Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

Tips on driving innovation within organizations for product managers and leaders Our guest says that organizations need pirates. These are the people who make entrepreneurship a legitimate part of the business. They are the innovators and transformers. Pirates design value propositions and business models that scale. Our guest’s name is Dr. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer, helping companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books, and his latest book is Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:46] Tell us about the title of your book, Pirates in the Navy. Steve Jobs said it’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy. The idea was that large companies are slower than startups, and he compared the team that built the Macintosh computer to pirates because they were working on a breakthrough technology. However, today, innovation has become really important in large organizations. It’s no longer better to be a pirate than to join the navy. Instead, it’s time for organizations to think about how they can create pirates in the navy. [3:01] Who are the pirates? If pirates get found, they walk the plank, so you don’t want to be a pirate like Steve Jobs, who was antagonistic to his own company and eventually had to leave Apple. Instead, make innovation a legitimate part of your company. Bring in aspects of entrepreneurs like innovation, confidence, testing assumptions, focusing on the market, and making sure you generate revenue, but don’t bring in aspects like ego, brashness, vanity, or overconfidence. Good pirates are a mixture of great innovator and great political acumen. Another analogy is privateers. Privateers were pirates who were paid by a country to complete a task. Many of them became explorers. You want to be a privateer or an explorer because someone sent you and is invested in your success. [ 8:18] Your book discusses innovation labs. What’s an example of a successful innovation lab? In innovation, we care about combining great ideas with sustainably profitable, scalable business models that create value. In an innovation lab, you need to be engaged in innovation, not innovation theater that looks like innovation but isn’t really creating value. One of my favorite examples of a successful innovation lab is at Intuit. Their lab is connected to their global organization, allowing people to be privateers within their company. Their program Design for Delight provides corporate coaches and allows employees to spend 15-20% of their time in the lab working on ideas. Intuit has been successful with their innovations because they’ve been focused on creating value. [13:49] What do we need to do to be more innovative? We need authenticity. The biggest challenge we have with innovation is that there are a lot of myths and behaviors that aren’t really productive. People blame their organizations, but that’s only 50% of why innovation doesn’t succeed. The other 50% is that innovators are much more interested in looking innovative rather than working on things that create value. [15:41] What should we do to be good pirates? First, care about creating real value. Think about the value you’re creating for customers, the value proposition, and the business model you’re going to use to take that value proposition to scale. There’s no chance an innovator can ever work on a product and launch it without collaborating with other key functions in the business. The question is, As an innovator, what agreements can you make as you’re working on your project that will allow you to succeed in the future? Many innovation teams try to avoid communicating with other teams as much as possible until they feel they’re ready, but then when they reveal their product no one else cares because they never knew it was happening. While you’re doing your work, you must also build bridges back to the core. Make connections with sponsors, legal and compliance, finance, etc. [18:25] What do you think about innovating in secret? Some teams innovate in secret because otherwise their innovation would be seen as too risky and be killed. However, successful teams always have a leader in on the secret—the CEO, CFO, head of marketing, etc. The leader helps protect the idea and navigate across hurdles. Another way to innovate, which I prefer, is to create a methodology, teams, and leaders for innovation management before ideas come up. Some people say that companies shouldn’t have an innovation department because innovation should be everywhere, but we need expertise to manage a systematic methodology that’s driven throughout the organization. The challenge for companies in the 21st century is to have an entrepreneurial function inside the organization whose job is to build the infrastructure and

Discover the smorgasbord of tools for product managers and innovators This is a little longer introduction than normal and there is a good reason for it, so bear with me for a moment. In 2007 I sat in a small conference room with 12 other people. We were there to prepare for the New Product Development Professional certification from PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. I wanted to learn what PDMA, the longest running professional association for product managers and innovators, said about product management. Studying for the NPDP certification was my way to accomplish this. Seeing how they organized the many aspects of product management and made connections between them was a huge ah-ha moment for me. It connected the work I had been doing for many years and filled in holes in my knowledge and experience. I saw my work more clearly and even more holistically. Needless to say, it had a huge impact on me. I found it so helpful, that after earning the NPDP certification, I created a virtual training program to help others learn the body of knowledge as well and earn the certification. Coupled with a PhD in Innovation, that is what got me started teaching product and innovation management. PDMA’s body of knowledge is updated every three years now. It reflects relevant practices, tools, processes, and concepts that the best organizations use based on the most credible research and the deep knowledge of expert practitioners. It has only been in the last few years that we’ve had the body of knowledge represented in a single book. Previously, the Body of Knowledge was expressed as a collection of many books and numerous articles. Now, the key elements of the knowledge are published in Product Development and Management Body of Knowledge: A Guidebook for Training and Certification. The second edition was published this summer, and I had the pleasure of reviewing it and providing editorial feedback; previously, I helped write portions of the first edition. This is the start of an 8-part series to explore the Body of Knowledge. I’m publishing the series every-other week, with interviews on other topics in between. Each part of the series is with one of the 7 authors who contributed to the second edition. Today we are joined by 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. I hope you enjoy exploring the PDMA Body of Knowledge and find it as helpful to your career growth as I did. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [4:07] Chad’s story of his lightbulb moment with PDMA. While I was earning my PhD in innovation and working as a software project manager, I needed help with product management, and I stumbled across PDMA, the Product Development and Management Association. PDMA is a non-profit that has curated the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators since 1976. PDMA gave me a network of others doing product management and allowed me to gain insights from people across industries. I studied for the New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification, and that was such a lightbulb moment for me that I now train others to earn the certification. At that time, the body of knowledge was a collection of books and articles, but now, thanks to Allan’s efforts, it has been codified into a book, allowing people to get their hands around the material much more easily. [7:05] Alan’s story of his involvement with PDMA. I’ve been in product management my entire career, in many roles, but I didn’t even know much about PDMA until around 2007. I got involved when a colleague and I set up a PDMA chapter here in New Zealand. Since then I’ve been to every international conference since 2008, and I’ve been in nearly every role in PDMA, including president. When I first got involved in PDMA, I thought I knew everything about product development and didn’t need a certification, but I took the exam anyway, mostly to encourage my colleagues to do it. Two problems I encountered led to creating the book. First, many of the books and articles that contained the body of knowledge at the time were written in the U.S. and included American terms that were confusing to a global audience. Second, several of those books and articles were out of print, difficult to find, or challenging to read. I created the book as a single, 350-page reference book, making it much easier for people around the world to take the NPDP exam. [10:37] What is PDMA? PDMA is the only professionally-based product innovation organization globally. It’s made up of people from all areas of product innovation, across 17 countries, with difference experiences, ideas, and backgrounds in product innovation. For me, after 40 yea

Simple steps product managers can take to become Time Rich Would you like to get more done? Product managers are pulled in many directions, and if you are like others, you struggle to get the most important things done, let along everything you are asked to do. Our guest knows a lot about this. He was an intrapreneur in large organizations. He got tired of being “busy” all day and having little to show for it. When he started his own company, he needed to learn how to actually work, and what he learned was how to get twice as much done in half the time. That is something I want, and I bet you do, too. He is still involved in innovation, as he co-founded Collective Campus, a corporate innovation accelerator. His name is Steve Glaveski and we discuss his system for getting more accomplished in less time. He also has written about the system in his recent book, Time Rich. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:17] How did you create your system to get twice as much done in half the time? When I worked for large corporations, I and my coworkers had little incentive for greater efficiency, but when I started my own company, I became intentional about creating an organization where people walk away from their work fulfilled. I found that I was fulfilled on days when I got high-value work done. We ran an experiment to try to double our output or at least keep it consistent while having only a six-hour work day. The time it takes to complete a task expands or contracts in proportion to the time we are given to do it. Having a six-hour work day forces us to focus on high-value tasks and figuring out how to outsource or automate low-value tasks. [6:10] How does your Time Rich system contrast with The 4-Hour Work Week? The 4-Hour Work Week had a significant impact on my life, but Time Rich is different. The 4-Hour Work Week focuses on making the leap from employee to entrepreneur, but my system is for individuals working either for themselves or as part of a team, and for leaders of organizations looking to build Time Rich cultures. A lot has changed since The 4-Hour Work Week was published in 2007. We have more distractions; today the average person spends four hours a day, or eight weeks a year, looking at their smartphone. Picking up the phone every few minutes gets us out of the flow state, where we’re up to five times more productive than when we’re doing shallow work. [9:59] In order to become Time Rich, what behaviors should we avoid? Saying yes to too much: Some people say they’re time-poor, but they’re really decision-poor—they are saying “yes” to things they should be saying “no” to. Saying “yes” to every opportunity means saying “no” to your goals. Distractions: Even a distraction of one tenth of a second can lead to a 40% productivity loss over the course of the day. Glancing at a notification on your phone takes you out of flow, and your intense focus fades away. The average person spends three hours per day checking email; we are efficient at responding to other people’s demands on our time but not at prioritizing our time. Residual work: We might spend a day putting together a proposal but then spend two days tweaking the wording and formatting. We’ve created 95% of the value the first day, but it’s much easier to spend two more days tweaking than to move on to the next difficult thing that requires thinking and focus. The best way to get started on difficult work is to take the smallest possible step. Commit to reading one page; then it’s easier to read the whole chapter. [17:40] What behaviors should we start doing? Follow my acronym P-COATS. Prioritize: Focus on the highest value tasks. The 80/20 Principle says that the top 20% of your tasks create 80% of the value. If you have ten tasks to complete, chances are the top two or three are way more valuable than the other seven. If you only get those top tasks done, you have won the day. Prioritize tasks by determining the value on a scale of one to ten and dividing by the cost in time. If you find a task that is not aligned with your strengths, you might want to outsource it to free yourself to do tasks that you enjoy and are good at. Cut: Eliminate tasks that aren’t worth doing. Every quarter, my team and I draw four quadrants labelled “start,” “stop,” “more,” and “less.” We reflect on tasks, customer segments, product features, etc., and write down what’s working and what’s not. Writing this down on a quarterly basis will help you avoid getting stuck in the habit of doing the same old things. Outsource: Use external contractors to do work. Nowadays, organizations can achieve more with fewer full-time permanent employees because the cost of finding, onboarding, and working with quality resources for complex work has gone way down. You can outsource not only rud

