers and leaders can better position their ideas, defend resources for their projects, and contribute to the organization’s success. This article explores the fundamentals of portfolio management, its goals, and frameworks for structuring portfolios, and provides insights on aligning product innovation projects with organizational strategy. It also discusses the importance of portfolio management for product managers, the characteristics and goals of portfolios, and the common approaches to linking portfolios to strategy. Introduction In the world of product development, portfolio management plays a vital role in helping organizations prioritize projects, allocate resources effectively, and ensure that their product innovation efforts align with the overall business strategy. As Peter Drucker famously stated, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation.” Portfolio management is the key to driving successful innovation and creating products that customers love. For product managers and leaders, understanding the essentials of portfolio management is crucial. It not only helps them better position their ideas and defend resources for their projects but also enables them to contribute more effectively to the organization’s success. By mastering portfolio management, product professionals can ensure that their organizations focus on creating the right products that drive innovation and deliver value to customers. Understanding Portfolio Management What is a Portfolio? A portfolio is a collection of projects or products that a company invests in and manages strategically. These projects may or may not be related to each other and can be categorized based on various criteria, such as new product ideas, enhancements to existing products, fixes, or research and development initiatives. The portfolio represents the organization’s investment in innovation and its commitment to creating value for customers. The Role of Portfolio Management Portfolio management is a decision-making process that involves continuously reviewing and revising the list of active projects to ensure that resources are allocated optimally and aligned with the organization’s strategy. It aims to maximize the value of the portfolio, balance projects based on predetermined criteria, and maintain the right number of projects to avoid spreading resources too thinly. Portfolio management operates in a dynamic environment where projects are at different stages of completion, and there is no certainty of success for each individual project. However, by managing the portfolio effectively, organizations can increase the overall odds of success across the full range of projects and products. Why Portfolio Management Matters for Product Managers Product managers play a critical role in driving innovation within their organizations. They are responsible for creating products that generate revenue, satisfy customer needs, and contribute to the organization’s growth. Understanding portfolio management is essential for product managers for several reasons: Positioning Ideas: By understanding the principles of portfolio management, product managers can better position their ideas and align them with the organization’s strategic goals. This increases the chances of securing support and resources for their projects. Defending Resources: When projects face competition for resources, product managers who understand portfolio management can effectively defend the resources their projects need. They can articulate how their projects contribute to the overall portfolio value and align with the organization’s strategy. Career Growth: Product managers are well-positioned to become leaders within their organizations. As they progress in their careers, understanding portfolio management becomes increasingly important. It enables them to make strategic decisions, allocate resources effectively, and drive the organization’s product innovation efforts. Goals of Portfolio Management Value Maximization One of the primary goals of portfolio management is to allocate resources in a way that maximizes the overall value of the portfolio. This involves considering the commercial worth of individual projects and the associated risks. By prioritizing projects with the highest potential value and managing risks effectively, organizations can optimize the return on their innovation investments. Balance Achieving the right balance of projects within the portfolio

How product managers can master product innovation strategy TLDR Ever wondered how top product managers create winning strategies? This article dives into the world of product management strategy, sharing insights from the popular Product Mastery Now podcast. We’ll explore: • What strategy really means in product management • How different strategies work together in companies • Cool tools for creating killer strategies • Ways to get your bosses excited about your product ideas Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, you’ll find practical tips to level up your product management game. Ready to become a strategy master? Let’s dive in! Understanding Product Management Strategy: It’s Not Rocket Science! Think of product management strategy as your game plan for creating amazing products that customers will love. It’s all about figuring out where you want to go and how to get there. What’s Strategy, Anyway? Strategy is just a fancy word for a plan to make good things happen in the future. In product management, it’s like your roadmap for success. Michael Porter says strategy is about figuring out what makes your company special and using that to beat the competition. The Strategy Family Tree In companies, strategies come in different flavors. Understanding how they fit together is key for product managers. Check out this hierarchy of strategies: Business Strategy A great business strategy is like a secret recipe for product success. Let’s see how to whip one up! Be Different, Not Just Better The saying in product management, “Different is better than better,” means that standing out is more important than just being a bit better than others. Think about it – would you rather have a slightly faster horse or a totally new car? The Recipe for a Winning Business Strategy Pick your goals (like which products to focus on) Decide how new products will help reach those goals Create a product innovation charter (it’s like a mission statement for your product) Choose how daring you want to be (Are you playing it safe or going for broke?) Pick projects that match your big goals Your Strategy Toolbox: Get Ready to Build! Great product managers have a toolbox full of tricks for creating awesome strategies. SWOT Analysis: Your Strategy Swiss Army Knife SWOT helps you look at your product from all angles. It’s like giving your product idea a full health check-up. SWOT Part What It Means Strengths What your product or company is awesome at Weaknesses Areas where you could use some improvement Opportunities Cool chances to grow or do better Threats Things that could cause trouble Trends (bonus!) Big changes happening in the world PESTLE Analysis: Your Crystal Ball PESTLE helps you peek into the future and spot big changes coming. It’s like having a superpower to see what’s around the corner. Political: Government stuff Economic: Money matters Social: How people live and what they care about Technological: Cool new inventions Legal: Laws and rules Environmental: Nature and planet Earth Business Model Canvas: Your One-Page Wonder The Business Model Canvas is like a treasure map for your business idea. It helps you see the big picture on just one page. Who are your customers? How will you talk to them? How will they find you? What makes your product special? Who are your helpers? What important stuff do you need to do? What resources do you need? How much will it cost? How will you make money? Innovation Strategy Innovation strategy is like your recipe for cooking up amazing new products. It helps you stay ahead of the game and keep growing, no matter what’s happening in the world. What Makes a Great Innovation Strategy? It’s custom-made for your company (no one-size-fits-all) It helps everyone in the company work together It helps you decide what’s most important It helps you make tough choices The Innovation Strategy Puzzle Pieces A solid innovation strategy touches many parts of your business: Technology: What cool new tech will you use? Marketing: How will you tell people about your product? Platform: Will your product work with other stuff? Open Innovation: Will you team up with others? Intellectual Property: How will you protect your ideas? Getting your Organizational Leadership to Love Your Ideas Got a brilliant product idea? Awesome! But how do you get your company excited about it? The secret is to show how your idea helps the company reach its big goals. Matching Your Ideas to Company Goals Your product idea needs to support one of these types of company goals: Financial (like making more money) Growth (like entering new markets) Learning (like mastering new skills) Business Processes (like making things faster) Customer (like making people happier) Speaking Customer Language Take boring business goals and turn them into exciting customer stories. Check out these examples: Boring Business Goal Exciting

How product managers can master product innovation management TLDR Want to level up your product management game? This article dives into the world of product innovation management, using insights from the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Body of Knowledge. Here’s what you’ll learn: • The ins and outs of product innovation • Why some products fail (and how to avoid that fate) • What successful product managers do differently • Four key strategies to boost your product management skills • How top companies nail product innovation By mastering these ideas, you’ll be better equipped to create products customers love and drive success for your company. Introduction: Why Product Innovation Management Matters As product managers, we’re always trying to create the next big thing, stay ahead of competitors, and make our customers happy. But how can we make sure we’re on the right track? Enter the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Body of Knowledge. It’s like a treasure trove of wisdom for product managers, packed with insights to help you level up your career. Today, we’re diving into the first knowledge area: Product Innovation Management. What is Product Innovation, Anyway? Product innovation is all about creating and introducing new or improved goods or services. But here’s the thing: innovation doesn’t always mean inventing something totally new. It can take a few different forms: Brand new products (like the first iPhone) New-to-us products (like when a company enters a market they’ve never been in before) Upgraded products (like when your favorite app gets cool new features) The key ingredient? Value. As product managers, our job is to create something that customers find valuable. When we do that, everyone wins! The Recipe for Product Innovation Product innovation isn’t just about having a “eureka!” moment. It’s influenced by a bunch of different factors. Some we can control, and some we can’t. Check out this breakdown: Stuff We Can Control Stuff We Can’t Control Company culture Our strategy Our skills and capabilities How our company is structured Our budget What our competitors are doing Government rules Industry regulations What’s happening in the global market Plus, there are a ton of people involved in making innovation happen. Inside the company, you’ve got folks like: The big bosses (Board of Directors and top management) Marketing wizards The tech geniuses (engineers and developers) Number crunchers (finance team) Supply chain experts And don’t forget about the outside help: Consultants with fresh ideas Suppliers who keep things moving Government regulators Industry groups And most importantly: our customers and users! When Products Go Wrong: Learning from Failures Here’s a scary stat: up to 90% of new products don’t meet their sales goals. Yikes! That’s why it’s super important to understand what makes products succeed or fail. Let’s look at some famous flops and what we can learn from them: New Coke: Coca-Cola tried to improve their classic recipe, but customers hated it. Lesson? Don’t mess with a good thing without really understanding what your customers love. Apple Newton: This early tablet was ahead of its time, but the technology wasn’t quite there yet. Sometimes, timing is everything! BlackBerry: Once the king of smartphones, BlackBerry missed the boat on touchscreens and apps. The takeaway? Always keep an eye on where the market is heading. These examples show why we need a solid game plan for product innovation. It’s not just about cool ideas – it’s about making sure those ideas actually work in the real world. The Secret Sauce: What Makes Product Innovation Successful So, how do we avoid ending up on the product failure wall of shame? The PDMA Body of Knowledge points out some key ingredients for success: 1. Nailing the Basics Create products that are unique and awesome Know exactly who you’re selling to Do your homework before you start building Have a clear plan for what you’re making Put enough resources into launching your product Work fast, but don’t sacrifice quality 2. Getting the People Part Right Build teams that fit the project Create a workplace that loves new ideas Knock down barriers to innovation Make sure the big bosses have your back 3. Thinking Big Picture Make sure your product fits with the company’s overall plan Play to your company’s strengths Go after markets where you can really shine Balance your product lineup (don’t put all your eggs in one basket) Give each project the resources it needs to succeed Learning from the Best: PDMA’s Study of Top Innovators PDMA did a deep dive into what makes some companies innovation rock stars. They found seven areas where the best of the best really shine: 1. Innovation Culture Top co

The essential knowledge areas that give product managers more influence and success TLDR Product mastery is essential for creating successful products and driving innovation within organizations. This article explores the seven knowledge areas crucial for product managers and innovators, as outlined by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Body of Knowledge. These knowledge areas include product innovation management, strategy, portfolio management, process, design and development, market research, and culture and teams. By understanding and applying these concepts, product professionals can enhance their skills, increase their influence within their organizations, and create products that truly resonate with customers. The article also discusses the importance of continuous learning in product management, the value of professional certifications like the New Product Development Professional (NPDP), and provides insights into resources for further development in the field. Introduction to Product Mastery Product mastery is a critical skill for professionals aiming to create successful products and drive innovation within their organizations. The concept of product mastery encompasses a wide range of knowledge areas and skills that enable product managers and innovators to excel in their roles. This article introduces the seven essential knowledge areas for product mastery, as outlined by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) Body of Knowledge. These areas form the foundation of successful product management and innovation practices across various industries. The Seven Knowledge Areas for Product Mastery The PDMA Body of Knowledge identifies seven crucial knowledge areas that product professionals should master to achieve success in their roles: Product Innovation Management Strategy Portfolio Management Process Design and Development Market Research Culture and Teams Let’s explore each of these areas in detail to understand their importance in the product management landscape. 1. Product Innovation Management Product innovation management serves as the foundation for all other knowledge areas. It encompasses the overarching principles and practices that guide the creation of new products and the improvement of existing ones. This area focuses on: Understanding customer needs and market opportunities Generating and evaluating new product ideas Managing the innovation process from concept to launch Fostering a culture of innovation within the organization Mastering product innovation management enables product professionals to drive meaningful change and create products that truly resonate with customers. 2. Strategy Strategy plays a crucial role in aligning product development efforts with organizational goals. This knowledge area covers: Developing and implementing product strategies Aligning product roadmaps with business objectives Identifying and prioritizing market opportunities Competitive analysis and positioning By mastering strategic thinking, product managers can ensure that their efforts contribute to the overall success of their organization. 3. Portfolio Management Portfolio management focuses on optimizing the mix of products and projects within an organization. Key aspects include: Balancing resources across multiple products or projects Prioritizing initiatives based on strategic fit and potential value Managing risk across the product portfolio Evaluating and selecting new product opportunities Effective portfolio management ensures that organizations invest in the right products and initiatives to maximize their return on investment. 4. Process The process knowledge area covers the various methodologies and frameworks used to guide product development from idea to market. This includes: Stage-gate processes Agile and lean product development methodologies Design thinking approaches Continuous improvement and iteration Mastering different product development processes allows product managers to choose the most appropriate approach for each project and adapt to changing market conditions. 5. Design and Development Design and development focus on the actual creation of products, encompassing both the creative and technical aspects. This area includes: User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design Technical architecture and engineering Prototyping and testing Quality assurance and product refinement A strong understanding of design and development principles enables product managers to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and ensure the creation of high-quality products. 6. Market Research Market research is crucial for understanding customer needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes. This knowledge area covers: Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies Customer segmentation and persona development Competitive analysis and market sizing Voice of the customer (VoC) programs By mastering market research techniques

The habits that set apart transformational product leaders Today we are talking about why organizations are increasingly facing the need to transform and how to navigate those changes. If you have experienced a big change, you already know firsthand how challenging it is. All of us need to know the principles that make transformations successful, and that is what we’ll takeaway from this discussion. Joining us is John Rossman, who was an early executive at Amazon and led the launch of the Amazon Marketplace (which allowed third-party businesses to sell on Amazon). He is a four-time author including best seller “The Amazon Way” and “Think Like Amazon,” as well as a sought-after business advisor and keynote speaker. His expertise is on leadership for innovation and business transformation. His most recent book is Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper-Digital Era. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:41] What advice have you received that helped you think about how to have more successful influence in the organization? I had a longtime business partner, Steve, who told me, “After Amazon, your superpower is always clarifying and simplifying the discussion, the meeting, or the communication.” I recognized from Steve that one of the things I learned at Amazon was how to clarify and simplify. Especially in a complex situation, the person who can clarify and simplify the communication is the controller of the situation. After I left Amazon, one of my key clients was the Gates Foundation, and Greg Widmyer told me, “You do a really nice job taking the little strategies, inserts, and mechanisms from Amazon and delicately implementing them and influencing our work. I think you ought to write a book about it.” The ability craft a story and influence others at scale through a book was a great piece of advice and something I had never thought about before. [5:48] What are Big Bets and why are they important to organizations? A Big Bet is any initiative, strategy, or project that both has the potential for significant business impact and business upside and has significant multi-sided risks or assumptions. They are not simple initiatives or straightforward capabilities. Big Bets typically happen at the enterprise level but can happen at the team or product level. They get called lots of things like market repositioning, merger integration, digital transformation, AI strategy, etc. Big Bets have a 70-85% failure rate, but those are all errors of commission where an initiative was taken and it didn’t work as scheduled. The biggest failure point is typically the benefits. But those statistics don’t count the errors of omission where a Big Bet was needed but one wasn’t taken. When you see a company go from great to average or from average to irrelevant, a Big Bet was needed. The framing of my book, Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper-Digital Era, is critical to answer the question, why are Big Bets needed? It’s my hypothesis that these past 30 years of digital change has been the warmup innings for the next era, which we call the hyper-digital era. The companies that can make a core capability out of transformational change, high potential impact, and high risk will win. In addition to being operationally excellent and great at incremental moves, they are going to be great at these transformational capabilities, these business model changes that are so essential. Those are the Big Bets. [9:33] Tell us about solving wicked problems. If you asked me, “John, what are you good at?” I would say I’m good at solving wicked problems—multi-sided, non-obvious problems. Technology is just one of the mega forces that I think will drive this next era. Mega forces include change, labor force, and population. Another mega fore is the need for our country to drive innovation. Just to be able to afford the required spending, we have to grow the economy. Those mega forces combined will create this cyclone of transformational change. There are going to be a lot of new winners and new losers. Transformation has to become a core capability for senior leaders. Today, it is not. That’s the problem we are trying to address in Beg Bet Leadership. [11:44] Can you share a success story—why transformation was needed and what the leader did to make it successful? My co-author Kevin McCaffrey drove new business incubation at T-Mobile, a company that has gone through a decade or more of Big-Bet success. In the book, we feature four Big-Bet legends: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, John Legere, and Satya Nadella. The story of T-Mobile starts in 2013 when John Legere declared war on the other three major carriers and started the uncarrier moves. Over the next five to ten years, T-Mobile underwent 12 sets of uncarrier moves. It took them from an irrelevant fourth-position carrier to a br

Tools for making voice-of-the-customer insights more accessible to product managers Today we are talking about aspects of the Market Research knowledge area for product mastery. Specifically, we are discussing how to overcome challenges collecting actionable customer insights. Helping us with this is Prashant Mahajan, the founder of Zeda.io. Prashant is an experienced product manager and leader, having guided product development in several organizations. In these experiences, he identified a critical gap: Many Product Managers are unsure if they are building the right products because they can’t access customer feedback, customer insight, or sentiment. This led him to developing Zeda.io, which is also focused on the importance of publicly sharing product roadmaps and progress with customers. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:52] You founded Zeda.io to help product managers capture the voice of the customer and get actionable customer insights. What challenges did you encounter as a product manager that gave you experience for improving how to gain customer insights? We learn about product management best practices, like solving customer problems and making a strategy, but most of the product management I saw in companies was about operations. Updating an Excel sheet or going to a meeting was taking up too much of my mental bandwidth. I thought there could be a better way to do product management, where operations are taken care of by software. We took inspiration from GitHub AI Copilot and Chat GPT. We started with the vision to make product management simpler and smarter. Product management can be divided into product discovery, prioritization, building, and launch. Most product people are good at building things, but they don’t know what problem to solve. If people knew what to build, we would not see companies launch useless products and fail. I experienced these challenges firsthand in my previous company. You get input from sales, support, customer-facing teams, and user research. As the company becomes bigger and bigger, the distance between the product team and the user keeps increasing. Meeting with people is like playing Telephone, and by the time you get information, it might be four or five people away from the customer. You can’t go to one place and find out what your customers are asking. I wanted to make a platform where you can centralize the customer voice, analyze it, generate insights, and make the key takeaways actionable. The product team, including designers and engineers, needs to know why they are building things. If you tell them the problem and the impact of solving it, they can brainstorm together and ship it out. It’s critical that you’re using your resources for the right problem, which will create impact, and not just randomly building things. [10:24] After you built a product to solve your problem, how did you validate the pain points and core problems for the larger product management community? I am a strong proponent of talking to people. In the last three and a half years, I have had a call with a product leader on average every day. I’ve talked to CPOs, VPs, and people who have just started as the first PM at a startup. The core problem as a product leader is there are so many ideas and a lack of confidence on deciding which idea to pursue. You need to justify the ROI of building a product. One CPO said he needed our product to be insurance for his job. If the product didn’t work, he would be fired. He needed the data to save his job. [14:18] How does your product at Zeda.io help product managers? We focus on product discovery and planning. We centralize all your customer voice or input from customers and customer-facing teams in one place so you don’t have to juggle meetings and Excel sheets and you don’t lose any information. We use AI to analyze customer input and show its impacts: What are your top customers asking? What are you current customers asking? What are your potential customers asking? What are the biggest pain points, opportunities, feature requests, etc? You can adjust the prioritization framework to prioritize based on revenue, number of requests, particular product, etc. You can convert an action into a Jira ticket. When you ship the product, we’ll help you publish release notes and updates, which help with adoption and NPS and reduces churn. [16:54] How is the problem of transparency with information addressed in organizations now and by your platform? If you don’t have a tool like Zeda, you will have separate tools to keep track of information from sales, customer support, user research, product, etc. The tools and processes would be different, and the information would be scattered. Getting access to information from different sources and converting it to a presentable form will take weeks. We have built native integration into all the different tools. The inform

