Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

The process of creating ideas – for product managers Today we are talking about the 7 habits of creative people. For such a discussion, we need a truly creative person, and that is why Nathan Phillips is with us. He is cofounder of Technology, Humans And Taste (THAT). Nathan leads the development of a proprietary collaborative methodology, which invites diverse and unfamiliar collaborators to co-create innovative concepts, leveraging AI to supercharge ideas. He’s also a best-selling author and Emmy award winner, on top of it all! Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [7:06] You’ve identified seven habits of creative people. Where did those habits come from? I focus on teachable methodologies for collaboration and creativity. People often think creativity is a magic power that only some people have. Everyone is creative, but sometimes we lack the vocabulary to understand how to build an idea. Building ideas is like math—once you figure out how to construct an idea, all you need to do is slot ingredients into that process and watch as innovative original ideas emerge. People think ideas have to be good, but that’s anti-creative; you can’t know if an idea is good until it’s executed. Our process, which inspired the seven rules of creativity, is designed to be understandable by anybody and inclusive of anybody’s participation. It celebrates the fact that you have to have lots of ideas to have a good idea. [8:48] What are the seven rules for creativity? [10:55] #1 Don’t eat with your hands Always have a writing utensil. If you can’t capture your thinking, you’re left without that idea. As my wife Victoria Wellman says, if you have an idea and don’t say it, it doesn’t exist. Don’t write in your phone because word processors and notes are designed to make lists, but beautiful ideas don’t happen in order. A piece of paper and pen allow you to express the creative data point that happened in your head, however it comes out. Writing makes you remember things and think differently. Personally I use pen, not pencil, because when you write with pen you’re locked into it and reminded that what you’re doing has value. [14:11] #2 Art is dead If you want to be a creator, listen to music you don’t love and find out what you could love about it. Don’t go to museums to be inspired; you’ll just see what’s been done before. Instead, go to a place least like a museum and find something that belongs in a museum. Approach the world from the perspective of someone who’s creatively engaged and trying to discover their own way of seeing. [16:32] #3 Keep it Kanye The idea of protecting your creativity is anti-creative. Always show your work. In an office, mandate that people show their work at the end of the day. If you’re sitting in a bar and thinking about a half-baked, great idea, tell someone about it and practice pitching it. If they can steal it, it wasn’t a good idea, but if they respond to it, you’ve got something original that’s yours to run with. It’s risky, but there’s nothing to be afraid of with sharing your work. [20:44] #4 Save your trash Author Stephen King threw away the first chapter of his first novel, but his wife pulled it out of the trash and he finished it, launching an incredibly impactful career. Reimagine your process through the lens of what you throw away. Look at what you’ve thrown away and connect those disparate data points. Your great concept or product is hiding in your trash, because you probably threw it away before you knew what you were doing. [23:30] #5 The Tina Turner Principle: We never do anything nice and easy There are tools that help you have ideas fast, but we need tools that help you have ideas slower. You have an idea by increasing friction, challenge, work, and disruption. You have to make it hard for yourself. If you’re making it easy, you’re skipping the creative part. [25:11] #6 Worship Satan: Religious imagination Use the power of make-believe to solve problems. When you approach a task where no solutions are available, come up with a story with a solution in it. That solution could be magic, from outer space, or something you completely invent. Then ask, How can I make this real? This is how you can get incredibly innovative solutions to problems everyone else is leaving on the floor. [28:34] #7 Create a code One of the most exciting parts of being a writer or creator is seeing people reading or using your stuff. You realize all the weird stuff bouncing around in your head is really useful to people when you bring it to life. They’re treating your crazy ideas like they’re normal. Instead of waiting for that, when you stumble on a new phrase that makes sense to you, codify it. Name a sketch you put on the wall and eventually people will start referring to it by the name you gave

How product managers can make innovation everyone’s job Today we are talking about how we design organizations for innovation. Joining us is Dr. Ben Bensaou. He is Professor of Technology Management and Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD. He has also served in roles at Harvard, Wharton, and Haas business schools. His research centers on innovation and how organizations innovate. His recent book, Built to Innovate, shares a proven system for building innovation into an organization’s DNA. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:49] What research led to the innovation framework you talk about in your book? The research started with my teaching and consulting about 20 years ago. I saw traditional companies transformed to be very innovative. For example, the CEO of a traditional company making fabrics for tire companies transformed his company into an innovative solution and services provider, not only to the auto industry but also to new markets in construction and aerospace. I wanted to share that experience of seeing an innovative engine built from the ground up in a traditional company. [5:24] What are your thoughts on designing innovation into organizations when many business leaders have spent years learning how to perfect execution? There’s nothing wrong with execution; it’s necessary for every organization. However, an execution engine tends to stop innovative behavior. Organizations often rely on specialists in R&D to innovate, but innovation is the responsibility of everyone. Particularly, we tend to ignore the important role of middle managers. Bayer, the pharmaceutical and life sciences company, recognized this role in the strategy they developed to make innovation the responsibility and job of everyone in the organization. They trained senior managers to train middle managers in innovation, and then the middle managers trained their teams. Bayer also provided coaches to train the teams, making it easy for middle managers to engage their teams in innovation. They also incentivized middle managers and teams to increase their innovative capability and contribution. Bayer also created an innovation information system where employees can send their ideas. To prevent the system from getting overloaded, they have local innovation coordinators who read the suggestions and send feedback. They also use a system called WeSolve where anyone in the company can post questions or problems and anyone else in the company can contribute solutions or ideas. More than 40,000 people participated, and surprisingly the people who provide solutions are usually not from the same division as the person who presented the problem. These systems give people permission to innovate and create a culture where anyone can innovate. [16:50] Where should innovation live in an organization? Should you start with an innovation group or push innovation to all employees? In the end, the CEO and board are responsible for innovation, but everyone has a contribution to make. Organizations need an infrastructure and process to coordinate ideas. As a typical example, a subcommittee of the board is responsible for innovation, and they give permission for innovation to the whole organization and convince and train middle managers. Once the middle managers understand the importance of innovation, the organization creates a separate unit of coaches who train and support people in innovation. At least one innovation coach is assigned to each unit. The organization gives the frontline employees time to spend with customers and use the tools they’ve learned from the coaches. In this infrastructure, innovation lives everywhere in the organization. Local coordinators pick up ideas from frontline innovators and have a network to move those ideas to innovation committees that culminate to the committee on the board. [20:25] What are your three processes for innovating? Because the traditional execution engine gets in the way of innovation, you need to create a separate but parallel innovation engine, which includes three processes: creation, integration, and reframing. Creation is how the organization creates new ideas. Frontline people play a major role because they face customers and can detect their needs, demands and problems. Integration connects the innovative ideas throughout the organization into a social network that builds innovation capability. It’s a system that selects and moves ideas to decision makers faster than going through a hierarchy. This system can include innovation ambassadors, local innovation coordinators, and coaches. Reframing is reimagining the strategy of tomorrow, rethinking the strategy of today, and challenging assumptions the company is making about who they are and the value they are creating. [24:24] How can product managers take action to help their organizations be more innovative? Innovation doesn’t have to start at the t

Special Episode From the 2020 Summit This is a special podcast episode, sharing an important discussion from The Everyday Innovator 2020 Summit. The Summit brought together 24 experts who spoke on topics for product managers and product VPs. Many of the topics are truly timeless and this is the second time I’ve shared one publically. Our guest is Ash Maurya. He has been a favorite repeat guest on the podcast and also spoke at our Summit in the Product VP track on the topic of continuous innovation. As this was a Summit presentation, the format of the show notes below are a bit different. BIO: Ash Maurya is the author of two bestselling books, Running Lean and Scaling Lean, and is the creator of the highly popular one-page business modeling tool, “Lean Canvas.” Ash is praised for offering some of the best and most practical advice for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs all over the world. Driven by the search for better and faster ways for building successful products, Ash has developed a systematic methodology for raising the odds of success built upon Lean Startup, Customer Development, and Bootstrapping techniques. Ash is also a leading business blogger and his posts and advice have been featured in Inc. Magazine, Forbes, and Fortune. He regularly hosts sold-out workshops around the world and serves as a mentor to several accelerators including TechStars, MaRS, Capital Factory, and guest lecturers at several universities including MIT, Harvard, and UT Austin. Ash serves on the advisory board of a number of startups and has consulted to new and established companies. INSIGHT: Love the problem, not your solution. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:19] What is continuous innovation and why do organizations need it? In the past, innovation happened apart from the core business. Now, the world is moving a lot faster and going to the end-user is more critical than ever. It’s increasingly important to think of innovation not as something that happens in a lab, but as something that happens continuously all the time.   [3:37] What can you tell us about each of your six rules for continuous innovation? Speed of Learning is the New Unfair Advantage: Companies that can out-learn their competition win. When you learn faster than your competition, you can continuously build a product that customers want and prevent others from taking customers away from you. Speed is relative; not all industries have to innovate at the same rate. The Business Model is the Product: We tend to focus on the product, but we need to consider the business model. The invention of a product is only a small part of innovation. The solution—how it gets to market and how it’s used by customers—is key. The Lean Canvas is a tool for mapping out the business model. Tackle Your Riskiest Assumptions First: Start with your riskiest ideas. We want to prioritize efforts on the right problems and not waste resources on the wrong things. Be Customer/Problem Centric: Start with a deep understanding of your customers and their needs and wants. Identifying their desired outcomes and obstacles helps you find problems worth solving. The solution becomes clear from there. Innovation is Evidence-Based: When we’re moving fast, it’s tempting to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks, but it’s much more effective to move ahead based on evidence. Evidence-based decision making is critical because it’s too risky to go down the wrong rabbit hole. Traction is the Goal: Traction is a measure of creating monetization and value or potential in the business model. Traction, not revenue or profit, is the leading indicator of innovation.   [15:01] What can we do to learn faster how our customers are interacting with our product? Running a product without a metrics dashboard is like getting in a car without being able to see where you’re going. There are many online tools that can help with your metrics dashboard. Metrics should generate useful data and be directly related to the ultimate traction, rather than incentivizing employees to create less traction just to meet the metric.   [19:26] How can the Lean Canvas help us collaborate? The Lean Canvas allows you to clearly and concisely communicate your idea to others so you can get buy-in. It helps you deconstruct an idea, share it with others, and look at it from different perspectives. To use the Lean Canvas with teams, have each person create their own version of the Canvas. Then come back together and share ideas.   [22:43] What’s an example of tackling the riskiest assumptions first? If you’re opening a restaurant, the riskiest assumption is that people will buy your food. First, just test that one assumption, perhaps by opening a food truck and experimenting with different menus, locations, and prices. Build something to test your riskiest assumption and start quickly experimenting. Don’t get distracted by the final solution.   [25:44] What are your favorit

Discovery, Detailing, and Deployment for hardware product management Today we are talking about applying Agile and Lean development practices to product projects that are not purely software-based. Our guest is Brian Cohn, who began his career with roles in optical engineering and mathematics. For the last 10 years, he served as the Lean Product Development Specialist at Danfoss and has recently co-founded Aspire Innovation, a group that applies a business acceleration model to help organizations be more innovative. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:11] What are the issues with applying Scrum to projects that don’t involve only software? Hardware development is iterative, while software development is incremental. Think about making a wedding cake: If you make it incrementally, you make the first layer the first year and the second layer the second year, building up a full cake. But if you’re trying to sell 1000 cakes a day, you need an iterative process; you build your first whole cake and then iterate repeatedly to make the whole cake better. Scrum works well for software because it’s designed to be incremental—you build one piece of code and then another, building up your software. Scrum is also built around the idea of product owner, someone who prioritizes the future of the product and translates that future to project work. In hardware, you have to develop everything together, and the features that the product owner is focused on may be dissociated from the project work. More disciplines are involved in hardware, so it’s harder to move the work from person to person on the team. Finally, the pace of hardware development is dependent on the supply change, buying components, and getting parts manufactured, and that can take a long time. Because of all these challenges, Scrum doesn’t fit with hardware development. [9:52] How can we apply Agile principles to hardware products? We need to be agile in hardware development because there’s a lot of uncertainty in solving a problem and time boxes are valuable. We start a project with an idea about a problem and a lot of things we don’t know. We have to go from a wild idea to a product concept for how we’re going to manufacture, market, and sell the product. We have to make many decisions, and the decision-making process can go on interminably because everyone wants more information before making decisions. We need a model for decision-making. We use Rapid Learning Cycles to make decisions at the right time—after we have the information but not too late. We need to know what knowledge we should have before making each decision. Then, we put our decision-making into a cadence. For example, we investigate a decision for two weeks and then make the decision. This allows us to learn from each time box and adjust for the next box, so we’re always learning the most valuable things. [15:53] Tell us about your D3 Model for hardware products. Hardware products go through 3 phases: Discovery, Detailing, and Deployment. In discovery, we start with a core value proposition and turn it into concepts for the product, including manufacturing, assembling, marketing, and launch. In detailing, we use engineering to move from concepts to form and function and design the manufacturing system, assembly system, and plan for selling the product. In deployment, we work on commercialization, scaling production, and sales, with the goal of releasing a product that’s easy and inexpensive to manufacture and that customers are ready to buy. [17:20] Discovery We move from an idea on the back of a napkin to well-formulated concepts for the product, process, and launch. We weigh the decisions we want to make and the gaps in knowledge we need to close to make those decisions. We have a workshop called the Market Requirements Event, where we bring people together to discuss the product requirements. We spend time framing the problem. It’s important to diverge and think about many ideas before converging on the problem definition. In workshops, we find people are often not aligned on what the problem is, and they bring important perspectives so we can all get alignment on the customer and problem. [21:58] Detailing We pull the whole product together, using iterations of increasing maturity. We think about the first prototype, the questions we need to answer, and how many iterations we’ll need before getting a design that meets all the requirements we can reasonably test with prototypes. We iterate the whole product in time-boxed cycles that can take months to a year, while also keeping a shorter time cadence to move forward. Back to the wedding cake example, we’re refining our recipe and also thinking about what machines we could use to make the cake. We improve the product and scale manufacturing. [26:07] Deployment We demonstrate how to replicate the product. At this point, there’s less

Combatting the forces that pull customers away from your product, for product managers Today we are talking about a key challenge with product innovation—the change innovation necessitates. If there is no change, there is no innovation. Helping us understand change and how to properly navigate it in an organization is David Schonthal. He is an award-winning Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management where he teaches courses on new venture creation, design thinking, innovation and creativity. He has also been a practitioner of entrepreneurship and innovation for over 20 years, including a decade working at design firm IDEO. Also, one of his early jobs was product manager at Arthur Andersen. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:39] Out of your many innovation projects, what’s one you’ve found especially interesting? I’m particularly interested in healthcare products because they’re complicated and their positive impact is unambiguous. One program, related to diabetes management, is a great example of design thinking and human-centered design. We recognized people tend to think about chronic diseases at the macro and functional level, e.g., blood sugar levels and HbA1C. When we used design thinking, we realized chronic disease is as much a social and emotional condition as it is a functional condition. The diabetes management programs we designed were about helping the entire person, not just managing the metrics associated with their disease. We aimed to help individuals achieve their goals in life. [5:40] Where did the title for your new book, The Human Element, come from? My co-author, Kellogg psychologist Loran Nordgren, and I wondered why some good ideas fail to get traction in the market. Often, innovators and marketers focus on the product, saying it is designed or priced wrong, but we found the human side of the equation often goes unnoticed. We don’t consider the reaction of individuals whom you are expecting to change to adopt your product. Our book focuses on the human element—the ability for humans to adopt the products we’re creating to benefit them. [8:14] What do you think about the tension in organizations between maximizing operations, which encourages consistency, and innovation, which brings change? In established organizations, there’s always the tension between running the core business efficiently and looking to future horizons for growth. Organizations tend to be optimized for the first part, not the second part. To manage both well, organizations need two speeds or modes, one speed focused on creating efficiency and repeatable, scalable processes, and one speed with an appetite for taking risks and a growth mindset. Organizations often say they want to innovate and take risks, but when the core business needs attention, they lose focus on innovation, leaving it without resources or attention. Managing this tension well has to start at the top of the organization, with leaders recognizing the need for these two modes of function. [13:02] Tell us about your framework for addressing change. We talk about the forces of fuel and friction. Fuel is what draws customers to a product, and it’s where most product managers and developers spend their time. It includes all the features and benefits that make a product desirable, the problem trying to be solved by the new innovation, marketing collateral, and all the tools in product developers and innovators’ toolboxes. Friction is the headwinds that stand in the way of customers’ implementing the change. We identify four headwinds: Inertia—the resistance to move away from the status quo Effort—the energy required to make a change; this can be physical or economic effort or ambiguity about how it will work Emotion—the doubt, anxiety, or concern a change raises in people’s minds Reactance—people’s aversion to being changed, particularly when they feel the change is being imposed upon them [19:12] Can you take us through an example of working through these friction forces? I worked with a customer furniture manufacturer who makes sofas. The two common detractors for people interested in customer furniture are the expense and the long time it takes to get a piece. This company figured out a way to enable people to design custom sofas and get them delivered in 10 weeks or less, and the cost was 70% less than other custom furniture. It was an overwhelming value proposition, and they got a ton of attention from their target market. A lot of people came into their stores or went online and designed the perfect sofa for themselves. Then, just before they were about to purchase it, they walked away. The company wondered what was going on. Clearly, their value proposition attracted people and kept them engaged in the product enough to spend time designing the perfect piece. They learned through interviews that what stood in the

What product managers might not know about insights Today we are talking about markets and customer insights. Great product managers understand their customers and know how to gain insights about their unmet needs. Darshan Mehta is our guest to help us explore this topic. He is the Founder of iResearch.com, an insights platform to quickly and affordably extract insights from consumers worldwide, and ConnectQik.com, an app for instant connections and engaging interactions. In addition he has taught at The George Washington University in Washington D.C., at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and at other universities. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:12] How can we make a human connection between our products and customers? In the past, innovation was more product-focused. Now, people aren’t buying products; they’re buying experiences. The focus of your innovation should be humanizing your product. [4:45] What are customer insights? We often think of insights as facts or observations, but they’re actually a combination of trends in society, emotions, triggers, and motivations. Comedians do an excellent job finding insights. They take an observation and combine it with other elements of human nature and trends to make you say, “That is so funny and so true.” [8:16] How do we get customer insights? The best way to tap into insights is to have conversations. For example, I did a focus group for a clothing retailer in Washington, DC, and a simple insight changed the store’s trajectory completely. They talked to shoppers, most of whom were women, and found these shoppers dropped off their kids in the morning at 9am and would have gone to the store but didn’t want to wait until it opened at 10am. The clothing store started opening at 9:30am, which boosted sales tremendously. [10:31] What’s the importance of an emotional connection? Most successful companies are doing at least one of three things: saving you time, saving you money, or making it easier. If you can do any one of those, your chances of being successful are pretty good. If you can achieve all three, you 3x your chances. If you can achieve all three plus evoke an emotional connection, that 3x is multiplied even more. When people have a positive emotional experience with your product, they’re not only delighted; they also share on social media and promote your product. [14:58] Are there any other ways to get customer insights? With social media, you’re going to get feedback from your customers even if you’re not seeking it. They’ll post reviews and comments. Your choice is to take in that feedback now or later. You’re better off getting it sooner. Keep getting feedback and be prepared that it isn’t all going to be good. You have to listen to the negative feedback because it gives you opportunities for innovation and insights to improve your product or service. Don’t just innovate your product. Also innovate to make your existing product obsolete. You are your own worst competitor. You can’t control your competitors, but you can control your existing product and transition to a new product so you have a sustained future. It can be hard to take feedback when you’re in love with your solution. You want your product to do well, but part of that is tough love. Be open to criticism and set your emotions aside. The people giving negative feedback care enough about your product to want to complain about it. They have the potential to become your raving fans if you listen to what they’re saying. They may be giving you an entry into a great innovation. [22:53] What’s an example of how you’ve found customer insights? We did a project for the State Department, which was looking to hire more minorities in the State Department of Foreign Services. We decided to do a focus group online, which helped people set aside visual bias and give honest feedback. When you have conversations like this, tap into what people are thinking and feeling. You’ve probably been a cocktail party where you’re talking to three or four people and you get on a topic you’re all interested in, and before you know it you’re feeding off each other and getting deeper and deeper into the topic. In conversations like this, you tap into thoughts and emotions you never thought about before and learn a lot about yourself and others. [25:01] How did you set up the focus group for the State Department? First, we invited potential attendees to do a screening survey to see if they fit the right demographics and were in the market for a job. We invited roughly 15 people to participate. This is an ideal number because 8-12 will show up and more than 15 will be too many for a deep discussion. We ran the discussion as an online chat session, so everyone could respond to the questions at the same time and respond to others’ answers. Th