How product managers can create product names that make people smile Not many product managers get involved in naming products, and that is a mistake. If you were involved during the initial idea work and problem solving—creating a product concept that fulfills customers’ unmet needs—then you have valuable insights for the product name. You can be a great brainstorming resource to help Marketing or a naming consulting. That is, if you know the attributes of a great name, how to avoid naming mistakes, how to use a creative brief, and how to effectively brainstorm. Those topics and more are in a new book titled Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick. The author is Alexandra Watkins and she joins us to discuss many of these topics so you can become a product naming champ. Alexandra has created names or renamed many brands and products you would recognize, including the Wendy’s Baconator. She has many great tips for us that take the mystery out of naming. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:59] What are the SMILE elements of a good name? SIMLE is an acronym for the five qualities that make a name great. Suggestive—your name suggests what your product is; the name doesn’t have to be descriptive, just suggestive of a positive brand experience. Memorable—a name is memorable if it is based in the familiar; for example, the bike lock Kryptonite is based on the familiar kryptonite from Superman. Imagery—when someone sees your product name, they have something to picture in their head; for example, the energy drink Bloom gives you a picture to imagine. Legs—your name lends itself to a theme, which is great for brand extensions; for example the Scrub Daddy sponge expanded to Scrub Mommy and Caddy Daddy. Emotional—your name makes an emotional connection, which can help you command a premium price; for example, you might buy a bottle of wine you’ve never tried before because you connect emotionally with the name. [9:50] What are some examples of product names that deliver all the qualities of SMILE? Silk Almond Milk—it suggests that it’s rich, creamy, silky smooth; it’s memorable because we’re familiar with silk; we can picture something silky; the connection between milk and silk gives it legs; and it makes an emotional connection with something luxurious. Retriever GPS for dogs Wendy’s Baconator The Church of Cupcakes Suppose Anne is a product manager trying to come up a with a great name for a new pool cleaner. What advice would you give her? [13:00] Creative Brief First, we would fill out a creative brief. This includes: Background information on the product, target audience, and desired brand experiences. Styles of names that Anne and her team like and styles they don’t like. Tone and personality of the name—is it a pool cleaner for millionaires or for families with kids? The creative brief is your brand name roadmap that helps you keep on strategy while you’re going through the naming process and helps you know at the end whether your name meets all your needs. [14:57] Kickoff Meeting Next, we’ll do a kickoff meeting with the team. We discuss words that Anne and her team might like to have in the name, perhaps clear, sweep, or speed. We also explore themes like less energy or quiet. [16:11] Brainstorming We brainstorm name ideas. I look for metaphors, parallels, and things that are unexpected. Let’s say we’re focusing on speed. I would look up lists of things that are fast, maybe names of power boats. I use the internet to search and dig deep. As another example, I was naming an athleisure clothing brand for a client who like mixed martial arts, so I looked for lists of movie fight scenes. I skimmed the lists and saw the name “stunt double,” and that was the name. [21:32] What do you think of making names by mashing together foreign words? I’m not a fan. It’s the go-to for a lot of people—using a word from another language that relates to their product. Foreign names are foreign to customers, and you want your name to be approachable, friendly, and easily pronounceable. [24:20] This podcast is named The Everyday Innovator, because it’s for people who think about innovation all the time. However, my core audience is product managers. How could I come up with a better name? The Everyday Innovator is approachable and aspirational, but if you wanted to focus more on product managers, put the word product in your name. My first go-to with any naming assignment is alliteration. I would look up words that start with P. You could be the Product People Podcast. You want to include interesting words, although not too many. Product by itself isn’t very interesting, but Product People is. We all want to find our people. Product People Podcast fits all the qualities of SMILE. Action Guide: Put the information Alexandra shared into action now. Click here to download the

How product managers can discover customer needs and build the right product I’m often asked by product managers on their journey to product master what books they should read. I have a new one to recommend. It covers a broad perspective helpful to less experienced product managers all the way to those who are leading other product managers. It covers: How to think like a product manager, How to have influence in an organization, Several specific tactics that extend from idea through product launch, and A plan for structuring your career growth. The book is The Influential Product Manager and it was written by our guest, Ken Sandy. Ken has over 20 years of experience in technology product management. He served as VP of Product Management at online education companies, MasterClass and lynda.com, and is currently an advisor for startup and scale-up companies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [8:07] How can we discover customer needs? It’s so important for product managers to not outsource the most important part of their job—engaging with customers. The product manager’s job is not to build the product right. It’s to build the right product. How are you going to know what the right product is unless you spend time with your customers and understand their problems? Value both qualitative and quantitative research. Quantitative helps you find market opportunities, spot trends, and know what customers are doing with your product. Qualitative gives you nuggets of insight about the underlying root needs. Don’t overlook qualitative research. Discovery is long-term process of both getting into the data and going out into the market. Don’t make customer discovery harder than it needs to be. If you think you need a time-consuming, expensive process, you’re going to do it less often. Instead, incrementally learn new things, using what you have. Do customer discovery early, often, and inexpensively. Focus on a few hypotheses at a time and meet many customers over a long period of time. All the little things add up to really big things. [17:07] How have you seen organizations change after developing a more customer-focused culture? In one organization, product managers were emboldened by having data about customers, and they built the confidence to tell the founder when he was wrong. He gained confidence in them because they had the context to make better decisions. I’ve seen a lot of success with exposing people throughout the organization, not just product managers, to customer discovery. Share the experience throughout the organization so that you all have empathy. It creates common language, a sense of purpose, commonality. There may be resistance, but it’s very impactful. [20:18] How do we move from customer insights to developing the right product (specification)? There’s a big gap between understanding your customers’ needs and encapsulating that into something useful your team can build into a solution. Discovery and specification are parallel processes that should both be happening constantly. First, you must immerse yourself in the problem space. Devel0p a shared understanding of the problem and your constraints. Agree on what success will look like. It’s challenging to not jump to solutions. If you think you have an understanding of the problem, you probably don’t. You might be working on the wrong problem. Zoom out and understand the true problem. If you don’t spend time creating shared context with your team, you risk de-motivating your team. You don’t want them questioning why the product is valuable or why they’re putting time into it. Without agreement at the beginning about what success looks like, you could roll out a product you think is really successful and find your stakeholders completely unhappy with it. If you are clear with your goals, you’re setting yourself up to inspire and empower your team. [26:50] How do we communicate the criteria for success? There are different ways to communicate success requirements (one template is in my book), but all templates should include five critical elements: Written hypothesis: Articulate your goal as a learning outcome. Even if you’re wrong, it’s okay because you’ll still learn. Measurable outcome: Identify the metric in the business or customer-centric metric you’re trying to drive forward. If that metric is lagging or hard to measure, develop some leading indicators that you can measure more quickly. I often write these measures as success criteria. Be clear on constraints in a useful way: Start with solving a smaller problem. You might want to eventually apply your solution broadly, but start with a small audience or one product. Be clear on your jobs to be done and user stories for the target customer. Share only potential solution approaches. Leave it open for the team to collaboratively come up with the a