How product managers can design their customer experience journey We all want to create products that customers find valuable and even delightful. But accomplishing that is complicated, and some teams lose focus on the real objective or start without a clear vision for what they need to accomplish. How can using the customer experience journey help you make better products? We are about to find out with Jason Friedman. Jason has started successful businesses in several industries including medical diagnostics, automotive, spirits, and digital media. He has taken his experience and knowledge and focused it to help companies gain an unfair advantage over their competition through the art and science of designing their “customer experience journey.” He is founder and CEO of CXFormula, which works with entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies including Nike, Universal Studios, Burger King, Bank of America, and others. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:26] What is the customer experience journey? The customer experience journey is the perception that a customer has after interacting with your product, service, brand, and team. The most important piece is how people feel. Today the customer experience journey is more important than it ever has been. Today, AI has dominated everything, so people can create a new product or idea in minutes. Where we shine as product managers is in the experience people have with our product. We can make it amazing, and that’s what differentiates us in the crowded market. [5:38] I’d like to provide two scenarios. First, sometimes startup founders develop a product to solve their own problem and assume others experience the problem the same as they do. Second, established companies can believe they are the experts in their domain and tell customers what they need. In both scenarios, the customer experience is not considered. How would you avoid these problems? The customer experience journey is all the touch points a customer has with your product, including brand, service, support, usability, and instructions. There’s that famous quote from Henry Ford, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses,” and Steve Jobs has been quoted as having a similar perspective. Often, customers don’t have the vision for creating a paradigm-shifting solution. Those companies might be right that their customers don’t know, but they miss the deep understanding of their customers. When we don’t truly understand our customers and what they really need and want, we can create a product that may be awesome but that customers are not going to adopt. I don’t want to discourage anyone from thinking outside the box. If you only rely on what your customers tell you, you might miss out on coming up with some amazing innovation. But finding out how to really understand our customers and their true wants and desires is problematic for many of us. We don’t really know, so we rely on superficial information. My background is in theatre working behind-the-scenes. In theatre productions, the focus is almost exclusively on the audience—the customer. Everything we do on stage is about the customers’ reaction. In our businesses, we often lost sight of the customer. A business owner who built a product for themselves might have been the customer at one point, but often they have the curse of knowledge. They know too much and lost sight of where their customers are. They might overdevelop or create something that’s not aligned with the customers’ true needs. One of the tricks is to get inside the customer’s head. Pretend like you’re going to play your customer on stage as a character. Get into character. Many famous actors use method acting. They go deep in understanding that character so much so that they know what they had for breakfast or who their imaginary friend was when they were a kid. Sometimes they make this up, but they make it up in real context and try to walk in their character’s shoes. All their research is to understand all the things that make them tick. They’re able to articulate what’s going on inside that character’s mind that the character might not have been able to say themselves. As you think of developing a product, if you can get into the head of your customers and really understand them, you can start to solve their problems and show them a solution that they couldn’t have told you they wanted, but when they see it, they say, “That’s it. That’s what I need.” [11:30] What’s another action we can take to better understand customers’ pain points? Amazon is a great opportunity. Look at products on Amazon that solve similar pain points and read through the reviews of all the frustrations. It’s a gold mine of information on how to make a better experience for people and maybe even how

How product managers can empower their teams Today we are talking about how product leaders can create more effective teams by using a people-first leadership approach. Joining us is Diana Stepner, Head of Product for Education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Her approach to product leadership empowers individuals, fosters collaboration, and connects with people in an authentic way. She is also a product leadership instructor on Maven and has held leadership and advisor product positions. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:09] What does people-first product leadership mean? Launching people is just as important as launching products. When people feel supported, their product efforts shine. When I was defining my leadership style, a colleague referred to me as a servant leader. I appreciated the notion, but I didn’t really like the phrase. I’m not an attendant to my team; I lead my team. Instead, I wanted to acknowledge that I like putting people first, and that’s what I expect for my team. That’s where the phrase people-first product leadership came from. [3:33] What are the key capabilities that leaders need if they’re going to adopt a people-first product leadership approach? Positive leadership character: Show traits such as integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion. Creating psychological safety: Establish an environment where team members feel safe to take risks, speak up, share their ideas, ask questions, be honest, and make mistakes. Promoting a learning culture: Provide the opportunity to continually learn and improve as a team. That enables individuals to adapt to changes and strive for excellence. That’s really important in product management, because things don’t stay the same. We always have new technologies and new competitors, and product management continues to evolve. A learning culture ensures we’re staying up to speed on all the areas that impact our product. [5:37] Tell us more about the aspects of positive leadership character. Developing people: This takes integrity and responsibility. Focus on developing people, not just products. Help people gain skills, confidence, and knowledge, so the team can work better together. Self-awareness and emotional intelligence: This takes compassion and forgiveness. Help individuals build their self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Understand your own emotions and understand and appreciate the emotions of others. Express empathy. I use an exercise called an Emotions Wheel that helps people identify their emotions. Active listening: Develop a listening style that encourages people to be engaged and creates an environment that’s not competitive. Show that you’re being attentive to, comprehending, and internalizing what’s being discussed. Be able to summarize and move forward together. [9:22] Tell us more about psychological safety. Empathy and understanding: Create an environment where people feel comfortable to tackle the unknowns. Experimentation: Encourage your team to experiment, try different ways to approach problems, innovate, and learn from failures. Sharing mistakes: Build a culture where people feel comfortable openly discussing and learning from mistakes. [14:28] Tell us more about how the Emotions Wheel can help create psychological safety. The Emotions Wheel is an exercise I do at the start of my people-first product leadership course on Maven. It’s a great icebreaker. People put a dot on the Emotions Wheel next to the emotion they’re feeling. It helps everybody understand what others are feeling and gives an indication to me as the teacher of how to best incorporate individuals into the session. At the end of the day, we ask participants how they’re feeling now. That helps them acknowledge that new things can be scary and helps them look back at what they learned, the friends they made, and how their emotions were affected. Another exercise I use is called a Read Me. It’s a document where you outline how you work most effectively and how others can best work with you. It’s a good way to break the ice and a reference point for new team members or to refer back to when you haven’t talked to someone in a bit. [17:28] Tell us more about promoting a learning culture. The main characteristic of a learning culture is empowerment through experimentation. Systematically encourage experimentation. Know the hypothesis, why you’re experimenting, and the desired outcome. Share successes and failures so the rest of the team learns too. [19:04] How do you introduce empowerment through experimentation to the team? I introduce the concept of experimentation by letting people know that I’m going to make mistakes. It’s often unexpected for a product leader to admit they’re going to make mistakes. The team is stronger when they feel comfortable sharing the knowledge that we’re all human

Product management insights from medical innovations Today we are talking about product management and innovation of medical products. Throughout my career, I’ve often found the best insights for improving my product work by learning from other industries, so even if you are not involved in medical products, you’ll be able to apply the practices you are about to hear. You’ll learn where insights for new or improved products come from and the pitfalls to avoid in getting products launched. We are learning with Ron Richard, a seasoned expert specializing in medical devices, medical diagnostics, and the life sciences. He has over 35 years of experience in the Medical Industry, has launched over 40 products, and has 17 patents under his belt. He is also the author of the book Someday is TODAY, which describes how to move from idea to launched product. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:17] How did you get your start in developing medical products? I started through my experience as a respiratory therapist. I worked in intensive care where patients are often on a ventilator and intubated. It’s frustrating to try to communicate with patients because they can’t talk. The first product I invented was a communication board that has simple phrases on it that a patient can point to. I didn’t have any idea how to develop a product, but I saw a problem and came up with a solution. I’m also a paramedic, and I worked on an ambulance. Back in the day, when you pick someone up and put them on oxygen, the oxygen cylinder goes right between their legs on the gurney as they’re transported to the ambulance. It was not very comfortable or safe. I bought some PVC tubing and straps and made my own oxygen cylinder holder. That got sold to the company that makes gurneys, and it’s still in use today. [5:38] What skills are involved in discovering insights that lead to products? Be open-minded. Be attentive to what’s going on in your surroundings. Live in the moment. When I’m dealing with critical issues with patients, I could get distracted, but I’ve had the ability to stay in the moment and not only take care of the patient but also work with the clinical team and observe what products they’re using. [7:01] What role do patients play in getting insights for new products? The first step is to come up with a platform or base idea. The next step is to interview patients and talk in general terms through a PowerPoint or show them a prototype and get their feedback. Many years ago, when people started using CPAP, which is a way to keep your airway open through a mask attached to a machine by a hose, the masks were very clunky and hard to put on. You had to really tighten them up, and it would make a crease on your nose and a red welt around your face. I saw those problems right away with patients. Through my experience at ResMed, we developed some of the most world-class, very comfortable masks you could ever imagine. That really advanced the whole field of sleep apnea, because if the mask is not comfortable, the patient isn’t going to wear it. [9:54] How do you make prototypes? I’ve used all kinds of different materials: foam, cardboard, plastics. Now 3D printers are fantastic. You can make all different sizes and shapes of things as long as you’ve got a decent CAD drawing. My book is focused on medical stuff, but I’m working on a project now using the same framework in my book to develop a new rain gauge. We’re using 3D-printing rapid prototyping. [11:16] How does your innovation process apply to many different fields? Early in my product development career, I attended a week-long workshop called the House of Quality that was put on by Ford and Toyota. I noticed the Ford and Toyota engineers had different approaches to developing products. The Japanese Toyota engineers seemed to develop products from being curious about something and talking to car owners and drivers about their experience. They were getting customer feedback and trying to develop something that would make the customer say, “Wow, this is fantastic. I love this car.” That’s what I’ve put into my medical career: Let’s make the customer exceedingly happy. [13:12] What role do medical practitioners play in getting insights for new products? I was invited to give at talk about product development and invention to the doctors at Stanford. After the talk, a lot of doctors told me, “I have these great ideas, and I just can’t get them out of my coffee cup. What’s the next step?” I feel that clinicians are the best inventors because they see first-hand what doesn’t work well. Always be curious. Always challenge what you’re using or doing. Try to see where there could be improvements to ultimately improve outcomes in patient care. Be innovative. Develop things that are patient-focused,

The Discover, Analyze, Create, Develop Design Thinking Framework for product managers You’ve heard about Design Thinking or even tried it. It is a simple-to-understand tool for solving problems, developing strategy, and most commonly for us product professionals, for developing a new product or service. And while it is simple to understand, that doesn’t mean it is easy to apply. I’ve seen Design Thinking mistakes, and I’ve made my own as well, which limit the results this powerful tool can provide. When you apply Design Thinking, wouldn’t you like to know you are getting the most from it? That is why Tom Granzow is with us. He has applied Design Thinking to hundreds of projects and also trained over 1200 people to use it properly. Tom has held senior innovation roles with an emphasis on medical devices and equipment and now shares his 35 years of experience and knowledge with others as the founder of Granzow Design Strategies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:23] Why is Design Thinking one of your primary tools? I think of Design Thinking as a framework and set of tools for problem solving. There are four key things that Design Thinking helps me accomplish: Getting closer to the customer Turning insights from customer research into action Driving collaboration Experimenting and iterating Design Thinking is a common framework that helps me communicate with other folks and get everybody on the same page. [5:09] Tell us about the phases of the Design Thinking framework: Discover, Analyze, Create, Develop. I modified these phases from Vijay Kumar’s model in 101 Design Methods. 1. Discover a. Frame: Frame out the customer problem and what you’re trying to accomplish for your business. b. Research: Build empathy. Understand customer problems. 2. Analyze a. Facts: What did customers say and do? b. Interpret: What did the customer research mean? c. Synthesize: Identify patterns and turn them into something actionable for the team like design principles, journey maps, and personas. 3. Create a. Brainstorm: Use a structured method, such as: Yes, and. Don’t say “no.” Say “yes, and” to keep the idea going. Creative matrix: Use this to break a big problem down into bite-sized chunks you can try to solve. Identify key problems on the horizontal axis and potential stimuli like materials and processes on the vertical axis. Brainstorm within each of those squares. b. Visualize: Build a sketch, rendering, or prototype. c. Combine idea fragments: Instead of trying to pick out idea fragments, combine them into bigger concepts. 4. Develop a. Test and refine: Put your ideas in front of customers, get feedback, and iterate. b. Repeat: Cycle through testing and refining many times. [14:18] What do people typically get right when applying Design Thinking? Companies that I have worked with really want to understand the customer. They don’t always have the right tools, and that’s what I’ve been able to help with. People understand the Design Thinking framework. I try not to call it a process, since teams already have their processes and don’t want new ones. Once people go through the training, they understand the framework and tools and can apply them. I’ve been very happy about the participation I’ve gotten. As long as I can explain what we’re trying to do, the engagement is amazing. Design Thinking helps with collaboration. It’s fun and engaging. People like doing the Design Thinking activities. [17:44] What do people tend to get wrong when applying Design Thinking? Some people think Design Thinking is supposed to be a really structured and linear process. In reality, it’s iterative and messy. We’re not trying to say it’s super structured, but we’re adding a little bit more common language, tools, and expected deliverables. When people talk negatively about Design Thinking, I don’t think they understand how we’re trying to use it. It’s a framework that’s very flexible. Another misconception is that Design Thinking is all about sticky notes and workshops. Sticky notes and brainstorming are tools. You need to start with the user. Understand your customer instead of starting with a product or feature. Even worse, sometimes people want to use Design Thinking and start with a particular tool. Instead, start with your user and what you’re trying to accomplish. People think Design Thinking is expensive or takes a lot of time. It’s a framework and set of tools, and it’s flexible. You don’t have to do all these steps. Design Thinking provides the tools to help with each part of the process. Teams can save time downstream by doing work upfront to understand the customer. I teach two-day classes around Design Thinking, and I think they’re great. People get excited and walk away wanting to use Design Thinking. But that&#821

Product management insights from Molson Coors’s non-alcohol portfolio transformation I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference. This discussion is with Marlon Hernandez, whose session is titled “Beyond the pint glass: Learnings from creating the new Molson Coors Non-Alcohol portfolio.” After over 233 years of brewing beer, Molson Coors announced its name change to Molson Coors Beverage Company to reflect its growing focus on beverages outside the traditional beer offers. A successful market entry strategy in the non-alcohol space was one of the critical pillars of the transformational journey into a beverage company. Marlon will share with us the process of defining, shaping, and building this new portfolio and how the PDMA body of knowledge helped him during this process. Marlon has held different innovation roles at the Molson Coors Beverage Company, including heading the newly established non-alcohol beverages division at its early stages. Also, this episode is sponsored by PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a global community of professional members whose skills, expertise, and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. PDMA is also the longest-running professional association for product managers, leaders, and innovators, having started in 1976 and contributing research and knowledge to our discipline for nearly 50 years. I have enjoyed being a member of PDMA for more than a decade, finding their resources and network very valuable. Learn more about them at PDMA.org. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:33] Why did Molson Coors want to create a portfolio of non-alcohol beverages? Molson Coors has been brewing beer since 1786 with the Molson family in Canada. Adolf Coors starting brewing beers in Colorado in 1873, even before Colorado became a state in 1876. Beer will continue to be a critical part of our portfolio. Right now, consumers are changing their behavior. They prefer a larger variety of beverage choices. At Molson Coors, we’re a consumer-centric organization. In 2019, we recognized that we needed to expand beyond beer and changed our name to Molson Coors Beverage Company. That was driven by the evolution of our consumers and our distributors. More than 60% of beverages consumed in the US are non-alcoholic, and some of our distributors already had started having products other than beer. The intersection of these factors triggered the creation of the non-alcohol portfolio, which I had the pleasure of leading. [5:15] What did market research show about why consumers were switching to non-alcoholic beverages? A combination of multiple factors triggered this change in behavior. In 2008, the Boomer generation reached an age at which their preference for beer declined somewhat. The new generation of drinkers is more aware of what they’re drinking and more conscious of calories and nutrition. Some consumers love the taste of beer but don’t want to have alcohol at some moments. That triggered the creation of non-alcohol beer options. Other consumers are looking to energize. The energy drink is one of the fastest growing segments in the beverage category. We want to continue building our portfolio in the direction the consumer is going. Molson Coors recently launched Blue Moon non-alcohol. People love the taste of Blue Moon, but sometimes they want to enjoy the taste without the alcohol. We want to ensure consumers have options to enjoy every moment of their lives. [9:06] How did you plan and structure your portfolio? Even though beer and non-alcoholic drinks seem to be in the same category, there are different consumer behaviors, regulations, and commercial practices involved. Molson Coors has been brewing beer for more than 200 years, but we realized the first step for us was to accelerate our learning about this new category. We partnered with a company called L.A. Libations, which is an incubator for non-alcoholic beverages. This was our fast-track learning process about the non-alcohol space. When you go into a new market space, ensure you have a clear path to help you learn about that space. If you don’t understand your context, it’s really hard to create the right content for that context. Next, understand your winning aspiration—what are your strengths as an organization and how can you add value in a new and different way? When I was building the market entry strategy for the non-alcohol portfolio, I identified the strengths we have as an organization and how we can add value for all our stakeholders. Molson Coors is an organization with an amazing ecosystem to scale business. When we complement that ecosystem with investment, it allows us to incubate new products and scale products. As we thought about the winning aspiration, we realized consumers are looking for better-for

How product managers can create products that customers cannot be indifferent to In episode 468, Dr. Merrick Furst introduced us to the discipline of deliberate innovation and how companies can create products customers absolutely must have. The purpose of this podcast is to help you create products your customers love. Products your customers must have takes this to a higher level. I asked Merrick to join us again so we can learn some of the tools for creating such products, which he also wrote about in the book The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand. These will be valuable tools to improve your work as a product professional. Dr. Merrick Furst, is a Distinguished Professor and the Director of the Center for Deliberate Innovation (CDI) at Georgia Tech. He has also founded numerous startups and in addition worked with hundreds of founders and innovators, helping them use the discipline of deliberate innovation. Listen to episode 468 for part 1 of this discussion. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:28] In episode 468, you introduced us to Deliberate Innovation and the concept of a not-not product. Please review for us what a not-not product is. We were trying to figure out how to help people make things that people would not be indifferent to. If they’re indifferent, that means that not buying is okay. They have other things they can do instead. When you’re building a product, you’re looking for a way to have authentic demand. The alternatives are just not okay, which means not buying it is not okay. As long as there are alternatives that are okay, you can’t be confident that people will buy your product. Often, when people think about products, they focus on what they think people need or want or the thing that will delight them. People might love your product, but if they have other options, what difference does it make if they love your product? To think more clearly as a product manager who is trying to help build something of value, it helps to think about not-not principles. What creates authentic demand is a situation in which not buying is not okay or not using the product is not okay for a customer. If you can train yourself to think in those terms, you start to see people and situations a little differently. If you make a product people are using, the alternatives are not being used. There is something not okay about them. Even though it’s obviously true that if someone could not buy, they’re not really a customer, people are not very comfortable asking a customer if it is okay for them to not buy the product. You need to know the answer because if it’s okay for them to not buy it, then you shouldn’t make it. People ask questions like, “Would it be helpful for you? Could you see yourself using it?” These are relatively useless questions. You need to know, “Is it okay for you to not use it?” [9:13] Help us learn about tools that lead to creating not-not products. As we talked after the last episode, you told me about the “Waking Dream.” What is that? We were working with innovators, product people, or founders who described to us why what they were doing was going to be meaningful to customers. We started to realize these people had an idea how the world worked that we call the Waking Dream. They’re living in some world where they think the know who their customers are, how they’re making decisions, and what their product means to the customer. It’s like a waking dream because it feels real. They don’t feel like they’re wrong. They operate as though that’s the way the world actually is. These people were making products that fit into the waking dream. They could see people buying and using the product. It all made sense. The problem is that most often when people would get those products constructed and put them in the real world, the real world was indifferent. The products worked in the waking dream world. They didn’t work in the real world. This led us to wonder what is this waking dream? How is it that people are walking around in this waking dream and not noticing it’s a waking dream until all of a sudden they discover that people don’t care about their product? Then they think they need to add features or charge less. They make up all these other stories about why it doesn’t work, but the reason is they made a product that’s not of the real world. There’s a book called Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz, in which she says that being wrong feels like being right. The difficulty of living in the waking dream is there’s no marker to tell you that you’re wrong. In situations that are uncertain, like whether people will buy your product, you’re relying on your judgement and your sense of what’s true, right, and wrong. We know that human beings make errors in judgements