What one product manager learned about understanding customers Today we are talking about the journey from software developer to product manager and some key challenges encountered as a product manager. This journey was made by our guest, Liron Lifshitz-Yadin. She is the VP of Product at Tel Aviv-based Lightrun. She enjoys being a mentor to new product managers and has gained vast product management experience. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:41] Please tell us about your journey from software developer to product manager. I started as a software developer in an intelligence unit in the Israeli army. The army was a very collaborative, connected environment, both empowering and humbling. I did software development for many years but eventually realized I wanted to work more with people and be engaged with customers and the community. I slowly transitioned from development to innovation teams. I saw the beauty of focusing on the problem space and moved to the entrepreneurial space and then to product management. [8:02] What took you from developing code to wanting to understand customers? It was a process as I matured, but one important moment was when I was working at an innovative Israeli startup. I worked there for two and a half years until it closed. We were trying to reinvent the mobile phone, and it didn’t work, but we had amazing people, and it was one of the most hyped-up companies in the country. I was privileged to work there. On the R&D team, we felt like we had a lot of questions about how the product would be validated in the market, where it is going, and why we were doing what we were doing. I wanted to better understand how we did research and how customers would approach our product. I wanted to do innovation, so the next job I took was on an innovation team. [10:57] On the innovation team, where did you get ideas? We tried a lot of products and sent them to conferences. Our customers validated all our concepts, and were in close contact with specific customers. [13:58] How do you get information from customers? The most important way to get ideas is talking to customers. You need to understand their underlying needs, their workflows, and the tools they use. Know how they do things before offering a solution. The specific method of talking with customer varies by company and includes: Phone calls or web meetings Slack channel: At a previous company I worked at, we had a Slack channel with our customers to interact daily, and they felt very free to state observations about our products. Customer interviews Sales calls: In other companies, I’ve gone on sales calls as a product manager, to hear from existing customers and prospects. Design partners: We work with customers as we’re developing products, and they become our design partners. This open relationship gives us tons of ideas. [17:21] Sometimes customers share their own solutions that might not be best way for solving their problems. How do you approach that? Often, you can solve a customer’s pain by doing something very simple. Build in stages—deliver a quick win for the customers, then take time to explore the best solution. You will have to make trade-offs between requests from customers, executives, developers, and other stakeholders. Sometimes you may have to make the tough decision to not pursue a feature customers are asking for because it doesn’t really solve their problems in the best way. [24:23] How do you prioritize ideas and features? We build our strategic roadmap each year and revisit it every six months, making sure it’s aligned with the company’s goals. Then we do a top-down analysis to lay out how we’ll accomplish our goals. Include all your stakeholders—management, executives, sales, and customer feedback. The roadmap will help you make sure every feature aligns with the basic goal of the company. However, you’ll still have customers or management suggesting new features that are off the roadmap. Evaluate them using data, customer feedback, and a transparent conversation throughout your company. You can also use frameworks and models like Value vs. Effort, the Kano Model, the RICE model (reach, impact, confidence, effort), or your own scoring system, which can be validated with surveys, customer interviews, and NPR scores. If an executive makes a request that isn’t on the roadmap, be prepared to discuss their thought process and show your research, data, and validation. Show them if their goals clash with the company goals and what the company will lose by fulfilling their request. If you choose to follow their request, have a clear plan for how you’ll validate it and minimize loss. If you’re saying yes to some features you’re saying no to others. Action Guide: Put the information Liron shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful link: Connect with Liron on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “

What product managers need to know about positioning products to create value Today we are talking about how market segmentation is done and how it impacts product pricing. To help us with the details, a product strategy and pricing expert is joining us, Dan Balcauski. Dan is the founder of Product Tranquility, a consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. He has 15 years of experience in managing multiple products throughout different life cycles, from start-ups to publicly traded multinational enterprises. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:05] What is product strategy? Product strategy is the art and science of understanding customer problems and aligning your organization around creating desirable outcomes for customers and your business. Problem management is more important than product management for product managers. Be obsessed about your customers’ problems. Strategy defines a current situation, an assessment of that situation, and a path forward to overcome the challenges you face. Product strategy is about orienting the company toward the problems you’ll solve and how solving those problems for customers will positively impact the business. [4:07] How does market segmentation influence product strategy? In customer research, we’re trying to understand what problems our customers face and how much they value solutions to those problems. Imagine you’re a general trying to guide your troops. You have a landscape of different hills you could traverse, and you need to understand the possible advantages, disadvantages, and constraints of taking any particular hill. In market segmentation, you’re trying to understand the opportunity, challenges, and advantages of taking any particular position in the market. Once you’ve outlined the market landscape, product strategy is the process of deciding where you can compete and win. [6:34] What’s an example of a company that does market segmentation well? Tesla’s first car was the Tesla Roadster at a price point of $250,000. Eventually, Tesla created the Model S at a slightly more reasonable $80,000, and now they have the Model 3 at $35,000. This is a perfect example of understanding customer segments and aligning product strategy to sequentially attack those different market segments. Elon Musk understood the electric motor has a distinct advantage over combustion engine vehicles: It can deliver power directly to the wheels. The Roadster could easily beat a Porsche or Ferrari in speed. Tesla found a group of people who were willing to pay for that. Their market segment for the Roadster was very high-end people who wanted their 0-60 speed to be the best in the world. These customers didn’t care as much about an established, long-range, national charging network, which was not in place when the Roadster came out. Elon balanced the segment he went after with the value drivers of that segment. He aligned the benefits of the product with the customers who were willing to pay for those benefits and aligned the capabilities of the company to execute his strategy. [10:07] Where do we start with market segmentation? Start at the top leadership of your company and make sure your executives understand segmentation is important; many leaders think they’re going to capture the entire market. Start early. Proper customer segmentation helps every part of the organization. It’s unsuccessful to build a product without a segment in mind and hand it off to marketing and tell them to position it for a particular segment. Understanding whom you are building for makes the prioritization of features much easier as you’re building. When you’re segmenting, you’re creating groups that have homogenous customer needs within a segment but heterogeneous customer needs between segments, while balancing the ability of the company to manage all those diverse interests. [13:34] Tell us about methods for segmentation. There are two methods we use: a priori (before) and post-hoc (after). First, we use a priori because it allows us to have an easy conversation about segmentation and leverages expertise of those on the team. A priori segmentation uses existing research or segmentation schemes like customer geography, company size, and industry vertical. One advantage of this method is it groups customers who are alike. It is fast and cheap because it uses publicly available or easily accessibly data. One drawback is that it doesn’t help you understand why customers buy certain benefits; also, existing segmentation schemes may not fit your exact business context or purpose. This method is useful for surfacing assumptions and areas of disagreement or risk. Next, we do post hoc segmentation. We dig into the underlying customer value drivers. We start with the customers’ view of the world to understand what drives them to make purchasing and usage decisions. We use tools like Jobs-to-be-D

Create change as a storyteller of the future – for product managers Today we are talking about how organizations can better support innovators and improve their innovation capability, taking a systems perspective. The work product managers and leaders do is the life blood of organizations, creating innovations that drive revenue and contribute to a sustainable organization. To help us do this even better, we have an expert guest, Dan McClure. He is a systems strategist and agile product manager who helps organizations envision and create high impact innovations. He has over 30 years of hands-on experience shaping systems-level initiatives that combine business and technology. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:5] You’re an innovation strategist and architect. What do you mean by that? I strategize about a solution in an interconnected system. Instead of improving just one piece of the current system, I think about reinventing the entire system. For example, instead of improving a taxi service by putting charge card capabilities in the cabs, innovation strategists reimagined the entire industry and created Uber and Lyft, changing not just one piece but all the pieces. An innovation strategist sees a big, complex problem and makes all the changes necessary to imagine an entirely new way of working. [6:40] Why do so many organizations struggle to create impactful innovation that matters? The challenge is usually not getting innovation done but making the innovation big enough to matter strategically and over the long-term for the company. It’s difficult to get the entire organization to embrace a big, complex change. Innovators need to imagine how to create big change that works. [9:05] What needs to change in the product leader role to support systems innovation? A lot of people think that product work means identifying a user, selecting a user need, and delighting the customer by creating an effective product that satisfies the need. This model helps you focus on what you’re trying to do and whom you’re trying to do it for, but imagine a more complex real-life situation: You’re planning a holiday party for all your extended family. You have to satisfy every family member, and there’s no single user. You have to design that party not to delight one person but to provide value to satisfy the needs of everyone. We call this “everyone needs to get a pony.” There has to be a solution in which trade-offs are recognized and balanced and all the pieces come together so everyone walks away satisfied. In the business world, similar challenges occur. Imagine you need to integrate a new technology into a hospital’s operation. You need to create value for the administrators, doctors, nurses, vendors, and trainers. The system solution is not about delighting one person. It’s about seeing how all the pieces fit together and how we make a whole, functioning solution that is complete, sustainable, and scalable. People are an integral part of these types of systems, and these types of problems are complex and messy. Systems thinkers have called these “wicked problems,” which sound impossible to solve, but the systems tools are also incredibly powerful, and that’s exciting. [14:40] What kind of work does a leader do to help an organization be successful in system innovation? We call this role of system innovation leader a choreographer. Choreographers see the whole problem, not just one stakeholder or function but the entire interconnected web of challenges and opportunities. Next, they imagine a future system that’s better than the existing system. In the past, many innovators would see the whole problem and start chipping away at individual pieces. That doesn’t necessarily lead to a future system that’s better. A choreographer imagines an entirely different system where all the pieces fit together in a new way. Choreographers are centipede-shaped—they have many legs in lots of different areas of specialty that often don’t relate to one another. Because they can see across many domains, they can work with many different types of users. They tend to be boundary-breakers and are often seen as rebels within traditional companies. Finally, choreographers are great storytellers. They help people imagine a new future. [18:57] Is the choreographer role usually filled by an individual or a team? Choreographers often come in pairs. One is a visionary who imagines the future, and the other is more practical and shows how to get to the future. [21:42] Some product managers see that their industry is headed toward disruption; they’re concerned with what the future might bring; and they have some ideas about what to do. What should they do to get their organization to pay attention to the problem? First, find your natural allies—people who resonate with the story and bring the skills and capabilities yo

Special Episode From the 2020 Summit This is a special podcast episode, sharing an important discussion from The Everyday Innovator 2020 Summit. Two weeks ago Grant Hunter discussed what is product management. I am sharing this episode now because Steve Johnson, who is also a business partner with Grant, did a masterful job at the Summit, describing the real nature of product management. As this was a Summit presentation, the format of the show notes below are a bit different. BIO: Steve Johnson is an author, speaker, and transformation coach on product methods from idea to market. His approach is based on the belief that minimal process and simple templates result in a nimble product team. Steve has been working within the high-technology arena since 1981 with experience in technical, sales, and marketing management positions at companies specializing in enterprise and desktop software. His market and technical savvy allowed him to rise rapidly through the ranks from product manager to the executive suite. A founding instructor at Pragmatic Marketing and product coach with Under10, Steve has been a long-time advocate for product management, serving as an advisor to a number of technical product organizations and industry associations. INSIGHT: As many as 50% of professionals (of any kind) cannot clearly state what is and is not their role and how they contribute to the success of the company. If one team doesn’t do its job, other teams must fill the void. Just as you never want your goalie to be your top scorer, you want each team member focused on their primary job. Use the tool in this presentation to help clarify who does what and how each group will be held accountable. COMPANION ARTICLE: Steve’s graphical framework and article with more details on this topic are available here.   Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [0:55] What is product management? Product managers often spend time putting out other people’s fires rather than putting out products. We wonder if we’ve planned the right products. Our titles are a mess—what one company calls a product manager, another calls a program manager or a product marketing manager. We are involved in too many activities. [3:10] Peter Drucker said, “In a well-run organization each role has a single orientation. They either support customers…or they support the market.” Of the activities that support the market, they focus on either problems or solutions. The activities that support customers focus on delivery. And some of the activities focus on what we’ll offer in the future, while some focus on what we’re offering now. [4:34] Each department has a different goal. Development and engineering focus on building solutions for the future for the market. Marketing focuses on the solutions we have now for the market. Salespeople deliver the solutions we have now to the individual customers. [5:36] Product is responsible for understanding both the market and the market’s problems, both now and in the future. Product management is about identifying problems in the market that we can solve in the future with new products. Product marketing is about identifying problems in the market that current products can solve. [7:56] Win-loss analysis is a useful tool for finding problems in how we sell, market, and deliver. [9:53] There are three roles within product: product strategy, product planning, and product growth. Product strategy is led by the product manager and focuses on products to create in the future. Product planning is led by the product owner and focuses on products to build next. Product growth is led by the product marketer and focuses on products we have now. Many product managers are doing things they should not be doing; they have stopped being product managers and are now development managers. Product management should not be a support role. Product management should focus on strategy, planning, and growth. [13:32] Write down all the activities you currently expect from your product team. Then cross out those related to single customers. Prioritize the ones that are left—those related to market problems. Those activities help us support the products we have now and define the products we should build next and in the future. [14:40] Should we be problem managers? Some people think product managers need to know everything about the product. Maybe we should talk about problem management rather than product management. Bonus Q&A [18:16] How can product managers reduce the time and energy they spend putting out other people’s fires? Product managers spend 47% of their time on unplanned activities. Imagine the increase in productivity if we could focus just 10-20% more time on the actual role rather than firefighting. Years ago, I declared Thursday to be International Productivity Day for product management and product marketing. I encourage every product manager and marketer to work from home on Thursday to get more work d

Prepare for the unexpected as a product manager Today we are talking about change. Innovation itself means making change happen. Changes also come from external sources, with the COVID pandemic being an example of a huge cause of change. Our guest, Jonathan Brill, is here to tell us how to survive through and profit from radical change. He was the futurist at HP, making strategy recommendations, and continues to help organizations prepare for the impacts the future brings. He also has written about the framework he uses in his book Rogue Waves. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers 5:17] What are business schools not teaching about strategy? Business schools teach people to use a formulaic recipe to solve problems, but a recipe only works if the environment stays the same. A lot of business schools teach tools like Six Sigma or Extreme Programming; the founders of those frameworks understood a problem and created a recipe to solve it, but when a disruptive event like COVID, a financial crisis, or a new technology happens, the recipe doesn’t work anymore. I call those disruptive events rogue waves; unmanageable, huge waves that pop up out of nowhere because multiple, individually manageable waves combine in the same time and place. When that happens, your recipe isn’t going to help you unless you know how to cook. To innovate in times of radical change, you need to understand three things: awareness to identify rogues waves coming; behavior change to prepare people to respond to the unexpected; and culture change to design processes and incentives to exploit change. [9:02] Tell us more about Awareness. Awareness means thinking about the social, economic, and technological changes that will overlap to create rogue waves, impacting your organization. Think about what could impact your financial, operational, or strategic performance or your external environment (the four foes). Product managers tend to focus on financial and operational impacts, but strategic and environmental issues are far more likely to occur. [13:50] As an organization, how do we become aware of the trends that are shaping the future? We need a culture shift. We make assumptions about what the future will look like based on the past, but it’s unlikely the low-volatility environment we have now will continue. We can’t assume our cookbooks will still work. To prepare for a changing future, consider having a future unit in your organization, like we have at HP. In the future unit, we look at the social, economic, and technological changes and what they mean across our functions. We report our findings annually to the C-suite and look at risks associated with the four foes (financial, operational, external, and strategic). As a result, we were prepared to respond to the rogue wave of the pandemic and HP’s revenue and earnings were stable over 2020. [17:50] How does recognizing trends create a catalyst for new opportunities? Recognizing trends not only helps us prepare for rogue waves; it also helps us find and exploit new opportunities. As an example, at HP we use microfluidics, moving very small dots of liquid on a page to make inkjet prints, a technology relevant for disease diagnosis. We had identified this application as an opportunity, and we knew a pandemic would be an accelerant. Just before COVID hit, we had funded a business unit that develops technologies for pandemics and medical issues. To find opportunities, you can look internally at threats associated with the four foes, and externally at threats your customers are facing. The more you can alleviate your customers’ pain, the higher the value you’re creating for them. We can apply some rules from Game Theory to innovation. First, make a dynamic threat into a static threat. This is what insurance does. I had two grass fires at the bottom of my hill, so the threat of my house catching fire is incredibly dynamic, but I pay $99 a month to turn that into a static threat. Move a threat from symmetric to asymmetric or vice versa. In 2011, a nuclear power plant meltdown impacted Toyota’s supply chains and production for months. They added a 6-month buffer of semiconductors to their supply chain, and in 2016 during the Taiwan earthquake and again in 2020 during COVID they rolled right through the threats. Move threats from synchronous to asynchronous. The goal is to make the threat hit you asynchronously, so you have more time to respond. Finally, move threats from permanent to temporary. Truly disruptive companies like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb have flipped all four of these switches. [24:12] What are ten major trends that may change the world in the next couple of years? The populations of the top 20 economies around the world, including the U.S., are aging. Although we’re getting richer, we may not have the labor to support increased consumption. The Data Economy has enabled companies like Airbnb and Uber,

The truth about product managers’ common misconceptions Today we are talking about what may sound like fundamentals of product management, but many product managers have misconceptions about these key topics. To help us with this is Grant Hunter, who co-founded with Steve Johnson a peer community and coaching group called Product Growth Leaders. I’ve been a participant in the community for a few months, and recently I noticed Grant posting articles on key topics that will help you as well. Grant is a product coach and strategy advisor who helps companies and product organizations get more market-focused in their products and strategies. Previously, he was a trainer at Pragmatic Marketing. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:40] What is a product? A product is a solution for a person’s problem, including all the components necessary to fully solve that problem for the personas who experience the product. You need to understand the problem of the specific persona you’re marketing to. Customers think of their entire experience, including buying the product and any support they talk to, as part of the product. [9:47] Do you make a distinction between new product work (sometimes called innovation) and current product work? Innovation is about creating value. In the lifecycle curve, if you’re not always adding incremental new value, you’ve plateaued and are not innovating. You can add new value through continuous innovation (adding more value within your current products’ lifecycles) or discontinuous innovation (new products or technology). You use the same processes to make a new product or a new version of a product. It’s all innovation and adding value to a customer. [14:45] How do you think about personas? A persona is someone with the same need and same value profile. Many of us have the same problem, but we don’t have the same value profile. The persona identifies motivation. Think about your customers and what they value and are willing to pay more for. For example, my wife and I will pay more for an electrician who is neat and cleans up afterward. We have a persona for a product that is clean and organized. Our persona is built around our value profile and what’s important to us in our experience with the product. Personas help you understand people’s value profiles and motivations and why they’re making their decisions. Many organizations try to make a product for everyone. They have a product that will help you save and share photos, and they say it’s for everyone who takes pictures, but no one is going to find their product. Instead, they could make it specifically for first-time moms sharing pictures of their new babies, and once they figure that out, they can go on to the next market site. In the bowling pin approach, knock over one pin first, then figure out where to go next. [19:27] How do you determine if a new feature is valuable to your customers? The Kano model helps you determine if a new feature is valuable to customers, ignored by customers, or distracting to customers. You can only understand the customer’s value equation by going out and listening to them. They’re the only ones who understand and know it. You can’t prioritize features based on your own hypotheses or assumptions. You must use data in the market and conversations with customers. [25:35] What is product management? Product management is management of the product. That means increasing value to the company and the market. Product management is the role that makes sure you’re always doing the right thing. Every company has more ideas than resources. Clayton Christensen found that three out of four new product initiatives never make it to market or never turn a profit. Product management needs to make sure you do the right things and aren’t trying to be all things to all people. Understand the persona; their problems, value equations, and motivations; and your differentiation. Align the persona and market with your differentiation and product. Product managers also create value for the team. Everybody wants to work on a winner product, and it can be demoralizing to work on an end-of-life product. Product managers may need to make the decision to sunset the product and start on the next product. Product managers think about value for the customer, the company, and the team. Action Guide: Put the information Grant shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Join Grant Hunter and Steve Johnson’s free community of Product Growth Leaders Read articles from Grant and Steve Innovation Quote “Marketing…is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.” – Peter Drucker Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators,