How product managers can increase team performance by understanding Team Dimensions The only thing better than hearing about how an organization improved their product management and innovation capability is sharing it with The Everyday Innovators! I was talking with Teresa Jurgens-Kowal about innovation culture and she shared some work she recently did with an organization that is building their ability to innovate products. The company is a B2B software developer. She took them through exercises to explore their work styles and better align their styles to the execution needed using the Innovation Z model. We discussed the tools to do this. Teresa is the President of Global NP Solutions. She has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and has advised several organizations, helping them grow by improving their new product development capabilities. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:35] Take us through your case study of helping an organization apply the Team Dimensions Model. I worked with the eight-person innovation group of a company that develops software for scheduling at hair salons and yoga studios. The company has grown rapidly, the team has an open culture, and they love their customers, but they were at the point in their growth where they needed to learn how to manage conflict, increase communication, and do more than templates, procedures, and processes. Successful companies dig deep into teams and leadership. I help them with functional team building, starting with the Team Dimensions Model. We begin with a short assessment of the behaviors of team members. We identify four categories of work styles based on combinations of spontaneous, normative, methodical, and conceptual behaviors: Creators are spontaneous and conceptual. They’re good at creating new ideas. Advancers are spontaneous and normative. They focus on interactions and transform ideas into procedures and processes. Refiners are conceptual and methodical. They turn ideas into plans. Executors are normative and methodical. They like data and getting work done. [7:02] Why is it important in innovation to have the right mix of people doing the right things? Understanding the culture of the company and how teams interact is transformative in creating a high-functioning team. Digging into teams and leadership transforms teams from creating one successful innovation to creating ten or twelve or fifty successful innovations. When you can match people’s preferred work styles to the different steps in your innovation process, you have a higher level of success. There are many innovation processes, but they all have the same four steps, each of which corresponds to one of the four work styles: Generate ideas—creators focusing on possibilities Build support—advancers focusing on interactions Plan a project—refiners focusing on analysis Execute the work—executors focusing on realities This plan is called the Z Model because it can be sketched like the letter Z. [12:22] What are some examples of why identifying team members’ work styles is useful? I was on a volunteer team with a tight deadline, and we discovered that everyone was a creator. We had only two months to get ready for an event, but everyone kept going backwards and presenting new ideas. We had to realize that while we preferred creating, the team had to execute, so we needed to put on our execution hats and focus on that. That mindset shift helped us move toward the deadline. On the software development team of the case study, we plotted a graph of the eight team members’ work styles and realized that we didn’t have a person who worked between creator and advancer. However, we realized that they were filling that gap through talking with customers in customer focus groups. Generally, you want to have a distribution of creators, advancers, refiners, and executors. If you don’t, you need to figure out how to get the missing input into the team. [14:37] How did the Team Dimensions model help the company in your case study? The team shared their work styles with each other, and using that information we discussed which person should be in each role. They were using Scrum, so we identified which person would be best for each step of Scrum. We found that some people were already in great roles, and there were some mismatches, so by swapping roles were were able to get the team better aligned. [20:26] What were some of the reflections of the team members? “I have begun to talk and respond to my coworkers differently.” “[I] make use of the different work styles to more effectively communicate with my coworkers.” “Good job of helping us find ways to tie into our existing process and encapsulate people or steps in the process.” “I know who I can leverage for help when I find myself struggling with a task.” “Not only does this help me understand my coworkers, but when I went home, I understoo

What product managers need to know to build a product into a successful company When I’m working with a group of product managers to help them move towards product mastery, I always ask them to introduce themselves by sharing what they love about product management. Among the numerous answers, in the last year the most frequent response is to create value for customers. Many product managers also aspire to create their own group to accomplish this, whether it is as an intrapreneur inside an organization or as an entrepreneur founding their own company. Product managers make the best founders. To explore what being a founder involves, I had a discussion with Ryan Frederick. He is a product manager and founder and now helps software companies build great products. He has put his lifetime of experience into a book titled The Founder’s Manual, and we discuss the key strategies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:46] Tell us about your book, The Founder’s Manual. I wrote the book to increase awareness about what it’s like to become a founder of your own company. There are a lot of similarities between building a product inside a company and starting your own company. I structured the book in three sections, Founder Flow, Startup Flow, and Product Flow. I address the human aspect of being a founder; I discuss building a successful product; and I talk about how to commercialize that product into a successful company. Flow is a state of higher productivity achieved by understanding the principles that allow you to perform at your best. [6:17] Let’s walk through a scenario. Suppose Lisa is a product manager who has an idea that her company isn’t interested in, so she decides to strike out on her own. Where should she start? The first thing I would say to Lisa is that she needs to look at herself as a problem solver. Entrepreneurs are problems solvers. They start with the hypothesis that they can solve the problem they’ve identified. The entrepreneurial life is a series of unending problems and obstacles. We aren’t wired to run to problems, but we need to learn to run to the fire. Lisa needs to get in the mental and emotional state not only to create her product as a solution to her customer’s problem, but also to solve the problems of getting her enterprise up and running. [9:39] Let’s talk about Founder Flow. What are some of the ways Lisa can embrace the entrepreneurial mindset to face problems? When deciding to become an entrepreneur, Lisa needs to understand her risk tolerance financially, emotionally, physically, and mentally. She’s coming out of a successful career, so she needs to ask herself, If my enterprise doesn’t work, am I okay with that? You can figure out your risk tolerance by taking incrementally riskier chances and tracking how you react. An easy way to start is by doing something physically challenging and uncomfortable, like taking rock climbing lessons, and tracking your progress over time. A lot of people take the entrepreneurial step without having ever assessed their relationship to risk, and then they’re in uncharted territory when they face risk as an entrepreneur. Instead, understand your risk tolerance first. It’s also important that Lisa’s personal life is ordered. If she starts a company while she’s experiencing personal stress, it’s super challenging to make it work. No one is an entrepreneur on their own, but it’s often a lonely journey. You have team members, partners, friends, and family who are going through it with you, but being an entrepreneur is consuming, and others may not understand what you’re doing and why. At the beginning you’ll feel like it’s you against the world, so it’s important to find a community of other founders you can relate to so you can support and guide each other. [20:50] Let’s talk about Startup Flow. What should Lisa be expecting and working on next? When they’re trying to commercialize a company, people often start looking for crutches. They struggle to get funding from investors, and they don’t realize that the best funding is customer funding because it proves that customers value what you’re doing. Because customers can be complicated, founders often don’t pursue customer funding as much as they could. There’s no better way to get other investors to pay attention than to have customers already paying you to solve their problem. Consider converting an early customer into a strategic investor. Find a customer who is paying for your product and ask if they are interested in becoming a strategic investor and taking a royalty or equity in exchange. It might be hard for Lisa to ask a customer to become an investor because she might be afraid of losing them as a customer, but customers make good investors because they already value your product. [25:25] What do you thi

Five behaviors of great product managers and innovators In this discussion we visit two topics—one to help you be more successful personally and another to help your organization be more successful. The first examines five behaviors to be a better innovator. The second is breaking through barriers in your organization that limit innovation and the effectiveness of product managers. Our guest for this discussion is Scott Anthony, a Senior Partner at Innosight, based in the firm’s Singapore office. If you are unfamiliar with Innosight, this is the innovation consultancy created by Clayton Christensen, the father of disruptive innovation and Harvard Business School professor. The insights that Scott shares with us are from a new book he co-authored with a title that is perfect for this podcast—Eat, Sleep, Innovate. As Everyday Innovators, we see innovation opportunities each day, and that notion is conveyed well in the Eat, Sleep, Innovate title too! Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [4:28] How do you define innovation? Innovation is something different that creates value. It’s purposely a broad definition. “Something” can be more than just new products or technology; it can also be new ways to market, new ways to organize meetings, etc. “Different” reminds us that while big leaps forward are great, you can also make something different by simplifying or making it more accessible. “Creates value” means that innovation isn’t just the idea; you have to do something with it to increase revenue, profits, engagement, etc. [5:04] What are the five basic behaviors of innovators? Curious—questioning status quo Collaborative—if you want a great idea, you need to work at the intersections Customer-obsessed—so you can find problems worth solving Adapted to ambiguity—because every idea is partially right and partially wrong Empowered—you can’t innovate until you go and do something [5:35] What are some hacks for being better innovators? [5:47] Hacks for being curious: Make it a regular habit to ask prompting questions that can open up avenues for innovation. Stay positive. Reframe worries as opportunities. [8:37] Hacks for being collaborative: When you’re solving a problem, find someone who’s already solved it. You might find a source related to a different context, but once you have inspiration you can bring it to your context. [10:53] Hacks for being customer-focused: Increase the amount of time you spend with customers. If you don’t understand what your customer values, you run the risk of innovating for innovation’s sake; you’ll come up with something cool that no one cares about. Great innovators have an empathetic understanding for the person they’re trying to serve. Understand the job they’re trying to get done or the problem they’re having. Use the many available tools to help you understand the problems you’re solving. [13:25] Hacks for being adapted to ambiguity: Follow an emergent strategy, meaning you discover truth through controlled experimentation. Early in innovation, your idea will be a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and you won’t know which part is which. The tendency is to solve this analytically, but you’ll make assumptions and miss something. Instead, recognize the few things you know and the many assumptions you’re making, and find the most effective and efficient way to experiment. Experiments don’t have to be complicated. Look for low-risk ways to test your idea. Create models or simulations. [18:11] Hacks for being empowered: Ask forgiveness, not permission. Figure out how to do stuff in a scrappy way in a constrained environment. Get other people behind you by telling the story of why your idea is compelling. [22:06] What are tools for overcoming barriers to innovation? Defeat the shadow strategy with BEANs. The shadow strategy comes from institutionalized inertia, which is the enemy of innovation. Innovation is doing something different that creates value, but organizations aren’t wired to do something different; they’re wired to do what they are currently doing better. They perpetuate today rather than create tomorrow. Even if your intended strategy is to do completely different things, the shadow strategy is causing you to make decisions to keep doing the same thing. Defeat the shadow strategy by planting a BEAN—a behavior enabler, artifact, and nudge. A behavior enabler is a tool that helps you consciously think about changing your behavior—it could be a ritual, checklist, or community. Artifacts and nudges remind you to change behaviors that you do without thinking. In our book, we have 101 different BEANs that encourage innovative behaviors. Some of my favorite BEANs are: [25:28] Adobe Kickbox: Participants in the Kickbox program get a physical box with behavior enablers like checklists, and artifacts and nudges like

