One Knight in Product

About the Episode And now for something a little different. I recently purchased a ChatGPT pro license and got access to ChatGPT 4, the groundbreaking new model from OpenAI. Social media is on fire at the moment, with people talking about all the cool stuff it can do. So, I thought "who better to speak to about AI Product Management"? A few hours later, and here's the result; the full One Knight in Product experience, a wide-ranging discussion with some terrible jokes from both sides thrown in for good measure. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights:   1. It's natural to be concerned about AI taking over the world We've all seen the movies, the books and the horror stories. But there's also an incredible opportunity to change the world for the better. We need to be vigilant, and confront the concerns head-on. 2. Product Managers can benefit from putting AI in their products But don't just go in blindly - you need to assess that adding AI capabilities to your product actually solves a real problem and isn't just cool tech. In short, you need to be a product manager! 3. You don't need to be a data scientist to be an "AI Product Manager" Having technical skills and being capable of understanding AI on a high level is helpful, but only to help you have good conversations with your colleagues. As a PM, your job remains to manage the product! 4. It can be hard to persuade traditional industries to use AI solutions Not everyone is cutting edge and there can be barriers to adoption. There are multiple ways to prove the solution and integrate gradually to show the benefits and remove the fear of change. 5. Explainability of AI is crucial AI is often seen as a black box, but there are ways to help explain what it's doing and justify its decisions. This is especially important when considering the impact of bias, and ensuring an ethical solution. Check out ChatGPT You can chat to ChatGPT on the ChatGPT website or visit the Open AI website.

Luke Hohmann is a startup founder, consultant, SAFe framework contributor and co-author of the upcoming book "Software Value Streams". Luke wants to help agile teams connect their own value delivery with profit, the value that the leadership team really cares about, and set up whole organisations for success. We chatted about some themes from the book, with a gentle detour into Scaled Agile territory for good measure. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights: 1. A software profit stream is the necessary evolution of a value stream Agile folk talk about value all the time but how does that map to company priorities? There are structures & systems we need to use to turn "value" into profit & meet the company’s financial goals. 2. Most books about pricing & licensing are old school and written for boomers - few of them cover software Pricing is not a number, it’s a system, and it's a team sport. Your software solution's pricing & packaging should evolve over the product lifecycle. 3. Value is a set of relationships between nodes that impact each other Value doesn’t occur in isolation; consider the system. if you’re building a solution to improve thing A in a positive way, but it negatively impacts thing B then the solution is intrinsically less valuable 4. Customers don’t care about your profits... ... but they do care about your ability to sustainably serve them a solution they need. But, beware! It’s possible to build too much quality and provide more than your customers are prepared to pay for. 5. Product management is an infinite game We play games for leisure until they’re boring. At work, we serve our customers until it’s boring to the business. If we play the game well we don’t win the game, we simply win the right to play again. Coming soon! Buy "Software Profit Streams" "Profit is your key to survival. Without profit, you cannot maintain or grow your business. Without profit, you cannot serve your customers or provide benefits to your employees. Without profit, investors have no reason to invest. Without profit, the goals of the business are unattainable. In Software Profit Streams, serial entrepreneurs Jason Tanner and Luke Hohmann unveil the essential tools and processes for creating profitable software-enabled solutions that have long-term impact." Book link coming soon! Check out Luke's article on startup SAFe Not convinced by SAFe in startups? Luke wants you to think again. Check the article out here. Contact Luke You can catch up with Luke on his website. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.

