Podcast appearances and mentions of John Cutler

In this episode, we dive into the phenomenon of the "feature factory," where companies focus more on releasing products and features rapidly rather than prioritizing quality or user needs. John Cutler coined the term, and it perfectly captures the feeling many teams face: launching features without a clear understanding of who they're for or how they impact the business. If this resonates with you, keep listening as we explore how to break free from this cycle.In our panel discussion, we hear from three product leaders—Aakash Gupta, Andrea Saez, and Paweł Huryn—who share their insights on shifting from output-focused to outcome-driven product development. They offer actionable frameworks for maintaining strategic focus, addressing mid-market pressures, and fostering a culture that values meaningful outcomes over sheer feature volume. Whether you're scaling a business or trying to reignite your team's creativity, this conversation offers practical advice for escaping the feature factory mindset.Resources from this episode:Subscribe to The Product Manager newsletterConnect with Aakash, Paweł, and Andrea on LinkedInCheck out The Product Growth Newsletter, The Product Compass Newsletter, and The Product Momentum Gap

Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben sat down with John Cutler and Joshua Herzig-Marx for a wide-ranging conversation about how AI is transforming the way product teams build, collaborate, and scale. John shares why he joined a new early-stage startup as Head of Product and how the team is breaking the traditional rules of product development—starting with a platform-first mindset.The conversation explores the rise of highly configurable tools, the new personas emerging in AI-native organizations, and how simulations, knowledge graphs, and organizational ontologies might shape the next generation of work. Whether you're a product leader, founder, or operator curious about the frontier of product ops and AI tooling, this episode offers tons of insight—and inspiration.All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube.New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox

Welcome to the UNLEARN Podcast! Today, we're joined by a thought leader and prolific voice in product management and organizational design, John Cutler. With a unique ability to navigate the “beautiful mess” of product development, John has spent his career exploring the complex overlaps of product, UX, and strategy.Currently serving as Head of Product at Dotwork, John has previously held impactful roles such as Senior Director of Product Enablement at Toast and Product Evangelist at Amplitude, where he collaborated with thousands of product teams worldwide. His extensive experience spans B2B SaaS giants like Zendesk, Pendo, and AppFolio, as well as B2C, ad-tech, banking, and media industries.Known for his insightful writing, John has authored nearly a thousand posts across various platforms, captivating readers with his deep understanding of product dynamics. Whether you're seeking to level up your product thinking or gain practical tips on team enablement, John's expertise offers unparalleled insights.Key Takeaways:The Beautiful Mess of Product Development: John's approach to embracing complexity and context in product management to uncover innovative solutions.Unlearning and Growth: How letting go of rigid practices and adapting to change can unlock greater potential for teams and leaders.Writing as a Catalyst for learning: The power of consistent writing in shaping ideas, refining strategies, and building meaningful connections in the product community.Additional Insights:Product Ecosystems in Flux: John talks about the dynamic nature of product management, highlighting how roles and best practices evolve with organizational and market shifts.Gamifying the Creative Process: Insights into how John uses tools and techniques to make writing, ideation, and problem-solving more engaging and productive.Rethinking Organizational Models: Exploring how companies can overcome challenges by reimagining structures, roles, and team dynamics for the modern era.Get ready for a thought-provoking conversation with John Cutler on embracing complexity, fostering innovation, and mastering the art of unlearning!Episode Highlights: 00:36 - Episode Introduction"I don't think we need a product manager for every 4 to 7 people. A software as a service company is much more of a service ecology." 01:15 - Introducing John Cutler"John is one of the most insightful voices in product management, with a career spanning roles at Toast, Amplitude, and beyond."03:46 - Discovering the "Beautiful Mess" of Product"I've always been fascinated by the overlaps—where product, UX, and strategy collide in unpredictable ways."11:27 - The Importance of Writing and Sharing Ideas"I realized that writing wasn't just for others—it was for me to process and refine my thinking."15:59 - Finding Your Path Through Experimentation"Everybody finds their way if you're willing to experiment and try. It's like software—the rate of iteration and the velocity of creation allow you to refine and...

As we head into 2025, we're looking back on our most popular episodes of 2024. This episode was originally published on July 29, 2024. Are you shipping faster than you learn, or learning faster than you ship? Learn the risks of practicing "agile" theater and iterating your product without direction. On this week's episode, product legend John Cutler joins Chris Saad and Yaniv Bernstein to discuss: Why so many teams get Agile wrong Pros and cons of Agile vs. Waterfall The dangers of practicing Agile by the book vs. based on experience Combining Agile and Waterfall: “Wagile” Book Recommendation: How Big Things Get Done The importance of planning and strategic vision If you're ready to get things done while avoiding iterative dead-ends, this episode is for you. Book Recommendation Link: ⁠https://a.co/d/f4NWJDA⁠  The Pact Honour The Startup Podcast Pact! If you have listened to TSP and gotten value from it, please: Follow, rate, and review us in your listening app Subscribe to the TSP Mailing List at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thestartuppodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Secure your official TSP merchandise at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shop.tsp.show/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on YouTube at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@startup-podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Give us a public shout-out on LinkedIn or anywhere you have a social media following. Key links The Startup Podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Vanta helps businesses get and stay compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in demand compliance frameworks. With over 200 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on. For a limited-time offer of US$1,000 off, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.vanta.com/tsp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The Startup Podcast is sponsored by Rippling. Rippling is a single all-in-one platform for your global workforce, covering HR, IT, payroll, expenses, and more. For a TSP listener offer of 3 months free, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rippling.com/tsp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get your question in for our next Q&A episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/NZzgNWVLiFmwvFA2A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Startup Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tsp.show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about Chris and Yaniv Work 1:1 with Chris: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://chrissaad.com/advisory/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Chris on Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissaad/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Yaniv on Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Credits Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Justin McArthur⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Strategist: ⁠Carolina Franco⁠ Intro Voice: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeremiah Owyang⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Product managers are often used to setting goals and going after them with a single-minded focus, achieving success by pushing for results. If they approach the job like a mechanic—fixing, controlling, and managing tasks—they risk stifling innovation and limiting their team's potential. Without realizing it, managers can create an environment that suppresses growth. John Cutler, a seasoned product manager and researcher, believes that by adopting a service-oriented mindset, managers can instead empower their teams, foster growth, and ultimately drive better results for both the product and the people.John Cutler is the Head of Product at Dotwork, a strategic alignment platform that integrates metrics, insights, and workflows to drive better decision-making for businesses.In this episode, Dart and John discuss:- Balancing variety, complexity, and focus in design- Horizontal vs. vertical products- A service design mindset for managers- The traits of a great product manager- 3 major challenges that product managers face in software- Empathy and agency in management- And other topics…John Cutler is a seasoned product manager and user experience researcher. He excels at tackling complex problems and uncovering the "why" through qualitative and quantitative insights. Currently, John serves as the Head of Product at Dotwork, a strategic alignment platform that integrates metrics, insights, and workflows to drive better decision-making for businesses. Before joining Dotwork, he held pivotal roles, including Senior Director of Product Enablement at Toast and Head of Product Education at Amplitude, where he honed his expertise in product strategy and education.Resources mentioned:“How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity,” by John Cutler: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigateConnect with John:Substack: https://cutlefish.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpcutler/ Work with Dart:Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what's most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

In this episode, John Cutler talks about surviving the current tech environment.  We discuss how layoffs and blame destroy trust, create fear and conflict and stop people from providing the feedback that leaders need to make good decisions. We discuss whether our workplaces are a meritocracy or highly charged political environments. And we explore survival strategies such as going with the flow, picking your battles, building alliances and creating narratives. Join us to learn how to navigate corporate politics more effectively. Listen to the podcast on your favourite podcast app: | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | iHeart Radio | PlayerFM | Amazon Music | Listen Notes | TuneIn | Audible | Podchaser |  Deezer | Podcast Addict |   Contact Murray on LinkedIn or via email 

We get right to the point in this mix. DEEP CUTS from the house music archives here! Tracklist for November 6, 2024 01 :: John Cutler feat. E-Man - It's Yours (Jon's B-Side Breakdown Mix) 02 :: Lil Louis & The World - Club Lonely (DJ Pierre's Afro Club Mix) 03 :: Donell Rush - Symphony Symphony (Hurley's Symphonic Soul Mix) 04 :: Crystal Waters - Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless) (Joey Negro's Mastermind Mix) 05 :: Joi Cardwell - Trouble (Deep Dish Vocal Remix) 06 :: Vanessa Daou - Sunday Afternoons (Danny's Zipper Mix) 07 :: Michael "Kid" Gomez - The Thief 08 :: Mood-Vibes - Morning Groove 09 ...

Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and Ben are joined by John Cutler and Joshua Herzig-Marx (friends of the show) to explore a growing trend in the product community: product leaders struggling to find their next roles. We discussed the contributing factors to this trend, including the flattening of product organizations, the rise of super IC PMs, and the influence of AI. The conversation dives into practical advice for product leaders navigating these challenges and what the future might hold for product leadership.For anyone who is navigating the evolving product management landscape, considering a career transition, or interested in how AI and organizational shifts are reshaping the role of product leaders, this episode is for you.All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube (video).New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox

Today's episode is particularly special.A 2-hour masterclass on discovery that every designer, product manager, founder, and product leader should hearWith bestselling authors Teresa Torres (Product Discovery Habits) and Petra Wille (Strong Product People) - two of my biggest references.My god, this was fun...!Is it the first long-format episode on discovery with 2 industry legends? Possibly...Will there be advanced lessons, golden practical nuggets, and plenty of spicy takes?Oh yes...The only thing I can say is: you're in for a treat :)Petra, Teresa, and I covered:* How to get support from your leadership to do great discovery* Main mistakes to avoid when doing discovery and what to do instead* How to frame business and product outcomes* How to set great strategic context and close the loop between discovery and strategy* Why user research is not the same as product discovery* The danger with the double diamond* How to translate discovery into a story CEOs want to hear* Beyond discovering products: business modeling* How to use KPI trees* Deep dive into Opportunity Solution Trees and main pitfalls* And so so much more_Show notes* Teresa's book: Continuous Discovery Habits* Teresa's blog and website* Teresa's LinkedIn profile* Petra's LinkedIn profile* Petra's website* Petra's books* Strong Product People* Strong Product Communities* Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy, Bad Strategy – mentioned by Teresa in the context of defining strategy and diagnosing market conditions.* Seven Powers, the foundation of Business strategy* Petra's article on KPI trees* Clayton Christensen's Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategy* Bob Moesta's Jobs to Be Done and interview methods* Gino Wickman's book Traction* Rich Mironov's blog Product Bytes* Carlo Mahfouz episode and website* Moment Prisons article, recommended to me by John Cutler a while back_

Joining Peter and Jesse to talk about what's next for digital product design is John Cutler, veteran product manager and product management consultant. Along the way, we'll discuss what product leaders know that design leaders don't, facing ambiguity and uncertainty from executives, and how design leaders can more effectively advocate for the true value of their team's work.