A conversation of insights for product managers This is our 300th episode. The podcast started in January 2015, and we have not missed a week. Thank you so much for listening and for sharing it with others! The purpose of the podcast has not changed—to better equip product managers and leaders for more success. Some Everyday Innovators have shared how listening has helped them—doubling their salary, finding a new job after not interviewing for many years, moving to a different industry, gaining a better appreciation of customers, and more. To mark the 300th episode, I asked past guest Steve Johnson to join me for a completely unscripted, off-the-cuff discussion. We had no specific topic or questions in mind, and the result is a free-flowing discussion about changes with product management we are seeing and changes we want to make. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers Why product managers are important This has been an interesting year for business. Companies are re-thinking product management. Throughout the challenges, organizations have realized a couple of things: They really need product managers. They’re embracing product management as a repeatable, sustainable function to keep their products going. They need to optimize their team. There has been a lot of chaos, caused by confusion about the role of product management. Prioritizing ideas Companies should prioritize projects or new features based on… value for the customer. value for the business. Sometimes a new feature will not provide good value to customers and may even distract them. We might like to polish our products, but we shouldn’t waste resources or create distractions. Creating value for the customer will return value to the organization. Assuming all possible features are valuable to the customer, a feature that creates more business and increases profitability is a better outcome. The Lean Canvas is a tool to help product managers prioritize projects. It’s focused on creating a product and identifying the customer, the customer’s problem, and the solution you could provide. It helps you compare projects and choose one or two to accomplish with the resources you have. Customer discovery and the role of product managers Many organizations have too many ideas. Before describing possible solutions, spend time doing discovery, personally talking with possible customers. Before prioritizing, get commitment from leadership. Only then, flesh out the canvas and begin development. If product managers are involved in development, they must also be preparing for launch and market. Release is the end of development, but launch is the beginning of marketing. Companies must be judicious about selecting projects—they may have many good ideas, but must figure out which one or two they need to get to first to create the most value for the customer and the business. Product ideas should be: supported by evidence, not just someone’s pet project. something customers are willing to pay for. feasible for the business. The product manager generates ideas by talking to customers. Then the company needs to prioritize what they’re going to do, get the ideas to the developers, and then to the salespeople and ultimately the customer. The magic wand If you had a magic wand that could change an organization, what key thing would you do to improve product management? Steve’s answer: I wish product management were recognized as a profession. People aren’t clear about what product managers are supposed to be. Scrum and Agile say that product managers are sitting next to developers all day, but somehow also have to be aware of what’s going on in the market. We need a product management degree and a professional definition of product management. Chad’s answer: We need to spend more time with customers. You can’t do product management if you don’t spend time with customers. Based on research, 30% of a product manager’s time spent with customers is ideal. I know very few product managers who spend that much time with customers. But spending time with customers is where ideas come from. It’s how we understand the customer problem, how we drive innovation. It’s the deeper understanding that sets really great companies apart. Action Guide: Put the information Steve shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Visit Steve’s website Past TEI episodes with Steve: TEI 115, TEI 168, TEI 265 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

Why product managers need to understand introverts and extroverts If you work with other people, and I think that is just about all of us, you are going to love this episode. People are either extroverts or introverts. For everyone leading a team or working in a team, you can improve the team performance by improving how introverts and extroverts interact. To help us improve team performance, I went to the person who has spent her professional life researching, writing about, and speaking on introverts. That is Dr. Jennifer Kahnweiler. She helps organizations harness the power of introverts. Her recent book is Creating Introvert-Friendly Workplaces: How to Unleash Everyone’s Talent and Performance. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:30] What are the definitions of introverts and extroverts? The identifying factor is where they get their energy. After being with people all day, introverts need to recharge during quiet time. Extroverts get charged up by being with people. There is some misunderstanding about introverts. Many introverts are labeled as shy, which is seen as a problem. Shyness has to do with anxiety, and it can be overcome. Introversion is a natural way people are wired. [9:49] How can we identify introverts and extroverts by their characteristics? Introverts tend to be calm, take time to think, embrace silence, and be humble. Extroverts can get people to talk and like to be in a large room where they’re having multiple conversations. Usually, someone can determine whether they’re an extrovert or introvert by their characteristics. There are also ambiverts, people who identify with both extroverts and introverts. There’s a myth that introverts aren’t in people-facing roles. That’s absolutely not true. A study a few years ago showed that introverts make the best leaders for extroverts because they’re very good listeners. [14:20] How can introverts better relate to the people around them? Introverts will do well to prepare for their interactions with others and to connect one-on-one. Consider some questions you would like to ask and schedule a meeting or phone call with someone for an intentional reason, such as hoping to learn from them or serving as a mentor. Having deep relationships is an introvert’s strength, and they like to get into deep conversations, but it’s also important to learn to use small talk to build relationships and then move to substance. [19:53] How can extroverts better relate to introverts? An important principle is “Accept the alien.” Realizing that somebody is different from you and you cannot change them takes away stress because instead of spending time trying to change them you’re learning how to work with them. Extroverts need to listen. When introverts pause in a conversation, they may be reflecting and have more to say. Extroverts can tend toward “loudership,” meaning the loudest voice gets to lead. If you do this, you’re excluding others’ ideas that you and your team need to hear. Extroverts can discipline themselves to listen, such as waiting for three people to talk before offering their opinion, or asking someone to email them ideas after a meeting. It’s also helpful to tell people the agenda for a meeting ahead of time so they have time to prepare their thoughts. Another tool is giving everyone a few minutes to write down their ideas before anyone shares. [24:44] As an introvert, after seeing myself on video at a professional development event, I realized that even though I was engaged, my voice and body language weren’t showing that. I’ve learned to speak louder and use my eye contact and body language to show my engagement. What are your thoughts? We want to choose behaviors that narrow the perception gap, which is the difference between what we’re intending to show and what people are seeing. Being self-aware is important for all of us. Watching yourself on video can be very helpful. Even if there’s not a real camera, imagining you’re being videoed can cause you to focus on the attitude you’re projecting. Another useful strategy for introverts is to have an advocate in the meeting. When everyone ignores your idea only to accept it when someone else brings it up, your advocate can point out that you just brought it up and ask you to share more. [30:17] How does remote working affect introverts? Some pros of remote working for introverts are solitude, the ability to arrange your day to work at your peak, and others’ openness to having deep conversations. The loss of connection is a challenge. We all need to be intentional about having conversations with others. There is a lot of stress in people’s lives right now, so we need to be deliberate about checking in and seeing how people are doing. Action Guide: Put the information Jennifer shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guid