Market research essentials for product managers Today we are talking about the knowledge area called market research. How do you know that the product you’re developing will actually create value for customers, that they’ll love it, and that they’ll buy it? Have you done the right things to have confidence of these outcomes, or are you wishfully guessing? You need confidence. That is why Andrea Ruttenberg, PhD, is joining us. As an associate principal at Applied Marketing Science, she has helped numerous clients conduct customer research and make critical business decisions—the same decisions you need to make, and this episode will help you move from guessing to confidence. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:08] What tools or processes do you use for customer research? The bread and butter of what I and my firm, Applied Marketing Science, do is Voice of the Customer (VOC). We define VOC as it’s described in an article called Voice of the Customer written by my co-founder John Hauser and his then-graduate student Abbie Griffin. Voice of the Customer is a systematic, thorough process that starts with qualitative interviews to understand customers’ needs. Needs mean customers’ problem, pain points, or things we can solve for them. Needs are not solutions. Voice of the Customer research means going to customers to deeply understand their perspective on problems we can solve for them. It’s our job to fix those problems for the customer. The VOC process has three main parts: Talking to customers in focused interviews. Analyzing transcripts and identifying unique needs. Doing a quantitative survey to understand how important each need is and how satisfied respondents are with it. [12:49] How many customers do you need to talk to? Our gold standard is 30 interviews. That’s when we start to hear nearly 100% of customers’ needs. At AMS we do a systematic, labor-intensive, time-intensive, in-depth VOC process. However, that’s not always necessary. There are times when it doesn’t make sense to do 30 interviews followed by 500 surveys. We’ve been focusing on helping our clients understand tools for getting insights in a pinch. How can you do this VOC process without completing 30 in-depth interviews? Step one is making sure you’re doing it for the right reasons and at the right time. If you’re starting a new product from the ground up, I would strongly recommend a more systematic process. If you’re just doing version 1.2 or you already have a lot of institutional knowledge, you can cut corners and still come up with really good research. [15:02] Tell us more about your in-a-pinch VOC process. For our in-a-pinch process, rather than relying on qualitative interviews, we rely more on our own institutional knowledge and sources that are already available, primarily online. Step one is to recruit three to seven colleagues within your organization who have diverse perspectives on your customers and their pain points. They should be from different parts of your organization and if possible also have diversity in seniority and demographics. Avoid folks who are likely to criticize or dismiss ideas and avoid large seniority gaps. Next do some brainstorming to build a list of your customer needs. Start writing down what your customers’ problems are. We generally have people sit around the table for an hour or two and do a brain dump. Go beyond generalities and define specific pain points your customers have. Ask people to put themselves in the customer’s shoes or walk through a day in the life of a customer. Think about different types of customers. Next take stock of what you know and where there are gaps in your knowledge. Then see what you can learn about your customers online. You can find consumer reviews everywhere—Amazon, Walmart, etc. I’m always shocked at all the different places where B2B customers are talking online. For example, a couple of years ago we did a study with snowplow drivers and found many forums online where folks who drive snow plows for municipalities or for their local neighbors were talking about some of their problems and challenges. Find out where your customers are talking online, and read and take detailed notes on what you’re learning. Look for pain points, goals, and aspirations. We are not going to our customers for them to build a solution for us, but it can be helpful to understand what people wish were available and why it’s not available. Take detailed notes and translate them into needs. Be as specific as possible. Last, you can use ChatGPT or Bard and write prompts to learn more about your customers’ needs. Then take stock again. Look through all your unique needs and ask if it feels like things are missing. We might recommend doing a couple of interviews to round things out. Your goal with the interviews is to confirm that the list of needs

How product management teams can make better innovation decisions I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference. This discussion is with two speakers who did a joint session, Dr. Wayne Fisher and Dr. David Matheson, whose session is titled “Improving decision quality during stage gate reviews.” Recent findings from PDMA’s Outstanding Corporate Innovator award program indicate that highly innovative companies follow some form of stage-and-gate process, including agile-stage-gate, to balance risk and rigor in the development of new products and services. Also, a recent Society of Decision Professionals poll suggests that innovation decisions are a rich area for improvement. We will discuss gate decision best practices with Wayne and David. After nearly 3 decades with Procter & Gamble and training thousands of their managers on innovation, Wayne founded Rockdale Innovation to guide other organizations in innovation best practices. David has more than two decades of portfolio and innovation management experience. He cofounded SmartOrg, which provides software and services to support decision-making and managing uncertainty. This episode is sponsored by PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a global community of professional members whose skills, expertise, and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. PDMA is also the longest-running professional association for product managers, leaders, and innovators, having started in 1976 and contributing research and knowledge to our discipline for nearly 50 years. I have enjoyed being a member of PDMA for more than a decade, finding their resources and network very valuable. Learn more about them at PDMA.org. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:39] What is decision quality? How do you know if you’ve made a good decision? Suppose my son, who is in his early twenties, goes to a party and has to make the decision whether to have a sober or drunk driver drive home. Suppose his whole group gets together and they decide to drive home drunk and everybody is safe. I would say that was a pretty bad decision. Suppose on the other hand, he says he is going to be the designated driver. I would say that’s a good decision even if he gets into an accident. What was the difference? At this conference we asked people what makes a good decision in their stage gate process. Most people said alignment with goals or expectations or that people were excited about it. People’s naive view is that alignment makes a good decision. It’s the equivalent of saying if everyone at a party decides to drive home drunk, that’s a good decision. People don’t think about what it means to make a good decision. Decision quality means looking at your options and seeing if they’re rich enough that there is a really good choice. See if the information you’re getting is relevant to the choices you want to make. Do you have metrics and goals you’re pursuing? How does the information come together into an integrated story to make a recommendation? Are the inputs connected to the outputs? You’d be surprised how many times people bring a great stage gate package and then decide to do something completely irrelevant based on what they want to do. You have to have commitment, including committing resources and having the intention to move forward on your decision. [5:23] What are some challenges with decision making in an innovation context? The Society of Decision Professionals, a professional society for people who are serious about decision-making, made a card to assess whether a decision is complicated indicating you should slow down when you’re making it. It asks questions like: Is there a lot of uncertainty, particularly of a kind you haven’t faced? Is there conflict that might be difficult to resolve? Do the best solutions require cross-functional perspectives or integrating different views and practices? We did a poll with about 40 people and asked them to use this card to score innovation decisions they make. About two thirds of the decisions were high-scoring, indicating you should slow down when making these decisions. If you’re making a decision that is very high-scoring, you should talk to a decision expert. Eight out of the 40 people listed decisions that were very high-scoring. On the one hand, decision making in innovation is just serious decision making, which is good news. On the other hand, not seeing the upside is a unique challenge in innovation. People are very worried about risk when they should be worried about upside. There’s uncertainty in innovation. Everybody wants a reliable promise, so people make a promise they can keep rather than doing something that matters. Decision making tends to reflect an aversion to risk, but

How to build high-performing product teams Today we are talking about amazing product teams—what is involved in creating one and then how to manage it. Joining us is Amruta Moktali, Chief Product Officer at Skyflow, the world’s first and only data privacy vault delivered as an API. She’s spent over a decade mastering the complex domains of data privacy and analytics and amassed an impressive track record spanning agile startups as well as tech giants including Microsoft and Salesforce. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:39] What do you do to create a high-performing product team? A high-performing team is like a beautiful orchestra. You’re the conductor bringing the right instruments together at the right time. First, you should have a clear understanding of what problem the team is looking to solve. Make sure every person on the team is bought into it. Unless you’re marching toward the same goal, you will never perform well. It’s like music. Assemble people who will work well with each other and will challenge each other. This changes based on the environment. People who work well in person may not work well in a remote environment. People who do great in consumer products may not do well in B2B products. The most important thing is iterativeness. A high-performance team does not happen over night. You have to guide them. Remove folks from the team who are causing the team to slow down or move in the wrong direction. As important as it is to put the right people in, it is also important to take the wrong people out at the right time. [5:38] To assemble a high-performance product team, what skills do you look for? Have a good understanding of the hard skills you need, which differ. Sometimes you’re looking for generalists. Sometimes you’re looking for someone with experience with a particular technology. You also need soft skills. Make sure team members have amazing communication skills, especially if you are hiring product managers, since they are the conductors and orchestrators. Make sure your team has the ability to make hard decisions. To do that, they need to know the market, your customer, and where the business is going. Your team needs skills in bringing people together. [8:39] Why is it important that team members know they are part of something that matters? Being part of something that matters is what motivates you to wake up in the morning to work. The problem you’re solving and who you’re solving it for should resonate with you at some level. I worked at the startup Clio, a health benefits company. We were supporting families all the way from pre-pregnancy to end of life. As a mom and having had aging parents, I knew the problem. It was close to my heart. Every person who was part of Clio had the same emotional feelings around their work. Making a change in one person’s life was enough to get through the whole day. It’s a little different when you’re building a SaaS product. I’m not changing someone’s life when I’m building a SaaS product, but I can still think about what matters to me. For example, privacy matters to all of us at Skyflow. The core purpose is making sure everyone can work with information and serve their customers better but never compromise privacy. Make sure your work matters and you’re marching toward the right thing. I have been in situations, especially in larger companies, in which the priorities of the company change and a small feature doesn’t seem to matter anymore. In that situation, you should think about how you can still matter. Ask yourself why you think your work doesn’t matter to the company anymore. Is it just because nobody is talking about you? Are you still making an impact on the revenue? Is anything you’re doing aligning with the goal? If not, make the decision to stop doing it. It’s the responsibility of leaders to make sure everyone understands how they matter. You may have to do a little bit of realignment, asking if your work is still important to the company. You might pivot, and if your work is then in alignment with the goal you were thinking about when you came in, then continue. Otherwise, it may not be the right place for you. [14:00] What character traits are you looking for? One of the most important characteristics I look for is curiosity. When you’re curious, you’re also respectful, eager to learn, and humble. I look for people who have a strong point of view but a collaborative or humble way of communicating it. They know how to get people to understand their point of view. Team members should be able to work with other people. There will be people on your team who are the flag bearers of the culture of your team. You may do this as the leader, or there may be someone else on your team who embodies all the the things you want your team to have and brings people together. If someone does not have the

How to become an emotionally fit product leader We are talking about mental health for product managers and leaders—specifically product managers moving into leadership roles and those who are already in leadership roles. We’ll call this emotionally fit leadership. Dr. Emily Anhalt is a psychologist, emotional fitness consultant, and the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Coa, your gym for mental health. For the past fourteen years, Dr. Anhalt has been working clinically with executives, founders, and tech employees and has conducted extensive research with prominent psychologists and entrepreneurs about how leaders can improve their emotional fitness. She has collaborated with some of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world, including Google, Asana, Github, Unilever, and Bloomberg. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:55] What is emotional fitness? Emotional fitness is an ongoing, proactive approach to working on your mental health. It’s the equivalent of going to the gym instead of waiting until something is wrong and then going to a doctor. With physical fitness, we know you should eat healthy, sleep enough, and exercise, but we don’t have a lot of clarity around what exactly you should do to build a proactive mental health practice. I did a research study in which I interviewed 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs and asked them, “How would you know if you were sitting across the table from an emotionally healthy leader? What does that look like? What does that feel like? What do they do? What do they not do?” Out of this research came the seven traits of emotional fitness. If you practice them in an ongoing way, you will build stronger emotional fitness. [4:03] Why is self-awareness important and what should we know about it? Self-awareness is important because it’s hard to change something if you don’t know it exists. To improve ourselves, we first have to see what we’re good at and what needs improvement. This looks like having a sense of your emotions, strengths, struggles, biases, and triggers. The more you know about them, the more agency you have to make change. Leaders set the ethos for their entire team, often their entire company. The more aware they are of themselves, the better it is for everyone. Leaders need to do this work to be aware of what they need to work on and aware of what they’re good at. Then it’s less likely that the leader’s struggles will leak out to the team. [5:47] Why did you do this research study? I did the interviews about nine years ago, before mental health had quite as much spotlight on it since COVID. It was clear to me that there is a huge population of people who are not struggling with some extreme diagnosable psychological disorder, but who still have a lot of things in their life they wish they could change. A lot of those people don’t think they deserve to go to therapy because they don’t think they’re broken enough. The idea that something has to be wrong with you to prioritize your mental health is a big problem. I wanted to create some language that would normalize the idea that everyone should be thinking about their mental health. COVID legitimized the idea that none of us is going to see every tough thing coming. No matter how healthy we might be, we’re all going to be in a position at some point where we need to draw on our emotional resources to get through a tough time. The more work you can do proactively, the better a position you’ll be in when life throws you a curveball. [7:54] What are some examples of self-awareness? One piece of self-awareness might be saying, “I really like being an individual contributor. I don’t necessarily want to take on the task of telling other people how to do their work.” A lot of people feel the only way they can keep growing in their career is to switch over to a management role, and that’s not always true. Know how you do your best work and what you actually want to be doing. If you do want to move into a management role, you could say, “I want to do this, but it’s newer to me, so I need to invest in understanding what it means to do this work and get better at it.” There’s no shame in that. I wish more people felt okay asking their company to fund management courses or get them a coach or therapist so they can see their blind spots. We only see the world through the lens of our own experience, and that lens is clouded by the way we thing things work, which is not always the way other people think they work. The more investment you can make in knowing yourself, the better you will do your job and the better everyone will feel working with you. [9:46] What are some tools we can use to increase self-awareness? There are three things: therapy or coaching, introspection, and asking for feedback. Therapy or coaching lets another person help

Five mindsets every product manager should cultivate I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference. This discussion is with Matt Phillips, whose session is titled “The Mindsets of Breakthrough Innovators.” Matt shared that successful innovators and entrepreneurs think differently from other people. Further, the way they think can be learned. Using examples from Pixar, Google, Netflix and even ultramarathoners, we can learn the secrets to unlocking innovation as well. Matt will help us. He is the founder of Phillips & Co., a Chicago-based innovation strategy firm. This episode is sponsored by PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a global community of professional members whose skills, expertise, and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. PDMA is also the longest-running professional association for product managers, leaders, and innovators, having started in 1976 and contributing research and knowledge to our discipline for nearly 50 years. I have enjoyed being a member of PDMA for more than a decade, finding their resources and network very valuable. Learn more about them at PDMA.org. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:35] Help us be better innovators. What mindsets should we have if we want to be breakthrough innovators? We often spend time learning new methodologies of innovation, but we rarely stop to change the way we think. When I’ve met incredible VPs of innovation, CEOs, or entrepreneurs, I don’t walk away with a four-step process. They just think differently when they walk down a grocery store aisle or talk to someone they just met. Their way of seeing the world is different. I’ll take us through five mindsets. [4:49] Be a gap spotter. Many incredible entrepreneurs talk less about products and more about gaps. They go through life spotting problems. An entrepreneur based in Texas, Chris Corner, had a friend who owned a bakery business, which did not sell online. Chris suggested that as an experiment they put a QR code on all the bread. That took off and he built an entire platform to sell his friend’s bread online. He then built that into a larger platform to sell things online. During the pandemic, Chris and his family were at home and they wanted snacks from Buc-ee’s, a massive Texas convenience store known for their snacks. Chris found that Buc-ee’s did not sell online. He called the company and told them he wanted to build an online store for them, but no one got back to him, so he decided to do it himself. He bought $1400 of snacks at Buc-ee’s, photographed it, and built a website called Buc-ee’s Store. Immediately the lawyers called. He had taken their trademark. Interestingly, the lawyers did not say cease desist. They told Chris to change the name but he was welcome to keep selling Buc-ee’s things online. He scaled the business, which is now called TexasSnacks.com. They continue to buy things at full retail price from multiple Buc-ee’s stores and sell them online. What I love about that is it’s slightly insane to take your kids and buy $1400 worth of snacks, but the bigger thing is Chris is a gap spotter. He goes through life seeing these problems, and instead o f saying, “That’s a bummer,” he immediately says, “That’s an opportunity. Let’s jump on it.” That’s true of both entrepreneurs and people in corporate America who are incredible repeat innovators. [9:36] Multiply your magic. John Osher is a serial entrepreneur who has scaled amazing businesses. He built a toy company and then the first spinning lollipop. That gap here was small—you don’t want to lick with your tongue too many time. The spinning lollipop spins as you put your tongue against it. He sold that company off and spotted another gap. He decided to do what I call multiply your magic—take the thing you’re already good at and apply it to a new gap. Oral B and other companies make electronic toothbrushes, but they’re $70 or $80 and you have to plug them in. John realized if he changed the head on the spinning lollipop, he could make a $5 motorized toothbrush. That became the Crest Spinbrush. [11:44] Innovate with action. Justin Gold was an outdoorsy guy who liked to go hiking in Colorado. He started making nut butter to bring on his hikes. Sometimes when he came back, his roommates had eaten all his nut butter. He starting making more and taking it to a farmer’s market, where he sold out. He made additional jars for his friends, but he wrote his name and stuck it to his jar. His brand of nut butter is now called Justin’s because he stuck his name on his jars. He never set out to build a big company. He just continued to take the next step. He innovated with action. A lot of companies innovate with th

How SCADpro is elevating product management through design We are talking about some of the lessons from integrating art, design, and business needs that have been learned by SCADpro—the Savannah College of Art and Design’s in-house design, research, and innovation studio—which is generating innovative designs and products for the world’s most influential brands, including Google, Amazon, and Apple. Joining us is Paul Stonick, the Vice President of SCADpro. Prior to SCAD, Paul spent 25 years in the corporate world leading world-class digital and user experience design teams, primarily in e-commerce, most notably with The Home Depot and Barclays. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:54] How do you view the intersection of art, design, and business? “Good design is good business,” quoting Thomas Watson from IBM. I like to view design as value. For a design team to show value, they have to be able to speak the language of business to their stakeholders. The work we do at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and SCADpro, our in-house design, research, and innovation studio, is the intersection of design and business. We don’t consider ourselves to be an art school but a creative university. Everything we do has some sort of business component woven into it. [4:25] Can you share some examples from SCADpro of how organizations have found value by approaching innovation from an art and design perspective? The Chick-fil-A drive thru was a SCADpro project. Several years ago they came to use wanting to rethink the outdoor dining experience. We designed the iPad experience, the flow, the orchestration, the uniforms, etc. We execute through a framework called Design Thinking. It’s a creative problem-solving tool, a human-centered approach to solving problems. Design doesn’t even have to be part of the output. For Chick-fil-A, the output was structure, process, and organization. That’s value because it’s a return-on-investment for Chick-fil-A. Another partner is Deloitte, which we helped tackle some of the most complex issues facing public-sector organizations. Recently we created a holiday campaign for the jeweler David Yurman. We’re providing value in all different ways. For these three examples, we had students coming together from 100 different majors and minors, 120 countries, and all 50 states. We provide a global perspective and diverse thinking. Our secret sauce is unconstrained thinking, pushing the envelope, and going to places you usually don’t go to find the answer. That’s what innovation is—creating magic moments for the customer. Innovation is not about taking it to the press or to the board because then you’re serving the wrong customer. [8:29] How do you apply Design Thinking? While we encourage our SCAD students to be creative and think big, we strive to never forget the needs of the client. Our process starts with understanding the wants, needs, frustrations, and behaviors of the user to make sure we’re building the right product. It’s much more expensive to build the wrong thing than to build the right thing. The beauty of Design Thinking is it marries creativity and critical thinking skills. It requires us to generate a lot of ideas, so students become comfortable with failure. It forces you to try out many ideas early on and not get invested in one because generally your first idea is never the best. The process harnesses creativity through inquiry. We have three offerings: a 48-hour design challenge, a 10-week partnership, and an executive experience in which we’re teaching other companies how to be creative again. We did a partnership to redesign the Atlanta Police Department’s patrol cars. The students dug into the history of the police department and met with officers to understand what they were looking for in these patrol cars. You can see that in the execution. A phoenix rising from the ashes represents Atlanta and six stripes on the side of the car represent the six zones and the motion of the phoenix. This creates an emotional connection because the cars became take-home vehicles for the patrol officers. Design Thinking starts with empathy. Once you have empathy, you start building the right think and putting yourself in the right shoes. The power of Design Thinking is it’s inclusive and it creates empowerment. You can solve anything through design. Design Thinking is like a Trojan horse that you can use to really create change and take design to a strategic level. [11:26] Tell us about the steps in a design challenge or partnership. For the patrol car project, 24 students came up with 24 options in 48 hours. It was a lot of pizza and not a whole lot of sleep, but it was a lot of fun. We presented the ideas to the mayor of Atlanta and the Chief of Police, and now it has gone to market. A 10-week partnership starts with a kickoff with the brand partner. General