John Cutler, a veteran thought leader and practitioner in product management, joins us for the first episode of Season 6 of the Boundaryless Conversations podcast. John is popularly known for his work on product development, collaboration, and systems thinking, and has worked with some of the most advanced product-centric organizations like Toast, Amplitude, and Zendesk. Based on his wealth of experience, John runs a thought-provoking newsletter, “The Beautiful Mess”, where he shares deep insights and revolutionary ideas in product and organizational development. During this podcast, we touched on how a founder's belief systems shape product strategies and organizational structures, the differences between single-product versus multi-product companies, and how it's important to consider the various frames through which one designs an organization's dynamics. John also covers the implications of rapid growth versus maturity in organizations and how technology, particularly AI, is reshaping product and organizational thinking. Throughout the conversation listeners will also get some special nuggets on what he looks for, when he first meets with leaders and entrepreneurs and this shapes the work in the related organizational context. This episode - one of the best ones yet - is full of insights on the challenges faced by organizations as they scale, and it's a precious reminder to avoid being elitist in driving organizational change. Tune in for a rich discussion and don't miss out on the shifting paradigms in organizational structure and product leadership. Key Highlights

Welcome to another episode of Building Better Games! Today, we are thrilled to have John Cutler, a capable and experienced product leader with a background in tech (with some game development and music thrown in). John will share his insights on fostering a healthy product culture, maintaining vision, and avoiding common pitfalls in the industry. Key Points: John Cutler's Journey: Started with a video game studio. Transitioned from music to software product management. Writes, consults, and leads product organizations. Product Thinking: Importance of product managers alongside talented designers and engineers. Focus on product viability and market fit. Balancing craft excellence with overall vision Diminishing Returns: Maintain momentum while ensuring quality. Internal motivation is key for team success. Role of Product Managers: Act as partners, not overseers. Importance of involvement in daily standups and retrospectives. Leadership and Culture: Create environments fostering creativity and coherence. Address issues harming team dynamics and productivity. Feature Factory Approach: Avoid treating development as a feature factory. Focus on sustainable growth and internal culture. Complex Adaptive Systems: Balance process-centric and variable approaches. Embrace uncertainty as an opportunity. Ideal Prioritization: Effective prioritization is crucial. Example of a CTO refocusing by deleting the backlog. Aspiring Product Managers: Key traits: curiosity, problem-solving, team orientation. Gain hands-on experience before diving into product management. Culture and Leadership: Leadership behaviors impact performance and creativity. Address performance asymmetries within teams. Thanks for joining us! We explored John's journey, highlighting the importance of a healthy product culture and clear vision. John provided advice on the role of product managers, effective prioritization, and fostering creativity within teams.   Don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell for more episodes. Your feedback and support are greatly appreciated, and we look forward to bringing you more valuable content. See you next time!   To learn more about John Cutler:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpcutler/   Twitter: https://x.com/johncutlefish   Newsletter: cutlefish.substack.com   Our discord community is live! Join here to engage with leaders and producers in game dev looking to make our industry a better place that makes better games: https://discord.gg/ySCPS5aMcQ   If you're interested in an online course on becoming a better game producer, head here: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/succeeding-in-game-production   Subscribe to our newsletter for more game development tips and resources: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/newsletter   Ben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/   YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@buildingbettergames

Are you shipping faster than you learn, or learning faster than you ship? Learn the risks of practicing "agile" theater and iterating your product without direction. On this week's episode, product legend John Cutler joins Chris Saad and Yaniv Bernstein to discuss: Why so many teams get Agile wrong Pros and cons of Agile vs. Waterfall The dangers of practicing Agile by the book vs. based on experience Combining Agile and Waterfall: “Wagile” Book Recommendation: How Big Things Get Done The importance of planning and strategic vision If you're ready to get things done while avoiding iterative dead-ends, this episode is for you. Book Recommendation Link: https://a.co/d/f4NWJDA  The Pact Honour The Startup Podcast Pact! If you have listened to TSP and gotten value from it, please: Follow, rate, and review us in your listening app Subscribe to the TSP Mailing List at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thestartuppodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Secure your official TSP merchandise at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shop.tsp.show/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on YouTube at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@startup-podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Give us a public shout-out on LinkedIn or anywhere you have a social media following. Key links The Startup Podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Vanta helps businesses get and stay compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in demand compliance frameworks. With over 200 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on. For a limited-time offer of US$1,000 off, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.vanta.com/tsp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. The Startup Podcast is sponsored by Rippling. Rippling is a single all-in-one platform for your global workforce, covering HR, IT, payroll, expenses, and more. For a TSP listener offer of 3 months free, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rippling.com/tsp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get your question in for our next Q&A episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/NZzgNWVLiFmwvFA2A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Startup Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tsp.show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about Chris and Yaniv Work 1:1 with Chris: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://chrissaad.com/advisory/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Chris on Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissaad/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Yaniv on Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Credits Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Justin McArthur⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Content Strategist: Carolina Franco Intro Voice: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jeremiah Owyang⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

My guest today is one of my favorite product people out there: Petra WillePetra is the author of one the best books for product leaders you can find "Strong Product People", she's the founder of an amazing product conference "Product at Heart", and one of the few product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed.Petra is such a great human being, and I am a big fan of her work.We covered a lot and, even though I am clearly biased, every product leader and manager should listen to this.We discussed:* Common struggles of product leaders and how to address them* Why many product leaders struggle with time management and understanding their role* Why product leaders need a framework tailored to their context and that works for them, to develop their people* What you need to know to get started with developing strong product people* The benefits of coaching and tools product leaders can use to help their people grow* Why reading good books and contextualizing their lessons is important* Navigating the "Instagramification" of the product industry (as John Cutler is putting it)* Building strong Communities of Practice and their benefitsWe even have a little surprise for you: we did some role-playing of a coaching conversation, so you can actually hear Petra in action and what great coaching is all about! Quite unique :) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

In this episode of the 'Retrospective' weekly podcast, Jeremy and Peter discuss key engineering leadership topics. Jeremy delves into his latest article on the four essential weekly ceremonies for engineering managers to ensure smooth and predictable execution. The ceremonies include the weekly kickoff, daily sync, one-on-one meetings, and the weekly review. Peter shares his recent experiment with AI-assisted coding, using ChatGPT for a Google Apps Script project, highlighting the benefits and challenges of leveraging AI in software development. Show notes: Jeremy's article on the Four Must-Have Weekly Meetings for Engineering Managers: https://www.jeremybrown.tech/the-four-must-have-weekly-meetings-for-engineering-managers/ Jeremy's earlier article about sharing at 20%: https://www.jeremybrown.tech/the-20-percent-rule/ Explainer on Task Relevant Maturity: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/management-concept/ John Cutler on Troubleshooting Status Updates: [https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-252-how-to-troubleshoot-status](https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-252-how-to-troubleshoot-status?ref=jeremybrown.tech) Peter's updates including AI-assisted coding experiences: https://peterszasz.com/week-24-2024-ai-coding-search-and-creativity/ BI dashboard and tools article Jeremy mentioned: https://briefer.cloud/blog/posts/self-serve-bi-myth/ - AI Summary “Sales pitches often oversell the idea of "self-serve dashboards," but in reality, it often falls short as non-technical users lack the context to interpret data accurately. The key to successful self-serve BI lies in technical support for business stakeholders using flexible tools that cater to their needs efficiently. Providing technical people with tools like LLMs, Python, and easy data sharing capabilities can bridge the gap between technical complexity and business user needs.” 00:00 Intros 00:37 4 Weekly Meetings for Engineering Managers 01:59 Why Work to a Weekly Cadence? 03:30 Projects and Milestones 09:03 The Weekly Team Kick-off / Planning Meeting 20:06 Daily Sync (Standup) and Team Connection 33:21 One-on-One Meetings 37:16 Monthly Career Focus and Continuous Feedback and Coaching 38:11 One-to-One Frequency 40:15 Task Relevance Maturity Framework 41:35 The Weekly Review Meeting 46:04 Stakeholder Communication and Status Updates 58:02 Retrospectives and Team Health 01:03:23 Using AI for Coding Projects 01:12:14 Wrapping up!

My guest today is one of my favorite product thinkers: John CutlerJohn is an absolute legend in the product community, and one thing I love about John is his dedication to sharing the messiness and contextual nuances in the world of building products.John has worked in Product with some of the most exciting tech companies around the globe and is the author of one of the most-read Product newsletters in the world: The Beautiful Mess.Everyone wants to work like the "best" product organizations. But what does "best" even mean? The "best" according to what, precisely? And how important is it to contextualize this advice? What role does culture play in subscribing to these principles, and implementing them?As I expected, John went deep on some of these things:* What does it mean to work in the "best" organizations* The nuances of categorizing an organization as the "best" and the importance of context* Reflections on implementing the principles of the product operating model and how messy it can get given different contexts* The importance of start starting, and being good at continuous improvement* Some patterns and antipatterns of high-performing teams and organizations* Foundational steps and reflections on prioritization* Approaching setting Strategy from scratch This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss product management with John Cutler, famous for his newsletter The Beautiful Mess. We dive into the purpose of product management as a driver of profitable growth. And we discuss how to use the north star framework to align your organisation around common goals. We examine how to use product roadmaps to communicate and prioritize plans and discuss how critical it is to be an open, honest, and effective leader. And finally we look at whether agile is critical or useless in product management. Join us as we uncover the insights and best practices product managers need to be more effective.   Listen to the podcast on your favourite podcast app: | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | iHeart Radio | PlayerFM | Amazon Music | Listen Notes | TuneIn | Audible | Podchaser |  Deezer | Podcast Addict | Connect with John via LinkedIn or over at https://cutlefish.substack.com/   Contact Murray via email or Shane on LinkedIn shagility. You can read the podcast transcript at: https://agiledata.io/podcast/no-nonsense-agile-podcast/product-management-with-john-cutler/#read   The No Nonsense Agile Podcast is sponsored by: Simply Magical Data

John Cutler is a systems overthinker, product educator and author of "The Beautiful Mess" newsletter. His hot take? That the Instagram-ification of product management sets unrealistic standards, and is driving us all crazy. If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!    