How product managers can gain influence, solve problems, and propel their organizations to success What would you do if you were the first product hire in a rapidly growing company? Our guest, Kenton Hansen, was in that position at Roll20 three years ago. The company now has more than 9 million users on its platform, providing the best of tabletop gaming in an online environment. Kenton is now the Product Director at Roll20, and over the last three years, he has built the product management and UX processes and teams the company uses. We’ll talk about what that journey was like and what he has learned. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:34] What was going on at Roll20 that caused leadership to hire their first product person? It was a time of targeted growth, and leadership was excited about growing the platform. The business had already grown significantly, and we had just announced our 3 millionth user. There was a product vacuum as one of the co-founders was becoming CEO, and development management was moving out of product into more technical aspects. I was happy to come in and provide support across the organization to make sure growth could happen. [4:08] What were your first few months like, bringing a product management process to the organization? I treated the position as a consultancy role. I talked to a lot of people and wrote down the problems people shared with me. I learned product knowledge and understood the vastness of the company and the various customers you might never think about. We’ve been a virtual company from the beginning, and that virtual environment is challenging and interesting. You have to be more targeted in understanding how other people contribute. After understanding the problems that needed to be solved and the flow of business, revenue, and innovation, I started a punch list of the main problems. I took an approach based on the three horizons model, and focused on accomplishing innovation in horizon one, which is everyday iteration. I focused on how we could deliver features and projects to our users immediately and how we needed to change our process. [7:08] How did you get to know people and problems in a virtual environment? I tried to listen more than I spoke or type less than I read in an online chat. I wanted to internalize the happenings in the organization, and I started to see people’s characters and personalities emerge. Quick coffee chats or volunteering for simple tasks to work alongside others was effective, especially in a small organization. [8:49] What were some of the main problems you discovered, and what did you do about them? I knew our goal was massive growth and scaling, and the punch list to get the product process organized was a small part of the larger goal. I understood that what got us here (the growth we had already seen) was not going to get us there (to more massive growth). I relied on other members of the team to help me create new processes and get some work off my plate. Our strategies and philosophies needed to change to accommodate the stage we were in then and the stages I expected in the future. [10:37] How did your level of real authority compare to your level of gained influence? The authority given to me was not enough to make effective changes, so I knew I needed to show I could handle myself. Volunteering for tasks with others is the best way to build trust. Everyone is going to make mistakes, and showing up for mistakes as much as for successes is key. Great product people understand you share victory and you carry defeat yourself. Influence is gained in small, intimate settings. [13:47] As you were trying to scale dramatically, what was wrong with the processes in place? We needed to understand that pre-optimization is waste. I could have designed a process and slammed it through the organization, but baked into that are assumptions about how the world will change. No one would have been able to pre-optimize a feature roadmap for 2020, because no one knew how the world was going to change. Instead, I focused on solving the problems that were emerging at the time, trying to understand the next problems, and preparing possible solutions. [15:41] How did you avoid constant firefighting (focusing only on what is urgent at the time) rather than putting processes in place for the future? Our leadership team was great at helping us distinguish between an actual fire and a perceived fire using key performance indicators and standard operating objectives. We re-approached how we expect to see change happen within our organization to solve the problems that keep coming up over and over again. Our CEO, Nolan Jones, says, “It’s fine to have 100 problems every quarter. We just want them to be 100 different problems.” [17:21] What were some of the actions you took to solve problems? We needed to change the way we listened to our community. Our community has been crucial to Roll2

Skills for product managers to deeply understand customers’ problems and goals Today we are talking about how to understand what provides value to customers by giving them what they need to solve a problem or complete a task. Clayton Christensen described this as the job to be done. It is a topic our guest, David Duncan, knows well, as he co-wrote the Jobs-to-be-Done book Competing Against Luck with Clayton Christensen and has more recently written The Secret Lives of Customers: A Detective Story About Solving the Mystery of Customer Behavior. Dave is a managing director at Innosight, where he helps leaders of organizations create customer-centric teams and innovation strategies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:05] How did your experience earning your PhD in physics equip you for your current work in innovation? I studied physics because I was fascinated by the subject and motivated by a desire to understand things deeply. Later, I moved into business and now work at Innosight, where we help companies figure out how to innovate more effectively. My background in physics helped me become a better problem solver and a better and more quantitative thinker. It gave me literacy in technology-related topics that enabled me to understand what different companies do. Science and engineering are at the heart of a lot of great innovation. [4:00] What does your new book The Secret Lives of Customers add to Jobs-to-be-Done knowledge? One of my goals was to create a broadly accessible book. The Secret Lives of Customers teaches anyone in any role in any organization the concepts, tools, and techniques they need to understand customers confidently. I put Jobs-to-be-Done in the broader context of the problem it solves—effectively understanding customers. Another goal was to assert the approach to JTBD I and others at Innosight have learned and developed over the years. The book also includes some new tools and frameworks including how to apply Jobs in strategy, as well as product development and innovation. [7:18] Tell us about your book’s narrative format. The Secret Lives of Customers is a fictional detective story. One of the main characters is a market detective who tries to understand customers in market investigations. The reader learns about the tools and techniques he’s using. This format was much more fun to write, and I hope it’s more fun and engaging to read. It’s best to learn to understand customers by watching someone have a conversation with them, reflecting on what you observe, trying it yourself, and getting feedback. [10:51] Why should product managers think of themselves as market detectives? In the story, I use market detective to describe a person who is aspiring to understand customers. The book emphasizes one-on-one customer conversations, which is the foundation of all other customer research techniques. One-on-one interviews are often the most valuable technique you can use and almost always relevant to every use case. They enable product managers to hear directly from customers, develop products that are more connected with their jobs-to-be-done, and develop features that reflect an understanding of not just their functional jobs but also their emotional and social jobs. You can make better prioritization decisions about which products to work on and minimize the temptation to be product-led rather than customer-led. [13:08] As market detectives, what are the three competencies we need to have to put Jobs-to-be-Done in place? You need to learn a language, a method, and a mindset to confidently understand customers. Almost every discipline has its own vocabulary, but surprisingly there isn’t a standard, widely accessible language that guides interactions with customers. We need a language that guides us to ask the right questions that lead to the right insights at the right level of detail. The right questions are those that help you understand what really matters to customers—their problems, their goals, and the jobs they want to get done. Once you have the language to ask the right questions, you need a method for discovering, organizing, and interpreting that information. The core thought process for understanding customers includes four questions: What are the customers’ circumstances? What are their jobs-to-be-done? What are they doing today to accomplish their jobs? How do they evaluate quality solutions for those jobs? Finally, you need the right mindset to apply the language and method. Be genuinely interested in the person you’re talking with. Be authentic and willing to share some of yourself in the conversation. Go into the conversations with a beginner’s mind—set your assumptions aside and be receptive to being surprised. [18:24] Can you share an example of using the right language to understand the job the customer is trying to accomplish? The Secret Lives of Customers is set in a coffee shop, which peopl

Learn what sets successful product management teams apart Today we are talking about a recent study that gives us insights into what’s going on in product management and product management teams. For several years, our guest has conducted the Study of Product Team Performance. The one for this year was rather different as it reflected on the impact of the COVID Pandemic, which we’ll get into in just a moment. Returning with us is Greg Geracie the CEO of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management training, consulting, and advisory services to some of the world’s most well-known organizations. I’ve known Greg for several years, as we both volunteer with PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:08] What is the purpose of the Study of Product Team Performance and how was it different this year? The study researches the factors that differentiate successful product teams from the rest of the pack. This year, we focused on the impact of COVID-19 on the performance of product teams. Our goal was to capture what we’ve learned from the pandemic and help our clients and followers better understand its impact on product team performance, so they can make better-informed decisions in the future. [3:45] What types of companies and industries participated in the study? Companies of all shapes and sizes from around the world participate in our research. For this study: 49% of survey respondents work in the technology industry 22% in the services industry 13% in consumer products 4% in education 1% in government 11% in other industries The revenue of survey respondents varied: 35% of our respondents worked for companies with revenue less than $50 million 37% worked for companies with revenue between $50 million and $2 billion 28% worked for companies with revenue over $2 billion Additionally, over 55% of our respondents were product managers, which was a larger percentage than in the past. [5:54] What highlights would you like to share about the study? [5:54] Remote-first mindset We discovered four key findings. First, survey respondents espoused a remote-first mindset. They believed their organization should be designed with a remote-first mentality and operating structure. Respondents described their organizations as rigid and against remote work, but during the pandemic they saw how working from home could be highly effective. They saw that COVID had changed the mentality of organizations in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and the lesson many people learned is that organizations need to perpetually experiment with remote technology and collaboration tools before a pandemic or other event forces change. Remote working does not extend equally to all industries. Education, academics, and financial services lead the way in transitioning to remote work, while food service, retail, and construction were the lowest adopters. Respondents shared challenges that come with remote working. Internet connectivity was a problem for many. Process documentation and onboarding of new employees were challenges. Feelings of alienation and perceived lack of empathy from executives contributed to reduced productivity. Nineteen percent of employees struggled with being effective while working remotely, and many dealt with the loss of family members from COVID. Organizations need to keep in mind the impact of the pandemic on their employees at a personal level. [10:03] Importance of strategy Organizations with a clear view of their strategy found it easier to successfully pivot during the pandemic. In every study, we’ve found that strategy correlates with higher performance on product teams. This year, organizations were pivoting their business strategy, not just their product strategy. Surprisingly, respondents were very upbeat and positive. One respondent shared, “Extraordinary situations are extraordinary opportunities.” Many organizations reprioritized their investments, shored up their strategy, and emphasized virtual products and passive income streams. [12:43] Planning for future adverse events There’s a heightened awareness of future disruptive events, and many respondents believe their organizations failed to effectively plan for adverse events, and they want to see this corrected. Respondents anticipate future crises and welcome more planning in advance of the next crisis. Specifically, they would like to see business continuity plans, increased contingency and scenario planning, and the development of special teams to deal with future crises more effectively. [14:21] Flexible culture necessary to thrive Respondents cited a need for a flexible, agile, entrepreneurial mindset. The status quo has been upended, and we need to be flexible in order to thrive in this environment. Respondents pointed out that organizations need to evaluate which organizational activities should cea

Tips for product managers to communicate so people remember We are about to have an important discussion on how to communicate in a way that makes people remember what is important. That is communicating to influence others and build networks to help you accomplish your product objectives. Helping us do that is our guest, Tina Frey Clements. She believes that a company’s success is directly related to the engagement of its people. She excels at moving businesses forward and motivating and growing talent. Her experience has been in many areas but has emphasized the automotive industry, with treks at BMW, Volkswagen, and Mini. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:41] You help people become better communicators and facilitators. What do you mean by facilitation? When you’re facilitating a message, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with your recipient, the learner. The job of a facilitator is to present the information and get out of the way of the learner and let them learn. [3:49] What should we try to accomplish as facilitators? First you have to define your specific goal. Usually, a product manager’s goal is to communicate knowledge. A specific goal might be communicating with a retail store so you can sell something or communicating with marketing so they can promote your product. Second, remember that whomever you’re communicating with doesn’t necessarily communicate like you. We typically communicate in the way we like to be communicated to, but that rarely works. Figure out how your audience needs to hear your information and communicate so that they are hearing it and retaining it. [9:21] How do we help our audience remember, retain, and apply? That’s not easy. Once you’ve acknowledged that not everyone learns like you do, the next step is identifying the learning style of the person you’re communicating with. Some examples of learning styles are visual, auditory, reading/writing, intellectual, and kinesthetic. Tailor your communication to your audience’s learning style. For a visual learner, use visual aids. For an auditory learner, ask them to repeat back what they understood. If you’re communicating to a big group, script your message to reach all of them. Always leave your audience with an action item. [15:18] How else can we better communicate? If possible, be interactive. Use the 80:20 rule—20% of your communication should be teaching the information and 80% should be your audience figuring it out on their own. For people to act, they have to create their own thought about the topic. Interaction is the critical element to engage the audience. Even if you’re in a formal setting behind a podium, you can encourage interaction by asking people to answer questions or raise their hands. Always invite people to ask you questions afterward. [24:29] How can product managers focus on solving the customer problem? We often focus on our solution instead of listening to customers. We need to prioritize learning about the customer problem. Without knowing your customers’ real problems, you’ll never be successful. [28:07] How can we partner with others to be successful in our communication? Focus on what you’re really good at and partner with others who complement your strengths. If you know everything about your product, but you’re not good at selling it, partner with someone who is. If you don’t want to partner with someone, change your behavior to communicate better. Don’t fake it so much that you lose who you really are, but take action to build relationships. [31:42] How do you use story to make your communication more effective? Be transparent, vulnerable, and relatable. This will make your audience want to hear you and trust you. When you can, use story. Everyone loves and can relate to a story. You could share a personal story about your journey with the product. You can use stories to engage all types of leaners. Action Guide: Put the information Tina shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Tina’s book, The Art of Facilitation: Communicate So They Remember Visit Tina’s website, RPCAmerica.com Look out for Tina’s new book, Fantastic Facilitation Fails Innovation Quote “If you can predict it, you can prepare for it.” – Unknown Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator 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 tool to help product managers understand what features customers value Today we are talking about conjoint analysis, which is a tool you can use to make informed decisions about what customers value and what they will pay for. If you have to make decisions about what features to include in a new product or the next version of a product, what price to charge for a product, or what the impact on market share will be by introducing a new product, then this discussion is for you. To learn about Conjoint Analysis, we are talking with Patty Yanes, a market researcher who has led numerous research projects that resulted in new insights about customers and a deeper understanding of their needs. Patty is with Applied Marketing Science (AMS), a firm dedicated to helping product managers with market research. AMS was founded by an MIT professor and is well respected for the work it does. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:49] What kind of problems does Conjoint Analysis solve? Conjoint Analysis is the industry standard for understanding the features to include in a product. It helps you find out how much people are willing to pay and is the best way to figure out pricing. [2:56] What are some other tools similar to Conjoint Analysis? Van Westendorp: a quicker and easier but less reliable method of pricing Gabor Granger: another pricing test Max/Diff (maximum difference scaling): a method of ranking features without considering price Turf Analysis: a method to understand which bundle of features will allow you to reach the most customers [5:29] Take us through an example of Conjoint. Let’s take the example of a pair of headphones. First, we must make sure we have the right inputs. Inputs that affect the customers’ decision to purchase the headphones are: brand, how it fits on the ear, whether it’s wireless or noise-cancelling, and the microphone. You’ll also need to determine your price, which could vary from $20 to $500. [7:54] How does segmentation fit in? Segmentation can be part of the process of designing your study or it can be part of cutting the data on the back-end to see how the results vary. For instance, you might create two separate studies for two different headphones, one for gamers and one for audiophiles. Or if you want to develop just one product that you will market differently to different segments, you would design one study with all the attributes and then cut on the back-end to see what’s more important to a gamer vs. an audiophile. [9:27] What’s the next step in Conjoint Analysis? Make sure you’re talking to the right people. You need a significant sample size including all the people who are part of the decision to purchase your product. We recommend 300 people, with a minimum of 100 per segment. Once we’ve designed our Conjoint study, we pre-test our survey. We talk to people in the field to make sure they’re understanding our survey and we’re understanding their answers. [12:23] How do you recruit and incentivize study participants? We use research panels that are already in existence. The incentives may have to be quite high since people’s time is valuable. Scrappy solutions include talking to customers in a store or reaching out to friends and family. [15:29] Tell us more about the pre-test. We recruit a small sample of the same type of people who would be taking our general survey and run through the survey with them. We ask them questions to discover what assumptions they’re making about the survey and whether they understand the survey in the way we expect. [17:35] How do we field the study? We go into the field with a panel, send the survey out, and get the data back. Then, before analysis, we clean the data, making sure everyone paid attention appropriately and that we have the right people who will give relevant answers. [19:36] What do we do with the data? There are many different ways you can analyze the data, and today almost all of them can be done with software. The industry standard for Conjoint software is Sawtooth Software. First, perform a regression to see what’s most important to people. We use the hierarchical Bayes regression, but there are many different options. The regression equation tells you what’s driving the overall purchase decision for the product. This allows you to look at which features are more and less important. Next calculate willingness-to-pay for each feature. For example, we could look at willingness-to-pay for two different types of noise cancellation. [24:20] What kind of questions would we ask in the survey to determine which features are more important? Conjoint is all about simulating choices and tradeoffs people are making. You present survey participants with three to five option of different headphones that all have different attributes and different prices, and you ask them to select the one they prefer. You repeat this about 12 times

How product managers can use data to understand customers and create value Today we are talking about making better product decisions that create customer value using the data you already have. A PR person contacted me about a company that received the 2021 Products That Count award in the Operate category. The award recognizes products that help product managers and are pushing for better ways to accomplish work now and in the future. The company is Indicative and they help product managers leverage insights based on data already in their data warehouse, build their product roadmap, optimize user engagement, and reduce churn. I’m interested in learning more about this area in general because it brings together several important aspects of product management—the customer journey, data science, data-driven decision making, and reduced time to market. Our guest is Jeremy Levy, the CEO of Indicative. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:00] What problem in product management drew you toward your work with Indicative? Our mission at Indicative is to help businesses build better products through data. The first company I founded provided location-based dating for iPhone and Android, and my second company was the first mobile-based CRM for enterprise. In these companies, we struggled with leveraging the data we collected from our customers in a cohesive way for our product teams to make informed product decisions. We created Indicative, the only product analytics platform build specifically for modern data infrastructure. Indicative allows product teams to easily synthesize and use information and ask thousands of questions about their product, roadmap, or day-to-day decisions. [5:36] What is a data warehouse? A data warehouse is a repository of a company’s business data. It’s separate from a traditional transactional database that runs your application. The data warehouse keeps your data in one place and allows the rest of the company to easily interface with the data. Data warehouses have become available easily and inexpensively; now a startup has access to the same hardware as a Fortune 500 company. [9:02] How can we do a better job creating products for customers using data? Can you take us through an example? One example is Prezi, which makes virtual presentation software. Customers don’t use their products in a linear flow; there’s an infinite number of journeys the customer could take when they use the product. Any manual analysis of those journeys is impossible, so Prezi built a data warehouse to collect and store all their data. Using our platform, they isolated the individual journeys customers take as they create presentations. They found friction, the most effective paths, and the features that people were and were not using. Understanding the nuances of how people use their products allowed Prezi to better understand their users and inform their roadmap to reduce friction and help people create better presentations faster. [12:24] When you brought Prezi onboard, did you instrument their product to collect data, or was there already data available for you to leverage? Prezi already had their own data. This is often the case. Companies retain ownership of their data and use a variety of available tools to collect and analyze data, storing it in a single data warehouse. Storing data in a single warehouse makes data collection and analysis safer, more reliable, and less expensive. [17:25] How do customer journeys help us make better products? Customer journeys include all the paths that customers take when they interact with your product and all the touchpoints like email, registration, and phone calls. We created a product called Journeys that visualizes many possible journeys and allows you to filter the ones that are most effective and visualize them with a Sankey diagram, which is a diagram that branches out like a tree showing the possible paths on a customer journey. Analyzing customer journeys helps us reduce friction in the product experience and allow customers to interact with the product as effectively, pleasantly, and delightfully as possible. [23:36] What are other benefits of making better use of data? Once you start thinking about product management using data, you start looking for opportunities to leverage data in your roadmap. That leads you to use the scientific method. You come up with a hypothesis about your product and use data to prove it. [26:41] Who helps get the data into a data warehouse? When data warehouses were technical and expensive, engineering teams or data teams put data into data warehouses, but now as data warehouses are becoming easier to use, product teams are doing this. It makes so much sense because product teams are the ones who use the data. More and more, data is being thought of as part of product. Action Guide: Put the information Jeremy shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Usef

Pipeline, Process, and Practice for Product Managers This is the Product Mastery Now podcast. For seven years it was called The Everyday Innovator, but I recently changed the name to better reflect our mission, which is to help you become a Product Master, creating products customers love. A common question I am asked is, How can an organization speed up its product development? One way is what our guest is sharing with us today, the 3 Ps of Lean Product Development—Pipeline, Practice, and Process. His name is Steve Stucky, and he has over 25 years of experience applying lean product development. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:20] What is Lean Product Development? Lean Product Development is about putting in place the best processes to make better products faster. It’s about eliminating waste in processes, making teams more effective, and aligning the organization. [2:56] Why are organizations incorporating Lean Product Development? Lean Product Development gets products that meet all the customer needs out the door quicker, without having to work harder. Lean Product Development helps developers spend more time on value-added work instead of wasteful work. [5:18] How can an organization use Lean Product Development? Lean Product Development is a holistic approach to improving product development, looking at: Pipeline—communicating priorities and aligning the organization so it isn’t overloaded Process—the lean product development process itself Practice—how the team works together [6:50] Pipeline The Pipeline allows leadership to communicate a ranked list of priorities. The top projects are the focus, and when we run out of resources, the lower priority projects are placed on hold. Top projects get the maximum effort and get done sooner. The Pipeline includes the optimal number of projects for people to be most effective and spend more time doing value-added work—usually two or three projects. [11:28] Process Process focuses on improving two main areas of the new product development process itself. First, find the waste, wait time, and bottlenecks in the process. Second, make sure development teams have the flexibility to reduce the number of deliverables on their plate to manage the work that’s important for the teams. A Kaizen approach finds bottlenecks and looks at the wait time versus the actual work time. Identify and remove bottlenecks and speed everything up. [13:40] Practice Several best practices can help improve the speed and effectiveness of project teams. One is using Agile with Scrum, taking the best of both practices. Teams meet frequently and communicate, and the vision and work are visualized using Scrum. Facilitated acceleration events are also impactful. A Market Requirements Event prioritizes product requirements in one to three days, rather than the months this process usually takes. The Market Requirements Event involves customer-facing people like sales and marketing, and it’s led by product management with developers and engineers present. You discuss customer needs and competitive threats and identify the key features customers will value in a product. You categorize and prioritize to develop products with maximum differentiation and value, and you align the group around the important requirements. Another event is PARM (Project And Risk Mitigation). This is an 8-hour event in which the team builds a project schedule, compresses it, comes back with a date they feel they can meet confidently, and then identifies risks and prioritizes the highest risks for mitigation. Rapid Learning Cycles are another great risk reduction opportunity. The team identifies unknowns and focuses on key decisions the team should make and the knowledge gaps they need to close to make those decisions. Rapid Learning Cycles can also be used for putting together a project. In a two- to four-week cycle, you start with a hypothesis and learn more to expose assumptions and help you make the right decisions. Action Guide: Put the information Steve shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Steve on LinkedIn Learn more about Steve’s Lean Program Consulting Ron Mascitelli’s Mastering Lean Product Development Norbert Majerus’s Lean-Driven Innovation Katherine Radika’s High Velocity Innovation Eric Reis’ Lean Startup Innovation Quote “You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Anonymous Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator 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

