Masters of Product Management

If you're familiar with the game of baseball, you know the saying “batting a thousand”. It means getting a hit every single time you go up to bat. And no one bats a thousand - at least over the course of any real number of at-bats. Here's the truth about product management - no one bats a thousand here either. Many products fail - or at least fail to fully meet their goals. And while we may not be able to “bat a thousand”, many companies - and product managers - are embracing techniques and practices that will help them “get a hit” more often than not. In this episode, Justin Bauer, Head of Product at Amplitude, shares insights and advice for product managers and product teams on how to optimize for product success.

Understanding customers is a bedrock of successful product management. But it is a lot easier to say than do. Truly understanding customers entails a deep knowledge of their motivations and behaviors. And, frankly, many product managers are not properly equipped to keenly grasp the nuances of customer behavior. On this episode Kristen Berman, CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, discusses ways that product managers can use use behavioral design to develop and design solutions that change behavior.

We, in product management, live in complex worlds. We are often solving complicated problems. We are often using sophisticated, complex technologies or engineering solutions to solve those problems. We have various audiences to which we must communicate.  Effectively communicating to these various audiences and especially making complex situations understandable and relevant to each is one of the most important skills a product manager has in their professional toolbox. Deepti Tadala, Senior Product Manager for Paypal, joins us on this episode to share her experiences in how to best communicate complex issues with various stakeholders. Deepti Tadala is Senior Product Manager for Paypal.

Anyone who has been in product management knows that a timeline is part of everyday life. Frankly, it's hard for a lot of people to imagine not living in this timeline-driven world. But why are timelines so important? More often than not, they are arbitrary and not tied to any real customer or market need. It's not to say we should just take our sweet time and be lackadaisical, we still need to meet customer needs in a timely manner and beat the competition in providing value. But are timelines in their traditional sense the proper means to that end?  In this episode, Janna Bastow, co-founder of Mind the Product and CEO of ProdPad, shares her wisdom on how organizations can move away from timeline driven focus and create more value along the way.  

In this episode, JJ Rorie, VP of Sequent Learning Networks and Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, CEO and Founder of Product School, discuss how product managers can move from *bad* - to good - to great!, and how the product community can help us all on this lifelong learning journey.

Regardless of industry, type of product, educational background, or development methodology, there are five commonalities among great product managers. In this episode, we discuss these common traits and how you can build your skillset around these 5 "truths".

The bedrock of successful product development is a deep understanding of what customers really need. In this episode, I speak with internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and coach Teresa Torres about Continuous Discovery Habits.

The Chief Product Officer (CPO) role is still a fairly new role. I get asked quite often where product management should sit within an organization. Historically, it has typically reported up through either marketing or technology, but more and more, organizations are realizing the value of having a product leader at the executive level, having a seat at the c-suite table when all important decisions are being made. The CPO is often that executive.  In this episode, Navya Rehani Gupta, Chief Product Officer at Peek.com, shares her experiences in and insights about the important CPO role.

There is a lot of discussion about whether co-location / in-person work is best for product management and innovation or if remote work can be just as effective. Maybe there is no one right answer there, and certainly there are pros and cons to both. This episode is a conversation about being successful in product management with remote teams.

There are few things that can make a bigger impact on the ultimate success of a product than a true, deep understanding of customer needs. Without this understanding of customers, their problems, situations, environments, needs, it is really just a matter of luck if we end up with a successful product. This episode features Keerthi Hoback, Senior Director of Product Management at Major League Baseball, discussing the importance of user interviews and customer research in order to set that foundation of customer awareness.

For those of us who build products for a living, how do we ensure that our products are equitable, inclusive, and are leaving a positive impact on customers and the world around us? This episode discusses how can organizations - and product people - can build equitable products.

Product-Market Fit essentially means having the right product to meet a market demand. Here’s the deal… if you don’t first understand what customers need and will buy AND the dynamics and attractiveness of the market in which your customers live and/or work, then it’s really quite difficult to build something that will achieve product-market fit.