Is your product management approach clashing with real-world demands? Product expert John Cutler – author of the long-running newsletter The Beautiful Mess and former product evangelist at Amplitude – returns to the podcast to discuss different approaches to product management, and where they might help (or hinder) your business. Learn about: Ideal or Ordeal: The challenge of applying idealistic, one-size-fits-all perspectives on product management to the harsh realities of business. Canny Valley: The risks of adopting Silicon Valley product management styles without the necessary resources or mindset. Project vs. Product: The similarities and differences between product managers and project managers. Role Call: How to tailor different roles and hierarchies to the actual needs of your business. This week's discussion got spicy! Don't miss out. The Pact Honour The Startup Podcast Pact! If you have listened to TSP and gotten value from it, please: Follow, rate, and review us in your listening app Subscribe to the TSP Mailing List at ⁠⁠⁠https://thestartuppodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠ Secure your official TSP merchandise at ⁠⁠⁠https://shop.tsp.show/⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on YouTube at ⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@startup-podcast⁠⁠⁠ Give us a public shout-out on LinkedIn or anywhere you have a social media following Key links The Startup Podcast is sponsored by Vanta. Vanta helps businesses get and stay compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in demand compliance frameworks. With over 200 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on. Go to ⁠⁠⁠www.vanta.com/tsp⁠⁠⁠ for 20% off their incredible offer. Get your question in for our next Q&A episode: ⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/NZzgNWVLiFmwvFA2A⁠⁠⁠ The Startup Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠https://tsp.show⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about Chris and Yaniv Work 1:1 with Chris: ⁠⁠⁠http://chrissaad.com/advisory/⁠⁠⁠ Follow Chris on Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissaad/⁠⁠⁠ Follow Yaniv on Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ybernstein/⁠⁠⁠ Credits Editor: ⁠⁠⁠Justin McArthur⁠⁠⁠ Intro Voice: ⁠⁠⁠Jeremiah Owyang⁠⁠⁠

Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Marc and I are excited to bring you our conversation with John Cutler. John writes The Beautiful Mess, a popular Substack newsletter in the product community and frequently posts on LI to his 100k followers. We both learned about John's work during his time at Amplitude, where he spent 4.5 years as a product evangelist and coach for hundreds of product teams around the globe, giving him a unique vantage point about reality on the ground in many different environments and cultures. John legitimately lives in the “matrix of product management”.Prior to Amplitude, John held product management roles at Zendesk and Pendo, and drove UX research at AppFolio. John recently left his role at Toast, where he focused on product enablement and is enjoying beautiful Santa Barbara while exploring what's next.In this episode, we covered topics including:* John's path from product management into product evangelism and the tradeoffs of making that transition* How the role of product management has evolved and where it might go* Why it's important not to follow frameworks blindly and understand the context* The benefits writing has on John's thinking and how consistent publishing has allowed him to build a personal brand, creating optionality in his career* John's take on the great feature factory vs empowered product team debate and Marty Cagan's episode on Lenny's Podcast* And much more!John is an extremely nuanced thinker and truth seeker who wants to help bring the product world closer together. We think you'll love this conversation.Links* John's LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpcutler/* John's blog (The Beautiful Mess): * Elena Verna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna/John's post about Marty Cagan's episode on Lenny (Product Theater): This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit suprainsider.substack.com