How product managers can succeed in innovation leadership Welcome to the Product Mastery Now podcast. You may know it as The Everyday Innovator, but after seven years of interviews, I have changed the name to better reflect our mission, which is to help you become a Product Master, creating products customers love. Our guest today is a 30+ year innovation and technology journalist. He has authored several books on innovation and is the CEO and co-founder of Innovation Leader, which helps changemakers at large organizations deliver real impact. He’ll share the challenges innovation leaders are facing and how to overcome them. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:37] What are the biggest obstacles to innovation in organizations? Big companies are designed to be like aircraft carriers—everything is supposed be perfect, safe, and reliable. If you, as a product manager, are trying to make something new that’s not yet perfect, safe, and reliable, you face obstacles like: Politics and turf wars: people don’t want you getting in their way Cultural issues: changing the culture is challenging Inability to act: people know what signals are crucial to the future of your company but can’t act on them [6:52] How can organizations overcome those obstacles? One option is skunkworks—innovating in secret. There are successful examples of this, like the Apple Macintosh and Lockheed’s skunkworks that developed some of the fastest planes of the 20th century, but often skunkworks don’t get enough support from headquarters and are not attuned to the overall strategy. Innovation networks are more successful. People from organizations all over the world work together to build innovation capability. These networks are much harder to switch off than skunkworks. [10:19] What is the role of an innovation leader? Innovation leader is an incredibly challenging role. Innovation leaders work in established companies and are responsible for thinking about the future, talking to customers about the future, and understanding how technology is going to change. It’s a hard role because of the obstacles I already mentioned—people know how to do their jobs and they have numbers to hit, and innovators feel like agitators because they’re disturbing the status quo. [19:24] What actions do successful innovation leaders take, and how do you see innovation leadership changing in the future? First, innovation leaders need to find out what kind of innovation the organization wants them to be doing. There are three categories: Product/service innovation: innovating what you’re offering to customers Cultural innovation: changing the way it feels to work here and potentially attracting new talent Process innovation: internally-focused Successful innovation leaders know you can’t work on all three of those categories at once. Choose one or two and don’t spread yourself too thin. Successful innovation leaders create value for the organization in the near-term, mid-term, and long-term. Today, they might be hiring new talent, testing new technology, or finding new solutions for customer research in a remote world. Meanwhile, they’re balancing those activities with a mid-term and long-term approach to innovation. Innovation leadership is a job about people—understanding organizational politics and influencing people. [24:00] What are the biggest enablers of success for innovation? The top three are: Leadership support Ability to test, learn, and iterate Right strategy and vision Do you have a vision that is thinking about today, next year, and the next five years? Successful founders have a vision for the next five or ten years and know what they need to get there. Too often, companies collect ideas from their employees but don’t have a plan for doing anything with them, so people stop giving ideas. These companies are doing innovation theater, not true innovation. You need to think through the unintended consequences ahead of time and making sure you have a plan for managing any innovation processes you put in place. Action Guide: Put the information Scott shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Innovation Leader Listen to the Innovation Answered podcast Connect with Scott and Innovation Leader on LinkedIn Connect with Scott on Twitter Innovation Quote “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator 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 tool to help product managers accomplish more Product improvements and product innovation too frequently suffer from accomplishing less than we want. The urgent is often in the way of the important. If you want to get the important work done more of the time, you’ll find OKRs (objectives and key results) helpful. Also, if you’ve tried OKRs and didn’t like them, this discussion will help you too. We need an OKR expert to learn more about this, and joining us is the woman who wrote the bestselling book, Radical Focus, that tackles the use of OKRs and startup culture with an eye to getting the right things done. Her name is Christina Wodtke, and she is a lecturer at Stanford, sharing insight into human innovation and high-performing teams. She has designed products with LinkedIn, Zynga, Yahoo! and many others, as well as founding three startups, and the online design magazine Boxes and Arrows. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:13] Why are OKRs (objectives and key results) important? OKRs are powerful for accomplishing important things that aren’t otherwise getting done. If a task is important and urgent, it always gets done, but sometimes the things that are unimportant but urgent get in the way of the things that are important but not urgent. OKRs give those important strategic projects a sense of urgency, scheduling them and helping you get them done. OKRs’ cadence causes you to touch them every Monday, when you commit activities toward your OKRs, and every Friday, when you celebrate progress. OKRs allow people to meet their goals. [13:27] What are the steps for putting OKRs into practice in a product team? Start using OKRs with a high-performing product team. Your objective should be inspiring. The key results can be hard to choose. Think about results that suggest you’re keeping your customers satisfied and committed to staying with you. For example, measure leads converted, renewals, or word-of-mouth referrals. Choose good, strong, honest signals of success. Don’t choose key results that you can make happen by doing them. Choose results that are in response to the activities you’re doing. At first you won’t know how many results to use; make a guess. Every Monday, everyone commits to doing something toward the OKR. In a healthy company with psychological safety, team members can ask each other, “Why are you doing that?” or “Do you really think that’s going to work?” On Fridays, celebrate progress. This is critical. Everyone shares what they’ve done during the week and how they’re progressing toward the OKRs. [19:59] What is an example of using OKRs? Suppose we have a small B2B company, and we want to grow, but we’re getting distracted from the real problems. We think we need a CRM, but before getting a CRM, the CEO says the OKRs for the next quarter should be around retaining current customer and turning leads into customers. Out of those, which is most important? Turning leads into customers is great, but if we can’t keep them, let’s focus on retention first. The CEO states the objective, using language of optimism and aspiration, “Our current customers feel so supported by our services and software that they eagerly sign up.” Next we figure out the key results, e.g., emails from customers saying thank you for the software. Next quarter we will choose new key results. Before trying something big and expensive like a CRM, we could start with a simpler solution like a single spreadsheet. Keep in mind that OKRs don’t do everything. They’re just a piece of the larger system of modern product management. [27:59] What’s the cadence of OKRs? The cadence depends on the needs of the company. If you’ve found product market fit and are looking to accelerate growth, you’ll have a different pace than if you’re looking to move into a new market. If you’re moving into a new market, run lots of experiments to test hypotheses. Choose key results that are strong, early indicators that you might have hit product market fit, then keep running lots of tests. At the end of the quarter, we have a formal closing of the quarter. Focus on learning. Have a retrospective, see patterns, and note the hypotheses that moved your numbers. Talk about what kept you from meeting your goals. Then you can repeat or adjust your OKRs for the next quarter. [32:34] What is the timeframe for OKRs? I think that at large companies all missions are five-year objectives. For these companies, have annual OKRs, supported by quarterly objectives. For startups or intrepreneurs who want to move faster, use quarters (three months) for your OKRs. Six weeks is the smallest timeframe I would run an OKR in. [35:33] Would you like to share any other tips for implementing OKRs? A common mistake is setting up the OKRs and not following up with the weekly meetings. A bad o

How to align your organization and product management team with the voice of your customer In this discussion we address what it means to properly incorporate UX (user experience) into your product work. This is not merely making things look right. This is deeply understanding the user experience that creates greater value, beating competitors and delighting customers. Joining us is Mark Baldino, UX product design expert and co-founder of Fuzzy Math, which designs software products for companies. Mark has 20+ years experience implementing human-centered design to solve difficult problems. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:37] Why should UX (user experience) be part of product strategy? There’s no better way to provide customer value than aligning your organization and product team with the voice of your customer. Often, UX gets bolted on at the beginning and end of the product cycle. Many organizations only contact their customers during sales and support, often because they’re scared to listen to their customer and make product decisions based on knowledge of their customers. Sales and support are important, but you’re missing out if you don’t also talk to customers while they’re using your product. Listen to customers and rely on a customer-centered design process. [5:43] How do we make UX more effective in our product strategy? Often, underperforming UX teams are stuck in a cycle responding to developers’ requests and fixing features without aligning the overall product with the customer. To get out of the cycle, you have to level-up and understand the entire process. Product managers are our best partners in this because they value listening to customers. You need to invest time and energy talking to current and potential customers and watching them use your products so you can make research-backed decisions. The power of user-centered design is that it allows us to tell stories about customers and the future of the product, getting product and engineering in full alignment. Pull cross-functional teams into the research and synthesis of concepts. [10:15] What tools are helpful in UX? Quantitative Tools: Super Q: a standardized set of questions asking the user to gauge the product’s features and functions Net Promoter Score: would you refer someone to this product? Qualitative Tools: Interviews with customers: open-ended questions and discussion Observation of customers using the product Think Aloud method: customers says exactly what they’re doing while using the tool Story-telling Tools: Personas: archetypes of the users Journey Maps: tell stories of how customers use the product Through customer observation, you’ll learn that how people use tools is not how you think they use tools. Have stakeholders join you in observing customers; it’s illuminating for them to see how their customers are using the products. [19:59] Wouldn’t adding UX to product strategy slow us down? Adding UX will introduce new parts to the process, but you have to ask, What is the cost of not adding UX? What is the business suffering from because you’re not spending time with customers and not making informed decisions? It might be a decrease in efficiency of your team, a lot of rework, high customer support numbers, low customer satisfaction, or missing sales. One study showed that UX give a 10x ROI. It may be closer to 3 or 4 times, which is still really good. When you begin to use UX, you will slow down for a period of time, but the cost of not doing anything is much greater. If you’re going to embrace UX, start running parallel paths. Choose a pilot project you can run with user-centered design while still doing incremental updates on the current product. This gives you an internal case study that will demonstrate the benefits of UX. [25:14] Tell us more about how to incorporate UX. UX adds a Voice of the Customer program. You’re installing listening devices to find out how your customers are using your product, such as: in-app analytics quantitative longitudinal studies user interviews At the beginning, you need to do a batch of discovery. We use scorecards based on our experience in the industry to pair SaaS and UX criteria with customer research. The goal is to bring together all the data so the team can make decisions on it. Take bite-sized pieces. You could start with incorporating UX into one feature. If you do a complete redesign, know that it will take more discovery. During your pilot project, work on creating alignment in three areas: people, process, and purpose. You need the right people in the right seats doing the right things. The new people are doing a new process—research. You need UX to be aligned with the bigger vision. Many people equate UX with UI (user interface), but it’s not about making your product look pretty. Begin with low-fidelity design, moving to high-fidelity design. Action Guide: Put th

How product managers can solve positioning, packaging, and pricing for their products Today we are discussing how to price products, helping you avoid common mistakes and sharing steps to make your pricing smarter. Our guest is Ajit Ghuman. He is the Head of Product Marketing at Narvar, an enterprise-grade customer engagement platform for retailers. Ajit is an expert in software pricing and his book, Price to Scale, covers an end-to-end approach to packaging & pricing for high-growth technology companies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:49] What mistakes do companies make when pricing their products? When a company is having trouble in the market, price point is never really the problem. Upstream issues cause price difficulties. Follow the PPP hierarchy: First solve positioning, then packaging, then pricing. Start with product strategy, determining why the product exists in the market. Then come up with positioning, which is how customers see the product. Next discuss packaging, which is a way to maximize value for different segments. Finally, choose the price point. [4:52] What’s involved in packaging? Packaging means including the right set of features the customer values. A large enterprise has different needs from a small business, and they want different features. The point of packaging is to maximize revenue from the market by creating an offer tailored to the customer. Large enterprises want a bundle of features, and higher pricing can increase their perception of value. Small businesses may value a cheaper, lightweight package. [8:57] Suppose we created a SaaS-based platform for product managers. How do we price this product? We’ll go through the PPP hierarchy. To determine our positioning, we identify our target segment and how we’re differentiating. Suppose we’re creating product management roadmap software for big enterprise teams. We’re differentiating by allowing a lot of PMs to collaborate. Next, we move to packaging. A common approach to packaging is “good, better, best,” where a company creates different levels of packages like Pro, Elite, and Platinum. Another option, which works better for enterprise products like our example, is value-based packaging. We make a list of all the features of the product and map them to the use cases the product solves. Then we decide whether our market is homogeneous, needing a single package, or heterogeneous, needing multiple packages. We present our packages to customers and ask them to rate how well the packages perform each capability to meet their needs. Let’s assume we create two packages for our product. Finally, we think about pricing. Before choosing the price point, we need to make two decisions: our pricing metric and our pricing structure. We have two options for pricing metric: Capability-based pricing sells the product for a flat fee. Consumption-based pricing, which is most common for SaaS products, charges a price per user (most common), API call, SMS sent, etc. For our product, we would choose consumption-based pricing and charge per user per month. We have two options for pricing structure: A linear scale charges the same amount per user. A three-part tariff provides a volume discount for more users. Finally, we choose the price point. There are many ways to measure this, including willingness-to-buy surveys, conjoint analysis, or Van Westendorp surveys. Conjoint analysis is best for simpler products. For our software, I would use Van Westendorp. We’ll get a range of options and choose the price point based on competition, positioning, and strategy. The three important decisions of packaging, pricing metrics, and pricing structure contribute more to revenue than the actual price. [17:39] What is the role of product managers in the PPP process? Product managers play a key role in positioning because they understand the customers’ problem and needs. Their insights from customers are also important in packaging. PMs play less of a role in pricing, which is mostly done by revenue teams. Too many organizations miss the opportunity to use product managers’ insights in marketing and positioning. In my career, every time we have a clear understanding of what the buyer and user want, everything—pricing, marketing, selling, sales—goes much better. I encourage product managers to take on a complete business role rather than being just product owners. Often product managers don’t understand or agree with the price attached to a product. The price should be based on the value the customer perceives. Everything is about value. [22:20] What can product managers do to help Sales present pricing information? For subscription products, customers want to be able to predict the impact on pricing as their usage grows. Product managers can communicate with other teams to create the best pricing structure based on what makes most sense from the customers’

Dive deep into a valuable tool for product managers In this discussion we are learning more about the power and use of Jobs-to-be-Done with Bob Moesta. Bob is an innovator, entrepreneur, and the co-creator of the Jobs-to-be-Done Theory to investigate consumers’ motivations and decision-making processes. He also co-founded the Re-Wired Group, which helps companies repeatedly innovate and reliably predict success. He is also a Research Fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. Bob has had amazing mentors and many accomplishments. I’m sure you’ll find this discussion valuable. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:54] How did you get involved in Jobs-to-be-Done? I’ve been breaking things for a long time and building things for the past 35 years. As I was building products, I would get marketing reports that told me who the customers were but wouldn’t tell me why they were doing what they were doing. One of my mentors, Dr. Deming, told me nothing is random; everything is caused; we need to understand why people buy what they buy. From that perspective, I started to understand the underlying causality behind why people buy something or do something new. I worked with Rick Pedi to make Jobs-to-be-Done a method and then another of my mentors, Clay Christensen, who made it a theory. Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) is a methodology based on the premise that people don’t buy products; they hire them to do jobs. It helps us understand the struggling moments that cause people to do something different. To solve problems, you need to see the big picture. [7:22] What’s an example of a time you used JTBD? When I was a VP of sales and marketing in the house building industry, I realized that our features looked like everyone else’s features and we could apply the JTBD methods to understand this business differently. We built homes for first-time home buyers, divorced families with kids, and downsizers. I asked, What causes someone to decide today’s the day they’re going to sell their house and move into one of my condos? The product is irrelevant. The important thing is to know what the customer wants, regardless of how we solve it. Understand people’s context, desired outcome, and the struggling moment that causes them to want to change something. JTBD helps us understand the forces of progress, anxieties, friction, and habit that are pushing and pulling people, and the phases they go through of having a first thought, passively looking for something new, actively looking, and deciding. When I was interviewing home buyers, I learned that a big friction point was getting rid of stuff to downsize. To decrease friction, we added two years of storage and a place to sort the stuff at the clubhouse, and increased sales 22%. We also provided crews that would fix people’s houses so they could sell. I realized I wasn’t really a builder; I was a mover. By making these changes, we went from 4% market share to 14% market share. One of my mentors, Dr. Taguchi, said, There is way more that we don’t know than what we know, and don’t ever forget it. He taught me to always talk to consumers and understand their underlying causal mechanisms. [14:01] What are the jobs of Snickers and Milky Way? Snickers and Milky Way are both chocolate candy bars with almost all the same ingredients, except Snickers has peanuts. You would think they compete, but we found the candy bars get hired in very different contexts for very different outcomes. When people eat Snickers, it’s typically because they have work to do and are running out of energy, and they want something small and quick to eat. People almost always eat Milky Way alone and very slowly after something emotional happens. Snickers satisfies physically. Milky Way helps people feel better emotionally. [18:53] How do we apply JTBD? Start with framing the fundamental question of what you’re trying to answer. We start with 15-20 questions, then boil them down to one core question. For example, “What causes people to move from the house they’ve lived in for 20+ years to a new condo?” The question can be about a product, a group of consumers, or a struggling moment. Next, we recruit people who have tried and successfully and unsuccessfully solved the problem. We conduct hour-long interviews with these people, asking questions that help us really get at what people mean and understand their actions. After each interview, we debrief and codify the causal mechanisms—pushes and pulls—that made them try to solve the problem. We start to see patterns of the different outcomes people want in different contexts. We use nearest neighbor analysis to understand how many unique stories we have. Now that we understand the jobs people are hiring a product to do, we decide what we want to do. [24:31] In your interview, how do you identify why people do what they do? Have an empathe

How product managers can excel in both supportive and challenging organizational environments In this discussion we share ideas and experiences for getting more benefits from product management and how you can help with that, regardless of whether your organization supports product management or not. To help us with that is someone who has made it happen, increasing the visibility and effectiveness of product management, in different types of organizations. Her name is Monika Murugesan and she is Vice President of Product Management at Sentient Energy. She focuses on portfolio roadmaps, innovation, strategy, and customer success. . Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:26] What’s it like to be a product manager in a product-centered organization where product management is valued? In an organization like this where the product manager’s function and value are understood, product management is usually a separate function. The product managers report to a chief product officer or CEO and have a big-picture understanding of the company strategy, which they can relate to the product portfolio strategy. [6:24] How can product managers excel in that environment? As a product manager, you build the right product and release it at the right time, so you need to know what the right product is and make sure you can build it with your resources and get it to market on time. PdMs interact with every division in the company—finance, marketing, sales, customers, quality, manufacturing. You have to be on top of everything and excel at time management and communication, because you are responsible for solving problems related to every division. [10:37] What’s it like to be in an organization where product management isn’t honored or recognized? Product management isn’t an easy job, because PdMs are the CEOs of the product without any positional authority. It’s a challenging role because it requires influential capacity, and it’s even tougher when no one understands product management. In organizations where product management is not well-understood, the PdM role blurs between project management and outbound marketing, and PdMs are usually under engineering teams or marketing teams. It’s a tougher position when your peers don’t recognize what you do. [12:02] How can product managers excel in that challenging environment? Build credibility and trust by influencing with the 3 H’s: Head: logical reasoning, e.g., using data to show the engineering team why it’s best for the company to pursue a project Hands: mutual benefits, e.g., showing a sales team why a strategy will benefit both of you Heart: emotional connection, e.g., showing developers how the product they’re building will help people; telling engineers what customers say about how your products are helping Consider organizing a brown bag lunch to share customer stories with your engineering or sales teams. [17:00] How can we build strong connections with customers? It’s important to build a good relationship with sales so they will introduce you to customers and take you along on sales calls. You can’t build the next product sitting at your desk all day. Innovative ideas come from seeing customers in action. [18:53] What are the benefits to having product management as a separate function? There are some pros to having product management aligned with another function. For example, if product management is under engineering, product managers are more technical and understand the engineer’s challenges and their innovative ideas that can become part of the product. However, the ideal output from product management is achieved when product management is a separate function. When product management is a separate function, product managers see the big picture and can set up product strategy that aligns with the long-term company strategy, so product managers have a direct connection with the leaders of the organization, and engineering and sales are their peers. Action Guide: Put the information Monika shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Monika on LinkedIn Find out more about Monika’s product manager coaching, Apex Specialist Innovation Quote “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” -Michael Porter Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator 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