Having an “entrepreneurial mindset” is a very beneficial trait for product managers. It will help them think and act in a way that drives ownership, accountability, leadership, strategic thinking, and other aspects of “owning the business of their product”.  This episode is is all about what product managers can learn from entrepreneurs and startup founders… regardless of what type or size of company a product manager works in, there are insights to be gleaned from entrepreneurs.

Design, of course, is a critical part of product development. It’s where the ideas in our heads start to take shape in the real world. These days, there are still the proverbial - and literal - ideas sketched on napkins, but technology is making it so that even the non-designers can express ideas in effective mockups and prototypes. While the expertise of designer and UX professionals is still paramount, everyone in the product management ecosystem can and should be a part of the critical function of design. In this episode, we discuss the democratization of design with Florian van Schreven, co-founder and COO of Uizard. 

All products have a lifespan. Some products live for a year or so. Some products - especially those attached to iconic brands - can live for decades or longer! Legacy products and brands - those that have stood the test of time and carved a place for themselves in their marketplaces -  often have a built-in credibility and can even have a sort of product folklore about them, but just like every product, these legacy products still must from time to time reinvent themselves to ensure they are continuously meeting ever-changing market dynamics and customer needs.

Many experiences can help product managers hone their skills... including stand-up comedy! In this episode, Deepak Paramanand shares how learning how to find jokes that will land with his audience helped him become a better product manager.

Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) has become one of the most discussed frameworks among product people. Yet while it's simple in nature, JTBD is often misunderstood, making it difficult for some to begin applying it. In this episode, we'll discuss what JTBD is and how to get started.

An organization’s product leader plays a significant role in mergers and acquisitions activities - from both the buy side and sell side. In this conversation, Jodi McDermott shares her experience as a product executive during multiple acquisitions.

Is the product manager role different for a physical product than for a software product? My answer is that most of the role is the same, but there are some real nuances that matter. In this episode, I discuss a couple of differences that product managers who own physical products encounter and ways they can be successful.

Neurodiversity - having a team whose minds and brains work differently from each other - can be a superpower for organizations, leading to more innovation and better products. Marton Gaspar, The Product Whisper, joins us on this episode to discuss what companies can do to leverage this superpower. More information on neurodiversity in tech and product at product-whisperer.com.

While there are a few product management degrees popping up in universities these days - which is great, by the way - generally speaking, none of us get a degree in product management and then start our careers in a product manager role straight out of university. We start from somewhere else… be it sales or marketing or engineering. Or we have a completely different path like this episode's guest, Mamuna Oladipo, SVP of Product Design & Engineering at Kickstarter. We discuss how to move into product management from a “non-traditional” path and how to make the most of every role and opportunity along the way

Product management is innately cross-functional. There are many key partners that help build and support products… product management, technology, sales, marketing, finance, supply chain, operations, and the list goes on. One of the most important relationships a product manager has is with his or her technology lead. As a product manager, it is our job to uncover customer problems. It’s the job of our technology lead and team to help find creative solutions for those problems. The tech lead also helps by managing the rest of the team and setting the team up for success. In this episode, we discuss the ever-important relationship between the product manager and the technology lead.

It’s early 2020 and the world has been drastically affected by the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. While the health and safety of employees should be the top priority for all businesses, of course, frankly we still must try to keep the customers we have and find ways to help those customers weather this storm. At this time, it’s even more imperative that product managers are in touch with their customers to uncover needs and problems and help solve those problems if possible. After all, your customers have very different problems than they did just a few short weeks ago.

When we think of the role of product manager, we mostly think of building products for external customers. Those people or businesses or governments that buy our product. But there are many, many product managers who build products for internal customers – other employees of their organization. It’s often said that an organization’s most important asset is its people, so these product managers who build products to attract better talent, to retain great people, and to help those people do their job more efficiently and effectively are of critical importance to the organization.

Scope creep – every product manager and engineer’s favorite thing. Scope creep is, of course, when, after we’ve finalized the scope for a project or release, the requirements for that release somehow keep increasing. Whether it’s an idea for a new feature, updated customer feedback on how something should work or a just more requirements, the scope of our development work can sometimes feel quite fluid and is something that must be acutely managed. While some of this new feedback can actually be valuable, it does make it difficult to score if the goal line is constantly changing. In this episode, we discuss some tactics for managing scope creep while maintaining the value and integrity of the original product idea.