Subscribe to The Beautiful Mess Podcast in your favorite podcast platform using this RSS URL: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/24711.rssIntroductionIn today's episode of The Beautiful Mess Podcast, I am talking to Chris Butler. Chris is currently a staff product operations manager at GitHub.During his career, he's worked at companies like Google, Facebook, Cognizant, Kayak, and Waze, as well as founding the Uncertainty Project. Chris embraces the mess like few people I've met. Defying categorization in his career path, inventing models and techniques for collaboration and sense-making, he's well versed in engineering, design and product, and figuring out how to challenge the status quo in big companies.Somehow he manages to be a mad scientist in terms of ways of working, and have a day job. In this episode we talk about being a change agent, introducing new ways of working, embracing a persona external to your day job, and interesting stories about the Google culture and define career categorizations.Enjoy.Transcript[00:00:00] John Cutler: Hi Chris, welcome to the It Depends podcast. How are you doing?[00:01:07] Chris Butler: Good. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to say it depends as many times as possible during this podcast.[00:01:13] John Cutler: You will not be judged for saying it depends in this podcast.[00:01:17] Chris Butler: I have the it depends jar over here that I have to keep putting, you know, a dollar in every single time I say it on other places. So it's, it's good that this is an open space.[00:01:25] John Cutler: And it depends safe space for sure. One thing I wanted to start out with is that typically there's things about our personal experience or how we grew up or maybe the jobs we've had, our personal context, which is our own personal It Depends. When you think about your personal experience, what are some things that stood out that have shaped how you view situations?[00:01:44] Chris Butler: I really hate the question, at a barbecue, "Like, what do you do?" It requires me to simplify down what I am and kind of my experience around what I do down to a place that is you know, maybe not helpful.[00:01:58] In high school I would help teach the C programming course because I was taught by another student and the teachers there didn't know how to do C programming. So I basically taught that course. I was a senior class vice president, but I ran on the anarchist ticket, mostly about how we would get like better pencil machines in the hallways.[00:02:16] And then I was, you know, a team captain on a football team, three time All League, Honorable Mention of my Empire. And I also built red boxes and ran bulletin board systems that were like, Warez Bulletin Boards back in the day.[00:02:30] I try not to require my identity to become one thing. Rather than like a T shaped career or whatever those other things are, like an octopus career. And the reason why I like that is because, you know, the octopus is like a very interesting neural kind of, system where it has one brain, but it also has like brains in all of its arms.[00:02:49] I guess I've just started to allow myself to be more comfortable with having a bunch of different things that maybe unify in certain cases. And I get paid for those things or it's part of my daily job. But I think I've just always followed my interests.[00:03:01] The anarchist kind of thread in my background or the fact that I was building red boxes or doing warez boards kind of says to me a little bit that I also have a problem with doing things within the rules sometimes. I don't think this is fair, right? Like just to be very clear, I don't think this is fair, but I feel like I have a natural distrust for leaders. I realized that there are also people, right. And there was a great post that came out a little while ago that was basically like, you will never fully love your manager no matter what, because of just the way, the way that these systems work.[00:03:29] That's maybe something that has really formed the way I think about all of this stuff and the work that I do on a regular basis is really, it's, it's a lot about how are we pushing back on just the way things are. That's where I would say, you know, I've kind of come from and maybe that's, that's the reason why I am the way I'm today.[00:03:46] John Cutler: I'm curious, when you start a new job do you know you've found your fellow Anarchist, you know, football captain, you know, cause certainly you could run into the football captain in the hall and say, Hey, welcome, welcome to the Anarchy Club, you were in the Anarcy Club too. And they, they might not be too happy with that statement.[00:04:04] John Cutler: How do you know that you found your tribe when you're in a company?[00:04:08] Chris Butler: Joining very large companies is interesting because I guess I see part of what my benefit is to people is building connections between maybe topics that don't make sense together, but also connecting and creating networks within the organization I'm in .[00:04:23] For example, there's a group called Flux and Gale, and it was started by someone internal to Google that was all about people that are model thinkers, system thinkers, like that type of stuff.[00:04:35] You kind of have to pretend to just be a regular person at first. I guess. When you find your other community, it's not because you want to just like be the same as everybody else. It's that you want your thinking challenged in this domain and they have the tools, the terminology, the language and the background to be able to then push you.[00:04:54] I've been doing a lot of stuff with something called design fiction, which is really about this idea of like prototyping some future artifact. And then how do we use that in a bunch of different ways? Like I I've given a talk about like product management is product management, fiction, right? Which like everything we write as product managers is fiction at first. It just happens to be really boring fiction, unfortunately. And so like, how do we do a better job of that?[00:05:15] But me going into like an intranet site and looking up things like design fiction, I started to find groups of people that were, you know, interested in these topic areas. And from there, I'm just have a natural like networking kind of ability that I then just reach out to people and say, Hey, I did this cool thing over here. I think you might be interested in it.[00:05:33] So that's, that's how I ended up like finding those people is really based on topic areas, but it's not always, it's not always possible. The intranet site that runs something like GitHub is different than the intranet sites that were inside of Google.[00:05:45] It's hard, but if you allow for that iterative exploration, you'll find the next person that is like this and, and maybe pushes you in a way that that would be helpful.[00:05:55] John Cutler: I knew you do a fair amount of speaking external to the companies you work at. curious how the desire to express yourself externally from your companies Is that a balancing act for you so that you can balance the need to project that everywhere internally as well.[00:06:10] Chris Butler: It's more of like an escape valve because I think like whenever we're at an organization, there are cultural expectations. There's the Overton window of what is acceptable or not. I've had previous leaders say we're kind of cutesy or like too smart or something like that. I have to try to gauge what is the Overton window for process change inside of this organization, and how do I push them a little bit so I can do more of this stuff? I think I've started to come to the conclusion, and I think a lot of people in the Wardley Mapping community also think about this, is that like, I can't use the terminology, I can't call it this thing anymore.[00:06:42] I was talking to someone at the product ops summit in New York like a month or two ago. And they were an agile coach that had gone into product operations, which feels like a natural progression, honestly, based on the terminology of today. She was saying that if she then tries to do something like hold a retrospective for the team, especially with her current team, they would be like, no, we're not, we don't do that type of thing. We don't get in a room and just like whine at each other about how bad things are. Right. But when she says like, we just had this launch and the launch went well in a lot of ways, but not in all ways, so why don't we get in a room and let's talk about like what went right, what went wrong and what we could do better next time.[00:07:17] I need a place to be able to experiment with these concepts. And so I use the external speaking as a place to do that. Would say that the values that I really care about personally end up being connection, right? Ends up being how do we actually discover new ways of doing things and then how do I personally learn about things. And so that type of drive for me means that these are going to be topic areas where I think they're on the edge of what is acceptability or considered to be normal or regular for these teams.[00:07:44] And that's what drives me is it's that escape valve.[00:07:46] Now, what's cool though, is that like when people that are part of my work come and see me talk about this stuff. They want to do more of it internally. The problem is how do we do it in a way that still allows leaders to kind of feel the culture that they have is appropriate and it's not too much of an assault on that.[00:08:02] So I think that's the, that's the problem I ended up coming up against is that I want to do these things internally. Right. But it's not always going to be considered to be a good thing if I didn't.[00:08:11] John Cutler: don't know if you have any, an example of something within the Wardley Mapping community, for example, that if you went down a rabbit hole, it would be the best three hours that had ever had. within Google or GitHub or whatever, if you went down that same rabbit hole in the same way, in that, in a different culture, it would not go over well. Maybe to give people like a very tangible, sense of how that would go down.[00:08:33] Chris Butler: Well so like with Wardley Mapping, right? Created by Simon Wardley, there's a bunch of different people that, that are kind of in this community of practice around essentially how do we create value chains and then understand the evolution of them over time, right? That's the simplest way I would put it.[00:08:46] I did a workshop as part of one of the Wardley Mapping online conferences about how you use Wardley Maps as a game board for doing strategic rehearsal or wargaming.[00:08:54] That's the type of thing where those people are like, "Oh, wow, this is actually a very interesting way to use this map to then talk about evolution."[00:09:00] When I did that, by the way, I did that inside of Google as part of our summit. And it was interesting because we did two different exercises as part of this. We did scenario planning where we would create basically critical uncertainty--so a two by two of like two different uncertainties, and it creates four worlds that we want to like talk about.[00:09:16] And the people that were user researchers, designers, they really got that. They, they did a great job inside of Google to do that. The PMs inside of Google had a really hard time thinking about like uncertainty about the future. But then like we, we changed it around and I had people build their Wardley Maps and then we would have random events that would happen and then they would have to like figure out what does that mean.[00:09:36] I think the thing that I do in a lot of these types of workshops or in these discussions, it ends up being that there's a surprise that they need to realize on their own. And so inside of this, I had felt like our strategy was not as like, well formulated as it could have been and was not communicated out in the way it could have been. And so whenever I asked for reflection at the end of this process of using a Wardley Map, people were like, you know, I was like, how did the strategy work out for you? And they were like, we are incredibly reactive.[00:10:03] I think it's things like that where you have to sometimes just not use exactly the type of terminology you want to use, but you want to still get people to some type of transformation or realization. And so, that to me is like, maybe looking at those two different communities, like, that type of wargaming thing could have gone on for actually more hours after that with the Wardley Mapping community. Within my community, It was like a little bit like pulling teeth to get people to think about this, like uncertainty and have an imperfect map. Inside the Wardley Mapping community all these maps are disposable. You create a map and then you will throw it away essentially.[00:10:34] Every time that I've ever done a workshop inside of Google where there's like post it notes, someone's like, "Who's going to write down all these post it notes?" And I'm like, no, we're not. We're just going to throw them all away, like, or recycle them ideally. But like, we don't need to have every single idea captured. It was about the lived experience of everybody inside this workshop that was actually meaningful.[00:10:52] So it's like stances on what is considered to be expertise or great at something, like how certain or uncertain people are. I think it's those kinds of things inside the communities that end up being I think it's very different.[00:11:04] John Cutler: Without necessarily revealing privacy stuff or whatever, what, what is it about the the Google culture that predisposes it to how are we going to write up all the stickies?[00:11:15] Chris Butler: There's a lot of smart people inside of Google, right? For a very long time, the culture was around academic excellence, right? I actually, I interviewed at Google like four times before I got offered a job. And I think it was the first couple of times I got rejected because my high school GPA wasn't that high.[00:11:28] There's like a real academic kind of smartness type of thing that's there. And so what that means is like, for people that are very smart in a particular domain, they tend to think that if they just think hard enough about something, they will come up with the perfect answer.[00:11:40] That's not true in my opinion.[00:11:42] This also is then related to like consensus driven decision making, which I think Google suffers from an awful lot. Where because everybody's like the other part of the culture is kind of like everybody's kind of nice to each other as well. It means that we all have to agree to be able to move forward. Because we're all super smart people, that means all of our opinions are equally weighted. And we have to converge all of them before we can move forward on anything.[00:12:02] And so that's, those are two things I think from the culture. And again, there are benefits to those types of cultures.[00:12:07] I would say that in the face of uncertainty, that's why we have to write down and take notes about every idea that came up because we don't want to miss a good idea that was there, when the reality is like, this was really just more of a workshop to get people to talk to each other in a particular way. And, and so I think that's, that's like a key difference, I think, and the reason why actually it's like that inside of places like Google.[00:12:28] John Cutler: When you think about the Wardley Mapping community. So that's the flip side. Like, what's the first thing that jumps out to you?[00:12:34] riverside_john_cutler_raw-audio_john_cutler's studio_0002: It's[00:12:34] John Cutler: seems like it's a honeypot for a certain type of thinking or need. what, what, what about that context sort of is the flip side for that? Um, cause it attracts a certain type thinker, uh, almost by definition of the visualization.[00:12:53] Chris Butler: I've met a lot of people inside the Wardley Mapping community that, you know, I mean, they're, they're fairly analytical when it comes to trying to understand this because some people are trying to take it into the direction where it's like, we're going to now use this map. Right. And, and you, you know, Double Loop right? Like I think Double Loop is a great example of that type of thing. They are actually trying to, in some way, mechanize these types of strategies. The honeypot of Wardley Mapping is trying to understand what is going on and then making choices about that.[00:13:19] The antithesis to that is that we actually have to make choices together and we want to make sure that everybody's happy. How much of your organization needs to agree to a strategic direction or not?[00:13:29] And I used to think it was like high, like you want to get everybody to agree. Then I was kind of like, Oh, well, maybe it's like 51%. You just need like most people. And then now I'm, now I'm actually of the mind that like, if you have a leader that you trust, it's actually only one person needs to actually believe in that strategy and everybody else can like decide whether they want to stay on that train or not. Basically. Right. Culture is another one. Like, yeah, you can try to change culture. It takes a lot of work to change culture, but if this culture is just not right for you, you just shouldn't be there.[00:13:59] Ideally, right? I think there's issues with like, you know, the fact that compensation and we all have to take care of families and that type of thing that I think ends up muddying this thing. But I think that's the ideal, right? We want to make hard decisions. And I think most of the time making hard decisions is a better strategic value, but that doesn't work inside of consensus driven cultures.[00:14:20] Like, like a Google. If we were to say to our leaders a lot of the time, like, should we do this or that? They'd say, do both. And it was because we also had unlimited resources almost, right? Search and ads are just printing money. So like all these other things we should be able to just like build whatever we want, but maybe the thing that, that Google has done really well that I loved about Google was that they don't feel bad about killing products if they feel like it's not in line. That's great.[00:14:44] And then there was like an internal site called Meme Gen which is known publicly, but it's like a meme site for Googlers. And it's usually very scathing of the leadership. And I thought this was probably one of the most interesting cultural things inside of Google.[00:14:58] If I wanted to understand what was actually going on with the people inside of Google, and it could be negative, a little bit negative sometimes. If I go to Meme Gen, I will understand what most of Google is thinking about, like in reality, not what we're actually talking about when it comes to, like the polished press releases and stuff like that.[00:15:12] John Cutler: I wonder what it is about that culture that would let that type of thing emerge.[00:15:19] it that, well, people are doing pretty well from a financial perspective and they're not going to get fired for saying something scathing? Or maybe that's changed now. Maybe you're like, yeah.[00:15:28] Chris Butler: it's, it is changing. I mean, I think there's always a struggle within organizations about how to allow for people to have, say, political discussions internally. And so that is something. There's an article that just came out recently about how they're removing downvotes because of some of the memes that came out about like the, you know, Israel, Palestine, conflict, right.[00:15:47] So there's things like that, that I think they're still figuring out. Now, there has been a belief that, that Googlers think that like management is trying to slowly kill Meme Gen because they don't like it.[00:15:58] Maybe from the beginning though, too. It's like, if, if you have a lot of really smart people. That are doing their own thing. That means that you allow for this type of like hacker culture. Like that's, that's, that's the truth is, is what's going on here. And so I think as like an organization like Google that's trying to become more of like a shareholder holder value type of organization, rather than an engineering driven organization, I think that's where you start to see that change.[00:16:22] Whereas for me, like it, it actually is very much like an engineer driven way of being is that you just build something because you felt like it was funny, right? That's where, that's where I think Meme Gen comes from, right? And there's lots of stuff like that internally that I thought was like, again, I think is, is an important part of like the culture there, but it's changing over time.[00:16:41] John Cutler: When you see people forming strategies do you have any example of of some contextual factor that they tend to think that matters that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme?[00:16:49] Chris Butler: One of the things I see pretty often is that people think about the plan, not about the strategy. And so we end up getting tied around the axle on like the stack ranking priority of this thing over this thing, rather than what are the rules that we're actually trying to kind of think about from this?[00:17:07] If you look at something like your roadmap or the next projects that are being funded, look at like how many headcount, any of those things are, that is your strategy at that point. And I call it the starter strategy and kind of a, you know, it's fine. Like that's, that's the way most leaders they'll come in. They'll create this like thing, which is a roadmap. That is the strategy, quote unquote, but it's really just like a plan.[00:17:26] That's actually something that leaders shouldn't be doing. Product leaders should not micromanage as much.[00:17:30] And I've definitely heard this concept that people should get into the weeds and worry about it. When the reality is like, If you're a product leader, if you're there to talk about the strategy, then maybe you need to know something about how the execution will take place. And I don't want to create this false dichotomy between strategy and execution. Like every execution includes a strategy of some type. But what I really get annoyed with is like, your job is actually to build culture now or to build the team or to create incentives for practicing in a way that you want people to practice. And that to me is less about like you're helping make these little tiny decisions and it's more about like broader things.[00:18:06] All the decisions then start being like, like led from just the leader rather than being distributed through the team, which is what we really want. That's why you should have a great strategy is because you should make the really hard decisions that people are constantly struggling with very easy. Because here's the strategy that says that we're going to do these things.[00:18:22] When we have things like escalations happening from the people that are at the ground level or at like the practicing level where they're talking with customers and they're building things for customers. If a whole bunch of escalations happen because of this theme, it sounds like that's actually a problem your team is struggling with, and they want guidance, right?[00:18:38] But it shouldn't be on a piece by piece basis. It should be that probably those five different things that are in the same theme, that's a strategy. And that's actually something that's really pertinent to today in making decision making, in doing decisions. We don't have enough where people are looking at the escalations to see how that modifies the strategy.[00:18:55] And then the third kind of last thing I think happens a lot for leaders is that they don't provide the context to their organization as often as they should. We don't have as much, at least I don't see it in a way that really, I think impacts people's day to day is here's kind of the headwinds and tailwinds that I see, like over the last month that I think you should actually know because I have a different context than you. Here's what I think you need to know more about in this world. And I feel like a lot of the time when we do strategy, like reviews, it's just pushing information up in a document or a slide deck or something like that, but there's very little, like, there's no, like, what is the person that's reviewing? What are they going to provide inside this meeting other than just like saying yes or no? Like they should actually be preparing things as well about like what they think is going on with the organization. That that's what I would argue.[00:19:43] John Cutler: When you think about the last couple of years why are we seeing this increase in people saying leaders should get into the details. Why are we saying this so often? Why is Brian Chesky saying this on an interview and, and every day on LinkedIn, someone's saying or have to be more hands on than you thought you were like, what's going on.[00:20:06] Chris Butler: I'm sure that there are leaders that are domain experts, right? Like I, I don't, I, I totally believe that's true. Right. And, and I've, I've often gotten in trouble both internally with my teams or externally on Tik TOK about saying, I don't think product managers should be very technical.[00:20:20] You can be a domain expert as a leader, and you can have good judgment and taste and kind of belief around things. But if you're not actually building teams that are able to be the domain experts. Right. I think that's a failure of leadership or, or a failure of building a team at the very least.[00:20:39] Because I want to make sure that there's like, there's a difference between like being great at hiring and talent development versus leadership in a certain area versus the management mechanisms and politics and all those different things that like are balled into a manager or a senior leader type of position. I want to make sure that that's clear that like, there's a lot of different ways to be a great senior leader. I think the moment that some moment that your job is there to catch all of the failures of your team. That's probably not a very healthy relationship.[00:21:08] That's why, like when, when managers complain that they don't get any like feedback from people, it's because that's the way that they usually are interacted with is like, you're there to make the most perfect presentation possible and any, any failure, like, you know, I've, I've heard about certain leaders that if anybody ever fails for any reason, they're suddenly unlucky and they should not be trusted with anything else. And that just sounds insane to me. You've got to be incredibly lucky. And that's like survivorship bias. Right. So then make it to that point. And maybe that's just the way that they think is the right view of the world. But I think, I don't think it is, I think it's bad for the organizations that they're building[00:21:43] John Cutler: What are some tips to make those sessions more effective?[00:21:46] Chris Butler: Derek Sivers has like a post that's like a two cents and it's all about the fact that a leader's two cents can be taken way out of context when the reality is it was like, just like a throwaway comment. And now someone's spun up a work stream to like figure out what this like two cent comment meant basically.[00:22:02] Speak less. Like it's your, your job is, is there to enable teams and to help them, but not to be like the main speaker, right? Like that, that's what I would argue.[00:22:11] The last thing is to actually believe in the systems that allow for that type of peer feedback. PMs can learn an awful lot from the way that like does great design critiques work or great code reviews happen.[00:22:23] From those kinds of practices, you end up actually learning something much more from each other. And because there's other people there, you accelerate the learning because other people are dealing with other problems. Allowing for that type of thing and actually not only inspiring it, but actually pushing to have those things inside of your teams. I think that is what great leaders should do is they want to create as many opportunities for feedback, between their team members as possible. And they're not always going to be the right ones to do the feedback because again, there's power dynamics. There's the fear of like losing your job because you screwed up, right? Like these are things that are really visceral for people. I don't think that the leader can always do that. What they can do though is they can push for systems that allow for that type of thing and do a better job of that.[00:23:03] I've heard this from a leader specifically that they thought that retrospectives were just whining sessions. And then they sent me a couple of articles about how HBR thought that retrospectives were bad. I get it. Like you need a good facilitator for those things sometimes, right? Like people will rat hole or they'll just want to complain or whatever. But I think overall, like having the team talk in a structured way about things is better than not doing it. Is what I would argue.[00:23:27] And I think this is why leaders, what they should be doing more of, is actually telling people on their team why they made a particular decision. And what was the process by which they did that. And if it's just intuition, Like, I just have tons of experience in this industry and so I'm making a decision based on this. That I think is the part that we, we need senior leaders to describe more.[00:23:44] And this is why like things like forward looking case studies, like decision forcing cases I think are so interesting is that you get everybody in a room from both junior to senior people and I would run these inside of Google. We get L3s to L7s inside of this room. They have to create a slide that is going to be for this offsite. It's very, it's a very PM activity. Right. Um, they, they have five minutes to create a slide that is going to basically frame this conversation that needs to take place.[00:24:09] And it's really interesting because like the L3 people, they, they are like very much, okay, well, here's the traffic light grid of options and characteristics and like red, yellow, green, everything like that, the L7s they would just be like, I have two questions for this audience. It's just like question one, question two. And it's like, the discussion is what matters in that case.[00:24:27] And what's really cool is just seeing the way that those senior leaders think about that in comparison to the junior ones. And they're not wrong or right. They're just like two different ways of looking at it.[00:24:37] I think this is why like strategic rehearsal thing I was talking about for wildly mapping, like. Those senior leaders should not go off and do email during those summits and just have their people do these activities. They should be there actually describing how they would do this. We need leaders to present more of their expertise as well inside these things to be able to describe this.[00:24:55] So that's why, I tend to want to have these types of containers for conversations that rather than the weekly, you know hand down of here's what's going to happen. I want the leader to be part of a game that talks about different decisions and see how different people in that room would do it because you learn about everybody's decision making capability.[00:25:15] That's what I would say. I think those things are more helpful. I've been starting to read this, this book about LARPing live action role playing, but there's this idea of a conceit where I'm going to play this role. It's not really who I am. Right. But I may be a jerk right now or like six hats is a great example of that, right? Like one of those hats is a jerk and it's okay because that's just the way six hats work. Right. So I think like allowing for those types of things that are more exploratory, I think, actually help the entire team learn from each other.[00:25:40] John Cutler: Back in the beginning of the podcast you talked about how you were okay with the flexibility in these particular environments. Right? Now I understand better about how you might be okay with like, uh, this is going to be improv slash, uh, we're going to do a two by two and improv and you're going to make slides and, and going to be fine with, uh, we're going to throw it all away afterwards.[00:26:05] Chris Butler: Right. That's right.[00:26:06] Dave Snowden. We call it acceptation. I think it's this idea of like meta or interdisciplinary thinking. I think we, we can gain an awful lot from that. And, and that's, that's what I love about this work.[00:26:16] John Cutler: One thing I like about how you're describing this though, is that you seem. to like the theory side of it, but then you seem to like manifesting it in an actually very visceral, hands on, out in the world type way. And one thing I've noticed Is that often that duality is not something that people immediately understand, right?[00:26:37] Do you ever get pigeonholed as being very theoretical and academic and you're like you have to raise your hand and say actually "Do you want to do an improv, uh role playing session with me? Like let's LARP. We're gonna go LARPing now." How do you communicate that duality that you seem to have to folks? ,[00:26:55] Chris Butler: I've been definitely called very academic, like very theoretical. But what's funny too is that like with a lot of the people that if I like be coaching someone or trying to mentor them, you know, I'm asking a lot of questions because I'm trying to understand what is the context of what's going on.[00:27:10] And, and people have said like, you know, I'll have a conversation with Chris and it's like the first 55 minutes are just like meandering. I have no idea where they're going. And then he gives me like three things to do with the 55 minute work. And it's like exactly what I needed, basically. You're absolutely right.[00:27:24] I think like part of the product manager's job is to be a toolbox of like methodologies and frameworks, right? It's like shu ha ri from the agile world is, is what we're trying to do.[00:27:32] I think once you get to that point where you're doing your own way. It's usually just a combination of things that have worked. I mean, I think you've said this too, about the fact that like frameworks are usually just an experts encodification of what they usually do. Right. And it worked in that moment, in that place, in that time. And it's trying to now turn it into something that anybody can pick up as a tool. But the reality is like, there's pieces of it that won't exactly work in every context.[00:27:54] Rather than assuming that there's this process that just has to work this exact way, how do we build something that is appropriate and fit for this. And I think maybe dropping another kind of like honeypot name is probably Christopher Alexander and pattern libraries and stuff like that. The way he thinks about things is that we're going to create a beautiful place that is going to be a place for someone to live, that is situated in the environment and gives them the things that they want, like the ability to have like a great breakfast with a beautiful view or something like that.[00:28:24] He really railed against the idea of kind of establishment of licensing for architects, the way that like architecture started to become something that was all about like the perfect way of doing something.[00:28:34] And if it's going to be for people, you have to build things in a very special way. And that's why I think like. We need all these tools and then we have like a team, which is a bunch of just people together and we need to figure out how they work and what they, what they want to work like. And that's why those things are, but it's, it's very hard.[00:28:49] I definitely try to do that. Usually it's just through workshops, right? It's like, that's the simplest way. Let's get in a room and we're going to format this conversation where it's not one person talking the whole time. It's all of us talking in this particular way.[00:29:00] And so that's kind of a, just for me, that's the brass tacks of this is like conversations.[00:29:06] John Cutler: Awesome. Well, I think that's a good way to end, actually. That's like a nice way of wrapping this up. This was a lot of fun and. I think I'm supposed to ask, you know, where are people supposed to find you? Although I think people are generally fairly findable now at the moment.[00:29:23] Chris Butler: Yeah. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. If people want to connect and I'd love to hear if you try anything that I've talked about, I'd love to hear how it works for you and whether it does or doesn't. The Uncertainty Project is a community of like decision makers and strategists that I think is interesting.[00:29:36] And there's like, that's where I've been doing some, some more interesting writing about this. But yeah, just in general, just always excited to hear how people are doing their job.[00:29:44] John Cutler: Great. All right. Thank you so much, Chris.[00:29:46] Chris Butler: You're welcome. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cutlefish.substack.com