How product managers can build great products by focusing on their customers’ unmet needs Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) is a valuable tool for product managers and innovators, and there are different thoughts on how to actually put it into optimal practice. Our guest, Jay Haynes, is helping that problem by creating the first and only JTBD software for product, marketing, and sales teams. He founded THRV (pronounced Thrive) to make that happen. Also, Jay has three decades of innovation experience and has helped Microsoft, Dropbox, eBay, Twitter, American Express, Oracle, Target, and others. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:54] What is Jobs-to-be-Done? Jobs-to-be-Done is a method to build great products that customers love. The core idea is that customers are not buying a product; they’re hiring a product to get a job done. A job to be done is a goal a customer needs to achieve, and it’s independent of any product. For example, we don’t want iPods, cassettes, or CDs; we want to create a mood with music using whichever product best helps us accomplish that job. [4:16] What problem does Jobs-to-be-Done help product managers with? It helps us fail less. If you start with a brand-new idea, you have no way to judge whether the idea is useful. JTBD lets you start with your customers’ unmet needs instead. Then you can more quickly and efficiently come up with ideas, which will be much more valuable once you understand their problems. [6:04] How do we get started with Jobs-to-be-Done? Everything starts with the customer. You need to know who your customers are. It’s amazing how many teams disagree on whom their customer is. Many companies define their customers using personas, which can lead us away from the core customer who benefits from getting the job done. Instead of limiting yourself to personas, group your customers into job beneficiaries, who are the people who benefit from getting the job done. For example, Nest the thermostat company focuses on the job beneficiaries. Traditionally, thermostat manufacturers sold to contractors, not homeowners. Nest redefined their customer and decided to sell directly to homeowners. This was smart, because homeowners are the job beneficiaries, benefiting from the thermostat, which performs the job of creating a comfortable home. Often, especially for B2B products, we have multiple different groups with different needs interacting with our product. In addition to job beneficiaries, there are job executors, who help the beneficiary get the job done, and purchasers, who purchase the product. Job executors perform consumption jobs like installing the thermostat, while job beneficiaries perform function jobs like using the thermostat. Both are important, but increasingly consumption jobs can be done by the job beneficiary. Focusing on the job executor isn’t good for your long-term growth, because someone is going to figure out how to get rid of the job executor, like Nest did. Focus on the job beneficiaries, because they’re your true market. [15:07] What’s the next step? Next we go to the market. The market you’re in is the most important decision you can make as a product team. If you have to choose between being a great entrepreneur in a terrible market or a mediocre entrepreneur in an awesome market, choose the awesome market. If you haven’t thought about what your market is and what your customer’s job is, you’ve made a critical mistake. There are no product-based markets. There are only markets for getting jobs done. For example, when Apple created the iPod, they defined their market based on the product. They sold $30 billion of iPods, but today the iPod market is zero. The market isn’t for iPods; it’s for creating a mood with music. Pandora experienced enormous success by finding a different way to create a mood with music. Speed and accuracy are the measures of success for Jobs-to-be-Done. The Kodak Brownie camera was one of the most successful products in history because it made photography fast and easy. All you had to do was point the camera and push a button. [21:47] Once we know our customer and market, what’s next? Next you need to identify your customer’s unmet needs. Jobs-to-be-Done theory breaks down your customer’s goal into very specific customer needs. We all know innovative products should satisfy unmet customer needs, but companies and product teams often disagree on what a customer need is. Let’s look at an example of how Jobs-to-be-Done can help define customer needs. Suppose the job to be done is getting a customer to a destination on time. First, break down the steps the customer has to take to get the job done. There are six categories of steps based on George Pólya’s problem-solving technique: Understand the problem: estimate the departure time Plan to solve the problem: plan the stops along the route Execute the so

How product managers can benefit from Scrum for joyful, prosperous, and sustainable work The name of this podcast is changing to Product Mastery Now, to better reflect our purpose of helping product managers becoming product masters, gaining practical knowledge, influence and confidence so you’ll create products customers love. The 2020 State of Agile Report found that only 5% of organizations have never used Agile practices. Scrum is the most popular Agile methodology and there is a good chance you are using it. The move to remote work last year impacted how teams work, including their use of Scrum. To learn about these impacts and other tips for improving the use of Scrum, Howard Sublett, the CEO of the Scrum Alliance, joins us. The Scrum Alliance is a member-driven nonprofit trade association that supports the Agile movement. They have trained and certified over a million people and provide a vast community for Agile practitioners to interact. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:55] What is the Scrum Alliance and what does your role as Chief Product Owner involve? The Scrum Alliance is a non-profit organization, or as I like to think about it, a “for-impact” organization. We’re a certifying body and training organization with trainers in every country and about 1.38 million certifications. We have a mission to empower our members and guide individuals and organizations into Agile practices, principles, and values in order to make the world of work more joyful, prosperous, and sustainable. Scrum gives teams the context, autonomy, mastery, and purpose to be able to solve complex problems and delight customers. Scrum teams have joy in their work because they understand the work they’re doing, the problems they’re solving, and their impact. [5:56] At the Scrum Alliance, how do you “eat your own dogfood”—how do you use the practices you promote? Our staff is organized as cross-departmental Scrum teams. Each team includes people from marketing, education, customer support, and software development, as well as a product owner and Scrum master. In the past, we had a separate team from each department, but we found that there were deep dependencies between departments, so we began to work in cross-departmental teams. Unlike many Scrum teams, our teams work in two-week cadences, and every two weeks they do a sprint review to an advisory team of real customers. Interaction with customers is huge for creating joyful work. It’s important for product managers to see the people who are going to use the products they’re creating. [12:05] How is Scrum being applied in a remote work environment? Many organizational leaders were afraid Scrum wouldn’t work in a remote environment, but they found out it does. Individual remote work can be lonely, but Scrum team members don’t do individual work; they work together. When a Scrum team works on a problem, the need to work together helps them collaborate. Many teams now have open Zoom calls that they use to see each other on video while they’re working on problems. Because it’s based on collaboration, Scrum makes remote work a little easier on people. New technology and tools are also helping make remote work easier and more connected. [18:27] The most common struggle I’ve seen when organizations adopt Scrum is that leaders feel helpless since the natural rhythm of information flow is disrupted. What can leaders and organizations do about this struggle? I think the key word is feel. Leaders feel helpless. In a traditional environment, leaders feel like they know exactly when a project is going to be done and what it’s going to be like, but in reality it never happens exactly like they expected. Leaders need to acknowledge what they don’t know. Distributing some decision-making to people closer to the customer may feel uncomfortable, but the leaders were already uncomfortable—they just pretended they weren’t. It made them feel comfortable to have a chart that said a project was going to be done on October 3rd, but the product wasn’t finished then, and their expectations still weren’t fulfilled. Some organization are building Agile-enablement teams, which include leaders of different areas in the organization and function as information centers of how teams are progressing. Most importantly, leaders need to acknowledge they don’t have all the answers. In Agile work, the bets are short and the risks are small. Each sprint is only a week or two, and you can make a new bet next week. The pace of change is fast, and you get customer feedback frequently. By working in small increments, we reduce risk and can deliver a better product to the customer. [25:31] What is the role of the product owner? Some organizations try to change the role of product owner to make Scrum fit with their current organizational design rather than changing the orga

Principles product managers can use to guide creativity and innovation The name of this podcast is changing to Product Mastery Now, to better reflect our purpose of helping product managers becoming product masters, gaining practical knowledge, influence and confidence so you’ll create products customers love. In this episode we discuss the obsessions of everyday innovators, as that is the language our guest uses to describe mindsets and actions that make us better innovators. You already know why this is important—because better innovators and product managers are more likely to create products customers love. Our guest knows a lot about this as he is the founder and CEO of five tech companies and a frequent keynote speaker. Interestingly, he started his career as a jazz guitarist. His name is Josh Linkner. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:59] What was it like to transition from a professional jazz guitarist to a founder of five tech companies? Surprisingly, there are many similarities between jazz and business. Both are about improvising and course-correcting when you inevitably screw up; they’re both messy, fluid, and creative. Jazz requires skills like passing the baton of leadership, taking responsible risks, and tinkering. Both jazz and innovation are about collaboration and co-creation. [5:48] From your book, what are the “obsessions of everyday innovators”? In my research for the book, interviewing amazing creators of all types, I found several common mindsets or obsessions of innovators. We can all apply these principles toward the outcomes that matter most to us, whether in business, our families, or our communities. Let’s dive into some of the obsessions of everyday innovators. [7:06] Fall in love with the problem. Fall in love with the problem more than a specific solution. Be willing to adapt, and study the problem from all different angles so you can solve it in the best possible way. [8:38] Don’t forget the dinner mint. Find a way to add delight with no more than 5% extra creative juice. Think about when you go to a nice restaurant and they give you a special treat compliments of the chef. That small surprise totally transforms your experience. When you’re creating a product, add a little extra something to take it to a whole different level. For example, a restaurant in New York City called Eleven Madison Park has a team of employees called Dream Weavers whose job is to add extra delight. A family with young children was visiting, and a server overheard that it was their first time to see snow. The Dream Weavers arranged for the family to be escorted out to a limousine, presented with brand new sleds, and whisked off to Central Park for an evening of sledding. It might sound crazy, but that family will never forget that night. Eleven Madison Park follows the 95/5 Doctrine; they spend 95% of their resources, time, money, and energy being super efficient and disciplined so they can spend 5% of their time “foolishly,” but it’s not really foolish at all because providing those extra special “dinner mints” is part of their strategy and a key driver of their incredible success in a crowded space. [13:27] Start before you’re ready. Too often, opportunities are out there, but we wait too long. When we wait for certainty, we can lose the opportunity altogether. Don’t wait for a bulletproof game plane. Just get going. It will be messy, and your first iterations will be sloppy and ineffective, but you’re going to learn quickly and course-correct. Suppose you and I both have an idea, and you test it for six months in the lab until it’s perfect, while I get going today. My first version is going to stink, but I have six months to catch up, pivot, adapt, learn, and grow. By the time you take your first shot, I’m way ahead of you. Meanwhile, the opportunity might shift and you might miss it altogether. It’s better to start quick and sloppy than to wait for perfection. [17:17] Open a test kitchen. Embrace rapid experimentation. Some people think innovation is about creating a once-in-a-lifetime perfect idea, but that’s not how it works. It’s much more effective, efficient, and less costly to use constant rapid experimentation. Shake Shack, a restaurant in New York City, has an innovation kitchen underneath one of their stores where they test new recipes, get feedback from their customers, and experiment with shaving time off their processes. They constantly experiment not only with their product but also with their processes, marketing and technology. Even if you don’t have a physical test kitchen or innovation lab, you can still be testing. The test kitchen principle is about a mindset of constant experimentation. There are a couple of ways to test: First, is the farmer’s market model—you look around at all your options and start experimenting, just l

How product managers can prepare for success in a rapidly shifting work environment This podcast will soon be known as Product Mastery Now. The name is changing, but the purpose is the same—helping product leaders and managers become product masters, gaining practical knowledge, influence, and confidence so you’ll create products customers love. The future of work is changing for many people. We saw some changes accelerate as a result of the pandemic, and others have already been in motion. The changes will impact product managers and innovators. Our guest, Matt Coatney, has studied the future of work as it is also related to his interests in the future of AI, automation, and other applications of technology. Matt has 25 years of experience bringing advanced technology products to market in a variety of industries and for some of the largest global organizations, including Microsoft, IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pfizer, Deloitte, and HP. Use this discussion to help you consider how your work will change in the near future. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:56] What is broken about work? As technology has evolved, it has made work easier, decreasing friction, but there’s a disconnect between changing technology and traditional corporations. Changes in technology are disrupting industries and, more importantly, changing the way we work, but large corporations are not set up to accommodate a world where technology is changing quickly. There’s a growing rift between management and employees. Engagement is at an all-time low, and job loyalty is not what it used to be. All these are symptoms that the underlying culture and systems need to be modernized for the world of the 21st century. Many people love their job but despise the environment. We see a lot of people loving project work, but the rest of their organization isn’t in a project-based mindset. [8:21] Your new book is titled The Human Cloud. What is the human cloud? The Human Cloud encapsulates the new world of work. In the book, we discuss two main themes and how they impact the way we work: the freelance economy and shift to project-based work artificial intelligence and how technology is creeping into every part of our life The Human Cloud is a visualization of a global cloud of people and devices that are all connected to accomplish an end. The cloud includes human and digital resources that you can tap into to do outsourced work. In the past, freelance work and AI were low-value, but now top-notch professionals are choosing careers of freelance work, and there are new capabilities that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago. People are becoming more comfortable with using outside experts, and technology is making it more convenient and inexpensive to outsource work. [14:00] What is a Changemaker, and how will Changemakers drive the future of work? A Changemaker is an entrepreneur or intrapreneur who is leveraging their resources to create value. They’re growing themselves, their business, or their role in their company. They’re taking charge of their work, and their focus is to drive value. Taking ownership of your work is empowering and provides accountability. People aren’t born Changemakers; you can develop the Changemaker attitude and approach to work. While writing the book, we interviewed freelancers and found that they operate as a business of one. They constantly think about how they can add value and stop doing things that aren’t adding value. We see tensions and dissatisfied employees when employees want to take ownership of their work but are in an organizational structure that doesn’t know how to let them do that. The 20th century corporate environment was very structured and hierarchical, which produced results but did not empower individuals or provide accountability. Many companies are still using those structures, but some companies are finding ways to work better. For example, one model assigns everyone to a pod that is working on a project. Once the project is finished, they’re reassigned. Each pod is given a mission, constraints, and a budget and then works independently to create value. The corporate structure is like a portfolio, managing projects, putting more bets on the projects that show value. Reid Hoffman talks about the two types of roles in an organization. People in traditional management roles needs structure, rules, guidance, and certainty, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, when an entrepreneur is put in that environment, they rankle at it. Entrepreneurs work better in an environment where they are given freedom to complete a mission and add value, with a mindset of project-based work. We’re shifting toward project-based work, and the traditional infrastructure is still vital but becoming smaller. [23:54] What should product managers do to prepare for this paradigm shift in work? How can they be Ch

How product managers can avoid false beliefs and revive their careers In this episode, instead of me interviewing a guest, I’m being interviewed. Mike Belsito, co-organizer of the INDUSTRY conference for software product managers, interviewed me a few weeks ago for an INDUSTRY webinar. We both found the discussion very valuable and I’m sharing it with you on this podcast as well. The topic is: Are your misconceptions about product management holding your career back? Product management has a longer history than many people realize, dating formally back to the 1930s. The first professional association for product managers that is still in existence, PDMA, began in 1976. While the discipline is not new, several misconceptions exist about what product management is and what product managers do. In this discussion, I’ll help you find the best place for you to contribute to creating products and services customers love so your career will take off. Check out the Virtual INDUSTRY conference coming up on April 20 and 21 by going to industryconference.com. I’m not receiving any commission from INDUSTRY, just recommending it because it is good. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [4:45] Tell us about the misconception that product management is a brand-new discipline. Recently, product management has grown in popularity and visibility, but the discipline has been around for a long time. People have been building products for a very, very long time, and product management as a discipline originated around the 1930s at P&G, where product managers were originally called brand managers and were responsible for developing a product, growing a brand, and getting customers to adopt the new product. The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), the first professional organization for product managers, began in 1976. I found out about product management through PDMA and found their resources and body of knowledge really helpful. As product managers, we have access to a solid foundation of knowledge. [8:00] What are some other common product management misconceptions? Many people think that because they don’t have the job title of product manager, they’re not doing product management. Actually, many people involved in product innovation, product development, or product marketing are doing product management. I use the IDEA framework to describe the full spectrum of product work: Ideate—coming up with ideas and putting together a concept to pursue Develop—making the concept real, e.g., writing software or manufacturing Evolve—continuing to make the product better after launch Accelerate—practices that improve product work At some organizations, product managers are all about Ideate; at others they focus on Develop or Evolve. Understanding the full breadth of product work helps us find the aspects that are a good fit for us and bring us joy. [13:15] What’s an example of someone reframing their work as product management? A listener of my podcast was a product marketer responsible for growing the product’s position in the marketplace. He reached out and said he really wanted to get into product management, which he believed was all about coming up with new ideas. After talking, he realized that he could easily call his work product management. He was learning what customers want and improving existing products. He ended up continuing to work in product marketing and loved it. All he had to do was think about his work differently and it became a good fit for him. I hear many people say they love the work they’re doing but despise the environment they’re in. If they reframe their work, look for the aspects they really enjoy, and try to find work that aligns with that, they may be happier. [15:53] What misconceptions about product management are holding people back in their careers? One thing holding people back is not having good alignment between their role in product and where they find joy. This might be because they don’t have a broad enough picture of what product work entails. Someone might think product management is all about customers but find that their organization thinks it’s all about data. With a broad perspective on product work, they may be able to help their organization think differently, because their organization is limiting itself if it doesn’t let product managers gain customer insights. One listener emailed me and said he had had his first interview for a product manager position, but he was disappointed because the organization didn’t talk about product management in at all the same way as I do on my podcast. It’s important to remember there are different perspectives on product management, and understanding the full breadth of product management can help us recognize we might be focused on different areas but we’re all working together on product. [19:01] What can we do if we

A framework for product managers to dig deep into their customers’ needs I am changing the name of the podcast to Product Mastery Now. The new name is coming soon. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Mastery Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing. This episode has two of my favorite things. First, our guest is discussing how he got started with Jobs-to-be-Done and how you can use this valuable tool yourself. Second, he is also the co-founder of Product Collective and the co-organizer of INDUSTRY, the conference for software product managers. INDUSTRY has a virtual conference coming up on April 20 and 21 and it is worth checking out by going to IndustryConference.com. Our guest is Mike Belsito. Before his current work, he had a number of product roles and experiences, giving him insights that can help us. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [10:08] What’s an example of Jobs-to-be-Done? Jobs-to-be-Done is a framework for understanding how and why people choose products. For example, in my hometown of Lakewood, we have a restaurant called Angelo’s, which is a neighborhood pizzeria, and a Little Caesar’s, which is fast food pizza. If I’m rushing home from my son’s soccer practice and need to be home and eating dinner in ten minutes, I grab a pizza from Little Caesar’s. If friends are visiting, I take them to Angelo’s because I want to show them Lakewood’s personality. I’m not choosing a pizza based on the toppings or ingredients. It’s all about the context and the circumstances. In the language of Jobs-to-be-Done, I’m not “hiring” the pizza to complete the job of feeding me. I’m choosing convenience or entertaining my friends. [18:39] What are the elements of Jobs-to-be-Done? Struggling moment—a moment of pain or need, when we wish there were a better way. As Bob Moesta, a pioneer of JTBD, says, the struggling moment is the basis of innovation. Push—realizing there has to be a better way and deciding we’re not going to live with the current solution anymore. We’re pushed to find a new solution. Pull—when we become aware of the better way or new solution. Anxieties—excuses for why we shouldn’t switch to the new solution. Inertia—we stop exploring the new solution because it seems easier to stick with the old solution than to go through all the changes to switch. [23:59] How do we conduct a Jobs-to-be-Done interview? A Jobs-to-be-Done interview uncovers all the elements listed above. First, identify whom you’re going to interview. Avoid interviewing outliers; interview average customers or people who aren’t customers yet but have similar problems. Block off two hours for each interview. Spend the first 30 minutes doing a pre-interview; don’t plan out an exact script, but list the important areas you want to explore. Spend a full hour with the customer. Then spend 30 minutes in a post-session, reviewing while the interview is still fresh in your mind. When you’re interviewing, dig deep. I learned this from Bob Moesta, who helped us interview INDUSTRY customers. One time we were interviewing a customer named Matt and asked, “Why did you buy a ticket to INDUSTRY?” Matt said he wanted to learn from the best. I would have moved on to the next question, but Bob asked, “What do mean by that? Who is the best? What do you mean by ‘learn’?” Bob kept asking questions and digging deeper, and we uncovered valuable insights we otherwise would not have found. Bob told us to act like documentary filmmakers—we’re trying to uncover the story, and sometimes what people initially say is not the whole story. We need to dig deep to capture the whole story. Action Guide: Put the information Mike shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn more about Jobs-to-be-Done from TEI 106 with Tony Ulwick Check out ProductCollective.com Register for the INDUSTRY 2021 Virtual Conference Connect with Mike on Twitter or LinkedIn Listen to Clayton Christensen discuss the job of a milkshake Innovation Quote “No one can stop you from doing exactly what you want to do. If you can accept that the cavalry won’t come, and if you can be the cavalry, it gives you a chance to be happy.” – Mark Duplass, filmmaker Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator 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