The five languages of appreciation for product managers Dr. Paul White is a psychologist, author, speaker, and leadership trainer who “makes work relationships work.” For the past 20 years, he’s improved numerous businesses, schools, government agencies, and non-profit organizations by helping them: Create positive workplace relationships and improve staff morale. Eliminate the cynicism, sarcasm, and lack of trust that often are associated with traditional employee recognition programs. Overcome the obstacles to help staff communicate authentic appreciation to one another. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:03] You recently wrote The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace. What is appreciation and why is it important? Appreciation is feeling valued for what you do or who you are. Stephen Covey said that appreciation is the highest need beyond physical survival. As opposed to employee recognition, which motivates toward specific goals, appreciation helps people feel valued for who they are. [6:37] What are the benefits of appreciating our colleagues? Appreciation does much more than just make people feel good. We have over fifty citations of research that shows the return-on-investment of appreciation. When team members feel valued, absenteeism and staff turnover go down and productivity and profitability go up. Appreciation is the oil in the machine that helps things running smoothly with less friction and less sparks. Let’s talk about the five languages of appreciation. [10:39] #1 Words of Affirmation (preferred by 46% of employees) When using words that affirm a person’s value, be specific. Don’t just say “good job.” Use the person’s name. Specify what they’ve done that you value. Tell why their action is important to you. [11:56] #2 Quality Time (preferred by 26% of employees) Quality time doesn’t have to take long. Just a few minutes can mean a lot. Quality time can take two forms… Focused attention—some people like to meet one-on-one to share and listen. It’s important you are not distracted. Peer interactions—others people, especially younger employees, prefer time with several colleagues, e.g., going to lunch together. [13:02] #3 Acts of Service (preferred by 22% of employees) Acts of service isn’t rescuing a low-performing colleague. Instead, consider serving a colleague working on a time-limited project. For example… Doing some work they delegate. Running interference with their email or phone calls. Bringing in meals so they can keep working. [14:00] #4 Tangible Gifts (preferred by 6% of employees) Tangible gifts does not mean raises and bonuses. It’s small things that show you’re getting to know your team members. For example… Their favorite cup of coffee. A gift card, especially for something you know they enjoy. Magazines related to their hobby. Pair tangible gifts with another appreciation language to make it more impactful. [16:06] #5 Physical Touch (preferred by 1% of employees) We struggled with whether to keep this in, but we did because… We don’t want to advocate a touchless society. Appropriate physical touch can be meaningful in an appropriate setting. Physical touch does happen in the workplace, usually as spontaneous celebration such as a high-five. [18:15] How can we identify which language of appreciation someone prefers? You can ask someone how you can show them appreciation, although that can be an awkward conversation, and you may not learn much. It works better to ask people how they are encouraged since this is similar to appreciation, but we tend to be more in touch with what encourages us. You can also observe how they show appreciation, although we found that 25% of the time people communicate appreciation using a different language from how they prefer to receive appreciation. We have an inventory that identifies people’s preferred appreciation languages along with specific actions they’d like and from whom they want that action. You can take this inventory and our training with your team. Our training helps the whole team become involved in communicating appreciation. [21:22] What happens if you use the wrong appreciation language with someone? This can be a problem. For example, in the general workforce, 40% of people do not want to be recognized in front of a large group. They know you mean well, but for these people employee recognition wouldn’t effectively show appreciation. A person’s preferred language of appreciation is also the way they’re most easily offended.Don’t fake it. You need to be sincere and real. Learn to actually appreciate people. You can value them as people even if you don’t value their performance. Build trust and loyalty by communicating your appreciation for something not associated with their work. Point out their cheerful personality, discipline in training for a marathon, o

Five steps to securing success in product management in an uncertain world Are you taking steps to make yourself more valuable to your organization or the next organization you want to work with? Arguably, all the topics we address on this podcast are about career development, helping you improve in product management and innovation. However, occasionally we focus on the topic head-on, and with the impact of the pandemic on organizations, creating opportunities in some cases and hardship in others, now is an important time to discuss making yourself highly employable, or as our guest says, forever employable. What is interesting is that our guest is now offering career advice after becoming known as the Agile Product guy who helps organizations build better products. You may know him from his past books, including Lean UX, Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking, and Sense & Respond. His name is Jeff Gothelf and, as a product guy, he will give you the 5 activities for being forever employable. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:37] You recently wrote the book Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You. Who did you write this book for and what does it mean to be forever employable? My target audience is mid-career knowledge workers, but the concepts apply to others too. Traditionally, job hunting is a push process, meaning we push our resumes and experiences into job listings. If we have to keep pushing for the rest of our careers, we’ll lose more and more often because as we rise on the corporate ladder there are fewer positions, and our skills will never be as good as when we were younger. Forever Employable changes the dynamic from pushing ourselves into jobs to pulling opportunities toward us. As you build a platform of recognized expertise around your unique experience and as you share generously and give back to your community, you create the environment for jobs to find you. Take us through the steps to become Forever Employable. [10:40] Plant a flag. Decide which slice of your expertise you’re going to build a platform on. For example, product management is a huge field, so you might decide to plant a flag in product management for the real estate industry or product leadership. [11:33] Tell your story. Share your expertise. Participate in the conversation; have a presence in the industry; and give your knowledge back to your community. There are many ways to tell stories, so experiment to find one that works for you. Tell your story with persistence and consistency. As Jeff Weiner said, right about the time you’re tired of saying it is when they start hearing it. Persistence means continuing to tell your story even if it feels like you’re shouting into the void because initially no one’s ever heard of you. Consistency means you’re on topic, wherever you planted the flag. [16:44] Follow the new path. Take the new opportunities that telling your story generates. That could be talking at a meet-up, attending a conference, or writing a book. Following the new path may stretch you in new directions, and you won’t be doing exactly what you used to do, but the whole reason you’re following the new path is to attract new audiences and reach people in different ways, driving even more opportunities toward you. Not everything you try will work out 100%, but the nature of becoming forever employable is experimenting and learning, then following the paths that generate bigger and better opportunities. [21:16] Teach. Teach what you know. Everything I do is teaching—conversations like this, workshops, coaching, speeches. Teaching is how you get better at your practice, because the better you can teach it, the better you can do it. Teaching is also how you get better at storytelling. [23:27] Give it all away. Share your expertise for free. This is hard because your expertise is valuable and you want to be paid for it. But I’ve learned that every time I give stuff away, stuff comes back in. When I give away free content, people see it and offer me new opportunities. The more you make your content available and easily accessible, the more traffic you drive to yourself and the bigger platform you’ll have. It’s tough to give your hard-earned experience and knowledge away for free, so start small. Write one article about something that worked well for you in the last month. Post one comment on an online discussion in your area of expertise. Then do it again and again and again. [29:24] In the midst of uncertainty, how can we future-proof our careers? Future-proofing your career is putting in the investment of doing the steps I’ve just described. By becoming known and valuable to your community, you’ll begin to develop a steady stream of opportunities. During a financial crisis, whether a pandemic or stock-market crash, the people who survive and thrive are those who are known in their

What product managers need to know about customer validation and alpha, beta, and delta testing Product testing is about more than determining if a product functions properly or not. A larger perspective, and one that our guests shares is Customer Validation. We discuss how to use the various types of product tests, including alpha, beta, and delta tests, to judge product performance, customer satisfaction, and areas for improvement. Our guest is Luke Freiler, CEO and co-founder of Centercode. Luke has spent most of his career improving product testing. Centercode is a Customer Validation solutions provider that helps tech companies bring products to market. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:46] How did you become a testing expert? Early in my career in software, I became very passionate about the new field of usability—making technology easy to use. I was asked to run a beta test for one of my company’s products, and although we were a large, established company, we had no process for running testing. As I looked for solutions, I realized I’d found a hole—everyone had the problem of testing but nobody had solved it. I realized that testing with customers aligned with my passion for usability; customers can help you make technology more accessible. At age 21, I started a company to do tests, and I’ve learned a lot and have been doing it ever since. [6:55] How do you relate customer validation to testing? We realized that there is no single standard term that people use to refer to testing. We wanted to establish a better vocabulary and methodology that could scale and be adaptable to any company. We chose customer validation as an umbrella term for the various ways we engage with customers to develop a product. Customer validation includes three forms of testing: Alpha testing looks for quality. Beta testing looks for satisfaction. Delta testing, where we’re seeing a lot of innovation, is a continuous test throughout the life of the product to gather feedback about specific details. [15:49] Tell us more about alpha testing. The goal of alpha testing is to make sure the product works. We focus on technographics—the technology that surrounds people and products. Alpha testing is about targeting diverse ecosystems rather than your target market. Alpha testers can be internal employees or strangers. [23:50] Tell us more about beta testing. A beta tester should be someone who matches the target market, is enthusiastic enough to provide feedback, and is a stranger rather than an employee. The goal is measuring satisfaction. We start a beta test with a test plan, which is a list of features we want tested. Each feature has a basic description. Using a 1-5 scale, we rate the effort or time we want to put in and the value of the feedback to us. Then we design activities that tell the tester where the features are but are not overly directive. We use these activities to take testers on a tour of the product and engage them over a period of time. We want the beta testers to collaborate and communicate with each other about the product as they complete activities to explore features. We look for actionable, prioritized feedback. Out of each test, you want to discover: issues—what needs to be fixed ideas—what needs to be improved praise—what needs to be promoted We ask testers to rate their satisfaction with each feature on a 1-5 scale. Then we ask why they gave that rating. We prioritize and act on the results. [31:27] What is the timeline of alpha and beta tests? Our average alpha test takes two weeks, and our average beta test takes three weeks. This is not very time-consuming. [33:57] Tell us more about delta testing. Delta testing is concerned with the next version of the product. We want to maximize small data to find quality issues. Delta testing is a continuous process as the product changes, and we believe it is the wave of the future. Action Guide: Put the information Luke shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide.   Useful links: Find out more about Luke and customer validation at Centercode.com Innovation Quote “Technology is a word for something that doesn’t work yet.” – Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) 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