In this episode of “Productly Speaking”, we discuss John Cutler's journey into product management, his contributions to the product management community through The Beautiful Mess, and his thoughts on self-gaslighting and the doubt loop. We also talk about his audience, where he finds his inspiration from, his thoughts on getting started creating content for the PM community, and the different voices that are already out there. This is an exciting discussion that's like drinking a large cup of bulletproof coffee with a side of wisdom, resilience, and a dash of humour. Show Notes: https://www.productlyspeaking.com/2024/04/02/episode-5-navigating-the-beautiful-mess-with-john-cutler/

My guest today is the roadmap sensei Phil Hornby.Phil is probably one of the few people in the world that has seen hundreds of Product roadmaps. He's the co-creator of the renowned show “Talking Roadmaps” where he regularly interviews thought leaders like Teresa Torres, Marty Cagan, April Dunford, and John Cutler. Phill works together with the one and only Bruce McCarthy as a Product Coach at Product Culture, and is the founder of For Product People.We could have talked about anything Product, but in today's episode we talked about all things roadmaps:* Why some people hate roadmaps* Common misunderstandings* Different types of roadmaps* How to navigate Now / Next / Later roadmaps and tweak it according to your context* How can roadmapping - when done well - help us transform our organizations to become more outcome-oriented* What roadmaps are really for* How to create different views from your roadmap to communicate with different audiences* Tips and tricks on all things roadmapping* And more.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

How can organizations create the necessary space for leadership to flourish amidst complexity and pressure? In this episode of Definitely Maybe Agile, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock delve into the intricate world of leadership in complex environments. Opening with a warm exchange, they explore an insightful article by John Cutler, examining the indispensable soft skills essential for leaders navigating complexity.Reflecting on Cutler's piece, Peter and David dissect various facets of leadership, from self-awareness to patience and self-repair. They highlight leaders' need to create space for diverse perspectives, fostering an environment where multiple possibilities can thrive. Amidst organizations' pressures, they ponder the challenge of finding time for such introspection amidst the relentless demand for results.This week's takeaways:Leaders must cultivate self-awarenessEncourage the blending of diverse perspectivesPractice Patience and Self-RepairResources: How Capable Leaders Navigate Uncertainty and Ambiguity- https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-274-how-capable-leaders-navigate?utm_source=activity_itemJoin the conversation and share your insights at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com – your input could shape our next big topic. Subscribe today and equip yourself to navigate the beautiful mess of leadership!