Pillars and practices for product managers to deeply understand their customers’ problems I am changing the name of the podcast to Product Mastery Now. The new name is coming soon. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Mastery Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing. I expect you’ll find this episode very value because it is focused on how you can get better at making products, which is a topic important to all product managers and leaders. I am joined by Heather Samarin and Vidya Dinamani, the co-founders of Product Rebels, a product management leadership training company. They have enormous experience in product management and delighting customers through product-market fit. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:09] How did your time at Intuit help you as product professionals? We learned how to stand in our customer’s shoes. We performed observational research that allowed us to have customer empathy and understand our customers’ pain and problems. Clayton Christensen introduced a program called Design for Delight, which helped us innovate by observing, experimenting quickly, and getting feedback from customers. Customer learning was infused into all the product decisions we made. [9:05] What led to your book Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products? We see product teams and leaders hitting the same pitfalls we have hit. Product leaders struggle with an overwhelming set of priorities and struggle to figure out where to put their effort, and investors shy away when they can’t see how you’re going to spend your money. Product teams struggle with making decisions. They argue about features, letting the loudest or highest paid person get their way instead of listening to what the customer wants. These problems lead to unclear value propositions, lack of clarity, and unhappy customers. We kept seeing problems like these over and over again, across all industries and in all sizes of teams. We wanted to get to the root cause of the problems and create tools and tactics to solve them. [14:53] Your book Groundwork covers two areas—the Pillars and the Practices. What can you tell us about them? The three pillars are the foundation for good decision making and focus: Convergent Problem Statement—defining a problem in a way that drives focus Actionable Persona—knowing your ideal customer to allow you to make trade-offs confidently Individualized Needs—intimately understanding your customers’ needs The three practices are daily actions that allow us to consistently get to the pillars: Developing a Hypothesis—clearly defining what you want to learn when you talk with customers Scrappy Research—researching continually without a ton of money and resources Getting Commitment—framing information to lead to an actionable decision [19:16] Tell us more about the Convergent Problem Statement. We naturally want to create solutions, but we need to first focus on the customers’ problems. When we observe and really understand the customer, we define multiple different problems. Think broadly about customers’ different problems, then converge on one. A convergent problem statement expresses the difficulty or pain the customer has with no attempt to address a solution. Often, we work on solutions when we think we’re working on problems. Take a look at your work and see if you’re just working on a feature or actually describing the problem. [21:32] Tell us more about the Actionable Persona. Once you have a clear problem, you want to know intimately whom you’re solving it for so you can make good decisions about how to design the product and prioritize features. Many teams don’t find personas valuable, but we’re redefining personas and making them actionable, simple, and something everyone can use. We define personas using character trait spectrums that help you understand different aspects of your ideal customer and take action to design the product for them. The more focused you are in targeting your ideal customer, the better you’ll be able to delight them. [24:49] Tell us more about Individualized Needs. In an ideal world, you’d solve one problem for one customer, but in reality you’re solving many problems for many customer segments. To create delight, you need to group together a persona and a problem statement. Think in silos. Understand the needs of each segment so you can make decisions about tradeoffs for each persona. Action Guide: Put the information Heather and Vidya shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Visit Heather and Vidya’s website, Product Rebels Check out Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products on Amazon Innovation Quote “Innovation comes from saying no to a thousand things.” – Steve Jobs &#82

The skills product managers need in a changing environment This podcast will soon be changing its name to Product Mastery Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Mastery Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing. The role of product manager is shifting, and you can position yourself for future success if you know how it is shifting. Our guest has some unique insights about this as he is the founder of Product School, a large community of product managers. His name is Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, and he’s here to share the shifts that are emerging and how you can prepare. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:22] What are some of the shifts in product management you’ve seen in the last year or two? When I started seven years ago, product management wasn’t well-understood. Now, there’s more understanding about what product management is. Many companies have a chief product officer who reports directly to the CEO. More and more companies are hiring product managers, even though many companies are downsizing because of COVID. They still need product managers to make their products and sell online, and with remote working, they need more efficient collaboration. Product management isn’t just for high-tech companies anymore; all industries need product managers. [5:05] What changes have you seen in product managers’ influence? The power dynamic is definitely changing. Product managers now have more influence because they’re in the middle of the organization, connecting the dots between engineering, design, and marketing. They create the roadmaps and vision. Product managers feel empowered because many CEOS are coming from a product background, setting up a product culture in their organizations. [6:22] Why is the cross-functionality of product management important? Product managers are generalists. They understand the company’s different functions and the customer. Product managers connect everyone under a common vision, similar to what CEOs do, which is why many product managers become CEOs and many startup founders and CEOs later become product leaders. [7:26] How can product managers be more effective at relating to different functions? Learn about functions you don’t have a background in. If you are trying to move toward a product manager role, and you have experience in marketing, take a year to learn about design and engineering. Become more complete by picking up skills outside of what you’re really good at. [9:04] What are the key capabilities a well-rounded product manager has? Technical acumen: You don’t have to be an engineer, but you will be working with engineers, so you need to speak tech and be able to earn engineers’ respect. Industry domain or business acumen: You don’t need an MBA, but you need to understand your customer, market, competition, and product, so you can be passionate about the problem you’re solving. Communication skills: Be comfortable communicating with different stakeholders, not only in big presentations but also over email, in-person, and online. You need to be there for your team and have time to support and coach others. [11:54] Tell us about your journey to become an effective communicator. It wasn’t easy. I immigrated from Spain, so I’m a non-native English speaker, and I still make a lot of mistakes when speaking. I had nothing to lose and no experience at all, so I pushed myself to practice, practice, practice. It’s okay to be uncomfortable; learning is a process. I encourage people to go for it and start practicing communication, even if they’re not native speakers or professional communicators. Non-verbal communication is important too; smiling while you talk goes a long way. Curiosity is also very powerful in making us more approachable and effective. [15:51] How is the role of product management changing going into the future? We recently released a report called “The Future of Product Management,” and identified several trends in how the industry is moving. Product management is becoming more data-driven. It’s becoming more of a science than an art. You can’t get away with just having a strong vision and being a great communicator; you need to also look at the numbers and listen to your users. There’s much more technology available specifically for product managers. These tools are becoming more and more visual, meaning you don’t need technical expertise to use them. Product management is becoming more collaborative. Product teams now include engineers, designers, and marketers, in addition to product managers, and they all work together to generate ideas and create successful products. Product managers need to learn about others’ work so they can connect with their teams.

How product managers can get their teams on the same page This podcast is getting a new name—Product Masters Now. The name officially changes in a few weeks, but I want you to know it is coming. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing. Effective product managers are good communicators and can get team members aligned to meet the objectives of a product. However, that is easier said than done. Knowing a few simple tools to create team alignment, getting everyone on the same page, makes a big difference in your success and the success of your products. To help us with those tools, Dr. Stefano Mastrogiacomo, a project management professor, consultant and author fascinated by human coordination, joins us. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:30] Why do some teams underperform? Teams underperform when members work around each other and not with each other. This is caused by two factors: The team climate is unsafe psychologically—trust is lacking; there may be conflict. When the team activities are poorly aligned—when teams do not understand and trust each other, they experience confusion. [4:17] How can we recognize an unsafe team climate, and what are its effects? Visible symptoms of an unsafe climate include lack of recognition, disengagement, and team members losing the joy of working together. As Amy Edmondson said, psychological safety is the belief that the team is safe enough for interpersonal risk-taking. When the team is not psychologically safe, we’re afraid to speak up and share new ideas, and that undermines innovation. Because of fear, we won’t wake up the collective genius. Trust and psychological safety are cousins. Trust is the perception that I can be vulnerable with you, and psychological safety describes a climate of trust. We all can tell very rapidly whether we’re in a place that’s psychologically safe. When we are, we have joy and motivation. We want to wake up and go work with people we enjoy working with. During my academic research, we followed several teams to measure the impact of mutual clarity on task performance. We also included a question on motivation in our survey. We did nothing to encourage motivation, but surprisingly we found that the teams with greater mutual clarity had greater motivation. We concluded that motivation is a consequence of mutual clarity and mutual trust. [10:07] What are your tools to help teams improve? The high impact tools for teams improve the quality of everyday interactions, especially related to clarity on team processes and psychological safety. The five tools are: Team Alignment Map—structured discussion to help every team member clarify their individual contribution to the team Team Contract—clarifies the rules of the team before problems occur Respect Card—checklist of ways to show respect and recognition Fact Finder—helps team members ask good questions to decrease perception gaps and improve mutual understanding and trust Non-Violent Requests Guide—manages conflict and allows team members to express discontent or disagreement in a non-judgmental way leading to a constructive dialogue I divide the tools into blue pill tools and red pill tools. The Team Alignment Map is a Blue bill tool that clarifies team processes, mission, and goal. Red pill tools improve trust, and include the Team Contract, Respect Card, and Non-Violent Requests Guide. The Fact Finder is a hybrid of a blue pill tool and a red pill tool. [16:08] How does the Team Alignment Map help teams? The Team Alignment Map is most powerful when used for a new team, new project, or new collaboration. The map is a poster divided into four columns. Teams put the poster on a whiteboard, discuss each area, and fill in the columns. The four areas are: Joint Objectives: What do we want to achieve together? Write down the team’s objectives categorized under the team’s joint missions. Joint Commitments: Discuss everyone’s contribution to make the joint objectives happen. Joint Resources: What resources do we need to keep the commitments? Do we have what we need? Joint Risks: What might prevent us from achieving our objectives? Once you’ve filled in all four columns, you’ve completed the forward pass. Now everyone has a big picture of the collaboration ahead. Next, you must perform a backward pass to address missing resources and risks. Each missing resource or risk must be connected to a new objective and a new commitment. For example, suppose your objective is to run interviews with clients, and a risk is that the clients might not be available for interviews. In the backward pass, your new objective is to schedule all interviews. You assign a team member to do it and identify resources needed. The backward pass increases the resilience of the team by trans

Powerful actions and mindsets to take product managers to the next level This podcast is getting a new name to better reflect our objective here—helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. Product managers are in a perfect role to become senior leaders and part of the C-suite. Your role is in the middle of the work the organization does, giving you insights that few executives have, which is why you should become one. To prepare for that, you need to adjust your mindset, stop doing certain things, and start doing other things. Our guest, Evan Roth, is an expert on this as he has coached many product executives. We first met way back in episode 102 after a product VP and coaching client introduced me to him. Today, he’ll help you prepare a path to leadership roles. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:28] How can product managers change their mindset to prepare for a senior leadership role? Stretch out your thinking about the future—think longer term, wider breadth Embrace the gray—recognize that there won’t be perfect answers Focus on the big picture— when you’re a senior leader, someone else will focus on the details Stop thinking about urgent products and start thinking about important products—focus on solutions, opportunities, and possibilities Stop thinking about the details and start thinking about themes and trends Anticipate the future (future proofing) [10:38] How do we think bigger? Examine your mental models. Ask yourself, What is my framework? How far out am I thinking? Is my thinking unlimited or limited? Spend time with other people who think big. Change your mental models by being influenced by mentors. [13:53] Tell us more about how can mindset help product managers. I coach people on four aspects of mindset, using the acronym GAIL: Gremlin (inner critic) Assumption Interpretation Limiting Belief Our brains don’t distinguish between limiting beliefs and positive beliefs. A thought leads to a feeling, which leads to a behavior, which lead to an action. If we want to change our behavior and achieve a goal, we have to change our feelings and thoughts. We need to reframe the messages we tell ourselves. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine. If you want to create a new neural synapse, you have to practice mentally. Your mindset is not in your DNA. You can choose to change. The brain is seeking certainty and will continue to stay the same unless you actively change yourself. Awareness is big. If you want to change your mental models, you have to become aware of them. [20:21] What actions should product managers take as they’re moving toward senior leadership? First, list the things you’ll need to stop doing. When you advance to the next level, you can’t keep doing all the things you’re already doing or you’ll burn out. Identify the most valuable activity (MVA) you’ll be doing at the next level. Find out how senior leaders spend their time in ways that lead to economic or product success. Think differently by reading differently; read about what your next position may be like and read about things you don’t understand yet. At the executive level, you’ll be faced with things you don’t know all the time, so prepare yourself now. [22:28] What books can leaders read to expand their thinking? All great leadership starts with self leadership. Read about you can become better, self-actualize, and become aware of blindspots. Leadership and Self-Deception is a great book on how we’re deceiving ourselves all the time and how becoming aware of that can help us. Read about emotional intelligence and change methodologies. [23:44] What is a 360 review? The 360 review is a process I use when I’m coaching clients. I call it the “human pincushion experiment.” You get feedback from people above you, beside, and below you in the organization, and sometimes from customers too. You end up with a list of actions to start, stop, and continue based on everyone else’s input. The 360 review can be done quantitatively with a survey, but I do qualitative interviews. I talk to each person for a few minutes about the client I’m coaching. The conversation is confidential, but I use what people share to create buckets of actions to start, stop, and continue. These actions can be related to behavior, leadership, conflict, or collaboration. You get a rich set of feedback to help identify blindspots. The bigger the gap between other people’s view and your view, the better the coaching opportunity, because you can grow in self-awareness. [26:03] How can product managers ask for feedback to prepare them for a senior leadership role? Some people are hes

How product managers can work backwards to amazing products In a few weeks, the name of this podcast will be changing to Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming. If your player is like mine that lists podcasts alphabetically, it will be displayed further in your list of subscribed podcasts as the first letter of the name is changing from “E” to “P.” The logo will look the same—just the name is changing. To be a better product manager, it is worthwhile to examine organizations known for their product management capabilities. Amazon is such a company. In this episode we are joined by not one but two product professionals who built much of their career at Amazon—13 and 15 years. They are Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. They document the process Amazon uses to create successful products in a book titled Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. And, they are here to share their insights with us. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:42] What makes Amazon so innovative? Innovation is a necessary part of everyone’s job. Our 14 leadership principles are woven into the DNA of everyone who works there and every process in the company, and six of them are directly related to innovation: Customer obsession—people wake up every day trying to figure out how to delight their customers. Invent and simplify—leaders expect invention and innovation from their teams, and they’re always finding ways to get better. Leaders are right, a lot—they seek diverse perspectives and try to prove themselves wrong to make sure they have the right thought. Insist on the highest standards—we’re continually finding ways to get better. Frugality—constraints breed innovation. Necessity also drives Amazon to innovate. Amazon operates at a scale that often can’t be supported by any commercial solutions, so they have to create solutions themselves. Amazon accepts failure as part of invention. If you’re not failing enough, you’re not inventing enough. When we started working at Amazon in 1998 and 1999, Amazon was an ecommerce business when ecommerce was completely new. We were inventing a whole new form of commerce from the beginning. The people who found it fun and exciting to invent something new thrived. As the company progressed, that mindset pervaded the company and drove them to move outside ecommerce. Also, some of Amazon’s raw materials like computing power, storage, and bandwidth, get cheaper over time. We use those advancements to invent new things, like scanning and storing every book in the world. [7:47] How did you see customer obsession encouraged at Amazon? Remarkably, Jeff Bezos and Amazon figured out how to create reinforcing processes to make customer obsession part of people’s jobs. Weekly business review meetings included a section called Voice of the Customer. At these meetings, a leader of the customer service group brought forward a customer problem that Amazon didn’t have a good solution for. The senior leadership assigned people to tackle the problem and create a solution so it never happens again. Another process, the COE (Correction of Error) process, tasked teams with diving deeply into the details of a defect, figuring out why the customer had the problem, and creating a detailed plan to fix the problem. Unlike most companies, Amazon created methods for leaders to programmatically seek out problems and solutions. [11:40] Who is responsible for innovation at Amazon? Everyone. Innovation is the lifeblood of the company. We don’t have a chief innovation officer, because that would be like having a chief breathing officer—everyone has to innovate, so you don’t assign that task to one person. We have found the best innovations come from people who are closest to working with the problems at hand, rather than having a management team several levels removed from the problem dictating how to innovate. Many of our innovations are small, and customers never see them, but they make Amazon work more efficiently and allow us to provide lower prices for our customers. In a lot of companies, people think of innovation as a product function. At Amazon, it’s a job for everyone, not just the product organization. Amazon celebrates innovation. Employees receive awards for finding ways to cut costs, going above and beyond to serve a customer, and filing patents. The awards have no monetary value, but they’re some of the most prized possessions of people at Amazon. Everyone is expected to innovate, and everyone celebrates and recognizes innovation. [17:37] What is Amazon’s Working Backwards methodology? Working Backwards is Amazon’s method for developing new products and services. We start with the customer needs and work backwards from there. Most companies take a skills-forward approach, meaning the

Four steps for product managers to make an awesome First Time User Experience This podcast is where product leaders and managers become product masters. That has been our purpose from the beginning, and it is why I’m changing the name of the podcast to Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. If your player is like mine and lists podcasts alphabetically, it will be displayed further in your list of subscribed podcasts, as the first letter of the name is changing from “E” to “P.” The logo will look the same—just the name is changing to Product Master Now. How much do you think about the user experience of your products? The entire user experience? I know I have put my focus in one area and neglected other aspects of the user experience—for example, the functional experience with the product, while perhaps ignoring the onboarding aspect or the customer support aspect. Even if you argue that such areas are someone else’s responsibility, I believe you, as the product manager, have important insights for improving these areas. Our guest, Elizabeth Ferrao, has a practical framework for quickly evaluating UX called First Time UX, or FTUX, which is an acronym for a 4-step process. She’ll take us through the steps and an example so we can understand how to apply the framework. Elizabeth is the founder of Product Mindset, a product consultancy focused on FTUX and onboarding. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:01] What is your focus as a UX product person? I’ve worked as a product manager for many companies, repeatedly working on onboarding—getting customers into the funnel. I started thinking about the first time user experience. I learned that 77% of mobile users download an app, then never use it after 72 hours. That means the money spent on getting those customers to download the app is wasted. The funnel is leaky. How do we make sure that the first time user experience is fantastic and offers immediate value that keeps users coming back? [6:38] What is First Time UX? First Time User Experience (FTUX) is the experience a person has the first time they encounter a product. FTUX is important for physical products and digital products. For digital products, it’s very measurable because we can measure our bounce rate, why people are dropping off, and what they’re looking at. [9:45] What are the steps of your First Time UX evaluation? I have a set of four steps that I walk through in any product experience, physical or digital. [9:54] Step 1: Landing Page On the landing page, I look for… Really strong message strength. Are they speaking directly to my pain point? The customer persona. The landing page tells whether the team understands whom they’re building the product for. I should be able to identify the key customer persona from the landing page. Are there any barriers to entry? I don’t want to have to enter a credit card number or talk to a salesperson. [11:09] Step 2: One Minute Magic Moment This is what the customer sees in their first minute with the product. For example, if an orange juice bottle tells me it has no sugar, and that’s my pain point, I’ll keep reading the bottle and might purchase it. As another example, when you first start using Spotify, it asks what music you like to listen to and automatically recommends songs you might like. It’s important to note that as a product manager you can’t satisfy your super fans and first-time users at the same time. You have to focus on one. Often product managers are focused on creating more value for current users, and they might not think about first time user experience. It’s important to have someone focused on getting users into the funnel. [15:06] Step 3: Five Minute Magic Moment In five minutes, you can give your customer a lot of information about your product. Within five minutes, you should be able to give them something fantastic, beautiful, or magical. For example, on a photo sharing app, in five minutes you can create an awesome photo album you can share. [15:45] Step 4: Grit Score The grit score measures how gritty your customer has to be to understand the product, keep using it, and convert from a free user to a paid user. I measure the grit score from 1 to 10. A low grit score is good, meaning customers don’t need to be very gritty to understand the product. [19:27] Let’s talk about an example of great FTUX—from Lemonade Insurance. I loved the Lemonade Insurance landing page and the entire experience. The landing page made it obvious that they were talking to me, a millennial who is purchasing home insurance for the first time and has heard things that scared me off before. Other insurance companies ask you to sp