Bethan Vincent is an experienced marketer who has worked with a variety of firms in B2B SaaS and B2B Services and has now started marketing agency Open Velocity. Bethan believes in good competitor analysis and how we might get ahead of our competition by going out and finding out what's going on. We spoke about the joys of fractional marketing leadership, and some of the ways to get competitive analysis done. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights: 1. Competitor Analysis is a simple concept, but doing it is hard Your competitors are out there and, in many cases, there'll be interesting stuff on their websites but you need to use a variety of techniques to really get to the bottom of what they're doing. 2. You need to know your own target market & positioning before evaluating others It may be Marketing 101, but it's important to understand the space you're playing in, the audience you're going after & who your direct & indirect competitors are before doing competitor research 3. It's important to have a hypothesis you want to test for your competitors There are many tools and approaches you can use, but you need to know what question you're trying to answer. Just finding interesting "stuff" is... interesting, but maybe not particularly useful. 4. Just because a competitor is doing something doesn't mean they're being rational Be aware of what competitors are up to, but blindly copying them is not a good strategy. You need to be in charge of your own destiny, be a leader and do things others can't replicate. 5. Product management should be considered a subset of marketing 🔥 "Product" is one of the many "Ps" in marketing. Product managers should care about packaging, positioning, pricing, promotions and all the rest. It's not just about what you build or how you build it. Contact Bethan You can catch up with Bethan on LinkedIn or Twitter as well as apparently TikTok if you're into that sort of thing. Make sure to check out Open Velocity too.

Eisha Armstrong is a company founder, digital transformation consultant and author of 2021's "Productize", a book that aims to help service-based companies move away from scaling via people and embrace repeatable product revenue. We spoke about some themes from the book, as well as the fear that stops companies from transforming. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights: 1. Digital transformation gets you away from "arms and legs" There's nothing wrong with being a service company, but there are very attractive reasons to productise. Growth, higher margins, higher exit value and getting away from having to add headcount. 2. The three biggest barriers to transformation are fear, fear and fear It's natural for leaders and employees to feel fear of the unknown or of change. But fear is the enemy of growth. Yes, things could go wrong, but think of what could go right! 3. Transformation should be a full-time job Productisation has to be done right... it can't be an afterthought. The company needs to devote people and financial support to the effort otherwise it will inevitably fail and you might as well not start. 4. "The more narrow the niche is, the greater the riches" Service companies can make good money selling to all comers, but product companies necessarily need to niche down. The company likely doesn't have a strong history in ICPs & segmentation but it needs to develop those skills. 5. Productisation is awesome, but life is in the grey Plenty of companies offer a product/services mix and there is nothing wrong with this. What matters is that you productise thoughtfully & disrupt yourself before getting disrupted by someone else. You need to want to change. Buy "Productize" "More and more traditional professional services firms are turning to "productization" as a strategy to grow, improve valuations, and to fend off new digital-first competitors. However, many of them will fail and waste a lot of money in the process. Productize first outlines the "Seven Deadly Productization Mistakes" made when pursuing a product strategy, then provides the blueprint for overcoming each of these missteps. It is designed to be a practical playbook for any leader of a professional services business who wants to successfully accelerate growth." Check it out on Amazon. You can also check out the book website Contact Eisha You can catch up with Eisha on LinkedIn.

Dani Grant is a former product manager turned VC who decided to go back to building products and setting up her own company, Jam. Jam aims to take the pain away from bug reporting, and to deliver Dani's dream of shipping awesome software fast. We spoke about the story behind her company, as well as some hints & tips from her time working with early-stage startups as a VC. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights: Starting a company is a big adventure Dani went from PM to VC but felt the call of entrepreneurship irresistible. She found a problem that she was passionate about solving and wanted to do something meaningful for herself, her users and her team. Startups can be force multipliers for people making their own impact in the world The impact of a startup is felt not only by your users but your users' users. If you can save people time, effort, or both, then you can contribute to changing the world one company at a time. There's an approach to getting your first funding round As a founder, you're in the business of delivering a great meeting & making it easy to shine. For early-stage companies, VCs care less about the detail than the team and the vision. They know the execution will change. "Move fast and break things" is so 10 years ago First impressions count. If you're building productivity tools, you can't make people's lives harder. You need to ship something that works - moving fast and breaking things was a valid strategy only before people knew better Every PM & founder's job is to support their teams moving fast & shipping awesome stuff Devs have a big role here, but the whole company needs to come together around quality, define enough detail up front, and keep the scope small to help deliver a quality product. Contact Dani You can catch up with Dani on LinkedIn or on Twitter You can try out Jam on jam.dev   Here's the VC video that Dani recommended: How to Nail Your Startup Pitch Deck - Rebecca Kaden