Five factors of successful product managers Do you and your product teams have the characteristics required for success? The Product Team Performance study has been identifying the characteristics of high-performing teams since 2012. Of the 31 factors found through the studies, I discuss five of the most significant ones with Greg Geracie, principal researcher. Greg is 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, through his work on the ProdBOK book, which is the The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge, as well as our mutual involvement in PDMA and AIPMM professional associations for product managers. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:50] Tell us about the survey of product managers you’ve done since 2012. It’s a performance study comparing factors of product teams that excel versus those that struggle. We use an independent statistician who conducts regression analysis on the survey data. [3:15] What’s new this year, in your sixth study? Approximately 40% of the questions are new, derived from our consulting, Q&A with live audiences, and our sponsor Planbox, who submitted five questions related to innovation. The rest are questions that we’ve been tracking on a longitudinal basis and demographic questions that help us better understand our respondents. Another important change is that when we started the study, it was very difficult to find hard data on the topics that our consultants were interested in; now, after years of research, anyone interested in answers to questions about product management and innovation topics can easily find information from our studies. [7:37] Who are your survey respondents? We’re interested in hearing from anyone actively involved in product development. Ninety-seven percent of survey respondents have an active role in creating or enhancing products or services in their organizations, so targeting has been very good. Some additional demographics about our respondents this year: 54% are product managers or product owners (higher than the norm from past years) other 46% are from a wide variety of roles including development managers, engineers, project managers, UX professionals, and more slightly more than half report to a C-level executive or VP 51% are in hardware software technology vertical 45% are from companies with revenue $50 million to $2 billion, with a strong response in the two other segments we identified [11:21] The study identified 31 significant factors that successful product teams exhibit, including five factors that are new this year. Let’s talk about one of those five new factors, connecting activities to business strategy. The study shows that a product team’s ability to connect their daily activities back to the company’s overarching business strategy is highly correlated with financial success. However, only 27% of survey respondents indicated that their product team is able to connect their daily activities directly to the company’s business strategy. Most respondents indicate that their organizations either fail to effectively communicate the company strategy or don’t have an overarching business strategy at all. Sadly, the number of product teams that can connect their daily activities with their company’s business strategy has decreased from 37% seven years ago. To improve their product and financial performance, companies need to shore up communication and transparency about their company strategy and how product teams connect to it. This will give product teams the context to make better short- and longterm decisions, and it will clarify the organization’s strategic priorities. This will also increase product team members’ commitment to their work efforts as they understand the value of their work. [17:58] Tell us more about the next factor, accountability for customer satisfaction objectives. Customer satisfaction is becoming increasingly important to product teams. In 2015, there was no dominant metric that teams were accountable to, but now customer satisfaction is the dominant metric, used by 51% of organizations. Being accountable to customer satisfaction is highly correlated with improved performance. [21:28] Another factor is stories in the backlog. What did you discover? Product teams that size the entire backlog of user stories demonstrate higher levels of performance. However, only 17% of respondents size the entire backlog. [24:11] What did you find out about the next factor, time that product managers spend in the field with customers? Product managers who spend at least 30% of their time in the field with customers improve the performance of their teams and organizations. Unfortunately, only 11% of organizations enable their product managers to spend that much time in the field with customers. One problem is lack o

What product managers need to know to create powerful customer experiences The experience that customers of our products encounter impacts the value they find in our products. The customer experience is intertwined with customers’ perceptions of value. To explore customer experience, I talked with two people who design the customer experience for theme parks, zoos, museums, and other venues. Part of the conversation is about a recent book they wrote, The CEO’s Time Machine, which uses historical innovations and a story about careful listening to create new innovations for a fictional company. We share useful insights to help innovators in a more personal context in this interview. That is because my guests include the Chief Creative Officer at Creative Principals, Geoff Thatcher, and Designer, Zoe Thatcher, who is his daughter. Consequently, it was fitting for my daughter, Kaitlin, to join me as co-host for this episode. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:55] What work do you do? We have a design firm called Creative Principles, and we work on experiences including corporate brand experiences, museum exhibits, and theme parks. As designers, we get to visit a lot of fun places to do research, because you can’t innovate unless you have a stimulus. [10:41] What makes a good customer experience? All great innovation begins with a powerful story. To create an experience, you have to translate the story. We use this formula: Attract people with an iconic element Build trust Provide the information to move forward (e.g., a pre-show) Internalize the story (e.g., the main experience, like a theme park ride) Exit through retail—this isn’t just about making money; you’re challenging people to act and become part of the story [18:27] Let’s talk about your book, The CEO’s Time Machine. The premise of the book is that there is a CEO who is ahead of the game, making his company super successful, and nobody knows how he does it. He has a secret R&D garage, and it’s rumored there is a time machine inside. As the story begins, the CEO is about to retire, and he allows his young protege into the garage to show her the time machine. Part of being a leader is creating the branding and mystique that the CEO creates with his secret garage. [22:01] What was Zoe’s work as illustrator like? In October 2019, Zoe participated in an Instagram challenge to post an inked picture every day. Zoe drew a girl in a red scarf in a futuristic woodblock ink style, and we thought it would be perfect for the story, which we had already written. When our business slowed down during the pandemic, we decided to get the book out before the lockdown ended. Zoe did forty-three illustrations in three weeks, and we got the book published. The great thing about being young, when it comes to innovation, is that young people don’t know something isn’t possible. A more experienced illustrator might not have attempted all those illustrations, but Zoe thought, Why not? [29:10] What lessons can product managers and innovators learn from the book? History is important to innovation. As Bruce Weindruch says in our foreword, in innovation you have to start with the future and look back. You want to invent the future, but you have to look back to examples from history to inspire you. [30:45] What are some innovation insights from history? I am fascinated by the Wright brothers because they invented the airplane. However, within a decade or two, they were completely out of business. After their amazing innovation of flight, they spent all their time litigating and arguing. It’s an important lesson for innovators to not lose focus on innovation. Charles Kettering, the head of R&D for General Motors, was trying to convince manufacturing that they could paint a car in an hour instead of several days. Kettering invited the head of manufacturing out to lunch. After lunch, the man couldn’t find his car because Kettering had his engineers paint it while they were at lunch. Having that personal experience convinced the head of manufacturing to embrace this new innovation. Action Guide: Put the information Geoff and Zoe shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out The CEO’s Time Machine on Amazon The CEO’s Time Machine on the Creative Principles website The Experience Model from Creative Principles Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi promotional video with Creative Principles Innovation Quote “Research is turning dollars into ideas. Innovation is turning ideas into dollars.”– Steve Hoover, CEO of Palo Alto Research Center 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 three powerful questions can lead to better product management I hosted a virtual summit in April this year (www.theeverydayinnovator.com/summit) and I met many wonderful people. One introduced me to her Slinky Dog metaphor for product management and a methodology called FAST Goals. She calls FAST Goals a winning methodology as it enables you to win, solving problems and creating value for customers. It connects what you need to accomplish with how you will accomplish it along with the why for taking specific actions. In the discussion, we role-play using FAST Goals to solve problems I have had as a frequent traveler — something most of us are doing far less of now but will return to eventually. Her name is Jeannine Siviy. She has been a software and systems engineer, contributing to and leading product development for several organizations, including Kodak and the Software Engineering Institute. She is currently the Director of Healthcare Solutions at SDLC Partners. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:48] What is the Slinky Dog metaphor for product management? The Slinky Dog metaphor reminds people when they’re running ahead of everybody else. If you’re ahead, you need to pause and let your team, peers, clients, etc., catch up in an organized way. You don’t want them to catch up by slamming into you. If the Slinky Dog is stretched too far, it breaks. [5:11] What problem does the FAST Goals methodology solve? When you’re working on product management and innovation, there are a lot of perspectives and different voices in the room. FAST Goals unifies those voices to create a clear line of sight between top-level objectives and day-to-day work. It empowers people to make decisions in day-to-day work with confidence and know that their work is contributing to the big picture outcome. [8:25] What are the key components of FAST Goals? It’s a ladder of abstraction method. FAST indicates the rapidity of the method and is also an acronym for Function Analysis Systems Technique, a manufacturing technique that I modified into FAST Goals. It uses a diagram to answer three questions: “What goals are you pursuing? How do you intend to achieve those goals? Why do these goals matter? Every goal is paired with a success metric so that you’ll know when you’ve achieved it, and each goal has strategies and tactics that are also measured. [13:15] Let’s walk through an example of using FAST Goals to improve customer experience at an airport. Our top goal is to improve customer experience at the airport. We brainstorm pain points and unsolved problems, like not knowing how much time it will take to get to your gate, food needing improvement, and difficulty navigating through the airport. Then we synthesize, looking for common themes and determining the meaning of each idea. Next we organize and simplify and write the ideas on the diagram, usually in a simple noun-verb format. Then we validate by asking how and why we’ll accomplish these goals. This process works best with a cross-functional team. [20:13] Let’s take a closer look at a specific problem—not knowing how much time it will take to get to the gate. At the top of the diagram, our main goal is to improve customer experience. We’ll write “Predict time to gate” as our sub-goal. Under that, we’ll write how we could do that, such as with an app on the phone or smart glasses. Then we’ll identify why we would implement a solution to this problem. One why is to predict the time to the gate, but we might identify other whys like optimizing the time to the gate, giving directions, or determining if there’s time to get a snack. Once we make sure our what, how, and why are all aligned, the people who launch the app or glasses have a good sense of why that product exists. After beginning development and research, the team may find another idea and change the diagram; that’s okay because the diagram still keeps everybody aligned. As we synthesize, we may reframe the problem and change the top goal. We can add other market segments to the diagram, like how we would solve problems for travelers with kids. We might expand our highest goal to improve the entire travel experience. [31:17] What artifact do teams end up with after FAST Goals? They end up with a diagram that becomes the North Star of the team doing the work. There’s usually a document behind the diagram further explaining the meaning of each goal, strategies, tactics, and measures. Bonus Question [35:58] What are some examples of when you’ve seen FAST Goals applied to make meaningful changes in organizations? A software and system development organization was working on flight systems, which involve human safety, so their quality was outstanding. However, their cost and schedule variability was very high. We tried to improve cost and schedule, but couldn’t get a