Strategy is messy. It's happening simoulteaneously at different levels, with different lenses, different time horizons, among many other stakes at play. My guest in this episode, John Cutler, has a remarkable ability to bridge the world of theories with what we actually face down the road when executing. Together, we unravel the intricacies of the 'messy middle,' that challenging space between lofty company aspirations and the day-to-day grind of teams. The conversation was extremely valuable to me, because it brought actionable ideas to complex topics like: helping team think bigger and wider, what is important to define to have a solid strategy, how to (or not to) align, and many more topics.

Startup founders are often preached to follow neat frameworks and one-size fits all prescriptions. Here to say “embrace the mess” is John Cutler. John is a well-respected thought leader in the startup world. He is currently the Senior director responsible for product enablement at Toast. John has previously held the position of product evangelist at Amplitude and numerous product management roles over his fascinating career arc. Most importantly, John is the author of the long running newsletter “The Beautiful Mess” where he posts prolifically to his followers about product development. This week, John joins Chris and Yaniv to discuss: John's fascinating career arc

Heidi Helfand is the author of Dynamic Reteaming, which outlines practical strategies for orchestrating successful team and company org changes. Her work is informed by more than 20 years in the tech industry at notable companies like AppFolio, Procore, and Expertcity/GoToMeeting. Today, she dedicates her efforts to sharing her knowledge through workshops, comprehensive courses, and consultative services, helping organizations navigate and optimize their team structures. In this episode, we discuss:• The importance of reteaming and reorging• The benefits of embracing reteaming• The five patterns of reteaming: one by one, grow and split, merging, isolation, and switching• Examples of successful reteaming• Why stable teams are not always ideal• How change can lead to great career opportunities• The RIDE framework for decision-making• Advice on how to set up isolated teams for success• The anti-patterns of reteaming and the challenges that can arise• Tactical tips for becoming a better listener—Brought to you by:• Productroadmap.ai—AI to connect your roadmaps to revenue• Hex—Helping teams ask and answer data questions by working together• Ahrefs—Improve your website's SEO for free—Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/episodes/. Today's transcript will be live by 8 a.m. PT.—Where to find Heidi Helfand:• X: https://twitter.com/heidihelfand• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidihelfand/• Website: https://www.heidihelfand.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Heidi's background(03:40) How Heidi got involved with reteaming and reorgs(07:37) Advice for people dealing with reorgs(11:56) The benefits of change and the RIDE framework(17:11) The five patterns of reteaming(20:00) The power of isolation(27:38) Advice on how to be successful by isolating small teams(33:27) Supporting and protecting internal startups(34:33) The one-by-one pattern(36:44) The grow and split pattern(39:20) The merging pattern(42:14) The switching pattern(50:18) Anti-patterns of reteaming(52:49) Embracing change and growth(58:48) How to become a better listener(01:01:28) Lightning round—Referenced:• Dynamic Reteaming: The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams: https://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Reteaming-Wisdom-Changing-Teams/dp/1492061298• O'Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/• Procore Technologies: https://www.procore.com/• Kristian Lindwall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristianlindwall/• Chris Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissmithagile• Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes: https://www.amazon.com/Transitions-Making-Changes-Revised-Anniversary/dp/073820904X• Pat Wadors on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patwadors/• The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strategies/dp/1119690358• GoToMyPC: https://get.gotomypc.com/• Teamwork: https://www.amazon.com/Teamwork-Right-Wrong-Interpersonal-Communication/dp/0803932901• AppFolio: https://www.appfolio.com/• SecureDocs: https://www.securedocs.com/• Citrix: https://www.citrix.com/• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Secrets-Highly-Successful/dp/0804176981• Tuckman's stages of group development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_development• Rich Sheridan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/menloprez/ • Menlo Innovations: https://menloinnovations.com/• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805• Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results: https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Kata-Managing-Improvement-Adaptiveness/dp/0071635238• Paulo Freire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire• Jon Walker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwalker/• Managing Corporate Lifecycles: https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Corporate-Lifecycles-Ichak-Adizes/dp/9381860548• The Adizes Institute: https://www.adizes.com/• John Cutler on Lenny's Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-differentiates-the-highest-performing-product-teams-john-cutler-amplitude-the-beautiful-mes/• Co-Active Training Institute: https://coactive.com/• Co-Active Coaching: The proven framework for transformative conversations at work and in life: https://www.amazon.com/Co-Active-Coaching-Fourth-transformative-conversations/dp/1473674980• Creating Intelligent Teams: https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Intelligent-teams-Anne-R%C3%B8d/dp/186922583X• The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash a Culture of Innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Surprising-Power-Liberating-Structures-Innovation/dp/0615975305• Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making: https://www.amazon.com/Facilitators-Participatory-Decision-Making-Jossey-bass-Management/dp/1118404955• The Bear on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bear-05eb6a8e-90ed-4947-8c0b-e6536cbddd5f—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

"The Tragic Consequences of Strict Drug Policies: Remembering Lee Sun-kyun"Larry Michigan, starts off by wishing everyone a happy new year and reminiscing about the Grateful Dead's legendary New Year's Eve shows. He decides to feature songs from the Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve show in 1981 at the Oakland Coliseum. Larry describes the chaotic countdown and the band's energetic performance at midnight. He also pays tribute to John Cutler, a Grateful Dead sound technician and producer who recently passed away. Larry discusses the strict anti-drug policies in South Korea and the tragic death of Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, who was subjected to relentless media scrutiny for his alleged marijuana use. He criticizes the punitive approach to drug abuse and emphasizes the need for rehabilitation rather than punishment. Larry also predicts that the University of Michigan's football team will win their game against the University of Alabama in the Rose Bowl based on his "Deadhead Cannabis System." The episode concludes with a discussion of the Grateful Dead's performance of "Dark Star" at the New Year's Eve show and the significance of the song's rarity.Timestamp Chapters:00:00:36 - Introduction and New Year's Eve celebration00:04:22 - Featuring songs from the Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve show of 198100:05:52 - Discussion on the song "Iko Iko" and the energy of a Dead New Year's Eve show00:33:48 - Tragic story of Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun and the strict anti-drug policies in South Korea00:38:00 - Predicting the winner of the Michigan vs. Alabama football game using the Deadhead Cannabis System00:42:00 - The encore set featuring Dark Star and other songsNote: The timestamps are approximate and may vary slightly when listening to the actual podcast episode.  Grateful DeadDecember 31, 1981Oakland ColiseumGrateful Dead Live at Oakland Auditorium on 1981-12-31 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive *With Joan Baez **With Matt Kelly ***With John Cipollina. Bill Graham flies in on a joint - also: NRPS - only "Banks Of The Ohio" - final "Bobby McGee" - final "Bye Bye Love" - final "Children Of The 80s" - last "Dark Star": 01-20-79 [232] - final "Lucifer's Eyes" INTRO:                    NYE Countdown                                Track No. 20                                6:35 – 7:35  SHOW No. 1:          Iko Iko                                Track No. 21                                :26 – 2:00 SHOW No. 2:          The Boxer   (with Joan Baez)                                Track No. 3                                0:00 – 1:35 SHOW No. 3:          Bye Bye Love   (with Joan Baez)                                Track No. 6                                0:00 – 1:14 SHOW No. 4:          Dark Star                                Track No. 31                                4:20 – 6:00  OUTRO:                  It's All Over Now Baby Blue                                Track No. 34                                1:41 – 3:45 Talk about the dead show/NYE shows in generalKorean Actor who committed suicide because he was being investigated for MJ useDead U. at Stanford with David GansRIP John CutlerAnd more .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

Today's interview is just a taste of what you'll learn at Rosenfeld's upcoming Design in Product conference—featuring John Cutler's closing keynote. John is the senior director of product management at Toast, a doodler, a former band member, a UX researcher, and business analyst. He's also the prolific writer behind “The Beautiful Mess, a Substack newsletter with over 36,000 subscribers, where he writes about cross-functional product management—especially the messy parts. As someone who likes “messy, creative endeavors” and building things with other people, John enjoys unpacking the complicated parts of collaboration, getting to the heart of messes, and finding a way forward involves much more than identifying patterns. John finds that each person's frame or perspective is only one of many. This is one reason the relationship between product and design is a complicated ecosystem, and the whole system—not just a part—needs to evolve together. In an effort to reach consensus across teams, John notes that it's easy to fall into the alignment trap where the so-called alignment is fragile and where consensus becomes more valued than a true solution. John encourages listeners to get comfortable with the complicated mess, to truly listen to multiple frames and perspectives while holding onto their own, and then to roll up their sleeves and explore a way forward together. What you'll learn from this episode: About John's background and his brief stint in a band that opened for others About the upcoming Design in Product conference About the messiness of product development and problem-solving About avoiding the traps of alignment and over-simplification Quick Reference Guide [0:00:24] Introduction of John Cutler and Design in Product 2023, and the back story behind “The Beautiful Mess” [0:05:01] Patterns in messes [0:10:23] The relationship between product and design [0:14:11] Dealing with varying work speeds and perspectives [0:20:32] Design Ops Summit, October 2-6, 2023 [0:21:45] The alignment trap and the simplification trap [0:30:50] A new metaphor for looking at teams in organizations [0:34:04] John's special words for listeners Resources and links from today's episode: Design in Product 2023 https://rosenfeldmedia.com/events/ The Beautiful Mess, John Culter's Substack https://cutlefish.substack.com/ Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan https://www.amazon.com/Images-Organization-Gareth-Morgan/dp/0761906320/

Сьгодні в епізоді:* Готували вакансію маркетолога, відкрили вакансію бекенда* Стартап це примітивна інфузорія * Хто визначає рівень відповідальності для ролі* Якщо ти не зростаєш ти загибаєшсяShow notes:* John Cutler “doing OK”* Дискуссія в Твіттері про відповідальність* Вакансія бекенд-розробникаP.S.: Вибачте за звук – мій провтик, наступного разу буде краще.Підписуйтесь на Startups are hard на Apple Podcasts, Overcast або Google. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newsletter.maxua.com

It turns out that people in Guatemala do not eat guinea pigs on the street, but they were used as guinea pigs in the 1940s by the US Government. The US really needed some human subjects to observe the effects of syphilis on the human body so they injected sex workers in Guatemala with syphilis and then sent them into the local jails to help spread syphilis to the prisoners.  The sex workers were injected with syphilis without their knowledge or consent, and the prisoners only knew that someone had opened the door and let the sexy times roll. If this sounds familiar, you're thinking of the Tuskegee Experiment and for good reason - Dr. John Cutler was involved in both human experiments.  After Tuskegee was made public in the 1970s, no one thought to say "oh yeah, and in Guatemala we also injected people with syphilis."  It wasn't until 2005 that someone discovered the study and went public with it. Come with us down the rabbit hole that is syphilis - what is it, what are its effects, and most importantly, who is to blame for it! Gentle Listeners, kindly Note: Our title is NOT taken from Urban Dictionary and do not look it up.