Mastering the art of customer conversations – for product managers As a product person, you know or at least have heard how important it is to talk with customers. Also, if you are not a complete newb, you also know you can’t simply ask the customer what they want. Instead, what do you ask them—how do you conduct a customer interview? We are about to find out from the go-to person on customer interviews, Steve Portigal. Rich Mironov, past guest and CPO of CPOs, said that Steve is the go-to veteran for field research and interviewing users. Steve is an experienced user researcher and consultant who helps organizations to build more mature user research practices. He’s also the host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast, where he interviews people who lead user research in their organizations. His work has informed the development of professional audio gear, wine packaging, medical information systems, design systems, video-conferencing technology, and music streaming services. You may already be familiar with Steve’s highly regarded book Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights. He has recently updated this book, creating the second edition. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:52] Why did your book, Interviewing Users, need a second edition? It’s been 10 years since the first edition was published. The fields that we all work in have changed. There was a little bit of discussion 10 years ago about remote user research, and now remote research is much more common. I wanted to talk in-depth about the best practices for remote research, even as they’re still emerging. Research operations, which is a field adjacent to user research, has emerged. The book also draws from 10 more years of me doing research and teaching research. I’m always learning. I updated the stories and included better examples. [6:09] How do we ask customers the right questions? First, don’t assume you know what people want. Second, recognize that just asking customers what they want is not effective. There are a few related questions that you should answer. Business challenge: What do we want to do? What do we want to change? What’s coming up? Why are we doing this research? Research question: What do we want to learn from people? Interview questions: The questions you ask customers. What you want to learn is not the same as what you should ask. For example, if you want to understand where people find the most value in their budgetary spending, don’t ask, “Where do you find the most value in your budgetary spending?” Instead, craft a set of questions and build a discussion guide that has a flow and sets context. Ask questions like: What do you do? How do you do it? How long have you been doing it? What are you big problems? Where does budgeting fit into those larger problems? Use the interview to ask many questions to get a larger context so you can conclude what the answers to your research questions are. [10:19] How should we prepare for a customer interview? Once you understand your business question and research question, think about your sample. Who are you going to talk to? Be creative in your sample. Don’t talk to the same people over and over again. Be intentional about who is going to give you the most information. Talk to people who will give deeper insight about the situation so you can make decisions about the changes you want to make. Figure out who will give you answers to your research question. Next, figure out how to get to those people. Then figure out what you’re going to ask them. Write a discussion guide. No interview looks like the guide you write, but it is a great tool to share with stakeholders to respond to their questions. This is a case of “Chance favors the prepared mind.” [12:42] How do you avoid interviewing the wrong sample? It’s much better to have a stakeholder object to your sample at the beginning of the study than at the end. Have a rationalization for the people you are choosing to talk to. Make everyone aware of the tradeoffs and how far these interviews will take you in your understanding. [15:13] What do you do during the interview? Don’t go through the interview line by line. All the good stuff comes from follow-ups. In the best interview, you ask one question and everything else follows. Every question you ask comes from something they just said. You are connecting and engaging such that everything they say is important because you have another thing you want know that builds on it. Telling someone honestly that their information is important and valuable to you creates rapport that makes these interview successful. Asking follow-up questions is a great rapport builder. You’re trying to poke around in the dark with a flashlight to see what’s behind the corners. You’re looking for your own understanding, not just checking off questions. Follow-

Insights for product managers on fostering innovation in corporate environments Today we are talking about how established organizations can innovate, resulting in new products and ventures. Most of us who have been in established organizations, know this can be challenging as a culture of innovation is often lacking. Joining us is Andy Binns, a management advisor, award-winning author, and speaker on innovation and change. He has over twenty-five years’ experience helping companies make and execute strategic choices to support business growth. He has been at the coalface of innovation, working alongside the leaders of IBM’s “Emerging Business Opportunity” program. He now leads Change Logic, a strategic advisory firm, which takes a hands-on approach to enabling firms to build new businesses. He has numerous articles published about his insights and his recent book he co-authored is Corporate Explorer Fieldbook: How to Build New Ventures in Established Companies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:42] Why is your book, The Corporate Explorer Fieldbook: How to Build New Ventures In Established Companies, needed? Our first book was Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at Innovation. This sounds outrageous, but although it is challenging for corporations to innovate and get into a market ahead of a startup, it does happen far more often than we realize. It’s hiding in plain sight. For example, Microsoft’s 365 is just a product extension for them. When you look inside these stories, you often find a corporate explorer at the center of them—someone who has the vision, commitment, and passion to drive it through. Our second book, Corporate Explorer Handbook, says that as management consultants and academics we don’t know all the answers. Most of the answers are in the field with the people doing this. Lots of little micro practices and activities together make you more about to fulfill that function of being a corporate explorer successfully. We wanted to make some of those tools more available to people. [7:22] What does a corporate explorer do? I endorse the view that to get better corporate innovation outcomes, you need good processes, good practices, and an enabling culture. There’s a chapter in the book about how to create innovation culture. However, when we look at venture-backed startups and entrepreneurs, we don’t say, “Oh that Musk guy, what a great process he has. Let’s get after that process.” We look at them and say, “They’re extraordinary leaders. They’re people who believe in something, and they follow it with a passion.” That’s what a corporate explorer does. We need a little bit more balance in how we think about corporate innovation. In Corporate Explorer, we tell the story of Christian Kurtisch at Unica Insurance, a firm founded in Vienna, Austria, around 1800. Fast forward 200 years and Kurtisch, a middle manager in Unica’s Hungarian business, builds a first-of-a-kind digital-only insurance business for this company. He does this because he is incredibly passionate about not his idea but the problem he’s solving; he builds support around him in the organization; and he gets really into experimentation in a big way. This is the corporate explorer recipe. [12:24] What tools have you seen resonant with organizations because they help them innovate better? The tool that gets the most attention is hunting zones. Part of the challenge is that large organizations wonder if innovation should be a top-down or bottom-up approach. Do they need a strong direction or do they need to gather lots of ideas? Hunting zones allow them to put boundaries around where they want to generate new ideas. They can use analytical techniques to describe the areas of greatest opportunity and then invite corporate explorers to step forward with ideas that might generate value within those zones. It’s important to have lots of ideas, and then you might find a good one. It’s tough to select the best idea. Putting boundaries around your ideas helps you pre-filter. [14:28] Can you share an example of using hunting zones? In 2012, Jensen Huang at NVIDIA was leading a GPU firm that was doing marvellously in gaming, but he found that Intel was incorporating the GPU into the CPU and sucking value out of his entire business. He decided to find the areas in the world where we can solve problems better than anybody else. He looked at problems in science, automotive, cryptocurrency, and gaming consoles. Once he understood science was a key area, he looked at where the biggest problems in science were. He got really involved in scientific communities. Because he had bounded the area he was interested in, he could engage in learning much more deeply. This allowed him to build a software platform that drove a 6000% improvement in stock prices. [19:16] What’s another tool that organiza

How product managers can turn customer dissatisfaction into innovation I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference. This discussion is with Tony Belilovskiy, whose session is titled “Voice of Customer in Product Design.” Tony will be sharing with us how you can turn customers’ perceptions (that is, their feelings) into numerical, objective data that can be injected into the product design and used as a business case for innovation. Tony is CEO and Managing Principal at C3 Excellence, that empowers clients to develop transformational strategic alignment with their customers. This episode is sponsored by PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a global community of professional members whose skills, expertise and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. PDMA is also the longest-running professional association for product managers, leaders, and innovators, having started in 1976 and contributing research and knowledge to our discipline for nearly 50 years. I have enjoyed being a member of PDMA for more than a decade, finding their resources and network very valuable. Learn more about them at PDMA.org. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:58] What’s an example of understanding the voice of the customer? This ties into the innovation quote I’ll share today: “Innovation comes from your most effective disruptors—dissatisfied, pissed-off customers with specific needs.” (Robin Lawton) Let’s talk about one of the biggest disruptions that happened in the last ten years in the taxi industry. Travis Kalanick was extremely dissatisfied while trying to secure a taxi cab in New York. He called the taxi company to order a cab, but they said he had to hail one himself. He hailed a cab and asked the driver about the fare and the route. The driver couldn’t provide any clear answers — no idea about the cost, the route, or even if he could take the shortest route. This frustration enabled him to think of Uber, a major disruption. It allowed customers to order a ride, exactly when and where they needed it, with clear information on the arrival time and cost. [6:23] What is the voice of the customer? The voice of the customer is the outcome the customers want to achieve when they use our products. [8:28] What is the downside of not paying attention to the voice of the customer? Often, innovators don’t think of the strategic implications their product may lead to. For a product to be sustainable, it must achieve some outcome. If the outcome is good, customers will keep coming back for that product. But if a customer bought the product because it was shiny and great, but now they have no use for it, it’s not going anywhere. Innovators need to look beyond the shininess, beyond the features of the product. You need to get into the minds, hearts, and feelings of customers. People will easily tell you how the product is performing, but getting into their minds and converting their feelings into numerical data that will help you design the product they want is an art. [12:06] How should we prioritize product features? The customer should be the one to prioritize. For example, a higher-ed institution wanted to create a heart of campus. They didn’t know how to define it, so our task was to figure that out. We segmented the customers, including students, faculty, staff, community, and administration into groups that have similar future uses for that space. Then we asked them specific questions, called word formulas. For example: “A successful heart of campus is…” (attributes) “A successful heart of campus results in…” (outcomes) “A successful heart of campus has…” (features) “A successful heart of campus is not…” You can end up with up to a hundred different answers for one question. Then you have customers look at the answers on a screen and pick the most important ones. Each person picks their top three or five, and they don’t know what everyone else picked. You end up with numerical data of what is most important to each segment. The top five features for the students are not the top five for the faculty, staff, or administration. The question becomes, which one of those customers do you not want to satisfy? You can’t possibly satisfy every single one of them. What is the decision-making process? I can’t answer that. I can give you the numerical data that tells you how important in a statistical sense certain things are to certain categories of people. Then it’s up to the business decision-making process to decide what actually gets implemented. We can’t blindly follow 100% of the voice of the customer because we still have a business to run, but at least it gives you a sense of direction. [23:28] H

How product managers can create authentic demand Today we are visiting the topic that is at the heart of this podcast—creating products customers love. To do that, we are joined by one of the co-authors of the new book The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand. Our guest is Dr. Merrick Furst, a Distinguished Professor and the Director of the Center for Deliberate Innovation (CDI) at Georgia Tech. In 2011, he founded Flashpoint, a first-of-its-kind deliberate innovation studio, to develop formative leaders and exceptional technology startups. Both at Flashpoint and at CDI, Merrick works with hundreds of founders and innovators and is developing the discipline of Deliberate Innovation. He has also personally founded eight startups. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:37] One of the aspects of your book, The Heart of Innovation, that caught my attention is the diversity of the four authors—four innovation experts from the startup world, large enterprises, nonprofits, and academia. How did that impact what the book addresses? Many of the ideas in the book came from my work and the work of my business partner, Matt Chanoff. We created and ran a program called Flashpoint at Georgia Tech, and we learned some counterintuitive but super useful things. In the context of doing pure startups, we were unencumbered by being part of a large corporation. The difficulty for a startup is how you become of value. We realized what we learning was applicable way beyond startups. One thing we learned is it’s hard to figure out the difference between invention and innovation. We determined a successful innovation is when people set out to do something and it continues beyond them. It doesn’t stop when they get bored or when the money runs out. It actually becomes part of the world. Matt and I were thinking about writing a book, and we wondered who the audience would be. People told us this kind of material and way of thinking affected their whole lives. It wasn’t just they were able to raise money or be successful in business. It also changed their relationships with their spouse and kids. Additionally, this material was for the people doing innovation inside corporations. I asked my friends Daniel Sabbah, who ran software for IBM, and Mark Wegman, who is an IBM fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering, to write a book together. We wanted to tell stories about startups, large and medium enterprise innovation projects, and how individuals can innovate in their own lives. The hard part was taking four people who have very strong opinions and different stories and writing a book that is easy to read. We had very intense conversations. We started the conversations with reminding ourselves of the purpose of the conversation, and then we discussed the facts we could all agree on. The thing that kills most startups is building products that customers are indifferent about. People say, “I could buy it or I could not buy it.” To be successful, you have to created something that people can’t be indifferent to. That’s the heart of the problem. You see that problem in its purest way in a startup. It’s important to ask yourself, “How is it that my customers are able to be indifferent? How can I create something in such a way that they are non-indifferent?” [10:00] What’s an example of a product customers are not indifferent to? Coca-Cola is super successful because everyone drinks a certain amount of liquid every day. Coke’s problem is to maintain a share of the liquid that is bought every day. If your customers find themselves in a situation in which not buying is not okay, that’s non-indifference. If not buying is okay, they can be indifferent to your product, and that kills business. At the beginning of every successful business, there must be some non-indifference. As companies get big, they forget what was causing the customer to not be indifferent and they start to look at other things. For example, IBM was in the disk drive business, and people were not indifferent to how dense the disk drives were. They made more and more money because their engineers kept increasing the disk drives’ areal density. When giant magnetic resistance was discovered, IBM thought it would enable them to be the absolute dominant leader by allowing them to achieve greater and greater areal density. They invested heavily in that, and the market collapsed before them because EMC figured out you can get reliability in a different way. You could put really cheap disk drives into RAID and manage the data storage with software. Greater areal density was actually not related to reliability. IBM thought they were about creating greater areal density, but they had forgotten they were about creating greater reliability. [14:30] What is the difference bet

Unpacking the BRIDGeS framework for product managers Today we are talking about strategic product planning, which involves decision-making, problem-solving, feature prioritization, and product vision creation. Our guest is Yaroslav Lazor, Founder and CEO of Railsware. He created the strategic product planning tools and frameworks that Railsware continues to apply on projects for customers as well as their own products. I first heard of Railsware when the founder of Calendly talked about the group that developed Calendly for him, which was Railsware. Railsware is a product studio focused on creating services and products that is on a path to becoming a $10B firm. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:25] To what do you credit your success in going from a developer to a product creator to a CEO? I was never just a developer. I was always a product developer. In the early days, I had no product managers over me, so I had to build products myself. This is one of our secret ingredients at Railsware—everyone is thinking about product. In many organizations, there is a big gap in communication between product managers and engineers. There’s pressure from product managers for developers to develop faster or cut technical depth. For engineers and product managers to work together in harmony, their skills have to overlap, and they have to understand each others’ disciplines. [4:49] What does it look like to have product people and engineers integrated? It depends on whether we’re talking about having this integration in-house with our own products or when we consult clients, but the one thing in common is our BRIDGeS Framework, which allows everyone to get on the same pages. When you start a project, often the founder has thought about it for years and is thinking 3D thoughts in their head. Their thoughts include a massive amount of data that you cannot display in a straightforward way. We map out these data with BRIDGeS. We map the roles of the people who are going to use this product and their problems. How someone who deeply understands the problem would describe it is completely different from how someone who just heard about it would perceive it. When you hear all the details about the problem, you start rewiring your brain to think about it like someone who has been thinking about it for years. However, the founder, who has been thinking about the problem for years cannot tell you all their thoughts because there are too many. We take cards, each representing one thought, and align them on a board. Everyone in the room looking at the cards starts to see this much bigger picture, and they remember little stories about each card. We have two boards, one to describe the problem space and one to describe the solution space. We go back and forth, sharing ideas, until we are all on the same page. Then, the product managers and engineers understand what we’re building in a much deeper manner. [11:40] What do you put down on the cards? Bigger cards are personas. For example, if we were doing a project for a school, one persona would be the school district administrator, which is a user role that needs something from the product. Other cards would be the school director and the teacher. Other cards are for their issues. The school administrator might have an issue of wanting to use the same template for all the schools’ websites, and copying the template takes a lot of work. As you dive deeper into each role and their problems, you start creating empathy for each person. It helps you build a product that is tailored to solving problems of real people. You also use cards to describe solutions, benefits, and risks. Typically we write the smallest possible amount of words on each card. We often do this in virtual meetings. [18:31] What framework do you use for executing your product plan? Another principle we use is called Heart. We try to find the most important part of the product we want to deliver. The team has a tendency to deliver things that are less risky. Instead, we want to start from the biggest risk that solves the biggest problems. When we were working with Calendly, we started by making a calendar page that showed the user’s availability. This is the core of the product. We didn’t know if Google would allow us to do real-time meeting invites. There were a lot of risks with using Google, and a lot of businesses were using Microsoft at the time, but we wanted to be able to skip the log-in. With Google, you can give access to the calendar and the integration is done. We created the core of the product, the booking page, and everything else fell into place because everyone got on the same page. Action Guide: Put the information Yaroslav shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn more about Railsware and the BRIDGeS Framework Innovation Quote “Those who seek shall find.”– Attribution Thanks! T

How product managers can navigate leadership challenges Today we are talking about four leadership motions that enable increased organizational effectiveness and productivity and alleviate organizational friction, waste, and indecision. The motions reflect a need for leadership change as organizations struggle for higher performance while supporting employees. Sharing the four leadership motions with us is Janice Fraser. Janice built her career in Silicon Valley as a startup founder, product manager, and confidante for entrepreneurs and enterprise executives alike. She currently supports very large organizations including P&G in becoming more innovative and agile. She also guides several venture-funded startup companies, federal government entities, and non-profit organizations. She is the coauthor of Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama: How to Reduce Stress and Make Extraordinary Progress Wherever You Lead. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:32] Why take on the topic of leadership from a product background? The product piece has always been with me. In my first job out of college, I was already creating new products. The instinct to make something out of nothing that helps people have a better life or solves their problems was an innate instinct in me. I started working at Netscape right after its IPO. It was the hottest startup in history. That was the time of the advent of a commercial public worldwide web and the first .com boom. Suddenly all these people were now startup founder and were creating something new, not just new products but whole new businesses and business models. There were a lot of really inexperienced, terrible leaders who were doing what I call flaily squanderness—startup founders just trying a bunch of things. Previously I had been working at some of the best managed, best run companies on the planet. The CEO of Netscape, Jim Barksdale, was influential to my thinking about what it is to be an effective leader during a time of hyper growth. My two journeys fused for me—helping people through new products and helping brand new leaders be effective in the heroic things they’re trying to do. For twenty years I was equally interested in both practices—how can you make great products and how can amateur leaders become effective and competent? Observing leadership and what is repeatable and effective became my hobby. My book, Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama, is the result of a user-centered design challenge and answers a product-centric question, which is “How can regular people be extraordinary leaders on purpose?” [6:11] What are the four leadership motions? We call them motions because they’re simply things you can do to be a leader that are reliable and effective. Orient honestly Value outcomes Leverage the brains Make durable decisions I treat these like a spinner on a board game. If I’m stuck as a leader, I can spin the spinner, and wherever it lands will give me a new direction to start thinking in. These are things great leaders already do. We just wanted to name and describe them so we can do them on purpose whenever we need to. [7:25] Orient honestly Ask the questions “Where are we now? What makes this moment complicated? And are we all in the same place?” Before we can set goals and hope to achieve them, we have to know where we are. We have to know what makes this moment complicated before we can begin to untangle it and get everybody into the right place. [9:03] What’s an example of orienting honestly? I was facilitating an offsite for a small company, their first in-person event in a few years since COVID. There were some market conditions at the time that were making it hard for them to be profitable. To orient honestly, we did a sailboat retro. We drew a sailboat on a whiteboard and had team members name what’s holding the company back, represented by the anchor, what is the wind in our sails, what are the rocks up ahead, who is standing on the crow’s nest looking out ahead, where is each team member on the boat, etc. That allowed us to take a snapshot of where we were and learn what the team thought might be preventing us from being more profitable. As a result, we identified some actions to take. [11:45] Value outcomes In a traditional planning process, you write down a list of all the things you’re going to do to reach a goal with dates. Unfortunately, real-life conditions often disrupt your plans. As leaders we exist in this world where externalities are making our plans obsolete very quickly. We need to enable flexibility without losing sight of where we want to go. Value outcomes more than you value deliverables or activities in your plan. This releases the pressure to anticipate the path with perfect clarity. [14:51] How can we impact the culture to make changing the roadmap acceptable? It has to start at the leadership level. It’s a mindset as much as a behavior, a