Secrets for working with customers to create products they will love This podcast is getting a new name to better reflect our objective here—helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. You are in store for an enriching discussion with someone who has more experience delighting customers than most of us will ever see. You’ll learn a few important tools along with deepening your understanding of what it means to create products customers love. Helping us with this is Chip R. Bell, who has been ranked for six years in a row as one of the top three keynote speakers in the world on customer service. Bell has appeared on multiple TV networks, and his work has been featured in several prominent publications. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:18] What is co-creation? Co-creation is a partnership of creating collaboratively. I’ll be discussing the application of co-creation between a customer and an organization. The customer and the organization work together with equal license to make contributions to the product. Many organizations make products for the customer, but in co-creation, you’re making products with the customer. It’s a win-win partnership. [3:47] How do you find co-creation partners? Good co-creation partners have a need and the knowledge to contribute effectively. For example, a contributor to an electronic device needs to have knowledge about electronics. Choose a partner who can make a contribution in a way that’s unique and different from how you would normally approach the problem. Another group of contributors are catalysts. For instance, I might bring in third graders who will ask questions that stimulate product development. They don’t have the expertise to create a product, but they will help us break out of our normal way of thinking. Talk to people like drivers or security guards in your company; they have a different viewpoint and can often bring intelligence you might otherwise miss. A friend of mine who manages a hotel got valuable insights from taxi drivers about what customers liked and disliked about the hotel. [10:44] What are the five secrets for creating co-creation partnerships? For many years I’ve worked in customer service innovation. In contrast to value-added innovation, customer service innovation is value-unique—it’s all about creating new experiences that your customers will want to tell someone about. I wanted to write another book about this topic, and I decided to focus on including the customer in the innovative process. I found five secrets that the cultures of the most innovative companies share. My book Inside Your Customer’s Imagination is about applying those secrets to a relationship with the customer. The customer’s imagination is a door that can only be opened from the inside. The question is what to do to get the customer to open the door and share their crazy, unique, or unusual insights. Customer service innovation is about looking for opportunities to add something that delights the customer in an unexpected way. If you involve the customer in this, you get their cool ideas mixed in with your creation, and your customer will be loyal to a product they helped create. [15:55] Curiosity that uncovers insight Curiosity is approaching an inquiry without having any clue where it’s going. Normally, when people do customer interviews or focus groups, they are looking for confirmation of something they already expect. Product managers know better than to ask leading questions, but the expected answers are in their heads. Instead, what if you took a treasure-hunting approach? Invite the customer to be part of the treasure-hunting process, and be curious, not knowing where the process will take you. For example, I worked with a pizza delivery company, and we were getting the same comments from customers again and again because we were focused on their needs and expectations. We switched to focusing on their hopes and aspirations. We asked dreamer questions, like “What’s something that no pizza company does that would be really cool?” Customers imagined having something useful or fun to do with the box—the inside of the lid could be a puzzle or coloring book. Several years later, the company added fun activities to their boxes. That insight only came from demonstrating real curiosity about the customer’s desires. Make your customers feel valued by demonstrating that you are truly curious about their needs. If you can “be the customer,” you will see their world from a different angle. Experience what your customer experiences and demonstrate understanding in your relationship with them, and

How product managers can use visual storytelling to make their ideas stand out As we move into 2021, the name of this podcast is changing to better reflect our objective here—product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. Product managers must communicate their ideas to others in ways that are clear and solicit feedback. Using visuals to help communicate information can be very helpful. Visual tools can make information easy to understand and also place it in context. When it comes to visual information, Amy Balliett is a leader. Her visual communication agency has created thousands of successful information campaigns for Fortune 1000 clients. She speaks on and teaches visual information concepts whenever she can. Today, she joins us so we can understand how simple visual tools can make us better communicators. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:44] How did you end up on the path to becoming the “Queen of Visualizing Information”? In film school I fell in love with visual storytelling. Later I pivoted my career and started my own business, Killer Infographics, creating infographics for online marketing. We evolved from infographics to motion graphics, interactive eBooks, and other visual media. We merged marketing and visual storytelling and drove success by applying what we had learned with infographics—the best practices of visual storytelling—to all these other types of creative content. Visual storytelling makes a huge difference for businesses because audiences want to get to know the brands they’re buying from, but they often don’t want to take the time to read content that delivers authenticity and transparency. We visualize those messages so that audiences will consume them far more often and voraciously. [8:13] You’ve been compared to Edward Tufte, the “King of Visualizing Information.” What are your thoughts on that comparison? To be compared to Tufte is a huge compliment. I’ve followed him from the beginning, and one time I went to one of his workshops and saw that some people were overwhelmed by the pace at which he was sharing information. I wondered how I could share the same content in a way that’s easier to digest. Tufte focuses on visualizing scientific or historical information for an analytical audience. At Killer, I focus on visualizing content to advertise to an audience. We want to make content edgy and exciting while delivering a clear, succinct message. We focus on catching attention very quickly, because today’s audiences have super short attention spans. What would you like to share about your eight rules for visual communication? [11:04] Always think about con-text. It’s a con when there’s too much text. The definition of visual communication is the act of graphically representing information to efficiently and effectively create meaning. A key word is graphically, but 99% of infographics have paragraphs of text next to images. That’s not visual communication. According to brain science, humans take in visual information in one-tenth of a second, but they take over five seconds to take in text-based information. If you have only five seconds to get your viewer to come to a conclusion, use visual content. If they have to read the text to understand the visuals, you’re not visually communicating. A recent study found that articles with images every 75-100 words had two times the engagement of articles that had one image or less. [14:53] Avoid the stigma of stock. It’s not enough to stick unrelated images into your content. Quality visual content is what succeeds online. Ninety-four percent of first impressions are based entirely on design. Lead with quality design, not stock imagery or clip art. Custom illustrations convert seven times better than stock imagery. In today’s world, we all have the tools at our disposal to quickly edit video and photos and create original content. If brands are leading with stock imagery, they’re not even doing what any of us can do. Lead with 100% custom illustration or photography and ensure that all your images have a matching style. Content is king. Visual content is the new king. But quality visual content reigns supreme. Consider using a designer to design quality content for you. [22:19] There’s no gold at the end of the rainbow. Color theory has been debunked. We’re a global society, and colors have different meanings in different cultures. Colors don’t invoke emotions. However, when used wisely colors convey meaning as your viewers start to recognize patterns in the colors you choose. Don’t use an overwhelming rainbow of colors; be minimal with your co

How product managers can innovate throughout the entire product lifecycle As we move into 2021, the name of this podcast is changing to better reflect our objective here—product managers becoming product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. This is the final episode in the series on a product management body of knowledge. Every-other-week starting in episode 307, we have explored the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. PDMA is the longest running professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We end the series by discussing product innovation management, which is the knowledge area for maximizing the return from product innovation through application of sound management practices throughout the product life cycle. Our guest is Jerry Fix, a global Product Management professional who has successfully launched numerous products. He has significant experience managing global organizations to develop and support products and guide the commercialization of products and technologies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:35] What are the key topics addressed in the chapter you wrote, Product Innovation Management? Innovation is a theme woven throughout the Body of Knowledge. We don’t treat innovation as a static event but as a process that winds through the entire new product development lifecycle. This final chapter wraps up the theme of innovation and highlights the idea that innovation should be managed throughout the process. [4:29] What responsibilities and skills do product managers have? I like how Marty Cagan describes the job of a product manager—to discover something valuable, useful, and feasible. Product managers’ main responsibilities are… Understanding the customer experience well. Internalizing a vision and communicating it to others. Assessing and prioritizing processes and activities. Managing pricing and roadmaps. Building business cases. Working with stakeholders. Effective product managers’ key skills are… Understanding the market. Understanding what innovation is. Switching easily between thinking strategically (big picture) and tactically (immediate actions). Being able to explain technical requirements to users and stakeholders. [11:58] What is the product life cycle? The product lifecycle is a curve that describes the stages of a product from the time it’s introduced to the time it’s retired. It includes the areas shown in the graphic. Historically, the introduction, growth, or maturity phases could last years or decades, but today we’re seeing the whole process getting shorter. As technology develops, consumers become more demanding, leading to more new technology, causing consumers to become more demanding, etc. Some product managers aren’t aware that retiring the product is part of the product lifecycle. They say their products never go away, and they have to continue managing them. They’re overextending the maturity phase. During the maturity phase, the product doesn’t change much. You’re generating as much revenue as possible while holding off decline as long as possible. If you extend that phase too far, your competitors will develop alternatives to your mature product, and you’ll miss opportunities for revenue and innovation. [18:08] What should product managers be thinking about as they’re taking a product through its lifecycle? During introduction, product managers are subject experts; during growth, they’re growth hackers; during maturity, they’re retention strategists; and during decline they’re solution seekers. In the growth period, product managers are looking to expand the reach of the product; they’re making sure it’s competitive and ready to scale. Their focus is on supporting as many users as possible while optimizing for the fastest growth possible. During maturity, product managers focus on retaining customers and sustaining their market share. They stay aligned with how the value to the user is evolving. Their goal is to deliver customer satisfaction and customer delight. Reframing a product is a very smart, low-cost way to stay in maturity. For example, Wisk detergent extended their maturity by 30 years simply by reframing their product as a solution to the ring around the collar. [23:09] What metrics should we use for managing product innovation? What gets measured gets managed. If you want to improve something, you have to measure it. If you think of innovation as a singular “ah-ha” moment, you can’t manage it. But if you think of innovation the way PDMA does, as a process woven t

How product managers can understand and solve their customers’ problems This podcast is getting a new name to better align with its purpose of helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. Today is a discussion with a listener who contacted me after hearing episode 304. I sent an email to listeners who are subscribed to receive the show notes in their email box that said, “If you thought your job as a product manager was building products right, think again. In this discussion, Ken Sandy shares why the job of a product manager is not building products right but building the right products.” I admit, I did phrase that to be intentionally thought-provoking. A Chief Product Officer of a global company responded to that message and we began discussing the responsibilities of building the right product and building it right. It’s such an important topic, which is why I invited the CPO to this episode. His name is Narasimha Krishnakumar, and he is the Global CPO for Wind River, a cloud-based IoT company, and he is also an advisor and a product consultant to startups and new ventures. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:16] What are your responsibilities as a Global CPO? At Wind River, we focus on software and tech for edge devices. I oversee product planning, product roadmap, vision, and strategy for our products. We look at the landscape of devices in the market and create innovative solutions for our customers. [4:42] Where do your ideas come from? We look at technology that has already been developed to know what our capabilities are. Ideas come from looking at our customers’ problems and finding ways to solve problems that we aren’t already solving. We consider how market dynamics and changing technology are relevant to our products and the problems we’re solving. We look at what our competitors are doing and understand what our value is and why customers like or don’t like us. It’s also important to think about how solving a problem will affect the business—how will we scale and grow through the products we’ve introduced? [6:56] In the many product management roles you’ve had, what is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned about product management? Product management is all about reducing the number of variables when you’re building a product. Product management begins with the customer problem—Who is the customer? What are you trying to accomplish for them? Why will it benefit them? After you’ve answered these questions, you must figure out how you will build the products. As you make decisions about building the product, make sure that your variables are easy to manage so you can meet the time to market requirements for the product. I was in a situation where we picked brand-new technologies for building a product, and we ended up facing an extreme delay because the technology was not mature. When we drive a product idea through execution, we have to make the right bets about technology choices. Product leaders must assess the risk and make the number of variables manageable. [10:20] What should our focus be—building the right product and/or building products right? We need both—building the right product and building products right. Building the right product starts with looking at your customer problem, market opportunity, and competitive dynamics, and using that information to create a product definition that has a fair chance of successfully solving the customers’ problem. Building the product right means making decisions to solve the customers’ problem. It also includes building a high quality product. While building the product, you will have to make tradeoff decisions. Work collaboratively with engineering teams, quality teams, your DevOps organization, etc., to make sure your product is meeting your customers’ requirements and is high quality. Product managers tend to focus on the market problems and customer problems—the who, the what, and the why. But product managers can also influence the how—determining the best way to build the product. Building the product tends to be an engineering activity, but product managers still have an important role to play. They should get active in the execution process and understand how the product is built. Product managers can also influence how the product is built by setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and quality standards. Effective product managers focus on the who, the what, the why, and the how. They’re curious and have a customer-first attitude. [19:48] Sometimes engineering creates a long-term architecture well beyond what the product is ready for now.

The secret sauce product managers need for success This podcast is getting a new name to better align with its purpose of helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show up in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. This is another episode in the series on a product management body of knowledge curated by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, it is the longest running volunteer-led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. I’ve been publishing this series every-other-week, starting with episode 307, which was an introduction to the body of knowledge. Today we cover topics related to culture, teams, and leadership, which are essential to forming and maintaining an innovative environment that enables, encourages, and rewards product management and innovation processes and practices. Our guest is Dr. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, founder of Global NP Solutions, which helps individuals and organizations learn, adopt, transform, and sustain innovation. Previously, she worked in R&D, process technology development, and as an internal innovation expert at ExxonMobil Chemical Company. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:12] How are Culture, Teams, and Leadership important to product innovation? It’s easy to implement systems, templates, and checklists, but culture, teams, and leadership really make for success. Teams need collaboration, expertise, and autonomy. You need trust among your teams and effective leadership that bridges the gap between strategy and execution. [4:45] What is culture and how does it impact organizations and product teams? You can feel the culture when you enter an organization—an innovative culture or a hindering, bureaucratic culture. The culture teaches how we do things in an organization. It’s how people behave and accomplish the mission. Culture allows a company to understand important qualities such as their risk tolerance, how much they can trust their teams, how much they interact with customers, how they work together, the pace of work, and how they bring an idea to commercialization when there’s risk involved. Culture is the “secret sauce” to unlocking success. [9:20] How does culture relate to strategy? Strategy consists of vision, mission, and values. Vision is who we are as an organization and includes our long-term goals for interactions with our community, employees, and environment. Mission is how we accomplish the vision. Values are the driving behaviors. Culture is closely tied to values because culture includes behaviors that allow an organization to have a reasonable approach to risk, fulfill their mission, and meet their vision. [13:19] What is the importance of teams to innovation? Lone geniuses don’t create spectacular innovations. For innovation, we need teams, particularly cross-functional teams that start together, work together, and launch the product together. Cross-functional teams can take many forms: Functional work groups for depth of innovation Lightweight teams for minor tweaks Heavyweight teams for large innovations Autonomous teams for something brand new Important elements of a successful innovation team include: Trust Autonomy Ability to learn from mistakes and not be punished for them Being close to customers [19:31] How do work styles impacts teammates and team performance? The Z model identifies four categories of preferred work styles: Creators like to come up with ideas. Advancers are good at communicating ideas, interacting with customers, and getting feedback. Refiners are good at making plans. Executors want to get their hands dirty, jump in, and do the work. Teams find that understanding each others’ work styles helps them communicate more effectively, and communication is what makes an innovation team successful. [23:35] What assessments do you use to identify people’s work styles? The Z model from PDMA has a very short assessment that teams can take together. Additionally, I use the DiSC assessment, which has four categories of work styles: dominant, influential, steady, and conscientious. These work styles relate to how people think, their preferred pace of work, and whether they rely on people or data to make decisions. [25:29] What are the characteristics of an effective leader of an innovation team? The DiSC assessment and Z model profiles help leaders build their teams and encourage their team members to understand each others’ work styles. Equally important for leaders is emotional intelligence, which includes: Self-awareness—can come from a DiSC Assessment or Z model profile Self-regulation—being proactive but not reactive, especially when addressing uncertainties Unders

Insights on roadmaps, metrics, OKRs, and more for product managers It is a new year and this podcast is getting a new name. In a few weeks, the name will change to Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming—The Everyday Innovator will be renamed to Product Masters Now. Chief Product Officers (CPOs) have many responsibilities, such as mentoring product managers, defining product strategy, leveraging cross-functional resources, developing products to meet an expected schedule, and more. They use tools to help them with these responsibilities. Joining us for this episode is a CPO who shares some of the tools he uses, including roadmaps, metrics, and OKRs. He knows a lot about tools as he is the CPO for Betterworks, a provider of enterprise OKR and performance management software. His name is Anup Yanamandra. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:58] What are your responsibilities as a Chief Product Officer? My primary responsibility is defining the product strategy for the company. Increasingly, CPOs are also thinking about the user experience strategy. It’s becoming important for CPOs and product managers to dig into data and make decisions based on data rather than pure intuition. In my company, I help with hiring great people across the company and explaining why the company is going to win using its great product vision. Product advocacy, internally and externally, is important for CPOs. [5:42] How do you use roadmaps? I use PowerPoint or Google slides for my roadmaps. I structure these roadmaps very clearly. We start with the company’s high level goal. Then we identify two or three themes that we’re trying to build through the product or portfolio; it’s important to communicate these themes internally and externally. Next, we create individual product ideas. We identify two or three big goals and create a slide for each one. Then we create more detailed slides under each goal, answering the questions, What is the business problem? What is the solution? What is the benefit? The roadmap will be slightly different for a new product than for a product that’s already in the market. When you’re launching a new product, the important questions are, What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Who is the persona that’s going to benefit? What is the core of the problem? When you’re creating a roadmap for a product that’s been in the market for a few years, you need to focus on four different types of problems: How do we generate new sales? How are we helping with renewables? Technology infrastructure as your underlying frameworks change over time. Support tickets that existing customers are logging. Put badges on your slides to show which features address each of these problems. This helps you be clear about why you’re creating each new capability and how it will benefit both your organization and your customer. [14:44] Do you use roadmaps at different levels? As a CPO, I like to have one roadmap slide that gives a high-level picture. I use a 12-18 month roadmap and break it down by quarter. This provides a strong foundation to build a great product. You must have a strong platform to have a successful long-term product strategy. As a CPO, I create a 4-5 page roadmap that highlights two or three goals to accomplish for each quarter. Then each director of a product line develops a more detailed roadmap, about 15 pages. All our roadmaps are available to everyone in our company. We’ve found that the 4-page, high-level roadmap is best to share with customers; once we have a commission, we can share the 15-page, detailed roadmap. [18:00] What metrics do you find useful? Adoption: If no one is going to use the product, what is the point of building it? While you’re building a new feature or product, have in mind four or five customers who would use it right away. Make sure that those customers will pick it up in its first phase. A month or two after the product is out, it should be used by at least 10% of the existing customer base. Every product, feature, and button should be instrumented. We need to know which pages and buttons are being used. If people aren’t using a certain feature, we can find out why. Net Promoter Score (NPS): There are two parts to this: First, we survey the satisfaction of product sponsors who purchase our product, typically just one or two people. Second—and more exciting—we ask end users to rate their experience on each of our pages. We get hundreds of responses every day with specific information, and we connect the responses to a Slack channel that the entire company sees. User feedback can be pretty tough on product managers, but good product managers don’t shy away from it; they want feedback and work to fix problems. Revenue: At the end of the day, people have to purchase your product. You need to be

How product managers can take an idea to a market-ready product This is fourth in the series on a product management body of knowledge I’m doing every-other-week. We are exploring the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, they are the longest running volunteer-led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We started in episode 307 with an introduction to the body of knowledge, explored strategy in episode 309, portfolio management in 311, development process in 313, and now we are discussing Design & Development Tools. These are tools that are used in a product process to move from idea to market-ready product. Our guest is Carlos Rodriguez, who is an associate professor of marketing and quantitative methods and also the director of the Center for the Study of Innovation Management (CSIM) in the College of Business at Delaware State University. He recently published a book, Product Design and Innovation: Analytics for Decision Making. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:36] You contributed to the “Product Design and Development Tools” chapter of the PDMA Body of Knowledge Guide. What is the purpose of that chapter? The purpose is to guide product designers, product developers, marketing managers, and other innovation managers toward selecting the most relevant tools and techniques to take them from the ideation process to getting ready to launch the product. [4:06] What are some Ideation tools you’d like to highlight? Ideation tools are used to generate ideas for products. Storyboarding: Focuses on the development of a story about the consumers’ experience with the product or service. This technique allows us to understand the problems the consumers face in trying to connect with the product. Day in the Life of a Customer: Focuses on the routines, behaviors, and circumstances of users interacting with the product. This allows us to observe consumers’ behavior in natural settings. Journey Maps: Allow us to understand the customers’ process before, during, and after a sale. Recent data show that measuring the journey at the end of the cycle may not be a good indicator of the consumers’ experience. Ethnography: Allows us to find insights we might otherwise miss by observing customers in their environment. [8:41] What are some of your favorite Concept Design tools? Concept design helps us to better understand the value proposition that is meaningful to the consumer. Concept Engineering: Translates the voice of the customers into customer requirements—what exactly is the customer asking us? This technique avoids the mistake of trying to find a solution during the development process. Kano Method: Helps us clarify which attributes of a product are important and which are not, so we don’t waste resources or distract by including features the customer doesn’t value. [16:32] What are your favorite Embodiment Design tools? Embodiment design moves from the basic concept definition to more technical and economic criteria. Functional Analysis: Allows us to draw a map of all the functions that define a product. It’s a useful tool for communicating across cross-functional teams as the designers correct and improve functions. Function Analysis System Technique (FAST) Diagrams: Allow us to set the boundaries of the product. [19:31] What are some of the Initial Design Specification tools? In Initial Design Specification, we move into quantification of all the specific requirements consumers are looking for. These tools ensure the product satisfies the dictates of the design. Let’s be very clear that the design doesn’t belong to the designer; it belongs to the team supporting the new product development process. Design for Functionality Design for Production: Helps us be sure all the elements can be appropriately manipulated in production. Design for Maintenance: Allows us to market to consumers who often want to maintain their own products. Design for Recycling and Reusability: Reminds us to be aware that consumers are increasingly selecting products that are more environmentally-conscious. [21:59] What are some tools for Detailed Design Specification? Detailed DesignSpecification takes us to the details, particular features, and specifications that are important. During design, we need to communicate with other colleagues, and detailed design allows us to connect with engineering. Quality Function Deployment: Allows us to bring in the customer requirements from the Kano method and connect with the technical requirements. It helps us translate the voice of the customer into the language of the technical and engineering team. It allows a comparative analysis of competing products and allows us to define the cost of making modifications. Emotional Design: Helps us think caref