Study after study show that diversity is good for business. According to McKinsey, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity outperform their competitors by 15% and those in the top quartile for ethnic diversity outperform their competitors by 35%.  Diverse teams, those made up of people from different races, genders, sexual orientations, backgrounds, and experiences lead to more creativity, a variety of thought and more empathy for customers. And as we all know, when it comes to innovation and product development, empathy for customers is paramount to success.  Diversity and inclusion are topics that simply must be top of mind for product managers and product leaders. We can’t build products for everyone if we aren’t in the right environment where inclusion is fostered. In this episode, award-winning author & CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting, Jennifer Brown shares insights into how organizations can be more diverse and more inclusive.

You’ve likely heard of the Jobs to Be Done theory, popularized by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. Jobs to Be Done is a framework for better understanding customer behavior.  The theory being that customers don’t buy products, they hire those products to do a job. As Theodore Levitt said in the 1960s, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

Regardless of industry, size or age of an organization, or the type of products built, understanding customers and markets is the bedrock of successful product management for any company. Without that understanding, frankly it doesn’t really matter how good they are at the rest of product development and management, because they aren’t getting to the heart of problems to be solved and needs to be met. However, there are some different dynamics in product research for B2B or Business to Business organizations and B2C, Business to Consumer, organizations. In this podcast, Yana Welinder, CEO & Co-Founder at Kraftful, and former Head of Product at IFTTT shares her experiences and expertise in product research for B2B companies.

Consumer subscription business models are sometimes quite difficult. Consumers – and we’re all guilty of this – expect so much for free these days when it comes to content, technology and online services, that it can be a steep mountain to climb for subscription products to become economically successful. The value must be proven initially in order for consumers to take that first step into paying for a product, but then we have to continue to show value for users to keep subscribing. This constant decision-cycle requires an ongoing, validated value proposition, even more so than other types of products.

Gamification is the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, etc.) to other areas, such as business, marketing, healthcare, or education for the purposes of changing behavior for positive outcomes. Heather Browning, a growth product leader with a background in game design, cognitive psychology and behavioral economics shares her insights on how to build products aimed at sustained behavior change with a focus on improving engagement and retention.

Cybersecurity is a scorching hot topic these days. Of course, there are products out there singularly focused on cybersecurity, but the impact of cyber threats goes far beyond the target of those products and touches a plethora of others. Think of all the connected products that you own… your Alexa or Google Home, your garage door opener may be on an app, your refrigerator may be able to tell you if you have milk or not. Now think of all the medical devices in hospitals that are connected to the cloud in some way. All these products, and many more, are targets for cyber hacks. As such, the topic of cybersecurity is top of mind for many product managers.

Empathy is a critical ingredient in successful product management. It affords us the ability to get in the shoes of our users and customers. It helps us feel their pain, celebrate their wins and feel a deep sense of commitment to help them solve their problems and be successful. Every great product manager has a deep sense of empathy. But empathy is one of those things that’s not easily defined or at least concretely described in context. Our guest on this episode, Ashley Wali, VP Product at Discuss.io, will share her experience with the evolution of user empathy and how she’s been able to incorporate empathy-building initiatives in her team and reap the benefits of those initiatives.

For most of us who have led product teams, scaling the team as you grow brings unique challenges. It’s a good problem to have, as they say. It means the organization and products are growing, but we must be diligent as we scale to maintain process consistency, product quality and team culture. While speed is important when you need more resources… skillset, mindset and cultural fit are of utmost importance and simply can’t be short-changed in the process. So it takes diligence, patience and planning.

Probably the most significant aspect of product management is the ability to gather feedback from customers and use that feedback to uncover core needs. While we all likely understand the importance of this activity, frankly most organizations don’t do it very well.  Generally speaking, Business to Consumer (or B2C) companies seem to have figured this out a little better than most Business to Business (B2B) companies. While there may be myriad reasons for that, there is a lot to be learned from voice of customer mechanisms employed by many B2C organizations.