The secret recipe for organizational transformation Today we are talking about organizational change. As innovators, creating change is what we do. You may have already learned that change is not always welcomed, such as when the new product you created also cannibalizes an existing product your organization provides. Organizational change and transformation is challenging, and today we’ll learn how to navigate it more successfully, thanks to our guest Lisa Carlin. She is a strategy execution specialist, scaleup mentor, and co-founder of FutureBuilders Group, a network of Organisational Development specialists. She works with ambitious leaders to turbocharge their transformation and business planning. Having begun her career with McKinsey and Accenture, Lisa’s experience has allowed her to achieve a 96% transformation program success rate, in comparison to only around a 30% success rate as reported by most research. Not bad Lisa. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:31] Why do organizations need to transform and what are some examples of transformation? What happens if you don’t transform? IBM did a fabulous job moving from mainframes to PCs, and they’re still in the market. But Kodak didn’t transform, and we know what happened to them. Transformation is driven by the need to keep up with the competition. That might mean a new strategy, new sales approach, or a new marketing approach. It doesn’t have to be a response to something wrong. It can be in response to a need for cost reduction, competition, stakeholder pressure, or mergers. Since COVID, a huge shift is going on in transformation, especially digital transformation. Eight to ninety percent of organizations are doing some form of digital transformation at the moment. There’s a big shift around skills-based organization, and now organizations hire for skills rather than thinking about a job design unit. With the shift to online, it’s easier than every to learn new skills, and we need to pick up skills. The World Economic Forum says over 40 to 50% of jobs are going to be obsolete by 2025. [7:16] What digital transformation are you seeing? Digital transformation has been around as long as digital technology has. Now, digital transformation is seen as a more comprehensive change in the organization. In the late nineties, cultural transformation was a little “out there,” and now it’s become mainstream. Now people see culture as a key lever for performance improvement. Working within the culture is important, and changing the culture is important. It’s not enough to just say we’re going to transform. It’s the difference between installation and implementation. You can’t just install transformation. You’ve got to actually implement it in the organization. [10:54] What is your secret recipe for a 96% success rate of organization transformation? There are three things: Culture Get out of the dark room A multidisciplinary approach Culture can be a prison or a playground for innovation. Your organizational culture can significantly hold your back from implementing new products or coming up with new product design ideas. Clayton Christensen spoke about creating a separate business unit for new product development and innovation because of the culture. In a large organization, some folks will be protective over their area and not think about the customer or business benefits as a whole. Work within the culture you’ve got. Figure out the culture. Choose the top three words that describe it. Then play to those issues. Get out of the dark room: Use co-design. Don’t develop products on your own and announce them to the organization. Talk to people in the organization and get them on board. A multidisciplinary approach: I use a model called the Future Builders Transformation Framework. It’s for executives and managers working in the transformation space who want to lead implementation faster and better. The model has three simple circles: Business: strategic commercial perspective that gives precision to the transformation Change: getting people involved in co-design Project: project management skills that build traction They all sit in a sea of Culture. We’re looking for a transformational approach in the middle, where the circles overlap. To deliver a successful transformation, we must make sure we have all three perspectives. If we don’t, we have to surround ourselves with people who do. If you can do that and attune your approaches to the culture you’re in, that’s when you can get the flywheel to return on investment and innovation. [27:28] When change is necessary, who needs to be part of it? It is necessary to work with everybody at all levels, because if you don’t, you’re missing out on important input. In one organization, we were helping with a big cultural change. We had the sense from a culture

Hershey chocolate company’s InnovationOps story I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference. This discussion is with Shawn Houser-Fedor, whose session is titled “Creating a Recipe for Innovation Success: Hershey Chocolate Company’s InnovationOps Story.” Shawn is a R&D Senior Director at Hershey and she is about to share with us how InnovationOps helped Hershey and can help your organization achieve innovation at scale. This episode is sponsored by PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a global community of professional members whose skills, expertise, and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. PDMA is also the longest-running professional association for product managers, leaders, and innovators, having started in 1976 and contributing research and knowledge to our discipline for nearly 50 years. I have enjoyed being a member of PDMA for more than a decade, finding their resources and network very valuable. Learn more about them at PDMA.org. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:55] Most of your professional career has been at Hershey, and this is not unusual for Hershey employees. What is it about Hershey that keeps employees for long periods of time? I like to say that Hershey is the sweetest place on earth to work and live for many reasons. The people we work with are the people we see outside of the office. We share a mutual respect for each other. Hershey offers a wide portfolio of products and numerous career development opportunities, so you have an opportunity to learn, grow, and develop into whatever you want to be. [4:47] What is InnovationOps? InnovationOps is all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into bringing great products to market—the people, processes, culture, and tools. InnovationOps at Hershey started with R&D and marketing working together. They owned every aspect of innovation other than bringing it to market through sales and commercial organization. When innovation started to grow and get more complex, we realized we were taking people like food scientists and candy confectioners outside their comfort zones. They have different skills from our marketing team members, and neither were well versed in product management. We found by having a group dedicated to innovation, we can bring together the right people to operationalize innovation. [6:51] What outcomes have you seen from using InnovationOps? There are three big takeaways: We are much more efficient with our resources, including time, money, and people. We’ve seen better cross-collaboration across the business and better partnerships. We’ve seen great business results. We have fantastic new products that are sustainable in the market and great innovation. [8:19] How has InnovationOps helped with alignment between different groups? Everyone has a seat at the table, so ideas can come from anywhere—engineering, product development, sales. If it’s filling a gap, we know it’s going to be successful. That mindset allows everyone to be very collaborative and get behind an initiative to make sure it’s successful in the market. We have specific values that drive our culture: Be real. Champion the consumer. Create the future. Take action. [10:09] What are the jobs that InnovationOps is trying to accomplish? The portfolio and project management group within the innovation operations team hold people accountable by making sure they have all the necessary information pulled together before a governance meeting. They make sure all the people present understand what the stage-gate process means to our overall business. They do a fantastic job of holding people accountable to all the company’s goals. Each person has the same innovation goals. For example, if there’s a financial metric related to innovation we need to deliver for the year, everyone understands that’s a holistic goal. Even when there are controversies in which one function doesn’t think the product should go further through the gate process, each one of us has an obligation to figure out a solution to ultimately deliver that financial target. [12:06] How does the stage-gate process work? The stage-gate process starts with an idea, which can come from anywhere within the organization. The first gate is all about resourcing, assessing the commitment of the entire organization to allocate resources to the idea. The key considerations include the idea’s scale, feasibility, and potential for execution. Once alignment is achieved on resourcing, the process moves on to evaluating consumer demand and the potential impact on top-line revenue or bottom-line profits. Then we assess technical and operational feasibility. It’s crucial to ensure that, beyond consumer appeal, the product can be produced and distributed profita

The key ingredients of a successful product management team Today we are talking about how to build a great product team that in turn will build great products customers love. Joining us is a returning guest, Vidya Dinamani. She’s a product executive, advisor, and coach. She has over 20 years of experience in product management, including multiple executive roles at leading companies such as Intuit. Vidya founded Product Rebels, which teaches people hands-on ways to become stronger, customer-focused product managers. She’s coached hundreds of companies from startups to Fortune 50 and loves seeing people and teams transform when they understand how to build products that customers love. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [4:07] What are the characteristics of a good product team that is able to create great products for customers? There are three essential characteristics. First is having a customer mindset. Great product teams all understand the customer. This requires top-down support and leadership to create a culture that values and prioritizes customer-centricity. The second characteristic is an outcome focus. It’s important for product teams to prioritize delivering customer value and focus on outcomes rather than just outputs. Outcome-driven metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) can help drive behavior and guide decision-making to move the needle. The third characteristic is alignment. Alignment is the ability the understand the work the product team is doing in support of the business and product strategy. Great products teams are not just focused on the how; they also understand the what and the why. This alignment sets up the team for creativity, innovation, and a shared understanding of goals among team members. [16:05] What practical tips can product managers use to build a better product team? First, we need to assess the team’s mindset, competencies, and resources to identify any gaps and areas for improvement. For example, often the product team doesn’t have access to customer data, and that lack of resources is stopping the team from being a great product team. This evaluation helps us understand where we are currently strong and what steps we can take to enhance our team. Pick one area and dedicate resources and time to improving that one area. A bonus for building a team is to think about the end-to-end experience. Great product managers should consider all the connective tissue and all the points. Everyone thinks about the end-to-end experience—not just the immediate team of developers and designers, but also the support system, including customer support, marketing, and sales teams. When we as a product team makes changes, it’s important to involve a group of people who can think about the end-to-end experience. Great product teams and customer-centered organizations naturally prioritize the end-to-end perspective [25:17] Who should be part of a product team and what roles should they have? The textbook core is the triad: the product manager, the designer, and the developer. This is often the ideal setup for SaaS and technical products, but let’s not forget that every industry is different, and it’s crucial to consider your goals and your customers. In my experience, I’ve even had customers who were so invested in our solution that they volunteered to be part of our team. They felt like it was their product, and their contribution was invaluable. It’s essential to define what you’re trying to achieve and identify the key stakeholders who should be part of the core team. It’s not limited to just the technical product team. Salespeople, account managers, and customer success representatives can all play a role, depending on your specific objectives. It’s about bringing together the right people to make the entire project successful. And in sectors like healthcare and FinTech, there’s often a larger group involved, even if they’re not directly coding or designing. They still bring their expertise and perspective, making them an integral part of the team. Think of it as creating a stakeholder map to ensure you have all the necessary players on board. By doing so, you’ll have the right people to achieve your goals and create a successful outcome. [28:41] How do you measure team performance? Many teams are overworked with a long backlog, and it never seems to end. There is a constant flow of work to be done, so a lot of time this is a prioritization problem. This is not a team problem; it is a leadership problem. The lack of clear direction and focus from the top is to blame. It’s important to make trade-offs because even the greatest team cannot excel in all areas. To address this, we should adopt a straightforward prioritization framework. Start by considering the inputs that truly matter, whether they are related to the business, customers, revenue targets, or retention

How product managers can use AI to get more actionable insights from qualitative data Today we are talking about using qualitative data to drive our work in product and consequently improve sales. Joining us is Daniel Erickson, the Founder and CEO of Viable, an AI analytics tool that enables businesses to instantly access and act on valuable insights from customer feedback, saving them hundreds of hours spent analyzing feedback. Before founding Viable, he held senior leadership roles in engineering, technology, and product. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:25] What is the qualitative data you have found useful for making product management decisions? When most people think about using qualitative data in product management, they think of surveys, user interviews, or getting reactions to a prototype. There’s a huge wealth of other qualitative data that often gets ignored by product teams because it is so hard to use—for example, customer support tickets, sales call transcripts, social media mentions, interview transcripts, and product reviews. Often somebody on the team is responsible for reading through all that stuff, synthesizing it into insights, and disseminating those insights across the team. This is a very manual process, so few teams decide to do the work. [4:22] What does that manual process typically look like? It starts with someone on the product team who says, “We need to know more about what our customers need from us.” Then the product leader goes to some poor associate PdM and asks them to collate all of the data together. This person goes to customer support and asks for raw data or asks what the customers are saying. The customer support person gives a response off the top of their head, which is biased and is not the big picture. Then the PdM or a person on the CX team reads through the data, puts it into Excel, and adds a column for bucketing to tag the data, e.g., “checkout” or “onboarding.” The PdM may do this for several data sets, such as NPS and sales calls. They tag each piece of data, find the biggest issue, synthesize the data, and write a paragraph about the issue. That report goes to the top-level leadership. This process takes a phenomenal amount of time, from 10-20 hours per week. You get analysis for only 5-20 buckets, and because those buckets are so broad, it’s hard to take action on that one-paragraph summary. Unless you spend hours going through every single data point, you’ll miss some nuance. It’s hard to get the fidelity of information you need to act on it. We found that artificial intelligence is starting to help companies make better product management decisions. Computers can go through the data in less time and in a more nuanced way. [12:53] How can we use AI for better qualitative data analysis? The first text analytics softwares could understand what is in a word cloud and identify parts of speech, but a word cloud doesn’t give you much other than some topics you might want to pay attention to. Sentiment charts also don’t show you how to take action. Over time, we have gotten more sophisticated tools to identify different topics. Now, transformer models allow computers to understand language itself. They’re no longer breaking apart parts of speech. They’re using statistics to predict what was meant. These tools are better at detecting sarcasm and agglomerating different wording about the same topic, for example it could group together “checkout” and “cart.” These tools are much more helpful in analyzing large amounts of text. Our AI analytics tool Viable provides analysis itself. Instead of just grouping things together and identifying themes, it analyzes these themes in the same way a qualitative analyst would. You interact with it by piping data in and asking questions. It produces reports based on the data. Each report identifies a ton of different themes and outputs a full analysis for each one that includes what people are talking about, why they are talking about it, who is talking about it, and what you should do about it. Instead of pumping out a dozen themes like you would in the manual process, Viable pumps out 120 themes that are each all much more actionable. [19:11] What examples do you have of using Viable to make better product decisions? We were working with an ecommerce company that ships custom-printed items to customers. They were receiving a lot of complaints about t-shirts arriving damaged. They piped the customer feedback in the form of support tickets into Viable, and we ran our analysis on it. We found close to 200 different themes and then searched through them to find the ones about t-shirts. We found the problem with the t-shirt quality was with the shipping not the manufacturing. They switched shipping providers. The next month, they ran the same report and the complaints about quality after shipping h

Tips for creating customer use cases – for product managers Today we are talking about how to create and use customer use cases to guide product design. Our guest is Dr. Lilac Muller, VP of Product Management at Kymeta Corporation. She oversees product strategy, definition, and launch activities for Kymeta’s mobile satellite communications product line, which is making mobile broadband connectivity around the world ubiquitous. Lilac has over 20 years of product development experience in the telecommunications, consumer electronics, and medical devices industries where she has led cradle-to-grave product development efforts, and she holds 19 US patents. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:35] What is a customer use case? A use case is how customers use your product or service to derive value of some kind. That value makes the customer purchase the product and recommend it to their friends. How the customer uses the product drives the requirements we as product managers write for engineers to develop the product. Defining use cases has a few challenges. First, everybody thinks it is easy, but there’s a lot of nuance. Second, not all users are the same, so creating a common use case across a market segment or sub-segment is a lot harder than one thinks. The engineers can’t design to every possible use case. That creates complexity we are trying to avoid. We’re looking for simplicity, which is derived from a very clear use case defined by product management. [8:36] How do we create a customer use case? The use case starts from the business plan—the target market vertical that the product fits the best. Narrow down the scope to the type of customers you’re going after. Then learn about those customers. We have a habit of thinking we know the answer or asking our friends, who are in the same geography and socioeconomic standard as us. For use cases, you should broaden that. When I derive use cases, there are three ways that I pursue in parallel. First, I do internet research. YouTube videos of how to do things are a great forum. What people say and what they think are different, and what they think and what they do are different yet. So you need to observe people. Second, I interview customers. I go out into the field with customers and see what solutions they’re using today and what problems they’re facing. We put an MVP (minimum viable product) into the marketplace, learn, and refine the product. Third, I use customer surrogates. In an organization, there are people who touch customers on a regular basis, and they often know customers better than the customers know themselves. When I joined Kymeta, we had just launched our first-generation product called u7. It was a technological marvel. We sold it in the market place and started getting feedback. As the head of product management, I pulled all our customer-facing teams into a conference room. These are the customer surrogates. We had a session in which they told us what customers say, answering “What do you see? If you had a magic wand, what would you change?” I had everybody write 10 things on sticky notes, and then we bucketized them and talked about them. I can trace the origins of our current product to that session. [14:32] What are the differences between defining a use case for a product that is new to customers versus for a product that competitors already sell? The hardest use case to define is when you’re trying to invent a brand new category and your competition is non-use. You’re asking a consumer to change how they do something and use a solution the didn’t even realized they needed. To generate a use case, you can use rapid prototyping, nonfunction mockups, and storyboards. Put those in front of customers or customer surrogates without any supportive information and ask, “What would you do here? How would you use this? How do you feel about this? If you had a magic wand, what would you do?” Compile all of that information. Watch their body language and emotional response. Purchasing decisions are made on emotions, so getting to that emotional response is key in defining the use case you are going after. When you are developing a use case for an existing product, you need to present a your product as a better solution. Talk about how it will improve your customers’ lives and give them more value. The toughest thing to do is ask the right question. [18:41] How does the use case impact product vision and decision-making? The use case is like a magnifying glass that bring the product vision into focus. Product vision is high-level goals matched with market expectations and opportunity. The use case refines that vision and brings it into focus to a point where we can write clear requirements for the development team. It’s an iterative process because it may revise the vision depending on what we find out in investigating the use case

How product managers can gamify their products, process, and career I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference. This discussion is with Mike Hyzy and Bret Wardle, whose session is titled “Level Up Your Product: Innovation with Game Mechanics.” In our competitive landscape, businesses constantly seek innovative ways to captivate users and empower their teams. Mike and Bret are sharing with us the power of gamification and its potential to revolutionize digital products and product management careers. Mike is a senior principal consultant at Daugherty Business Solutions. Previously he has been a product management consultant and has held senior product management roles. Bret is a product leader with 15 years of game and software management experience who advocates for the convergence of design psychology in games and software. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:13] What is gamification? Gamification is applying game concepts, mechanics, and psychology to anything outside of games, including careers, product, or life. [2:54] What’s an example of gamification? Board games are a perfect example. Storytelling emerges from playing board games. You go back years later and say, “Remember that time when we played Monopoly…” We can apply storytelling elsewhere and put it into products. There’s no reason why a spreadsheet can’t be shared in a story. Intricate game mechanics like getting points and unlocking levels help create a story and memorable experiences. [6:16] Why should product managers care about learning to use gamification? As we grow in our product management roles, we have to expand our toolboxes. Gamification is another tool to be innovative and enhance user experience, engagement, and retention. You don’t have the goal of doing gamification. You have a different goal—teaching users a new language, building a community of product managers, helping people hit their weight loss goals, etc. Gamification is a set of game mechanics and tools to help you get your user there. Gamification sometimes get a bad rap. Someone puts up a leaderboard and leaves it there for a year and then says, “Oh, gamification didn’t work.” There’s more to the mechanics of gamification than just putting up a leaderboard or giving points. There has to be a story behind it. There have to be fresh ideas—you never want to play the same level over. You can also gamify your product development process and make it more fun for your team. I started gamifying our retros. We did a Mario-Kart-themed retro and asked questions like, “What’s the shell that hit you? What’s the banana you slipped on? Why did you want that powerup?” It changed the conversation and energy within your group. [12:27] Tell us about gamifying your career. I made a list of skills and achievements, and every time I get a certification or a raise, those are like levels that I’m completing. As product people, we can create our own story. Let’s build levels into it, figure out where we’re getting points, and reward ourselves. [15:13] Are gamification and goal setting different? I think of them differently. The experience of writing a book over the last year has included secret levels I didn’t even know about like working with a publisher and creating a PR plan. Those weren’t goals—they were more challenges in the game. You can set goals, but when you gamify your product career, it’s just a more competitive mindset. Gamification also includes the idea that accomplishments earn rewards. [17:39] What are some examples of gamifying products? The mapping tool Waze treats traffic like a medieval dragon that users defeat together. Users generate maps that say where accidents, detours, and speed traps are. Users can see when they are passing another Waze user. There’s socialization and users can earn points and level up. Waze didn’t show people how to get from point A to point B—that already existed. They did it better, in a way that motivates people to use the app and provides loyalty. Their product encompasses storytelling and provides rewards as motivation. The American Red Cross blood donation app incentivizes users with points and rewards for donating blood. They give reminders when blood is needed and provide rewards like t-shirts. The photography competition app Guru Shots hosts themed competitions like best ancient buildings, flowers, or animals. You compete against others by submitting photos and voting on other photos. The more you vote, the more notoriety your photo gets. Photographers learn by doing and can join teams to socialize. [23:10] How does gamification create community? Some products naturally gravitate toward socialization, like social media. But anytime users are telling others about your product, that’s a so