The Guatemalan Syphilis experiments were conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. They were led by John Cutler, who would go on to participate in the Tuskegee Experiments. This was unknown, until Historian and Professor Susan Mokotoff Reverby found Cutler's archives, while she was researching the Tuskegee Experiments. Guatemala has condemned these experiments as crimes against humanity. Carmen tells Cristina about this dark chapter in Guatemala history and it's aftermath. They also discuss the recent news about Nury Martinez, former president of the Los Angeles City Council and her racists remarks. Obscure Latin American history, capitalism and corruption. Each week, your hosts, twins Carmen and Cristina, will tell each other a story about Latino/Latine history, capitalism or corruption and sometimes all three. Episodes every Thursday. If you have any topic suggestions, dm Historias Unknown on any of the socials! On Instagram, you can find pictures of topics discussed: https://www.instagram.com/historiasunknown/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/historiaunknown Website: https://www.historiasunknown.com/ Sources: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guatemala-syphilis/u-s-researchers-broke-rules-in-guatemala-syphilis-study-idUSTRE77S3L120110829 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3828982/ http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/02/guatemala_syphilis_experiments_worse_than_tuskegee.html  https://www.voanews.com/a/judge-lawsuit-over-guatemala-syphilis-experiment-to-proceed/4730000.html https://www.law.com/2022/04/22/federal-judge-dismisses-suit-against-johns-hopkins-rockefeller-foundation-over-nonconsensual-human-medical-experiments-in-guatemala/?slreturn=20220909212146 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Cutler writes the popular and beloved product newsletter The Beautiful Mess. For many years, he was a Product Evangelist at Amplitude, which led him to meeting and working with a large number of product teams around the world. Through this role, he gained unique insight into how the best product teams operate. In today's episode, John reflects on leaving his role at Amplitude, and explains the attributes that the top 1% of product teams share. We also go deep into some of his favorite frameworks and discuss the best way to apply these frameworks to your work. We also unpack skills like product sense and product mindset, and what he's planning in his new role at Toast.—Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/what-differentiates-the-highest-performing-product-teams-john-cutler-amplitude-the-beautiful-mess/#transcript—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for supporting this podcast:• Merge—A single API to add hundreds of integrations into your app: http://merge.dev/lenny• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments: https://www.geteppo.com/• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny—Where to find John Cutler:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/johncutlefish• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpcutler/• Newsletter: https://cutlefish.substack.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Referenced:• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/• The North Star Playbook: https://info.amplitude.com/north-star-playbook• Craig Daniel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmdaniel/• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595• AppFolio: https://www.appfolio.com/• High Leverage Product Evangelism: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/high-leverage-product-evangelism• Satya Nadella on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella/• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Map-Breaking-Invisible-Boundaries/dp/1610392507• Innovation Labs: https://innovationlabs.com/• BEES: https://mybeesapp.com/• Marty Cagan on Lenny's Podcast: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-nature-of-product-marty-cagan#details• Sooner Safer Happier: Antipatterns and Patterns for Business Agility: https://www.amazon.com/Sooner-Safer-Happier-Patterns-Antipatterns/dp/1942788916• Teresa Torres on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresatorres/• Andrew Huberman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab/?hl=en• TBM 49/52: Pyramid of Leadership Self/Other Awareness: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-4952-pyramid-of-leadership-selfother• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/chat• How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business: https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business-ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U• Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations: https://www.amazon.com/Accelerate-Software-Performing-Technology-Organizations/dp/1942788339• User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product: https://www.amazon.com/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/dp/B08TZGKKF2• Build with Maggie Crowley podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-with-maggie-crowley/id1445050691• One Knight in Product podcast: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/index.html#page-top• Sunny Bunnies on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81286920• Booba on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81011059• Toast: https://pos.toasttab.com/• Drift: https://www.drift.com/John's list of high-performing people worth following:• Dr. Cat Hicks (@grimalkina) https://www.linkedin.com/in/drcathicks/ • Stephanie Leue https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-leue/• Amy Edmondson (@AmyCEdmondson) https://www.linkedin.com/in/amedmondson/• Dominica DeGrandis (@dominicad) https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicadeg/• Courtney Kissler https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-kissler-0930681/• Christina Wodtke (@cwodtke) https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinawodtke/• Matthew Skelton https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewskelton/• Heidi Helfand (@heidihelfand): https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidihelfand/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) What is a product evangelist? John's unique role at Amplitude(05:50) John's reflections and feelings on leaving Amplitude(17:28) What John's doing next(18:52) John's newsletter: The Beautiful Mess(27:49) What do the top 1% of product teams have in common?(40:08) Different ways companies are successful, and why anyone can improve(45:55) Investing in people vs. investing in processes(48:49) The importance of culture and values(49:59) Global company cultures: the individualist vs. the collectivist  (55:55) Why it's hard to make changes in large companies(58:49) How to view frameworks(1:01:02) The spectrum of performance in big and small companies(1:05:27) Examples of high-performing people who work outside of Silicon Valley(1:09:02) The skill of product management(1:11:35) The value of learning a bit about everything(1:13:46) Why do people often underestimate the loops available at their company(1:16:20) Chronic vs. acute issues at companies(1:18:07) Unpacking the skills behind product sense and product mindset(1:20:44) A place for people without the traditional meritocracy mindset(1:22:38) John's writing process and what he plans on writing about next(1:27:52) How to use ChatGPT for learning and levity(1:31:56) Lightning Round—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

01. Ananda Project - Cascades of Colour (Joe Claussell super mix)02. Jill Scott - Whenever You're Around (JB's Main Vocal Mix)03. HALO & ATWATER Ft Mr V - CHANGE04. Rhythm & Sound ft. Paul St. Hilaire - Free For All05. John Cutler feat. E-Man - It's Yours06. AALIYAH - MORE THAN A WOMAN (MAW Remix) 07.  Femi Kuti - Truth Don Die (Kerri Chandler Remix)08. Tyrone Ellis – Music In The Air (Martino Vocal Dub Mix) 09. KINGS OF TOMORROW ft. J McKNIGHT - FINALLY KOSMIC DUB10. RAW ARTISTIC SOUL - FELA BRASIL (MAIN MIX)

What qualities do you believe a successful product evangelist should possess? Do you want to know how John Cutler became a successful product evangelist? Gaining a deeper understanding of PLG can be a key factor in your success and aid in your development as a successful product evangelist. In this episode, Product Led Podcast is pleased to welcome John Cutler, a Product Evangelist and Coach at Amplitude, to discuss his knowledge of Product-Led Growth, concepts and insights as a product evangelist that many successful Product teams have already adopted. If you want to learn more about this conversation and gain the insights you'll need to expand your knowledge about the PLG growth, listen to this podcast right now! Show Notes [04:29] Success isn't always linear! [08:00] It doesn't matter what part of your career you're at, you have to disrupt yourself often! [10:15] Tactics change overtime! [11:18] A successful Product evangelist needs to be curious, wants to try a lot of different tactics and ideas and is mission-driven! [11:57] The tactic may change, but the mission should stay the same! [15:22] Listen to one of John Cutler's key insights on how to be efficient with employee-generated content. [16:35] Keep an eye out for your value system; not everyone shares your values. [32:05] People want real-world content, and the PLG industry should not overlook this! [35:17] Develop a toolkit of model and business strategies, such as experimentation, psychology, and monetization. [41:02] Pay close attention as John explains the three foundational things that can assist you in reaching that business milestone. About John Cutler He is intensely interested in user experience and product development that is informed by evidence. He combines and contrasts different methodologies to assist teams in providing customers with long-lasting results. About Amplitude A digital analytics platform called Amplitude provides self-service visibility into the whole customer journey. Profile John Cutler on LinkedIn John Cutler on Twitter John's email list Graphic gallery Amplitude Amplitude experts to follow on LinkedIn: Justin Bauer, Chief Product Officer, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjbauer/ Spenser Skates, CEO, https://www.linkedin.com/in/spenserskates/ Shadi Rostami, SVP of Engineering, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shadi-rostami-b6a636/ Tifenn Dano Kwan, CMO, https://www.linkedin.com/in/tifenndano/

John Cutler is a product evangelist for Amplitude, and a leading voice in the product management community. As a systems overthinker and "on second thoughts" leader, he's an anomaly in this world of quick-fire bubblegum takes. John's hypothesis is simple - product management is messy and he loves nothing more than thinking about it and drawing lots of complicated diagrams to explain it. Here are some of John's weighty thoughts: There's a lot of variety in product content out there and that's good John can get pretty in-depth, but there's plenty of room for targeted, optimised, "just do this" takes out there. As long as they're reducing the gatekeeping around product management not increasing it. Working in the "ideal" product way isn't the be-all and end-all There are lots of great teams out there not working as per the books. There are also great Big Tech-style practitioners who can only thrive in certain environments and would flounder anywhere else. We should all be thinking in systems Systems thinking is important for product managers trying to make sense of their product or organisation. Nothing is linear, everything is composed of self-reinforcing loops. Think you're a change agent? You're part of the system too! Product people need to be able to translate their thinking Systems thinking or otherwise, product people can have complicated messages that could sound esoteric or theoretical to non-product folks. It's important to find a way to land your message with your target audience. He coined the term "Feature Factory" as a joke and his thinking has evolved Sometimes you're going to have to build a feature & it might even be the best move! Work with your CEO, not against them, when they ask for a feature & make sure you know what game you're playing. Surviving a feature factory is possible with this 5-step plan John has an actionable 5-step plan (containing 6 steps) which enables you to work out what you want, what your colleagues want, demonstrate the value of product practices and, if all else fails, when to leave. Contact John You can hit John up on Twitter, or sign up to his mailing list The Beautiful Mess.