Insights for product managers from an R&D Engineering Director How does an R&D Product Line Director lead the development of products and help to mentor product managers? That’s what I wanted to know when I talked with our guest, Shankar Achanta. He has had a number of engineering product roles at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, which designs and manufactures products for the power industry. Shankar shares several tools for getting ideas for new products along with practical tips for how product managers can frame their ideas and gain support from colleagues as well as leaders. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:30] What are your responsibilities as an R&D Engineering Director? I’m responsible for a large portfolio serving the global energy industry. My role includes vision and strategy for my portfolio projects, as well as executing the strategy by introducing the right products at the right time. I’m also involved in portfolio management. I lead product development teams and product management teams. [2:51] Where do you see ideas for new products coming from? Great ideas come from anywhere in the organization—sales, talking to customers, product development, etc. Recently, my team and I experimented with a three-month Innovation Framework. We brought together product managers and product development leaders to solve difficult problems our customers are having. We let them create self-forming teams, with a maximum of five people per team. After we provided the problem domains, we asked the product managers and product development leaders to read the problem domains and ask us questions in the first one to two weeks and then provide a one-page abstract with all the solutions each team came up with. We saw a lot of participation, and many teams came up with the one-page abstracts. [6:05] How did the product managers and product development managers come to have good insights into the problems that customers encounter? These insights are key for the Innovation Framework to work. The product managers and product development leaders engage with customers at conferences and in one-on-one meetings and get input from the sales organization. Once we have the ideas from this variety of avenues, we compile a list of problems for a particular segment of customers or enhancements to an existing product line. [6:52] What’s an example of the Innovation Framework in action? We had a couple of challenges with our sensors for power lines: They communicate wirelessly, so they need to have a line of sight between the transmitter and receiver, and they need to last for 20+ years. Using the Innovation Framework, one of our engineers solved these problems with a device that repeats the signals and doesn’t need batteries. Once the teams created their abstracts, we selected a few and allowed the team members to use 20% of their time every week to explore those ideas. We found that they spent additional time on their own to come up with solutions, and one team put together a prototype of the sensor. [10:37] How do you select which solutions to pursue? First, we consider how practical the solution is to commercialize. Second, we consider how it fits within the company’s strategy. Third, we consider the effort, technology, and time to create the solution. [15:19] Do you get customer feedback on the solutions being created? Once we have the early prototype, we engage with customers who give us feedback about the solutions. We didn’t engage with a large number of customers because the Innovation Framework was limited to three months, but we got early customer feedback on the ideas, and we had upfront research that we’d already done on the problem domain. [17:06] How can product managers share ideas and draw attention to them? I ask my product managers to think like scientists. You have a hypothesis that your idea solves Problem A by creating Solution B for the Customer Persona C. Fill in the blanks and write down your hypothesis. Then understand and document your assumptions. Answer questions: Is the problem I identified really a problem? Does my proposed solution solve the problem? Does the customer persona want this problem to be solved? If so, are they willing to pay for it? More importantly, are they willing to switch from their existing solution and pay any switching costs? Once you have the answers to these questions documented, show the strategic fit of your problem statement, which is extremely important to get the stakeholder buy-in from the executive level. [20:07] How do product managers frame their ideas to show strategic fit so they can draw attention to their ideas and get resources? We already have a pipeline of existing projects, so when a new idea comes up, we have to choose to either displace or slow down what we’re doing or put the new idea in the backlog. We compare new ideas to the company strategy and to a document that

What product managers need to know about the journey from idea to product This is another episode in the series on the product management body of knowledge I’m doing every other week. We are exploring the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, they are the longest running volunteer-led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We started in episode 307 with an introduction to the body of knowledge, explored strategy in episode 309, portfolio management in 311, and today we are discussing Product Innovation Process. These are the processes and tools for making a product real. Our guest is Jean-Jacques Verhaeghe, who authored the new chapter on process in the PDMA body of knowledge book. He has many years of experience in a variety of senior product roles and is now serving as the Research, Development, and Innovation Program Manager for the Minerals Council in South Africa, with a focus on Digitalization, IoT, AI, and Technology Research. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:24] What is the purpose of product innovation process? Product innovation process takes us on the journey from an idea to putting the product in the customers’ hands. The purpose of process is aligning our organization and team around a common goal. It creates a baseline of consistency and repeatability while allowing for change, and it allows us to balance reward and risk when developing products. [5:22] What is the Product Innovation Charter (PIC)? The front end of product design is uncertain or fuzzy, and the PIC allows us to get what’s in people’s minds into a structured format on paper. It causes the team to think about key elements like the goals and metrics they want to achieve, sustainability factors, the rationale for doing the work, and assumptions that need to be tested. The PIC validates what’s in scope and what’s not and explores the environment. It shows the direction we’re heading. It also elaborates on day-to-day management of the product. Let’s walk through a few product innovation processes. [9:18] Stage Gate The idea behind Stage Gate is managing uncertainty along the journey. Typically, the first stage is about discovering and exploring. Then we reach a gate, which is a decision-making event. The team uses criteria to determine what they need to get out of each stage and how to proceed going forward. The focus of Stage Gate is quality decision making. Stage Gate is very transparent and adaptable. Recently, a methodology has been created combining Agile and Stage Gate; in this methodology, the team always thinks in terms of customer needs. Stage Gate increases team morale and improves communication. People know what to expect; quality decisions can be made and focus is maintained. [14:34] Lean Product Innovation Lean Product Innovation originated in companies like Toyota where eradicating waste in production and innovation is of primary importance. Lean Product Innovation is about gathering information and knowledge as early as possible. It’s unique in that it includes gathering knowledge all the time and incorporating it back into the process of eradicating waste and improving. In this process, the team develops a sense of ownership, so it doesn’t require heavy governance. It does take time for the team to buy into it, but it’s a fantastic way of managing risk, quality, and performance in the long run. It’s also easy to scale. [18:36] Agile Agile is an iterative approach, a quick way of achieving milestones and iteratively checking what’s working and what’s not throughout the life of the product. Agile was made to be done by self-organizing teams who collaborate, share ideas, and develop solutions that fail fast and fix fast. Working in small stages allows you to change plans quickly, so it’s especially useful in an unpredictable environment. You can’t spend too much time on any one phase, so you work in sprints. Agile is underpinned by pillars. One pillar is the interactions of individuals—the team players work in specific roles. Another pillar is the heavy customer involvement in product development. [25:02] What do you tell organizations that want to improve their innovation process? First, evaluate the problem with the existing methodology. Remember that culture is key; it is people who create, ideate, and innovate. Include all the stakeholders on the journey to improving the innovation process, and don’t bring in anyone who would disrupt the process. Be clear about the roles, accountabilities, and responsibilities that everyone has in the process. Be clear about the product—remember that any process is a means to an end. Give the new process time and check it again. Action Guide: Put the information Jean-Jacques shared into action now. Click he

How product managers can empathize with customers and colleagues in five steps You’ve heard it before, product managers need empathy. One way we talk about empathy in our role is “walking in the customers’ shoes,” meaning that we understand the customer, the problem they need solved, or the job they want done. Indeed, product managers who use empathy wisely are more likely to gain customer insights that others miss, leading to products that create more value than competitors and products that customers love. Clearly, empathy is important, but not all product managers have gained this skill, and others are not using it correctly. Our guest, Rob Volpe, will help us use empathy better. He is the CEO of Ignite 360, a consumer insight firm, and a self-proclaimed Empathy Activist. He uses his years of experience in marketing research and promotions to help organizations launch and position better products, including at Kraft Foods, Wild Planet Toys, Pepsi, Sprint, Target, Pinkberry, and many others. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:37] What does empathy mean and why is it important to product managers? Empathy is the ability to see the point of view of another person. That’s important for product managers because if you’re creating a product, you need to understand your customers, how your customers view the world, and how your product is going to solve a problem or do a job for them. Some people are afraid of empathy because it’s an “E” word like emotion, and they’re afraid of their emotions. It’s important to know that there are different types of empathy. The type that’s relevant for innovation and product management is cognitive empathy, which means seeing another person’s point of view. It’s not about feeling their feelings; it stays in the head. Cognitive empathy doesn’t mean sacrificing your belief; it’s just recognizing another way of seeing the world. Affective empathy means having deep emotion, and that can be harder for people to control. Cognitive empathy still includes an emotional component—it’s still below the surface—but affective empathy is deeper. The trick is to marry cognitive empathy and affective empathy. This combination of the head and the heart can create conviction. Empathy helps us understand a problem so we can solve it. [9:07] Tell us about your system, Ignite 360, with five steps to empathy. We created the five steps because we were seeing empathetic failure in our work. Everyone wants empathy, and everyone is born with the trait of empathy, but empathy is in decline, like a muscle that’s atrophied. We need to exercise and focus our empathy. The five steps explain what it takes to get empathy. [12:47] Step 1: Dismantling Judgement Judgement is made up of our biases, stereotypes, and limited experiences. Passing judgement on others is a brick wall you’ll keep running into until you’re aware that you have it. Just recognizing that you have judgement helps. Example of dismantling judgement: I working with a client to talk with customers about food products in convenience stores. One respondent talked about how his brother would take home a pizza from the convenience store and get a second pizza to eat on the way home. Later, my client told me that he felt judgement and was having trouble listening because that seemed crazy to him, but he decided to drop his judgement and then was able to listen and understand. [16:52] Step 2: Asking Good Questions Good questions are exploratory and open rather than closed. Good questions are important in innovation because you don’t know the story someone will tell you; you need to be open and hear what they’re saying. Example of asking good questions: I was interviewing people about soup, and one respondent kept referencing his nephew who had recently passed away. I asked the open question, “Tell me about your nephew,” and we spent 45 minutes having a conversation much richer than we would have just talking about soup. [19:45] Step 3: Active Listening Active listening is not just what you hear with your ears; it’s what you experience with all your senses, including your sixth sense of intuition. It means paying attention and being present in the moment with somebody else. Example of active listening: When I was talking to the man about his nephew, I could feel the nephew’s presence in the room because my intuition was at work. When you’re doing an in-home interview, observe everything in the room. In a conversation, even over Zoom, notice body language and nonverbal cues. Bringing a second person with you to take notes helps you catch all the nonverbal observations. Debrief with that person afterward and talk about what you each noticed. [27:33] Step 4: Integrating into Understanding Integrating into understanding means reconciling others’ beliefs to your belief

What product managers need to know about selecting and managing projects This is the next episode in the series on a product management body of knowledge I’m doing every-other-week. We are exploring the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, they are the longest running volunteer led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We’ve had an introduction to the body of knowledge in episode 307, explored strategy in episode 309, and today we explore portfolio management. Our guest, who also authored the portfolio management chapter of the PDMA BoK book, is Steve Atherton. Steve has over twenty years of professional experience in product management and related roles for some of the world’s largest industrial technology companies. He currently serves as the senior product manager for Fujifilm’s inkjet technology integration group, which designs and produces Nano-technology products for industrial applications. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:23] What is a product portfolio? A product portfolio is a set of products an organization is investing in that have certain trade-offs. Like an investment portfolio, a product portfolio should be balanced and diversified. [3:19] What is the purpose of portfolio management? Choosing the right group of products to achieve balance. Aligning with your business strategy. [4:51] What’s an example of a portfolio that reflects the strategic objectives? All the techniques for developing a portfolio involve metrics that reflect the strategy. For example, if you’ve been working on cash cow products, and you want to be more innovative, you need a metric that captures innovation. That could be a simple pass-fail scoring or a more complex system. [8:21] Who is involved in portfolio management? Cross-functional involvement in portfolio management is very valuable, in order to… Capitalize on the organizational knowledge, allowing business leaders to make decisions by tapping into the knowledge and experience of everyone in the organization. Keep everyone informed and motivated, because they can see how their contribution fits into the big picture. The level of complexity of the portfolio management system needs to line up with the decision-making pace of the organization. In some cases, a simpler system is better than a complex system. Portfolio management includes choosing projects to put into the portfolio and managing projects while we’re working on them. We might slow down a project and use resources for something more important, or we might even kill a project in order to focus on better projects. A facilitator is important to remind people of the context of portfolio management and understand that their individual projects fit together to move the organization forward in the direction aligned with the strategy. We can get protective of our work, so the facilitator helps us be objective and make good business decisions. [16:59] How are portfolios created to reflect the strategy of the organization? One approach is the three horizons. We might put 70% of our money toward making current products better, 20% to adjacent but new areas, and 10% to work that’s really outside the box. A top-down method would be deciding that 80% of any new products must be strongly innovative, or 80% of new product development dollars need to go toward innovative projects. A bottom-up method starts with setting goals. Then your innovation mechanisms come up with ideas, which are reviewed against the goals, and some projects may be cut to align with the goals. If you’re focusing on innovation but have a lot of cash cow projects, you might cut one. Ideally, have a mix of top-down and bottom-up. Allocate portions of your spending to finding projects and opportunities; then have review on top of that. This starts people off the right way and confirms that what’s produced aligns with strategy. It’s all about prioritizing limited resources and deciding how much you can give to each project. [20:57] What are some tools for selecting projects for the portfolio? One of the arts of portfolio management is selecting the right metrics that line up with the goals you’re trying to achieve. There are two broad categories of doing this. To use judgement-based criteria, choose a criteria that aligns with your strategy, and assess projects based on a simple high/medium/low or pass/fail test. If you’re trying to do more innovative projects, judge whether a proposed project stretches you to be more innovative. The other option is more sophisticated metrics like engineering economics, financial metrics, or return on investment. You must pick the right metric that aligns with your strategy and has the appropriate level of complexity for your organization. If you’re starting a portfo

Lessons on innovation and product management from the pandemic Dr. Joseph Michelli is a returning guest, having previously brought us insights for creating incredible customer experiences with products and services in episodes 147 and 251. Much has changed in 2020. It is not the year we expected. The adversity has created a need for resilience. Some product managers have responded to the challenge, making pivots and finding value where it had not previously existed. Many organizational leaders have learned on the fly how to navigate the challenges. We can learn from the leaders who have been successful and that is what Joseph will help us with. He talked with over 140 global business leaders, includes leaders at Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Feeding America, United Way, Verizon, Southwest Airlines, and many more. He compiled the timely lessons-learned in a new book, Stronger Through Adversity. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:47] Tell us about the product journey of your newest book, Stronger Through Adversity. In the beginning of 2020, I was scheduled to write a book about the success of the chocolate company Godiva, but COVID put that project on pause. Meanwhile, I was working with other clients on positioning their products for survival through the pandemic, and I asked leaders, “How are you even trying to approach this?” I realized a lot of people are struggling and doing their best, and maybe we can learn something from them. I decided to create a new book about how leaders are coping with adversity. We needed the book to come out in 2020 to be relevant, so I interviewed 140 leaders and expedited my process to write in six weeks what I would normally write in six months. [8:58] What have you learned about managing uncertainty? A lot of C-suite leaders weren’t used to dealing with uncertainty. For example, Marriott was trying to figure out how to deal with an environment in which no one was staying in hotels. Microsoft Teams had to figure out how to scale and service their product when its application was far greater than they had anticipated. Leaders tried to grab on to something they could rely on. Sometimes that was consumer data, which is part of the iterative design process product managers are already familiar with, but now they had to do it on warp speed. They were agile beyond agile, and for a lot of brands that’s just not part of their DNA. These leaders had to follow the terrain. They had a roadmap they were used to following, but suddenly their roadmap and the terrain diverged. The changing environment made it so that they could no longer act on the timelines that the roadmap specified. When the roadmap and terrain diverge, you must watch the terrain vigilantly. We saw companies doing more sampling of teammates and consumers. They were very focused on the data in front of them and responded to the environment rather than thinking about the roadmap. [14:53] What have you learned about rapid innovation? Many organizations became myopic, just trying to hold on and not looking for opportunities. A few organizations invested in the opportunities they saw in adversity. In the book, I talk about the leadership style in a wild horse herd, which has an alpha mare leading in the front, an alpha sire in the back, and some horses within the herd that shape its behavior. Sometimes leaders have to be out front; they have to be visionaries, lay out the strategy, and go beyond the boundaries. Other leaders stay in the back, encouraging and moving the pace of the pack; they don’t lead their team through the struggle, but they know their team can innovate solutions. Often the leaders in the middle of the herd make it happen; they roll up their sleeves and become part of the action teams, thinking through problems together. [18:54] What’s an example of a personal transformation of a leader? The CEO of Farmer’s Insurance, Jeff Dailey, shared with me that he has become more vulnerable and humble than he had ever been before COVID. He apologized to his entire organization for not listening to his team about an opportunity for innovation they could have taken. He would not have imagined publicly apologizing before COVID. His engagement scores among employees went up meteorically. People don’t like to follow perfect people. If you’re authentic and vulnerable, admit your mistakes, and show that you use reasonable judgement, most people will follow you because they know that you’ll permit them to be imperfect as well. Similarly, the FTD Flowers CEO was appointed during COVID, and his message to his team was “No hiding bad news.” He was concerned that people didn’t know him well enough to know that it was okay to tell the truth about the good, the bad, and the ugly. How can we make things better if we don’t recognize where the problems are? [25:21] How do we take care of ourselves when “normal” is r

The importance of an organizational game plan for product managers I started a new series to explore the Product Development and Management Body of Knowledge. While it has since been updated many times, this is the body of knowledge I discovered in 2007 that led to many ah-ha moments for me as a product manager. It gave me a framework for integrating what a product manager does, and I have since taught it to many other product managers. Every-other-week we are exploring one of the 7 knowledge areas. Today we are discussing strategy. This is the foundation for product managers as organizational strategy impacts product strategy. By aligning the two, we create more value for the organization and accelerate our careers in the process. Our guest is Dr. Allan Anderson, past chairman of PDMA and the person who led the development of the first and second editions of the Body of Knowledge. He has had a long career in product management, primarily in food products, and is professor emeritus at Massey University New Zealand. He also joined us two weeks ago, providing an overview of the entire Body of Knowledge. Today, we focus on strategy. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:28] What is strategy? Strategy is an organization’s game plan for achieving its long term objectives in light of its industry position, opportunities, and resources. Strategy defines and communicates an organization’s unique position and says how organizational resources, skills, and competencies should be combined to achieve competitive advantage. Strategy positions the company in a way that it can use its resources and competitive advantage to achieve its specific goals as defined by the company. [14:16] What is organizational identity? Organizational identity is a statement of what the organization stands for and why it exists. It’s important to communicate this identity to the whole company. Organizational identity is a key element in creating the environment and underpinning, long-term culture of a company. You must develop organizational identity from a personal perspective within your company. Don’t just copy a vision statement from someone else; make it real for your company and the people involved in your company. [19:33] What is innovation strategy? Innovation strategy is embedded in overall business strategy. Innovation strategy is achieving the goals of the company using your resources to achieve competitive advantage, focused around product innovation. [20:46] What are some innovation strategy frameworks? Porter framework Miles & Snow Landscape model Business canvas None of these frameworks does the job on its own, so you can use them in combination. Innovation strategy provides the basis for selecting the right portfolio. [24:37] What is Open Innovation, and why do you include it in the Strategy section of the Body of Knowledge (BoK)? The definition from the book—Open Innovation is the strategy adopted by an organization whereby it actively seeks knowledge from external sources through alliances, partnerships, and contractual arrangements to complement and enhance its internal capability in pursuit of improved innovation outcomes. In other words, seeking knowledge outside the walls of the organization to meet the business goals. In my opinion, Open Innovation is a strategy because it’s something an organization employs to achieve its goals. [27:16] What is Sustainability, and how is it addressed in the Strategy section? Sustainability means doing innovation that is profitable and environmentally responsible and takes care of employees and the community. The first edition of the BoK covered Sustainability under lifecycle management. In the second edition, we decided to distribute Sustainability topics across the book. Sustainability is part of strategy because it should be part of your mission and vision, but we also cover Sustainability in other sections. We’re highlighting the importance of Sustainability by showing that it’s part of the innovation process all the way from strategy to delivering products. Action Guide: Put the information Allan shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Allan on LinkedIn Catch up on the first episode of the PDMA BoK series, TEI 307 Innovation Quotes “Product innovation is the lifeblood of companies.” – Unknown “We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think.” – Lord Ernest Rutherford Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator 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