How product managers can promote human-centered design I wonder if you can relate to this frustration—the pressure to get products and product updates released quickly sometimes means making compromises on design quality. It’s an organizational issue—moving quickly to beat competitors and keep up with changing customer preferences. Speed is more important than quality. Our guest, Debbie Levitt, renowned CX designer and author, recommends a different approach. When companies take the time to design products that match what the customer needs, profits soar, customer satisfaction (and retention) soars, and employee satisfaction gets a nice uptick too. Her book, Customers Know You Suck, address how to better understand, attract, and retain customers. We’ll discuss some practices that will help you be more successful with the products you work on. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:56] What is your perspective as a customer experience (CX) designer? My experience is in strategy, customer experience, and user experience. I’m focused on strategy and tactics that affect every touchpoint with customers. Sometimes when people hear design, they think making things pretty or deciding what color the button is, but I don’t have an artistic background. My background is about human behavior, psychology, and ethics. Customer experience design is human-centered design (HCD). Some people don’t know HCD has ISO standards. It is formalized and real. Human-centered design doesn’t really start with design. It starts with evidence, knowledge, and data. What do we know about people, systems, and contexts? If we don’t really understand our customers and the tasks they’re trying to accomplish, we’re unlikely to understand their problems and unlikely to solve their problems. HCD is making sure we’re customer-centric. [6:49] How is poor CX costly to an organization? There are always ways to be cheaper or faster, and we can pursue those if they match our company values, but there are many opportunities to have quality over speed. I know that scares people. It takes time and money, but the companies we admire most put in that time and money and we love them for it. [9:30] Where should we start with CX? Some companies already have UX researches who specialize in qualitative research. The try to get the best evidence, knowledge, and data to drive strategies, priorities, decisions, and products using qualitative data. The problem is we can run a survey that asks, “Are you sometimes thirsty and wish you could drink out of a cup?” And so many people say yes. Then we can all sit around a meeting table and say, “I think people need this cup idea that we have.” And then we release this giant one-liter cup the size of your head, and it’s not selling. We say, “We gave them the cup. What happened here?” That means we didn’t do the right research. We didn’t have our qualified specialists plan, execute, analyze, synthesize, and come up with actionable data to understand our users’ needs. It all comes down to tasks. Understand customers, what they do now, and ways they try to make it easier for themselves through workarounds and band-aids. Everything we notice in an observational study is an opportunity for our company to either adjust something small or to be disruptors and innovators. I’m not going to say you must be innovative and disruptive, but I will say you must be great. That’s what customers want from us more than anything. More than speed, they want the quality. [12:10] What other sources of data do you use? We use surveys, focus groups, NPS, customer support tickets, angry tweets, etc. Often these give us a clue of what could be going wrong, but we know customers are not great at understanding their own problems. These data sources are smoke that tell us there’s fire. Then we need research. I see too many teams and organizations say, “It would be great for our KPIs if customers clicked this button more.” They do a brainstorming workshop to figure out how to make customers click the button more. But they don’t know why they aren’t clicking the button, so they guess. I call this a guessing sandwich. We’re guessing why something is happening, what’s going to make it different or better, what the problem is, and what possible solutions might be best. Then we vote among ourselves on what solutions we like without going through a good human-centered design process to find the right one. Beware of guessing sandwiches. [16:17] Take us through how to talk to customers and do observational studies. You don’t have to know the right questions to ask because the right thing to do is to bring in a qualified professional. Another mistake I see people making is not doing research rigorously. We care about research rigor. You need to plan the study and figu

Product feature validation and iteration – for product managers Today we are talking about tips for selecting, planning, and prototyping product features. To help us, our guest is Matt Genovese. He is the Founder and CEO at Planorama Design. He has in-depth experience marketing products, addressing product requirements, research, UX design, and management. He spent the first half of his 25-year engineering career in the semiconductor industry as a chip designer and the latter half in software product development. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:33] What issues have you seen in your career in both hardware and software when selecting product features? In hardware, features are normally planned out well ahead of time. You do not have the rapid iteration capability that you have with software. Hardware tends to use more of a waterfall process. You have to capture feature understanding from customers upwards of a year before you release the product. In software, projects can be never-ending, but we do have the ability to learn as we go along. We try to learn little bits about what the customer needs and turn that into value we can build into the application. It’s very useful to start small and mitigate risk. You may not even have to build an application to validate your features. Sometimes you can build a quick prototype to test if value is being delivered. [4:43] Do you have an example about starting small to do validation? A friend was working on using large AI language models to help analyze data and produce some metrics about the data. To test this, you might not need to build an application. You could produce a CSV and ask the customer if that is the output that solves their problem. Then, you can fine tune based on what they need and build a script that produces that output. [10:12] What do you do when the engineering team isn’t listening to the product managers? Engineers usually strive for perfection. Customers just want their problem to be solved. Those goals don’t always mix well because “perfect is the enemy of good enough.” There are different options to address this. The development team probably has technical debt they want to address. They want to make their application perfect because they know in the future they’re going to have to rewrite code or redo something. Allow time for that technical debt to be addressed. You can’t just keep pushing it out because it’s going to catch up with you at some point. Developers may design a product that’s easier for them to use so they can get it out sooner. Their motivations are good, but customers may not use the product if it’s not designed for them. Product managers have to be the advocate for the business and meeting the customer’s needs. [18:25] How do you select product features to implement? There are different ways to address it. One is to ascribe value to each feature. That value may be value to the customer or business value. You can use the ascribed value to select which features are most important. Also, think holistically about the features—not only their current impact but also their future impact. If you need to get a high-value feature done right now, you may need to do a bunch of redesign later. Consider if you’re going to paint yourself into a corner by building a feature now. One of the values of UX design is ensuring you’re giving yourself room to expand in the future. Think about how that feature is going to play into a larger set of features later on. Also think about the administration needs of a feature. For example, you may need to adjust pricing. When you’re building a feature, plan how you will manage it. Consider the entire scope of work so you’re not surprised later. In engineering, design is a necessary component. In software, we tend to think of design as optional. We think we’ll let the developers handle design or that design is just UX. UX is just a component of design. We need to think from an engineering perspective, holistically. Think about how to mitigate future risk. [26:20] How do you balance optimization with flexibility? To me, optimization occurs after you build something for the first time and find out how users are using it or how it’s functioning. Engineers are typically addicted to optimization, but when you’re thinking as a product manager, your objective is to get it out the door so somebody can try it. Later, based on what your customers’ needs are, you can do optimization. Flexibility is preventing yourself from painting yourself into a corner. If you’re designing a small thing now, in the future it might become bigger, so you should design for that now and try to avoid big redesign efforts Maybe designing it more or less flexibly is the same cost, so give yourself more freedom in the future. Optimization usually is not free. Mitigate risk, get the product o

How product managers can use Adobe’s Kickbox innovation system Today we are talking about using the open source innovation system called Kickbox that was created at Adobe. This is a simple and effective tool for increasing innovation by orders of magnitude in an organization. Our guest is Ralph Hartmeier, co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of rready, an organization that started from personal experience applying Kickbox, and which now helps other organizations unleash innovation. Ralph was introduced to Kickbox while he was head of growth for Swisscom. He is also a founding member of the non-profit Kickbox.org that promotes the use of Kickbox. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:50] What was going on at Adobe that led to Kickbox? Around 2013, a serial entrepreneur named Mark Randall sold his startup to Adobe and joined Adobe. He realized innovation in a big corporation such as Adobe looks very different from innovation in a startup. He was given the title VP of Creativity and given as much budget as he needed in order to change Adobe’s cumbersome innovation process. He realized that coming up with ideas was rather easy for certain employees but submitting ideas into an idea management system and validating ideas were not easy. He helped these innovators with a gamified, fun approach to go from raw idea to a validated idea. He put an innovation process guide in a red box called Kickbox and started distributing it to people within Adobe. [5:17] What else is in the box? The most important part is the guide to the innovation process. There is a credit card with $1000 on it. An employee can spend that on whatever they think is necessary to bring the idea forward. They also need to prove what they have done and how they have progressed. There is a notebook labeled “Bad Ideas” to help create a culture of innovation. It’s important to spread the message that not every idea is good and not every idea needs to be good. You need quite a few bad ideas in order to hit a good one. There is a chocolate bar and a Starbucks card. The whole box told a story. Mark Randall gathered 20-30 employees, handed out boxes, and told the story, which was highly inspirational. People started validating their ideas. Adobe made sure to capture the learnings and made sure people are being held accountable. [9:41] What philosophy does the Kickbox promote? Perhaps a company could fund 10 projects with $1 million per year, or they could fund 1000 projects with $1000, and they only need one of them to win for the whole program to pay for itself. Plus 1000 employees learn how to innovate. If a management board chooses 10 ideas in early-stage innovation, that’s a game of luck. Kickbox finds people who want to go the extra mile—working hard, being patient, and iterating their ideas. You should test a lot of ideas with a little money. Let people learn what it takes to validate an idea. Then you will be quite sure you will be able to implement one idea or another and scale it and turn it into a growth machine. We step away from corporate innovation being a game of luck to knowing exactly how many ideas we need to source in the beginning of the year to hit two, three, or four projects being implemented and scaled. [11:32] What is the $1000 credit card intended to be used for? Mark Randall said, “I don’t care.” You use it for whatever you think is right. When we applied the Kickbox idea to the company here in Switzerland, we realized this is very gray from a compliance perspective. We needed to put another system in place, but we didn’t want to lose the mindset that you’re the CEO of your idea. We realized the kickboxers might not know many people within the organization. They might not know how to access somebody who can help them with a prototype. We got rid of the prepaid credit card and use a digital currency. You get a thousand coins and can spend them to bring in people to help—designers, lawyers, etc. That was very successful because it’s super easy to deploy and the entrepreneurs are still in the driver’s seat. We also made it easy for them to connect with others inside the organization who could help. [16:44] How are companies using the Kickbox system today and how is rready helping? Typically the Kickbox system is positioned within the innovation department, but it’s optimal if we have strong support from HR. We try to understand the definition of innovation in each company. A few companies want to create the next big thing, but others just want to be better at executing cost savings. In any case, Kickbox is a gamified, fun way to communicate within the company. It shouldn’t be perceived as just another tool coming from management. [18:46] What is the timeline for using the red box? The typical timeframe is two months. We realized if we just distribute boxes few people come back. After two months, you have to come back and e

How one serial inventor brought a revolutionary approach to flossing from idea to launch Today we are talking about the journey from initial insight to launched product. The featured product is Instafloss, a revolutionary approach to flossing your teeth. With us is the creator of Instafloss, serial inventor, and two-time founder, Eli Packouz. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:03] Tell us about Instafloss. I found myself in a position that many people may find themselves in—you’re in a rush and trying to clean your teeth and flossing is just taking too long. I thought there had to be a way to make this go quicker. At the time I had already founded a company, and we had come out with seven products. I was thinking about how we could solve this problem, and within a week about five other people told me they hated flossing and asked if we could make a product to do something about that. I started reading periodontal textbooks and finding out more about the problem. I found there are two problems: In the U.S. 70% of people regularly skip flossing, and of the people who do floss almost all of them are flossing incorrectly. If we break down the first problem, there are three reasons people don’t floss: It takes too much time. It hurts. And it’s difficult to do correctly. I looked at existing solutions. Water flossers have been on the market since the 60s, and research shows they are more effective than string floss if done correctly. However, there are a few issues: Nobody does it correctly; in order to do it correctly, you have to hold the jet at a 90 degree angle, trace the gum line, and do it on the inside. It’s messy, and it takes even longer. We had to create a floss that people will love and that will be quick and automatic. After five years, it’s been quite a journey, but I believe we’ve accomplished that. [6:10] What is the form of the product? The insight was that in order to floss correctly you need the water jets at a 90 degree angle to the gum line and they need to cover 100% of the gum line. The first iteration was a mouth guard with jets pointing at various areas. There were two issues with this: The mouth guard is stagnant, so the jets mostly point only between the teeth, and we would need to create a customer mouth guard for every individual, so the product would have to be $900. That didn’t seem like a path we wanted to go down. The breakthrough was taking a cross section of the mouth guard and moving it across the mouth. We have an H-shaped manifold. The top of the H goes over the top of the teeth, and the bottom of the H goes over the both teeth. It spins around in the middle, which is attached to the handle. It flosses the top, front, back, and bottom simultaneously. It has 12 jets aimed at the correct 90 degree angle. We can ensure 100% coverage at the right angle, and we can do it in just 10 seconds. The water pressure is adjustable, and it is painless. [9:20] Were there other paths you went down before you got to a water jet? Yes, I did a deep dive into all the possibilities. My initial sketches were trying to figure out ways to automate flossing with string, but that requires an insane amount of dexterity and intelligence. You don’t want to cut your gums and cause problems in your mouth. I looked into air as a medium, but that is incredibly ineffective. Overflossing might be the only thing worse than not flossing. That was a problem we ran into in the development. We had giant reservoirs of water because we don’t want people to have to refill the reservoir often. We noticed that people were enjoying it so much, but they were used to flossing for two to three minutes. Ten seconds with Instafloss is the equivalent of two minutes with an alternative flossing method, so two minutes of Instafloss is equivalent to 36 minutes of flossing. If you’re doing that two or three times a day, that’s a big problem. Sometimes when you solve a problem you uncover a problem you had not realized existed before. We had to develop into the UX a way to let people know the floss is over and they should stop. We built in a stop and LED feedback and made the reservoir so it must be filled before each use. [13:13] What was your prototyping process? One of the first things we started with was math. What is the capacity for water jets in the mouth? How much power would the necessary flow rate take? How much room is there in the mouth? We had to know what those constraints were. First we made sketches and then we 3D-printed some parts to get measurements. We ordered basic parts and then machined parts out of metal. After we had something we thought worked, I started talking to local scientists and professionals in dental science. I got connected to Dr. Ana Mascarenhas, who was the chair of the American Dental Association Council of Scientific Affairs. We showed her diagrams and prototypes, and she guided us on a long journey of te

How to stand out as an applicant for a product management position We are talking with Erika Klics. Erika is a former Head of Talent for tech companies who became a Job Search Strategist for startup and scaleup Directors, VPs, and department Heads for Product Management and other functions in tech. She sent me an email message that got my attention, and I’d like to read part of it. She wrote, “In a past life, I sat on the other side of the table supporting hiring teams to define processes, find candidates, and make great hires. And I noticed a few patterns along the way….When it comes to PM leadership roles, hiring teams would share the same small handful of reasons for rejecting candidates. ‘They just weren’t quite strong enough.’ ‘I liked them, but who else do we have?’ ‘We need them to be more strategic.’ ‘They’re great, but I’m not sure they’re senior enough.’ They used different language, different lenses, but it was the same across almost every scorecard. Candidates were missing something, but hiring teams couldn’t articulate what it was. So I started paying attention to who was getting the offer and what they did differently. Erika will help us not make the mistakes that lead to you not getting the job—she even has a system for job seekers she calls the Inevitable Edge Method. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:24] What are some reasons you see product leaders not getting the jobs they’re trying to get? There are different flavors of product managers and different focus areas. Often, hiring decisions depend on whether you have experience in the area the company needs. I see a lot of product management leaders get all the way through the hiring process and then get generic rejections. Why is that happening? It’s about building trust at every level of the interview process with other leaders, the team, and cross-functional leaders. Build trust that you can do the job they’re looking for and take the product wherever they need to take it next. [5:28] How can product leaders get feedback on why they were rejected? Build relationships along the way. The stronger a relationship you have with the recruiter, the more likely you’re going to get feedback from them and the more likely you will land the role. Even if you’re not the right fit, if you’ve built the relationship and connected on a more human level, it’s a lot harder for them to ignore your email when you ask for feedback. This feedback is not always actionable but it can give you peace of mind. It’s usually not you; it’s the company. It’s not that you’re bad at your job. The company was looking for something else. Often startups do a couple of months of interviewing not to find the right person but to figure out whom they want to hire. If you’re the first candidate going through a hiring process, it’s pretty hard to get the offer. [8:41] How can product managers build trust and position themselves to get the job? Build a relationship from the beginning, starting with the first recruiter screening. Get to know the person who’s going to guide you through the process. Give small signals—when they ask, “How’s it going?” give a little anecdote instead of just saying, “Great.” Warm people up in conversation. It sounds simple, but a lot of people get into interview mode and it has a very different feeling than just a conversation. Read between the lines—a skill products managers need every day anyway. Think about the context clues you can pick up and what’s not being said. Are there particular challenges in the product? Are there cross-functional collaborators? Where does the product fall within the suite of products? These clues can help you position yourself as a better candidate and build trust with the people you’re meeting along the way. Think about how you can meet the needs of each person you meet in the interview process. If you create an interview environment where it feels like you’re actually working together, then they’re envisioning you in the job. [13:58] What should applicants know about the company before the interview? Do research for the right stage of the interview process. Don’t spend hours talking to the recruiter for the role at the very beginning of the process because they may not be able to answer deep questions about the product or team. However, before the conversation with the recruiter prepare by learning about the company. Look through job descriptions to see who else they are hiring. This can give a lot of signals about what they’re planning on building next or where the company focus is. Know who’s on the team and who the executives are. Look through the history of funding. Where were their big growth spurts? Collect some clues that can give you context so you share stories that are most r

How to build connection and empower product management teams Tami Reiss is with us. She is an experienced product executive who works with tech product leaders and teams to realize their potential by focusing on their strengths to advance toward their goals. She guides product leaders through defining their personal product vision then taking the right steps to make it a reality. Right now, Tami is focusing on coaching product leaders, speaking around the world about management and strategy, and interestingly, writing a children’s book called What do Product Managers Do? She will be sharing with us how product leaders increase team performance. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [12:09] How can product leaders improve product team performance? Connection—help people feel connected to each other and the larger mission and vision of the company. People need to see themselves not as cogs in a wheel but as pieces of the puzzle. Each person owns their piece, but it is just one piece, so they have to help out the other pieces. I often see siloed teams, where the team members may have never met in-person. Inter-team connection is important. It is important to talk to your customers, but it is also important to talk to prospective customers. Generally, the only way to talk to them is through salespeople, so you must have a strong connection with your salespeople. Product leaders should encourage their product managers to establish relationships with internal stakeholders that will assist them in getting a better pulse on the market. [18:23] How can product managers build those relationships? Reach out to the customer success manager or implementation manager. Tell them you’re looking to learn more about how your product gets implemented and ask if there is somebody you can form a partnership with. You’re not looking to do research; you’re looking to create an ongoing partnership with somebody that will allows you to understand the impacts of your choices on their team. When you meet that person, get to know them. This is not a transactional moment. Form relationships with many people to access different kinds of customers. Establish empathy for who they are, what their aspirations are, and how you can help them with that. Treat them like a human and learn about their personal life to create a relationship that isn’t only transactional. [24:23] How does empowerment relate to helping product teams be more effective? Part of empowerment is not being overly prescriptive. When you’re doing strategy deployment, you’re not supposed to tell someone what to do; you’re supposed to give them goals and guidelines that help them feel empowered within those guidelines to spread their wings and make choices. The other part is teaching someone how to advocate for their ideas—how to navigate interpersonal relationships, have empathy for people, and spin what you’re talking about so people get on board with you. Influence without authority is the most crucial skill we have, and that is a matter of advocating for your idea in way that is respectful and brings other people on. Someone recently asked me what the difference is between leadership and management, and I said management is the day-to-day, one-on-ones, signing off on PTO, etc. Leadership is what you are doing that makes people follow you. Product management is always about leadership. We teach people to be better leaders using “I do, we do, you do.” First, you invest time showing someone how you would do it. Then you do it together. Then they do it on their own while you watch. By the end of those three rounds, the person you’re training feels a lot more confident because they know why certain things are done and how you make decisions. By the end, they become a functional leader who knows how to influence without authority. They can move ideas forward without your support. This is the best empowerment you can give them. At the end of this, the product manager, rather than coming to you asking what to do, will come to you as a manager, having analyzed the problem and created a plan. They will trust you as a mentor to tell them where their plan might need adjustments. That’s what you want in an employee. Action Guide: Put the information Tami shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Tami on LinkedIn Visit Tami’s website Innovation Quote “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.” – Mary Kay Ash Thanks! Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