In this episode, Kendall and rachel talk about: * The art of mending things beautifully (the words rachel was trying to remember are Kintsugi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi) and Sashiko (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sashiko), in that order) * The art of mending things not so beautifully, aka hacking off the bottom of your favorite pants and adding bits of your favorite shirt so they fit better (Kendall subsequently found some photos, but none of them from after the shirt addition...) * Why Kendall sounds echo-ey (also, maybe this is why there's an annoying echo of rachel throughout this recording, apologies) * Why we're talking about systems thinking: https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1518361842342453248 (no longer pinned) * Context, and why it rules from orbit * How seeing the big picture can be frustrating when one has limited power or scope * Optimization, in a shockingly nerdy gaming analogy * When it's hard to share context due to business volatility * Wait, what actually do we mean when we say systems thinking? * How systems thinking is actually largely about understanding people and their motivations * A former podcast guest we both think is a super impressive systems thinker but did not name ;) Thanks to John Cutler (@jcutlefish on Twitter) for a thought-provoking list! Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music

There's more to being a product evangelist than just advocating for a product. Amplitude Product Evangelist John Cutler believes focusing on the work culture and systems surrounding the R&D org is just as important and he joins us on todays episode to chat with Intercom Product Manager Mathew Cropper.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Scott Prugh is CTO at CSG International and one of the people I admire a lot for his perseverance and dedication in making a 35-yo large enterprise embrace modern ways of working. He is an active member of the DevOps community and a member of the DevOps Enterprise Summit conference programming committee. We had a great conversation about their DevOps transformation at CSG. Folks at large enterprise organizations – don't miss this!Subscribe to 0800-DEVOPS newsletter here.Show notes:- This interview is featured in 0800-DEVOPS #34 - DevOps transformation with Scott Prugh- DevOps Portfolio Management slides by Scott Prugh- Scott recommends: Kill it With Fire by Marianne Bellotti,  John Cutler, Melissa Perri- Scott's weekly DevOps Digest

John Cutler is a product evangelist, coach, and Head of Product Education at Amplitude. As an accomplished writer, John has an amazing ability to create, record, and produce content at an incredible rate. He is passionate about wrangling complex problems and answering the why with qualitative and quantitative data. John joins Jeff Gothelf to share how he uses all the knowledge he's obtained to build a bigger and broader following, all in service of staying forever employable. He talks about his professional journey and discusses tips for creating content. You'll hear John and Jeff Gothelf talk about: John's journey from dropping out of college and attempting a video game company to product evangelism. How John started writing about product management. Advice for creators interested in monetizing their content. What John draws inspiration from, and why you don't need to be massively inspired to create. Laying the foundations to give yourself options. Asking your employer for adjustments or accommodations, rather than leaving your job. The coolest stage John has ever been on, between his stint as a musician and his job as a speaker. Resources Jeff Gothelf on LinkedIn | Twitter JeffGothelf.com John Cutler on LinkedIn

John Cutler is the Head of Product Education at Amplitude. He is a product evangelist & coach, who has spent his career wrangling complex problems and answering the ‘why' with quantitative data. He joins Melissa Perri on this week's Product Thinking Podcast to talk about the importance of product education and getting in your product “reps”, and the types of product patterns he's discovered after working across industries.  Here are some key points you'll hear Melissa and John talk about in this episode: A product evangelist acts as the public face of a company and connects with the people who use its products in unique ways. Product evangelists bridge the gap of need for education advocacy, helping teams see the future direction that they're going in, and product therapy. [2:04] Product people tend to follow common patterns and principles when it comes to transformation approaches, but how they apply these principles can be different depending on the culture. [6:08] How to pivot to transform an organization must be tailored to the position the company is in. [9:23] Sometimes product people just need to empower their teams. However, there are often systems in place that prevent this. "If you go into an organization that isn't really aligned in a way to allow agency, where there is low confidence among the teams, a lot of dependencies between the teams, and maybe they don't have the way to see if what they're doing is working... no amount of empowerment will help," John tells Melissa. [11:40]  A lot of organizations have people at the head who have had experience in the digital and processing development department, but they have not worked on a team in modern ways of working. They can intellectualize it, John says, but they can't feel it in their bones. [15:11] Melissa talks about product people not being able to recognize product patterns and see how technology can completely change your product. They can't comprehend rethinking the way they approach product, or they don't consider platform approaches. "You can take the strategy of a different SAAS company from the product architecture and how they deliver value, and use the things that work in your company but just refine it and it's those types of things that I feel like are missing," Melissa says. [17:43] People who have been doing product for a while may underappreciate how many signals and tacit knowledge that have been acquired over the decades. Because of this, communicating with someone who hasn't had those signals can be frustrating. It's important to step back and think about how you learned what you learned when trying to teach other people. [21:25] John talks about some of the core strategies of product leadership. [26:18] Before teams decide to move on to strategy, they should do a simple linear regression and analyze the who, what, where, when, and why of their product. Then start layering complexities and uncertainties. John describes a system he's created called Mandate Levels. [30:31] Not everyone in the product world is fortunate to have job mobility, so organizations need to create an environment that gets outcomes going. [33:51] Sometimes product people believe they're empowering their teams but they're not being sensitive and empathetic to the lives of their employees. How a product manager shapes the mission is important because it can leave enough room for people to take risks. [40:15] Product managers must be clear and honest with themselves before they begin to implement change. They need to connect with their organizations and find the kernel of opportunity. [43:53] Resources John Cutler | LinkedIn | Twitter | Articles Amplitude John Cutler's Product Org Expertise

In this episode we discuss a topic a little more serious. Jordan Olgin is back in The Laboratory for another Blind Topic, in the theme of previous episodes. This week its The Tuskegee Experiment and its off springs in Terre Haute Prison experiment and The Guatemalan experiment as well as Dr John Cutler and the truly ATROCIOUS things he got away with.  No episode is complete with a first half of our shenanigans. So be prepared for rollercoaster episode. 

The role of a product manager is not to be a mini-CEO, according to John Cutler, Head of Product Research & Education at Amplitude. The product manager should not be the only decider. Instead, the product manager should function as a team facilitator bringing context and guiding discussions. John was fanatical about that view of the product manager's role. He still agrees with it, but he's softened his stance a little. In the three years he's worked at Amplitude, which offers digital optimization tools used by more than 1,000 enterprise customers, John has met with more than 500 product development teams. Seeing how different teams operate has given him an appreciation for the role culture plays in team dynamics. “Different versions work in different settings,” John says on this episode of People Driven Products. Before joining Amplitude, John was a consultant and had no desire to go back to working for an employer. Then, Amplitude's Head of Marketing reached out and recruited John as a product evangelist. That was three years ago.“My philosophy was that the product would just sell itself. I really do actually believe that Amplitude sells itself,” he says.In this episode, hear John discuss his obsession with cross-functional teams (and how to make them work effectively), and why analytics and research are essential for building a successful team.

A simple mindset to help you navigate through your most ambitious goals: think big, work small. If you're a business, focus on how to earn your first $1, then $10, then $100 and so on. If you're trying to write a novel, focus on writing the first page, then the second. Envisioning lofty goals doesn't require you to figure out how you will get there. Envisioning lofty goals in smaller units of progress does. Inspired by John Cutler's writings on Think Big, Work Small: https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-452-think-big-work-small-part

In this debut episode of The Right Track, Stef Olafsdottir of Avo speaks with John Cutler of Amplitude. They discuss the growing proximity of product teams to customers, managing organizational inertia, and building better data cultures.

In this debut episode of The Right Track, Stef Olafsdottir of Avo speaks with John Cutler of Amplitude. They discuss the growing proximity of product teams to customers, managing organizational inertia, and building better data cultures.

This week on the Product Love podcast, I sat down with John Cutler, self-proclaimed “product agitator” and, most recently, a first-time dad. John has worked in a variety of roles in product and consulted at top tier companies like Zendesk, Appfolio, and Pendo. John is one of the most active and prolific writers and thinkers, and if you don't already, you should definitely follow him on Twitter.

John Cutler is the Product Evangelist at Amplitude, a product analytics platform that helps product managers. His career spans music, entrepreneurship, Product Management, and UX Research at such companies as ZenDesk, AdKeeper, and more. In this episode of the Product Science Podcast, we talk about what patterns John sees working with product teams on their process. Read the show notes to learn more.

John Cutler (@johncutlefish) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss his article “Why Agile Isn’t Working” and what we can do about it. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]John Cutler[/featured-image] John is a multiple hat-wearer. Product development nut. He loves wrangling complex problems and answering the why with qualitative and quantitative data. John blogs on Medium here. John is currently Senior Product Manager for Search and Relevance at Zendesk. He has a perspective that spans individual roles, domains, and products. John knows agile product management and frequently shares his knowledge on In this episode you'll discover: Why Agile doesn’t work Discussing principles and values instead of practices How meeting the needs of others can ultimately help us meet our own needs The impact of “promises in progress” in your organization Links from the show: John’s blog site – https://medium.com/@johnpcutler Why Isn’t Agile Working? – https://hackernoon.com/why-isnt-agile-working-d7127af1c552 Coaching Beyond the Team Workshop – Columbus, OH – April 3rd – 5th How to support the show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute to the show: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon Book of the Week: [callout]In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Related Episode: Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. Help promote the show on iTunes: One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Rolling Rocks Downhill: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Entertaining Way to Learn Agile and Lean by Clark Ching All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose among more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 087: Why Agile Isn’t Working with John Cutler appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Cutler (@johncutlefish) and Amitai Schleier (@schmonz) joined Ryan Ripley (@RyanRipley) to discuss feature factories, outcomes, and excellent agile product management. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Product Manager John Cutler presenting his agile product management insights.[/featured-image] John Multiple hat-wearer. Product development nut. He loves wrangling complex problems and answering the why with qualitative and quantitative data. John blogs on Medium here. John is currently Senior Product Manager for Search and Relevance at Zendesk. He has a perspective that spans individual roles, domains, and products. John knows agile product management and frequently shares his knowledge on Twitter. Amitai is a software development coach, speaker, legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, award winning bad poet, and the creator of the Agile in 3 Minutes podcast. He blogs at schmonz.com and is a frequent guest on Agile for Humans. Amitai has published many of his agile observations and musings in his new book – Agile in 3 Minutes on Lean Pub. In this episode you'll discover: Why a feature factory models work in the short term and fail in the long term. How to empower and engage your teams with customer collaboration When to change roles in order to gain insights and empathy Links from the show: John’s Blog on Medium Amitai’s Blog Roots of the Feature Factory by John Cutler To the Drifters, Why Askers, and System Thinkers by John Cutler [callout]Scrum is the most successful framework for agile product development and much has been written about how to follow the Scrum process but the key to success is in the leadership skills of the product owner. Product Mastery explores the traits of the best product owners offering an insight into the difference between good and great product ownership and explaining how the best product owners are DRIVEN to be successful. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! Techwell's Agile Dev East is *the* premier event covering the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AFH20 by July 21st to receive 20% off any registration package over $800 in addition to Super Early Bird pricing. Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You'll notice that I'm speaking there again this year. Attendees will have a chance to participate in my Aligning Toward Business Agility–360° of Freedom Leadership Summit presentation, along with my half day sessions on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions, as well as Rethinking Your Retrospectives. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando – November 5-10, for this great event. The post AFH 072: Agile Product Management with John Cutler [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.