There are many products that stand the test of time and become embedded in consumers’ lives. Think banking, healthcare, insurance or, depending on where you live, taxi cabs. For decades at a time, consumers are content in how they interact with these products, until someone comes along and disrupts the experience in ways consumers didn’t even know possible.  This episode is about the strategy and process of rebuilding century old products for the modern consumer.

Succeeding in product management and innovation while our industries and markets are changing around us is something we deal with every day. As the saying goes, “The only constant is change.” That’s what it feels like sometimes as product managers and product leaders. We rarely have the luxury of a slow-moving market. We must constantly be on top of changing market dynamics and evolving customer needs while still trying to manage the day-to-day process of developing and supporting products. It’s one of the things that make product management so difficult but also so rewarding when we get it right.

We hear a lot about AI – artificial intelligence – these days. According to McKinsey, AI technologies are projected to increase labor productivity by up to 40% and Executives are highly optimistic in its potential—80% believe artificial intelligence improves worker performance and creates jobs.  Frankly not all of us know a lot about AI and specifically how we in product management will need to understand, embrace, and utilize it. Chris Butler is an expert on AI and he will share his thoughts on how AI is going to impact product management and how product managers and product leaders can leverage AI for the betterment of their products, their businesses, and customers.

Iterative planning & design, also known as design thinking, is a process and philosophy that centers around deeply understanding customer problems, then designing solutions and testing those prototyped solutions in an iterative way, continuously getting real feedback from customers and improving the solution along the way. If there’s one key tenet of product management, it’s that uncovering and truly understanding the core need of the customer is crucial, and design thinking is a great tool to aid in that.

On this podcast, we discuss how skills that are critical to Product Managers - skills such as influencing others, initiative, a sense of ownership and empowerment, and many others - can be taken into other roles.

Organizations are keenly focused on developing their most important asset... their people. Talent Management and Learning & Development are strategic functions within best-in-class organizations, and they partner with Product Management groups to ensure Product Managers have the unique skills needed to be successful.

Many physical product companies are finding themselves dealing more and more with technology and the connected world… that is, their products must interact with many other products, platforms and technologies. Think about all the products in and around your home. We’re asking Alexa or Google to tell us what the weather will be like today. Our refrigerators are reminding us we need milk. We can control our thermostats and light bulbs from our phone. This is our world today. These formerly mundane products are now “smart”, connected and automated. And the product managers and product leaders for these types of products must now bring a whole new paradigm into their thinking - one where their products are now part of a larger ecosystem.

Launching and managing products across various global regions takes a special mindset and process. Whether it’s differing laws and regulations or differing cultural aspects, there are nuances that must be accounted for in every new market entered. We can’t just throw products into new markets without a lot of investigating and preparation.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of what's needed to be a successful product manager. In this episode, Steven Haines reinforces the key constructs required to be a successful product manager.

Product Management, by its very nature, is collaborative and cross-functional. On a daily basis, we work closely with engineering, marketing, sales, finance, operations, etc. Product Managers have many partners, and we need them all to be successful.

Episode 37 - How to Use Soft Skills to Influence Others: It’s amazing how often the topic of influencing and using soft skills comes up. As most of us know, product managers are supposed to influence those who don’t work for them, yet they’re accountable for so much! This episode is geared to those who need a little extra advice on how to influence others using softer skills.

Episode 36 - Riding High - a Conversation with Ruth Zukerman - Co-Founder of Flywheel: Product managers can learn a lot from entrepreneurs. In this episode, Steven Haines talks with Ruth Zukerman, author of the upcoming book “Riding High: How I Kissed SoulCycle Goodbye and Co-Founded Flywheel, and Built the Life I Always Wanted.” Ruth shares her remarkable story of how she translated her passion and creativity to build a remarkable company and a loyal following. Hosted by Steven Haines of Sequent Learning Networks

Episode 35 – How Product Managers Can Think About Mobile Users: We are a mobile, on-the-go society and our devices are glued to our hands. Product managers who deal with mobile users must understand how user needs change with each step they take. Keeping track to stay ahead of the curve is a challenge. Amazon’s Kabir Bedi shares some of his thoughts so you can fine-tune your approach to understand customer needs. Hosted by Steven Haines ofSequent Learning Networks