How product managers can break through the barriers that are keeping them from taking action Product managers are doers. We make change happen. We are mini-CEOs after all, right? Here is the big difference between being a product manager and a CEO; CEOs actually can make change happen. They have the authority to do so. Us product managers, no so much, and yet we are doers and we still bring about change. We have to sell our ideas, overcome roadblocks, and get others to join our cause. It helps if we love the work we do. Our guest is going to help us accomplish these things. She is a doer herself, with a history of helping organizations create technology products to solve problems, including being a Product Manager Director at IDEO, Senior Director of Innovation at Autodesk, and a Mentor at Stanford Latino Entrepreneur Leaders Program. Most recently, she has codified the steps for being a doer in an organization in her book, Start Within: How to sell your idea, overcome roadblocks, and love your job. Her name is Karen Holst and she’ll share some of these steps in this discussion to help you excel as a product manager. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:32] What was a key takeaway from your time at IDEO? The people there are humble and eager to learn, even though they have many accomplishments. IDEO intentionally hires people like this because they contribute to the culture. [4:53] What was a key takeaway from your time at Autodesk? Innovation doesn’t look the same in every company, and it’s important to allow time to figure out how things work, where you’ll fit in, and how you can effect change. [6:17] What have you learned about dealing with barriers when you’re trying to create something new? You may be the smartest person in the room, and you may know the right solution, but it’s not enough to just be right. You also have to sell your idea. If others don’t buy-in, it’s going to fall flat. [8:31] Who is the audience of the book you wrote with Douglas Ferguson, Start Within: How to sell your idea, overcome roadblocks, and love your job? I wrote the book for myself and people like me. It’s for doers—people who want to get started innovating within their organizations. [10:36] How can we take action internally? The more you fill your brain with new ideas and diverse thinking, the more value you’ll have later. Bringing naysayers into your conversation can help you think differently. If you’re feeling pessimistic, talking with optimistic, enthusiastic people can help you balance. If we don’t find edges where we allow uncomfortableness, we get stuck in a rut of the same way of doing and thinking. [15:03] What is getting in the way of doers not taking action? One reason is exclusivity around the terms we use to talk about innovation. Innovation can seem difficult to achieve. In reality, innovation is anytime we’re launching new ideas, whether revolutionary or incremental. Another roadblock is not knowing where to start. Innovation can take the form of many different processes, and it’s not linear. Start Within is a playbook—innovation is about knowing the different plays or processes and knowing when to get stakeholder alignment. [18:12] What are some skills that enable doers to be more effective? Being a doer does not require a charismatic, extroverted personality. Doers’ skills can be learned and practiced. Start with small ideas. Recognize small steps and experiments that can lead to your bigger goals. Embrace the beginner’s mindset. It’s difficult to approach the work that you’re an expert in with this mindset, but it’s important to listen and allow others to learn. Also, explore areas where you are a beginner—new industries, new roles. This is where you can really grow and find purpose. If you know you’re too close to an idea, ask someone else to lead so that you can listen and learn as an outsider. After you pitch an idea, be quiet and listen instead of continuing to explain. If nothing else, you’ll learn how to improve your pitching skills. Prototyping ourselves is part of prototyping innovation. Recognize that you will hear “no” at every step. That doesn’t mean you have to pause. Maybe there’s a different approach. A useful tool is mapping out your nos on post-it notes. On the first post-it note, write, “I’m hearing no because…” and fill in the reason. On the next post-it note, write, “Maybe if…” and fill in a way you could think about it differently. On the last post-it note, write, “Then…” and fill in what you could do differently. You could create the opportunity for people who normally say no, like the legal compliance team, to switch roles and imagine that they’re innovators. Try to bend your thinking and bring in different perspectives. Bonus Question: What are so

What product managers can do when you launch a product at the wrong time Times change, trends start, and trends die. Remember those friendship bracelets made of rubber brands? They were so popular with students that many schools prohibited them because they became a source of distraction. A few months later the trend was dead. Sometimes a smart product concept is created but the market is not ready for it — the timing is off. The trick is recognizing when market conditions change and the product concept should be dusted off and tried again. It is easy to miss the changes. Our guest, Jerry Abiog, had a new opportunity for an old product because of how COVID-19 has impacted restaurants, but he almost missed it until a chance encounter with a restaurant owner while walking his dogs. Jerry has led growth and strategy for various startups and co-founded Standard Insights where he also serves as CMO. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:31] How do you help companies improve their customer experience? We look at data first because data drives everything. Our winning formula combines these three principles: Improving customer experience Preventing customer indecision Telling the customer what to do next. Companies that can synthesize data and act on it are going to win. [7:55] Let’s dive into your product story. I’m the co-founder of Standard Insights. We help companies drive repeat buyers using AI. We’re a 2-year-old company, and our market was originally eCommerce, but we had the vision of expanding to other markets such as restaurants. Last year, we developed an AI-driven digital menu, because we saw the start of a trend as McDonald’s began to use digital menus that can make recommendations. I took the idea to my buddy who owns a restaurant, and he thought it was a great idea, but just not the right time because to use it he would have to lay off 60% of his wait staff. We put the digital menu idea on the shelf and moved on. When COVID came along, we tweaked the platform and launched it. Now we’re getting an average of a call a day from restaurants. It’s a lot more appealing in the current environment. A lot of companies are racing into the market with digital menus, but we’re taking it a step further by making it AI-driven. In addition to the contactless menu and contactless pay options, our menu can make AI-driven recommendations about customers’ favorite foods, seasonal foods, or drink pairings. We also provide AI-driven customer outreach through texts, social media, or email to encourage customers to order again. [19:35] What was the customer validation process like? When we originally developed the AI-driven platform two years ago, we allowed our sales and marketing outreach and our current customers to dictate product development. Our current customers and others who didn’t become customers gave us insights on how to pitch. When we expanded to include restaurants, we didn’t do a validation because it all happened so quickly and we already had the main engine, but now we are tweaking our digital menu based on feedback from customers. Life doesn’t go in a straight line. It’s all these turns and ups and downs. When the opportunity presents itself, you just have to go after it. Otherwise, someone else will. Action Guide: Put the information Jerry shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide.   Useful links: Jerry’s company, Standard Insights The digital menu Connect with Jerry on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” – attributed to Winston Churchill 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 boost innovation in companies large and small In 2012 I read a book titled, Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. It’s a book that spoke to me. It tied together many of my experiences and I helped me put them into a framework. It shared the need to get out of the office and learn from actual customers – something I had found vital but that I did not always practice on projects. Finding this book also made me aware of Steve Blank, its author. Later, like many of us, I learned about Lean Startup thinking from Eric Ries and found threads to adjacent thinking that was in the Startup Owner’s Manual. It made sense to me later when I read Steve Blank saying that Eric Ries is his best student. Consequently, I think of Eric Ries as the create of Lean Startup and Steve Blank as its father. Steve is someone I have wanted to discuss innovation with for a long time and this interview fulfills that dream. I hope you enjoy it! Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:13] What is the purpose of your book The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company? As I reflected on my life as an entrepreneur, I recognized a pattern in my experiences with eight startups that I had been a part of over 21 years. Investors told startups to act like smaller versions of large companies—coming up with a business plan on paper without talking to customers or testing prototypes. Successful startups ignored that advice. I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which kicked off the Lean Startup movement. I articulated Customer Development methodology, which says: There are no facts inside your building, so you need to get outside. While large companies execute business models, startups search for business model, so startups need their own tools. My student Eric Ries became the first adopter of Customer Development and recognized that in the 21st century, people were starting to adopt Agile Engineering, where you build products incrementally and iteratively. Alex Osterwalder then popularized the Business Model Canvas, which describes on a single piece of paper the key things a founder needs to know. Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and the Business Model Canvas became the Lean Startup. After the startup world rapidly adopted the Lean methodologies, I wrote The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company as a handbook for how to use those methodologies. [19:48] How have you seen the startup environment change since you published The Startup Owner’s Manual in 2012? The Lean Startup and Customer Development came out of the rubble of the crash of the dot com bubble at the turn of the century. After the crash, investors became risk adverse and were looking for product market fit. It was a mass extinction of startups and investors. The Lean methodology emerged as a way to build startups iteratively and incrementally without wasting a lot of resources. With Lean, you can pivot quickly; incremental changes are much cheaper and faster than failures later. I think we’ll see a similar effect in 2020 as Lean is used and we develop new methodologies to take advantage of a changed environment. [23:51] Why do larger, established organizations need to apply ideas from The Startup Owner’s Manual? The last decade has been pretty tough on established organizations. They’ve seen a lot of disruption because everything is changing around them. Large companies started looking at startup tools to deal with high-speed changes and disruptions in their business models. In 2013, Harvard Business Review published my article “Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything.” Corporate CEOs realized that they could use the toolset that startups were using. In the 21st century, being an ambidextrous organization, able to execute and innovate simultaneously, is not optional. [28:04] How are these large organizations doing? A lot of corporations adopted innovation theater, not innovation. They copied the patterns of successful startups, but didn’t get the outcomes they desired. These companies were focused on demos, not delivery. They never really solved the hard problems like integrating the innovation pipeline into the organization and accepting failure as learning and discovery. [30:20] How can established companies integrate innovation? All companies have great passionate innovators, but in large corporations, they’re frustrated. Large organizations celebrate the stories of innovation heroics, entrepreneurs who fight the internal company system and get a product out against all odds. But this means the company doesn’t have a system for innovation. What they really need is an innovation doctrine, which is the heuristics and rules that allow innovation to thrive. This can’t be implemented by individual heroics; it must start at the board lev