A four-layer framework to create a winning product strategy Today we are talking about creating product strategy. Our guest is Bob Caporale. Bob is the author of the book Creative Strategy Generation. He is a strategic practitioner, having spent 20 years leading product, marketing, and business functions for large international corporations. I first heard of Bob when he was the president of Sequent Learning, the product management training company. He has since founded and leads the Strategy Generation company. Bob believes that strategy is derived from a combination of experience, insight, and creativity. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:09] What is product strategy? Strategy is a plan to achieve a set of objectives under a set of anticipated conditions. What makes strategy strategic is anticipating the situation you’re going to be in and putting a plan in place within that context. Product strategy is doing that at a product level. The job of product managers is to take the company’s bigger strategies and objectives and break them down to their impact on product. They put together a strategy that details what they need to do for their product to contribute to the overall business strategy. The product strategy is still at a big-picture level. Often, companies approach me asking for help with their product strategy and they’re really focused on the roadmap. While the roadmap and choosing features is the last step of product strategy, it’s not the whole picture. If you’re just focused on what features to build into the product, you could still take a lot of random actions that make no sense because you don’t have the bigger picture. [9:00] Who is responsible for developing product strategy? Whoever is responsible for the P&L (profit and loss) of the product is ultimately responsible for the product strategy. I’m a big proponent of developing strategy with a team, but there does need to be one person accountable for it. The P&L owner varies from business to business. In some businesses, the product manager own the P&L and is accountable for the strategy. In small businesses, the general manager or owner may be responsible for the P&L and they would be accountable for the strategy. [11:03] How is senior leadership involved in product strategy? If there’s any problem in alignment between the product team and senior leaders, that’s a better problem to have than leadership not being involved in product strategy at all. Especially in larger companies, one of the biggest deficiencies I see is that companies don’t have a verifiable and disciplined product strategy process. Strategy can easily fall to the back burner because product managers are doing so many other things, most of them reactive. If you aren’t required to build a product strategy, you might not. I like to see leaders involved in product strategy, asking product managers to update the product strategy on a quarterly or annual basis and present it to them, because this ensures some level of alignment. As long as there’s a process where product managers are responsible for developing strategy, a negotiation will happen. In lieu of product strategy, the leaders will tell you what you need to do with your products, and some of that might not be right. The best-case scenario is an organization that has a disciplined strategy process between leadership and product managers. [14:24] Share your Strategy Generation framework for developing product strategy. Download the framework. The framework has ten steps in four layers in a circular framework. When you build a strategy, you will go through the strategy in steps, so the steps are numbered. However, I developed it in a circular way because in real life when you’re executing on your strategy plan, things don’t happen linearly. It’s important you follow a process, but if something changes you know where in the process you need to change something. The first layer is the context layer. Because strategy can be developed at so many different levels in a company, it’s important you know the context. Along with this is the vision—the big picture of your purpose. The second layer is the analysis layer. This is where you look at your situation, including customers, competitors, and your own company. Try to predict what your situation will be in the future. The third layer is the planning layer. This is where the strategy lives and where you put together your goals. Look at the options that are available to you based on situation analysis and choose which actions to take from those options. The final layer is the execution layer. Here you put together your roadmap, determine your investments, and determine what results you will get from your strategy. If you’re using this framework to develop a strategy from scratch, you would go through each of those ten steps. If you’r

What product managers need to know about the Decision Sprint framework for faster problem-solving Today we are talking about faster problem-solving to speed innovation by using a three-part framework including Exploration, Alignment, and Decision-Making. Our guest is Atif Rafiq. He invented a system for problem-solving based on his 25-year career spanning Silicon Valley and the Fortune 500. His ideas proved so impactful as a competitive advantage that they sped his rise at Amazon and later to C-suite positions he held at companies, including McDonald’s as their first Chief Digital Officer, and at Volvo and MGM Resorts. He has written DECISION SPRINT: The New Way to Innovate into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action. He joins us to share how it works. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:03] Why do we need Decision Sprint? We’re in an era of economic austerity, so the bar for innovation has been raised in most organizations. This means we need a way of innovating that is more purposeful. It’s one thing to have a promising idea and another thing to get the buy-in for it. CEOs are talking about sharpening the pencil to be more confident about the ideas they’re supporting. If you’re a product manager and you have promising ideas, the bar has been raised. Even if the times were a little brighter, we have the problem of getting the organization to agree to a good idea and getting stakeholder alignment. Rather than leaving it to personalities, we need a methodology so that we can objectively take good ideas forward. To solve big problems to innovate, we have to create shared understanding for everybody who is involved in pulling off the big idea. What are the components of a design sprint? [5:25] Exploration The first step is to define the problem statement. If people have a different interpretation of that, and you only realize that a month down the line, that’s problematic. Next, canvass the key unknowns behind the problem statement and create a good question list. I recommend independently sourcing questions from your team. This is powerful because you make it a deliberate step in the process. Having questions come up organically is potentially detrimental because it can cause you to find blind spots too late. By sourcing questions independently, you get a more diverse set of questions that are more relevant with fewer blind spots. If you have a great question list, you have the basis of an exploration. [8:19] Tell us more about making a question list. The initial understanding of the problem is usually a little bit murky. For example, if Netflix has a problem with password sharing, that’s not the problem statement. The problem statement is something more like, “How do we do the right thing for customers while minimizing the abuse of sharing passwords?” You’re trying to balance to things. A good problem statement usually includes some trade-offs. The problem statement is nuanced; the answer is not obvious. Before rushing ahead to opinions and recommendations, teams should spend time building an exploration. This could take just a few days. I independently ask people to make question lists asynchronously over about two days. Then we share the questions with the team and see the patterns and overlap. It’s fun to see the collective intelligence of the team, and this builds a lot of positive team dynamics because you see the power of a team. Team members are glad we did it independently because each person sees ideas they wouldn’t have thought of. We assign people to answer and review questions. I share the question list with sponsors, such as a commercial leader, legal team members, and a product leader. This allows the sponsors to see the progress and have the ability to contribute without micromanaging. [17:51] Alignment It’s important to have exploration before alignment. In companies I often find alignment before exploration. There’s a lot of judgement preceding the exploration. However, alignment is important after exploration. Meaningful ideas cannot be executed by one corner of a company. It takes contribution from multiple parts of the organization. If we create a shared understanding of the direction we’re going and why we’re doing that, people are more confident taking the idea forward. Alignment is about creating the bridge between the problem that was explored and the conclusions that are being recommended. In order to get those heads nodding around the table, people have to understand how you arrived at those conclusions. I ask people to draw conclusions from FAQs individually and then aggregate insights and patterns. Conclusions are often very layered. For example, when I was at Amazon, I led a business unit around self-publishing. There was a raw idea around creating an exclusivity program where authors are rewarded for publishing only with Amazon. The program was a smashing succes

Thrive Market’s VP of Product Management discusses mission-driven product process Jonas Klink is joining us. He is the Vice President of Product Management & UX Design at Thrive Market, the health-first membership for conscious living. He is responsible for the company’s entire product portfolio, shepherding a lean virtual team of 10 Project Managers & UX Designers. He has established a system allowing the team to focus on understanding customer needs more deeply, creating Outcomes through hypothesis-based testing, and measuring progress through Velocity, Win Rate and impact towards their North Star Metric. In a minute, he will tell us how to do the same thing. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:17] What is Thrive Market? Thrive Market is an online grocery platform where we are on a mission to make healthy and sustainable living easy, affordable, and accessible to all. Inspired by that mission, our team has put together one of the first online platforms that offers a pre-curated selection of the highest quality, healthy, and sustainable products. It’s a membership-based ecommerce experience. Everything we carry is non-GMO and organic, and there are over 500 ingredients you’ll never see in our products. We support over 90 different values and diets. Working here has been a homecoming for me, where I’ve been given the opportunity to put my background in ecommerce product management to work for a mission that I deeply care about. [5:54] Take us through the customer-centered product process you have created and use at Thrive Market. It’s important to me to experiment with the craft of product management. I’m looking to perfect my craft over time and develop my brand of product management. I care just as much about how we do things as about what we do, because I believe regardless of the size of the company, there’s no excuse for not approaching product management and UX design in a way that feels best-in-class. I like when I’m able to distill things down to the core principles of how things work, and I try to strip away fluff that is not helping and might cause confusion. I put a hierarchy in place where every single person, not just on my team but within the company, is able to draw a straight line from what they are working on this minute all the way up to the company’s mission. I do that by starting off looking at the mission. That straight line starts at the top with the mission. As a purpose-driven organization, we take a measurable approach to the mission, which is the North Star goal. The mission is usually a goal you’ll never actually reach; it’s meant to inspire and set people on a path. However, the conversations I started with were very pragmatic. Our mission is to make healthy, sustainable living easy, affordable, and accessible to all. We talked about what we mean by healthy, what our design targets mean by healthy, and whether those definitions align. Similarly, we talked about how we would measure “easy,” “affordable,” and “accessible.” As a purpose-driven organization, you should treat your mission as a goal. Even though you may never get there, you should still be able to measure progress toward it. The second part of the process is the product vision, which outlines how you will make progress toward the mission over the next two to three years. That feeds into the product strategy, which is typically set on an annual basis or for six month. The product strategy goes hand-in-hand with your KPIs and goals. The last part of the process is priorities. They define how you will make progress toward the strategy in the next quarter. These priorities or focus areas must be focused. You need to have a small number of priorities that the OKRs line up with. Each OKR includes three to five objectives each with three to five key results, each of which is value-based, measurable, and time-bound. If someone is working on a key result, they should be able to easily see the connection from the key result to the objective, strategy, vision, and mission. [15:07] What was your involvement in discussing Thrive Market’s mission? The conversations I had with the co-founders were about getting the mission out of their heads and onto paper in a brief one-page format. We quantified some of the things the mission mentions to make sure we can treat the mission as a goals that drive culture and behavior, not just an inspiration. If you want to be a truly purpose-driven organization, you need to treat the mission as a measurable goal, even if you know you’re never actually quite going to get there. [17:02] What are some examples of measurable goals at Thrive? The baseline goal for making our product affordable is that we want every customer to save at least three times their membership fee based on their annual purchases. Now that we had a definition, we worked with our data engi

How to solve common dysfunctions in product management Today’s guest is Ben Foster, the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Prodify. He is convinced that product is the single most important success driver for tech companies, which is why he founded Prodify to share what he learned from being an advisor to over 50 tech companies to realize their full potential. Ben has led successful technology products for the last 25 years. He is also the co-author of Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management. He’s with us to share the advice he most frequently gives to the company leaders he advises regarding creating products. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:22] Can you take us through the primary challenges you encounter advising companies and what they need to overcome the challenges? I founded Prodify so my team and I can help companies by sharing knowledge from our previous experiences. We have identified several different areas where companies typically struggle when it comes to product. The three areas in which we tend to help companies the most are: Direction—core metrics, product vision and strategy People—structure of the product team, coverage, empowerment, accountability Process and practice—ongoing development and learning, communicating with the rest of the company Every company I’ve ever spoken with, no matter what stage they’re in, has some flaws across each of these areas. It’s not because they’re bad at what they do. It’s because it’s just really hard to get right. [9:24] What issues do you see with strategy? A lot of companies have a mission statement that they think is a strategy or vision. The reality is those two things are very different from one another. A mission statement is why you’re doing what you’re doing. The vision is where you intend to be in several years. The strategy is the plan of attack for how you’re going to get there. A lot of work that goes into a vision. When I was the Chief Product Officer at Whoop, I left the company with a 70-page vision about the future state of the product and how were going to manage it. It provided a lot of clarity. There’s no way any mission statement could ever fulfill that need. Often a CEO tells me something like, “Our vision is to get to $3 billion revenue in five years.” That’s the byproduct of you being successful and executing your vision. What’s the actual vision itself? What’s the customer value that you’re going to deliver? Too often the vision is not tied to customer outcomes and not focused on customer value that needs to be delivered. Product management is concentrated on the creation of customer value from which you’re then in a position to derive business value. Even those companies that build a strong vision and strategy may have a complete disconnect between the work the PMs on the ground are doing and the vision and strategy documents that sit on a digital shelf collecting digital dust while no one is paying attention to them. [12:41] How can leaders better communicate strategy? Often the senior leadership team thinks they talk about strategy a lot, but the employees under them don’t understand the strategy. When I see that type of thing happening, I tell the senior leadership team to ask their CEO, “What’s your strategy?” and then ask the people doing the work, “What’s the strategy?” Either they don’t have an answer or they have a completely different answer from the CEO’s. That’s an indication that the CEO or senior leadership team may feel like they’ve communicated the strategy well or they may feel like it’s well understood within their organization, but their perception is not reality. The leaders are usually shocked by the results that they get when they ask their team members to explain the strategy to them. Communicating strategy requires a lot of repetition. The leaders will think that they’ve communicated it, and maybe they have communicated, but new employees have joined since then and people have been having conversations around the water cooler about the strategy that have gone off on different tangents. You just need to be repeating those same messages. Don’t just talk about the things that are included in your strategy. So much of strategy is about all the things that you have to say no to and the way that you focus. If everybody can repeat what you’re saying back to you, then it’s usually a really good indication that you’ve done a good job as a product leader. [16:05] What problems come from working on product work not aligned with the company strategy? There’s only so much that you can do in product yourself. A lot of it has to do with pulling together a bunch of other groups. There needs to be coordination and alignment that spans acros

The value the Product Development and Management Association provides for product mangers and leaders Today we are talking about the most influential professional product association you’ve likely never heard of. The association is PDMA, and we’ll talk about what the they do and why you should know about them. Susan Penta is with us. She is the Chair of PDMA and has served in other volunteer roles with the association in the past. She is also the co-founder and managing partner at MIDIOR, which has been providing professional services for 26 years to product organizations in a number of areas from product insights, product development and management, and technology platforms. It’s worth noting that PDMA is a volunteer-led organization and, like Susan, most of the people involved in its leadership have fulltime jobs in product roles yet make time to contribute to the professional association. On and off, I’ve been one of those contributors as well because PDMA has been vital in my career development and I want to help other product managers. I’m currently serving PDMA by being an author on the 3rd edition of their body of knowledge for product innovation, which Wiley is publishing in early 2024. This episode is sponsored by PDMA so we can find out more about the association. Register for PDMA’s 2023 Inspire Innovation Conference on September 16th-19th in New Orleans, LA, USA.   Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:15] What is PDMA? PDMA is the Product Development and Management Association. We exist to advance and nurture the discipline of innovation, product development, and product management. We do that through academic research, academic-focused professional development, education, certification, and community. We were founded in 1976 by a group of individuals who at that point powered some of the most respected, recognized, and innovative companies. Today we are still doing that, and we are one of the only associations, if not the only professional association, to bring together academics, practitioners, and service providers around the discipline of product management to advance the discipline. [4:13] Why is PDMA not better known among product managers and leaders? You can talk about it as a marketing problem, but I think there is some root cause in our mission. Because we are about nurturing the discipline of product management itself, PDMA isn’t the place where individuals who work in product roles come to get jobs. Because our focus is on thought leadership and often the kind of content we bring to the table is heavy—academic or at least well researched and thought through—we are for those who are not faint of heart when it comes to product development and management. For many individuals who work in product management and product development roles, the discipline is a stop on their career path, so they don’t necessarily get jazzed about the discipline itself. Our work in our communities is through our chapters. We are not putting commercialized content out there. We don’t have a big marketing engine. While we are a global organization, our grassroots are in each individual location where our chapters are. We should be better known, and organizations trying to professionalize the discipline of product development and product management inside their company give our certification visibility, but many people in small to medium businesses might not engage with PDMA unless they come across a chapter or our journal or somebody like Chad or me. [12:47] What value have you found by being a PDMA member? I fancy myself a lifelong learner. I care about nurturing the discipline of product management and development. In PDMA, you’re always learning. It’s fascinating to hear how other industries deal with product development, product management, organizations, process, and so forth. PDMA provided me with colleagues and an opportunity to look through many different lenses. Because I was starting to teach and the individuals in my classes were from different industries, that ended up being super valuable. It kept me at the forefront of where the research was headed because a big piece of our organization is focused on academics and research for the future. The PDMA Body of Knowledge is synonymous with entrepreneurship and how you think about starting a company. A startup is a single-product company. The Body of Knowledge chronicles the product journey from cradle to grave. Even if you are focused on research and development, or if you’re focused on product marketing—two different ends of the life cycle—the Body of Knowledge gives you the entire context. It makes you a better individual, a better leader, and more appreciative of what other teams are doing. We have a body of work that is highly relevant to many. [18:22] What are some other reasons product managers and leaders should know about PDMA? First, if you think

Starting from the customer experience to build products customers love Today we are talking about the “working backwards” approach to product that was created at Amazon. To give us the details on this approach, Colin Bryar is with us. He joined Amazon in 1998—four years after its founding—and spent the next 12 years as part of Amazon’s senior leadership team. For two of his years at Amazon, Colin was Chief of Staff to Jeff Bezos, AKA “Jeff’s shadow,” during which he spent each day attending meetings, traveling with, and discussing business and life with Jeff. Colin is co-founder of Working Backwards where he coaches executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon. He is also the co-author of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:07] Where did “working backwards” originate? Working Backwards started at Amazon in the early 2000s. We were trying to figure out how we were going to move into the digital space. Amazon’s first leadership principle is customer obsession, and we realized we weren’t as customer-obsessed as we needed to be. Jeff Bezos wanted to create a new type of process to make sure that the customer was with us for the very beginning of an idea all the way through the journey to when the product was released. And we had tried a bunch of standard tools to build products, but we realized that the one person who wasn’t in the room was the customer, and that was the most important person to have with us on the journey. We created a process called Working Backwards, which is starting from the customer experience and then working backwards from that to build a new product. [4:39] What is the “working backwards” approach? The primary tool that we use is the PRFAQ document, short for press release and frequently asked questions. When someone has an idea for a product or service, the first thing they do is write a PRFAQ document. The first part is the press release, which must: Be one page or less Clearly define who the customer is Clearly define the problem you’re trying to solve for that customer State your solution Convince the customer that this solution is worthy enough for them to change their behavior from the alternatives Be in written in language that a customer can understand Be written to the customer After reading that press release, if you’re not excited to go out and buy the product or use the service, go back and rewrite it. It’s an iterative process. Once you have a press release you’re satisfied with, write the frequently asked questions. Some people break this up into two parts—external FAQs that the customer or press will ask and internal FAQs that you’ll have to answer in order to make the idea a reality. [8:55] Do you involve the customer in writing the PRFAQ document? You don’t need to involve the customer necessarily, but you do need to figure out ways to get the customer needs out in front of everyone in the group. Look at data about how people are currently using your product or service. The best way to understand the customer experience is really to deeply immerse yourself in the data and the problem at hand and come up with conviction that this is a solution to a real customer problem. Then you can do some surveys and focus groups to validate or disprove that hypothesis. When you’re writing the PRFAQ document, typically a product manager takes the lead. You can’t write it overnight. Allocate an appropriate amount of time to do it. It’s best to show people drafts of the document before you bring it to the leadership. They’ll help refine the idea and make it better. [12:02] How long are the FAQs and how do you discuss them with your team? We try to keep the document to six pages or less for a one-hour meeting. You spend about the first 20 minutes reading the document, and then you have 40 minutes of discussion. You don’t have to comprehensively cover the whole product in each meeting. Start off with the idea. At the next meeting, narrow down the pricing model, etc. The body of the document needs to be six pages, and you can have appendices added onto that which can run well over six pages that you can refer to as needed. [15:50] Why have a meeting about the PRFAQ document? There are two reasons to have a meeting with the team rather than individually reading the draft. First, people will update the document until the very last minute before the meeting starts. If you read it the night before, you’re reading a draft that has gone a little stale. Second, during the first 20 minutes of the meeting everyone is guaranteed to read the document. Despite best intentions, things come up, and some people might not be able to read it ahead of time. [16:52] Who is at the PRFAQ meeting? The meeting includes the per