Learn the qualities of a successful product manager and leader. Part of the path to becoming a product master is developing as a leader. Leaders of product management need agility, influence, trust, empathy, and motivating vision. And, those are the topics our guest, Roman Pichler, explores with us in this episode. Roman is a product management expert specializing in digital products. He is the author of several books, including his latest, titled, How to Lead in Product Management. His popular blog is also available as a podcast and both are simply named Roman Pichler. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:00] What is agile product management? Agile product management is product management infused or enriched by agile practices and principles. It’s interactive, iterative, incremental, and collaborative. [6:15] You recently published How to Lead in Product Management: Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together. Why did you write this book to help product leaders? Over the last 15 years, the product community has changed for the better, benefiting from tools like scrum and agile, but the soft skills have received less attention. Hard skills like market research or roadmapping are important, but they’re not enough. Product leaders can’t succeed if they neglect people skills and leadership skills. I wanted to offer practical help for product people and draw attention to the importance of soft skills in product management. As a product manager told me recently, product management is 80% people and 20% technology. [10:18] As product managers, how do we approach having responsibility but no authority? We don’t have any positional authority or transactional power. We can’t make people do things, but we rely on people’s work. To encourage stakeholders and development team members to move in the same direction, we have to influence them and get them to listen to us and follow our guidance. That’s only possible if people trust us. [12:09] What are ways to facilitate trust? Empathize—develop a kind and warm-hearted attitude; take a genuine, respectful interest in them; and be concerned for their well-being. Empathy is not about approval or agreement; it’s about accepting. By empathizing, we can discover their underlying needs, interests, and goals, and build trust. Listen deeply and actively. Don’t be overly critical or judgmental; be present for them. Speak and act with integrity. Saying what we believe and acting accordingly is easier said than done. Get to know people personally. This could be as simple as having coffee together, or it could be sharing failure stories, which shows vulnerability and builds trust. Strengthen product management expertise. [17:30] Tell us about product vision. Product vision is an inspirational goal that describes the positive change that the product will bring about. The vision is the foundation, and it’s important that stakeholders and the development team buy into it. A collaborative workshop with key stakeholders is a great way to kick off a new product development effort and create the initial vision. When you make a major change to an existing product, revisit the vision and adjust if necessary. The collaborative workshop gets people’s buy-in, leverages collective wisdom, and ensures there is a shared understanding. To avoid a few people dominating the workshop, it’s valuable to prepare the workshop and have a skilled facilitator. [28:22] What are other important qualities that are key to being an effective product leader? Again, empathy is important to train ourselves in. Also, mindfulness is very helpful. Bring awareness to what is going on and increase your ability to stay present and be aware of yourself. This gives you more choices and makes you less likely to do something you’ll regret later. [35:28] Bonus Question: What are your tips for better time management? Focus on your core responsibilities. Instead of helping meet a need outside your job, investigate the real cause of that need. Don’t neglect less urgent but important work. Invest in building relationships. Take proper breaks to let your body and mind recover. Empower and coach others and delegate work. Avoid task-switching and timebox your activities. Action Guide: Put the information Roman shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Roman’s website, RomanPichler.com Innovation Quote “A person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable) … it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.” – Carol Dweck—Growth Mindsets 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 m

The recipe for rapid product design for product managers A Design Sprint is how you can solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. That is also the subtitle of the groundbreaking book called Sprint. The Design Sprint became popular at Google a few years ago, which is also when Sprint was published. More recently, I am seeing product managers using Design Sprints in organizations to create new product concepts, resulting in realistic prototypes in five days. One of the original contributors to the Design Sprint methodology is my guest, John Zeratksy, who co-authored the Sprint book. He was also a guest two years ago, sharing how product managers can make better use of their time, in episode 210. Not just as a practitioner, but as an original creator of the Design Sprint, John takes us through the 5 phases of a sprint: Map, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, and Test. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:28] How did the Design Sprint come about? While working as a designer at Google Ventures, I was looking for a systematic, structured process to help companies achieve their goals. Around this time I met Jake Knapp, who had been experimenting with a new process for team collaboration called a Design Sprint. We soon decided that the Design Sprint was the repeatable process we needed to bring a team together and help them focus on their problems and opportunities. Jake joined the team at Google Ventures in 2012, and we started running Design Sprints. After a year of tweaking, we arrived at a repeatable recipe based around the five-day structure that is still used today. Like a startup incubator, we wanted to help startups prove the validity of their business model quickly. Like everyone else, startups struggle to focus their time. Design Sprints help them focus on the core work that makes the product valuable. The Design Sprint is a recipe that gives teams very clear, specific, proven steps to follow when they’re getting started. [14:01] What is the result of a Design Sprint? The Design Sprint is all about creating a realistic prototype and testing it with real customers at the end of the week. The prototype is not actually functional, but it looks real. If the prototype is realistic, reactions from customers are very high quality. [15:42] Can you run a Design Sprint in less than five days? You can run a great Sprint in four days, but don’t go shorter than that. You can run a similar collaborative working session in less than four days, but it’s not really a Design Sprint. If you’ve never done a Design Sprint before, start with the five-day process because it’s outlined in the book and includes a bit of buffer time. Many companies who are experienced with Design Sprints use the four-day option. If you do the four-day process, you can allow an extra day before the Sprint to allow people to clear their schedules so they can focus for the next four days. [22:46] How do we prepare for the Design Sprint? Most important, you must have a big problem or opportunity. Sprints work best when they’re focused on something really important. Gather a team that reflects the real team that’s responsible for solving the problem. Set aside time; in the five-day process, this is a five-day workweek with one big goal per day. Let’s walk through the Design Sprint recipe: [24:13] Monday: Map This is all about problem framing. You create a shared map to get the team on the same page. We start at the end by considering our longterm goal for the project. We also write down questions, unknowns, assumptions, and things that could trip us up. We interview members of the sprint team or extended team to bring as many perspectives as possible. We use the pattern Note and Vote throughout the Sprint. On Monday, everyone individually writes down their mental map of how the customer interaction with the product looks. Each person highlights the parts they think are most important and share those parts with the group. We vote on the most important parts. Everyone feels involved in a meaningful way even if their ideas aren’t selected. [24:48] Tuesday: Sketch The goal is to generate ideas for what you might build or do to solve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity. Individuals work alone to think through ideas. This process tends to generate higher quality ideas than brainstorming. [25:33] Wednesday: Decide We decide which sketches are most likely to work. We use a structured critique to make decisions. This is done in a group because while individuals are great at coming up with ideas, groups are great at making decisions. [26:23] Thursday: Prototype We usually build multiple prototypes of different approaches to solving the problem. The key to getting the prototype done in one day is focusing only on the facade. The prototype that the customer sees looks real, but it’s not functional. Exactly what to prototype depends on the questions you’re tr