How product managers can create a portfolio and manage innovation Today we are talking about portfolio management—creating a portfolio, adjusting it, selecting projects for it, and managing innovation. Our guest is Gareth Bradley, Director of Product Management at Planview. Planview is a leading provider of product portfolio management solutions. Previous to Planview, Gareth held Product VP roles and managed innovation portfolios. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:42] What is a product portfolio and why do we care about it? Product portfolios allow companies with multiple products to align work tracks around particular products. Companies organize their product portfolios either at the product level or around groups of products or services. [3:12] What are some ways organizations structure portfolios? There are two worlds. The traditional world is where the structure of portfolios is around projects—how a work item starts, is worked upon, and is delivered to the market. These projects run in groups called the portfolio. Each project has a start date and end date. The traditional view is prevalent, but we’ve observed a shift from a project mindset to a product mindset. In the product mindset, work is more continuous. You work in the product development lifecycle, thinking about a continuous evolution of a product or service that goes into market. The way your portfolio is structured needs to adapt for new innovations. The product mindset is the new frontier. One of the biggest challenges for many organizations is striking the balance between a project- and product-oriented mindset. They may have been working in the project mindset for a long time. Now because of disruption in the market, they have to shift the way they think, and that’s tough to do. [6:29] What are some example of project-driven and product-driven portfolios? Organizations delivering smart-connected products have had to make the jump to product-driven portfolios. When you’re manufacturing a physical thing, you work on one version and it’s complete. The development cycle is long. As more companies are dealing in software, the product mindset comes in. You cluster work to support the overall family group. For example, automotive entertainment requires a lot of software for a vehicle. There’s a family of supporting projects for that vehicle. Once the vehicle is out, there’s continual work on the software. As my CEO says, “Good software is not like fine wine. It’s more like sushi. It doesn’t get better with age.” As an organization, you have to think about how you can maintain your position in the market. Think about the structure of getting the product out to market and balancing the portfolio to manage the whole lifecycle. [10:03] How do you use buckets or horizons in portfolio management? The three horizons approach is dividing work into short, medium, and long term. Some companies organize their portfolios to keep each horizon contained. In other organizations, like those spending a lot on R&D for medical devices, horizons one and two can become more muddled so you have incremental innovation to support the product that has gone to market. Other organizations are purely doing R&D innovation. They work in horizon three. [23:27] Where do innovation ideas enter the portfolio? Start with the end in mind—what do we want to put into market? Organizations that win at this game are the ones who think about the end in mind, predominantly around funding—how do we fund innovation in and around our portfolios? Organize crowd structure into three buckets: incremental, disruptive, and breakthrough. (The crowd is employees, supply chain, partners, and customers—anyone you collaborate with.) There is a middle space before the portfolio, an incubation area where you select 10-20 ideas from a thousand. The incubation area can be where pre-funding happens and where market fit is thought about. If you don’t do that middles step or if you don’t execute it well, you end up with a lot of good ideas but you can’t execute them. I’ve worked with engineering companies who do this very well. They know what type of innovation they’re looking for and will line up the end with the start. In the incubation process, they make sure those ideas are viable. As a project manager, you need to be in touch with the portfolio people to understand what kind of projects they have funding for. As a product leader or product VP, you would want your portfolio to have funding allocated for receiving new ideas. [30:36] What are some indications we need to rethink how we’re allocating our resources in our portfolio? I look at throughput. What are we getting out into market? Are we finishing things on time as predicted on budget with the resources we have? We look at the whole lifecycle. What is happening in the market with what we already delivered? What are cust

Lessons from the discoverer of Stage-Gate for product managers Today we are talking with a legend in product management. Our guest is Dr. Robert Cooper, who discovered the now famous Stage-Gate process and was named the “World’s Top Innovation Management Scholar” by the prestigious Journal of Product Innovation Management. Besides his best-selling books Winning at New Products and Portfolio Management for New Products, he has published more than 130 articles on R&D and innovation management. He is frequently helping organizations succeed while also holding the role of Professor Emeritus at McMaster University and Distinguished Research Fellow at Penn State University. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:05] What key challenges are medium and large organizations encountering today when trying to get new products into the marketplace? We’re facing new uncertainty and risks. Companies have to think about what to do short-term to keep the lights on and what to do long-term for bolder innovations. Some companies will retreat and cut their spending by cutting bolder long-term innovations, and we saw in the recession around 2010 that was a bad strategy. In some mature industries, it is increasingly difficult to find opportunities for new products. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was no absence of problems in telecommunications. They couldn’t even send a long-distance call because there were no amplifiers, no vacuum tubes, and no transistors. They had to invent all those things. When you have no absence of customer or user problems, if you’re reasonably intelligent, you can usually come up with the inventions and the necessary breakthrough new products. Today it’s harder in the telecommunications business because there are problems but not as evident as formerly. Other industries like IT are still going strong with many opportunities and problems to solve, but it’s becoming increasingly tougher to find fantastic voids in the marketplace. Another challenge is fortitude of the general manager to keep spending at the same level when it is tougher and tougher to get the return on investment you need. On the other hand, there are all kinds of new technologies like AI, biosciences, and new opportunities in the medical field. These technological possibilities should generate all kinds of new product opportunities. [7:38] What advice do you give leaders about making strategic decisions? There are many risks and uncertainties like the supply chain, market size, and expected profitability. The numbers we put in our business cases are notoriously wrong often by a factor of two. Many business cases are fantasy because there are so many unknowns, which people usually don’t factor in. Take a hard look at how you do your business case in light of increasing uncertainties and build that in somehow. I have a new article coming out on expected commercial value, which builds likelihoods into the business case. How do you estimate likelihoods? We didn’t know how to do it in the past, but now we have estimates from companies like Dow Chemical and 3M. They have put together probability tables that give the likelihood of success under certain circumstances, because they’ve studied enough projects to know. Do the net present value calculations with correction factors for likelihood of success. The other piece of advice is getting the product right. Sometimes people do voice-of-customer analysis and think they understand the customer’s needs, then spend a year designing a prototype, then do field trials and everything goes wrong. The customer’s needs have changed or the customers didn’t understand their own needs. Instead, we recommend iterative innovation. Build something really fast and demo it to the customer to get instant feedback. Get the product out in their face fast, early, often, and cheap. The first version doesn’t have to be the real product. You can create a computer simulation or animation. Show the customer something in the first three weeks of development and repeat every four weeks. Demo to management too because you need their buy-in and support. [13:07] What’s an example of using iterative innovation? Steve Jobs said, “Customers don’t know what they want until they see it.” LEGO has a B2B business called LEGO Education, which sells learning products to schools and teachers. It’s a combination of IT software and LEGO blocks. There was a new product coming out that LEGO had been working on for about four years and couldn’t get right. It was a creative writing curriculum to teach younger children how to be more creative writers. LEGO had several panels of teachers, and they asked them, “What are you looking for in this product?” And the teachers weren’t sure. One of the teachers finally said, “Why don’t you build something and show it to us? And then we’ll t

How product management teams can better make decisions Today we are talking about disruptions that impact our product work. Whether it’s supply chain disruptions, the great resignation, AI impacts, market competition or something else, continued disruption is expected. How can we navigate such an environment? To help us make decisions in this environment, Alexis Gonzales-Black joins us. She is an organization design expert and author, with experience in organization design, transformation, and team leadership. She is currently leading organization design at August Public and previously at IDEO, Zappos, and other organizations. She also authored The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:13] What does an organization designer do? We look at the factors of an organization like purpose, strategy, structure, process, systems, talent, and incentives. We make sure those factors are accelerating the organization toward its ultimate outcome— its mission and vision. The cycle of disruption is so fast that it consistently pulls our structure and processes away from what we are trying to achieve. We need an ongoing awareness of sensing and adapting to change at all levels. [4:35] Tell us about your framework for making decisions in turbulent environments. First I want to talk about “Why decision making?” Why do we use that as a way to talk to companies and product teams? No matter where we go in any organization, folks have feedback about how decisions are being made. Typically, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the way decisions are made in organizations. Decision making is a great proxy for many other factors in an organization, like trust, empowerment, psychological safety, speed, efficiency, power, and authority. We often use decision making as a concrete way to improve and accelerate teams because it brings in so many different factors of how teams work together. When we look across all of the research about decision making, we see that three common levers emerge: Clear decision ownership Explicit decision process Decision capture [6:49] Clear decision ownership The most ubiquitous decision ownership tool is RACI. It falls hopelessly short of providing the type of clarity that we want it to provide. We end up just documenting the dysfunction of our teams rather than providing clarity about how the decision is made. We like to introduce single decision ownership. That doesn’t mean that person is making an autocratic decision, but it means you have one decision owner. Who is responsible for shepherding the decision process, for getting the inputs and ultimately making the final call? That level of clarity helps accelerate teams. We encourage folks to consider who is closest to the work, has expertise, and is closest to the data. A lot of folks default to consensus as the model for decision making because they’re afraid of being responsible if something unforeseen happens. Consensus is overused and misused. It is preferable is for one person to make a decision using the information they have at the time and to have an environment where it’s okay to say, “Oh, maybe that’s not what I would’ve done, but I trust you,” or “Maybe it didn’t turn out the way that we wanted it to, but let’s just learn and pivot moving forward.” [10:04] What tools do you use for clear decision ownership? Select the best decision owner for each decision. We use a proposal where somebody on the team says, “You know what? I think Chad is closest to this information. He’s been working on this project and driving this forward. I propose that Chad is the decision owner.” Have a quick moment to see if there are any objections. As long as we agree that Chad is going to make sure that his stakeholders are heard and considered, we consent to Chad being the decision owner. Then we do a really rigorous stakeholder map where the decision owner names his key stakeholders—the people he needs to keep in the loop and who will impacted by the decision. He doesn’t necessarily invite them into the decision-making moment, but he gets their input. The decision maker has to make a great stakeholder map, engage us appropriately, get our data, and make sure that the decision is considering the most relevant data. [11:58] Explicit decision process We use a disagree-and-commit process, where you detail the steps of a decision-making process. The first step is a proposal. The second step is an opportunity for the stakeholders to ask clarifying questions. Often we jump right into reactions, but we need to understand and clarify before we get into our opinions. After we’ve clarified, we’ll have a round of advice or reactions where each person, one at a time without interruption, gets to say their advice. Then we will end the decision-making moment with

How established organizations can overcome barriers to digital transformation – for product managers Today we are exploring digital transformation in large organizations as well as other challenges leaders are facing in a digitally transforming business environment. With us is David Rogers, an expert on digital transformation, a member of the faculty at Columbia Business School, and the author of five books, including The Digital Transformation Roadmap. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:38] What kind of problems are executives of organizations talking about now? There’s a tension between the external and the internal. Established organizations are seeing a lot of external change—new technologies, new behaviors among customers and employees, and digital change. The pace at which each new wave of change comes is speeding up. On the other side, businesses find it hard to adapt internally to respond to change. Many companies are working on digital transformation, but they’re struggling to see results. Seventy percent of large organizations are failing in their efforts to transform. I’ve been diving into the key problems that are holding organizations back from digital transformation. They understand the urgency to transform, but inertia is holding them back. [5:43] What is digital transformation? Digital transformation is the transformation of an established business to thrive in a digital age of constant change. This is about established businesses. Creating a new startup is a different challenge. In an established business, you have a business model, customers, ecosystem of partners and distribution channels, employees, and a brand reputation. The challenge is adaptation. How do we turn a giant battleship in the water? Digital transformation is not, at its heart, about technology. We need to change because of changes around us, which are driven by new technologies, but to change our organization, we have to focus much less on the technology and much more on the customer and our own business. To respond when things seem to be changing so fast, keep an eye on the technology, but don’t lose sight of your real mandate, which is to solve customer problems, solve business problems, and pursue opportunities for sustainable growth. [7:36] What part does artificial intelligence (AI) play in digital transformation? The current wave of change is around generative AI. A lot of companies are pumping out demos of AI passing the bar exam or creating a marketing plan in 30 seconds. It’s uncanny how an algorithm can put things together that are shockingly similar to what a person might write. Is it actually useful though? Most of the examples I see are not useful. The marketing plan created in 30 seconds is not good enough to implement. It’s a B-minus student’s effort. Other people are using AI to actually solve problems. Khan Academy is using large language models to provide one-on-one tutoring. There is a lot of evidence that learners perform and progress better and faster if they have one-on-one tutoring, but human tutors aren’t scalable. Khan Academy is building an incredible application to provide tutoring that is as good as or even better than what a human tutor can provide. We have to follow and track these fast-moving changes, but we cannot be distracted by them from the strategic question, “What problems are we trying to solve?” [10:51] Tell us about your framework for digital transformation. My framework address five barriers to digital transformation: Lack of shared vision: A lot of companies have a generic intent to become more digital or futureproof the business, but those phrases are meaningless and generic, as opposed to a vision that is specific to the company. Where do we see our world, context, customers, and industry going? What is the role that we see ourselves in, in this rapidly evolving future around our particular organization? Your vision must be rooted in your particular business and unique capabilities. Lack of clear growth priorities: Sometimes a company has no focused strategic process at all and is chasing after the latest shiny object. Other companies are purely looking at cost savings and efficiency, which is important, but if all you’re trying to do is optimize your longstanding business, you’re going to miss out on the biggest growth upside. Focus on planning instead of experimentation: Product management is all about iteratively learning through experimenting and getting customer feedback. Some companies lack that process and rely on detailed, traditional planning processes based on third-party data. Lack of flexibility in governance: If you have no flexibility built into governance processes, such as allocating resources and starting and stopping projects, you will have an inability to effectively scale good ideas. Lack of change in capabilities: Your technology stack may not have been bro

Why product managers need to understand customers’ needs We have had a lot of valuable guests on this podcast, and one of my favorites is Ken Gray. When we talked a few years ago for episode 046, he was the Global Director of Innovation for Caterpillar. Since leaving CAT, he has worked on 3D printing, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and more. He has also been a long-time supporter of the University of Iowa Institute for Vision Research, which is creating cures and solutions everyone can afford for vision diseases. Ken will be sharing lessons learned from years of product innovation wisdom. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:43] How do we discover what customers want and need? Innovation is people, culture, vision, and execution. Understanding what customers need is about having the right people on your team and building deep relationships with customers. You need people who spend a tremendous amount of time with customers to learn what they need. Customers generally don’t like to be on the bleeding edge of technology. They don’t want technology for technology’s sake or innovation for innovation’s sake. They have specific needs to improve their business. The most important product marketing work a company can do is understanding what customers need to improve their business performance and translating those needs into functional specifications, which define what a product needs to do to serve the customer’s needs. Functional requirements are the definition of what the product is, and technical requirements are the definition of how to engineer the product to deliver those functional requirements. [9:10] What tools do you use to understand and meet customers’ needs? Never write a product requirement document that isn’t prioritized. Never give engineering a flat list. Give them a prioritized list—at least high, medium, and nice-to-have. Otherwise you’re going to get the cool stuff first, which doesn’t necessarily align with what customers need. There are things customers need that they don’t tell you they need. You need to understand why customers behave the way they do beyond their spoken word. Whatever appeals to them psychologically needs to be satisfied as well. Those buying decisions are harder to uncover than purely technical ones. To uncover them, you have to get to know your customers really well. Maslow’s Hammer is the idea that if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This is unconscious bias. We tend to think if we have a technology that’s really cool or better than other technologies, people are going to come. It’s not that easy. You have to spend time understanding what drives success to the business and create an optimal product that helps your customers. You have to learn what customers need and explain your product to them. It isn’t about features and benefits. It’s about how your product improves your customer’s business—why they want it. If you can’t explain that to your customer on one sheet of paper, you’ve lost. [15:10] What are some other lessons you’ve learned related to product innovation? I would rather have an empty seat on my team than the wrong person in that seat. Don’t settle. Nurture the dissenting voice. Have people on your team who will tell you when you’re wrong and ask hard questions. [19:23] What tips do you have for working with team members? We had town hall meetings with employees. I would sit on stage and have people fire questions. I always learned more about what was going on with my customers, my product, and my team culture in those settings than in any other place. We always started these meetings with talking about safety. Everyone you work with—your team, customers, suppliers, and visitors—ought to have an expectation of getting to your facility safely, being there safely, and getting home safely. Then we got into how we were performing as a business. We showed profit and loss statements and took everyone through the numbers. We discussed the quality of the product and how it was performing. We talked about feedback we were getting and how customers were responding. We did these town halls on a routine basis so people got comfortable asking hard questions. My philosophy is I will always answer questions as long as they don’t violate insider trading rules or something like that. [26:51] How have you dealt with team members’ being afraid of you? I met with anyone who wanted to meet one-on-one. I started scheduling one-on-ones with people I didn’t know very well. I have lunch every day anyway, so I invited people to have lunch with me. When I was in Japan, in the factory there was a breakfast area where many of the leaders would meet before work to have breakfast. Everyone was invited. I started going to breakfast with the leaders, and they would discuss the topics that wer

How product managers can build trust and alignment on virtual teams Today we are talking about making virtual product teams more effective. Our guest is Anna Marie Clifton, Head of Product at Vowel. She is leading the effort to make virtual meetings more effective by turning them into searchable, sharable knowledge. Before Vowel, she held senior product management roles at Asana, Coinbase, and Yammer. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:57] How do you build trust among product team members on virtual teams? Trust is at the foundation of everything. Trust builds velocity. Trust builds product. It’s hard to build trust in virtual environments. When I had a distributed team at Coinbase, we were in a hybrid setting where some of the team was co-located and some of the team was not. That’s the hardest setting for building trust because there’s a local clique and remote participants. At Coinbase, we developed a mascot to give ourselves team culture. We chose the Count from Sesame Street because our team was working on trading, buying, and selling. We sent the Count stuffed animal to our colleagues who were not co-located with us as a symbol of our cohesion. One of the most important ways for leaders to build trust is being vulnerable and admitting mistakes. I go out of my way to call out any time I make a mistake in front of everyone whom I work with. You can do that not just in the moment but also in reference to a past mistake. That really humanizes yourself and sets the tone that it’s okay to make mistakes—this is a safe space. One of the best ways to build trust is to share vulnerability. If I’m being vulnerable with you, you can definitely trust me, because you have something you can hold over me. I’m in a position to be trusted because you have power. It’s critical especially for leaders to be vocal and vulnerable about current and past mistakes and set the tone of trust. For product managers joining a new team or organization, one of the best things to do to build a foundation of trust is to build early commitment. Say you’re going to do a thing and do that thing. Find things you are very confident you know how to do and that have a very short time window, say you will do them, and do them on time. Those actions give promissory notes that build trust, rapport, and expectation that you are a reliable person. When you move to a new organization, you start from a clean trust slate, and you have to really quickly build that balance sheet up. Giving people little commitments you can deliver on in the next 24 hours and doing that repeatedly in your first few weeks is one of the best ways to accelerate that. [10:30] How do you keep virtual teams aligned on product goals and priorities? Alignment is the most important aspect of team functioning, but maintaining alignment is challenging. Until you’re in an organization where there’s a lack of alignment, you don’t notice how completely frenetic it can be. If you move really quickly forward and you move really quickly backward, you’ve moved at a high speed but low velocity—you haven’t gone anywhere. One of the best ways you can improve velocity, especially as an organizational leader, is by focusing on alignment, not necessarily speed. Everything is always trending toward less alignment. The default state is as time moves forward, people are becoming less aligned. Your job as a product leader is to continue to pull people back into the alignment you have created. It’s all about communication. The adage “people have finally heard something once you’re tired of saying it” is true. At Vowel, we do an all-hands meeting every two weeks. Our product team will share a product update, and most product updates will include a high level reminder of product strategy. Every quarter we do a detailed all-hands meeting about the product strategy. What is our current product strategy? How, if at all, has it changed since the last quarter? If it stayed the same, you still have to say it again. I strongly encourage good posts in Slack or Teams. Communication with your teams in one-on-ones is important. One of my favorite ways to start a one-on-one conversation is with the question: “What’s the most important thing?” It’s a great question to pull your colleague out of the minutiae of tactics and into thinking about the most important thing for the company right now. People as individuals and teams as groups of individuals have a certain capacity for change. They can only absorb so much change so quickly. The capacity for change is a budget you get to spend as a leader. Give people a lot of heads-up notice of when a change is coming. That gives them a lot of confidence and security to execute the change and prepare to shift to the next thing when it’s time. You don’t necessarily need to know what the next thing is going to be. Y