Pooja Parthasarathy is a product leader who started out her career in the high-pressure, high-volume world of high-frequency trading. She took some time out with me to reflect on her unconventional career journey, what it taught her, and how to make an impact as a product leader. A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both! Episode highlights: High-frequency trading is as stressful as you'd imagine, but it has lessons for early-stage product managers Working with traders teaches you to think on your feet in volatile environments, think three steps ahead & build a thick skin. These are all valuable traits for PMs. We should all be comfortable asking basic questions Working in a variety of jobs has helped her get comfortable with first-principles thinking and asking even the most basic questions. It's important to model this behaviour for your team. Be kind to yourself and the stories you tell yourself Pooja was hard on herself after her first child and wondered if she could make a success of work after going back. She learned to appreciate the job she was doing and be her own champion. The job of a product person is to be an investor in good ideas A PM's job is not to have all the answers or all the best ideas, but to be the Socratic Police Officer and ask good questions to get those around you to bring their own insight to the table for you to tie together The CEO & CPO relationship is the most important in the company It's important to create leverage with the CEO, by having the right motivations, setting clear expectations about who owns what for what time horizon, and being comfortable delegating to other leaders. Contact Pooja You can catch up with Pooja on LinkedIn, although she's about to have a baby so maybe wait a bit!

Uri Levine is a 2x 'Unicorn' Builder (Duocorn) who co-founded Waze and is a former investor and board member in Moovit. Uri recently published his book, "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution". We talk about some of the themes from the book as well as some stories from his own career. A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both! Episode highlights: There are no right or wrong decisions, only the decision you make right now Uri is often asked if selling Waze was the right decision, but you can only make decisions based on the information you have. It's more important to make a decision than wait for the perfect decision. Find a problem you care about, but you are a sample of one You should be passionate about the problem you're solving, but don't assume that anyone else cares as much as you do or wants to solve it the way you want to. You have to get out & speak to people who have the problem If you're afraid to fail then, in reality, you already failed When you're building something no one has built before, you never know if it'll work. You need to experiment, fail fast and have multiple shots on goal. The faster you fail, the sooner you can have another shot. Product/Market Fit does exist & it is measurable If you're not creating value, people won't come back. Retention is the most important way to measure P/MF & make sure that the solution to your users' problem is actually valuable. Getting people to value quickly is essential. B2B & B2C product management share the same goals You might have different customers who care about different features, but they all care about something. The metrics might differ, but the ultimate goal is to deliver value & solve a real pain for all these different people. Buy "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution" "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution offers mentorship in a book from one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and empowers you to build a successful business by identifying your consumers' biggest problems and disrupting the inefficient markets that currently serve them." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Uri You can visit Uri at his website UriLevine.com or follow him on Twitter.

And now... for something completely different. The other day, I did an experimental webinar with my former podcast guest Adam Thomas where we talked about some audience-submitted questions about product strategy. I think it went pretty well and wanted to share the audio with a larger crowd. So here we are! Please do let me know if you like the format. A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring, and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both! The questions we answered:   What are the pillars of an effective product strategy? How do you know a strategy is working or not? What do you do when there is no product strategy? Check out Adam's previous interview I interviewed Adam back in 2021 about Survival Metrics. Check the episode out here. Contact Adam You can find Adam on Twitter. He's also got a Substack mailing list and his website is theadamthomas.com

About the Episode Ronke Majekodunmi is a product leader and featured Product School speaker who is passionate about using the power of storytelling to help drive cross-functional alignment. We spoke about storytelling, as well as some stories from her own career. A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring, and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both! Episode highlights:   You can't just walk into a new leadership job & trash the old team's work It doesn't matter where you worked before - there's always context and a reason for old decisions. Take time to understand them. Oh, and make sure you leave a clean audit trail when you move on! When looking at a new job, work out your non-negotiable questions Ronke has moved jobs for the wrong reason before and this has inspired her to make a list of questions she must have satisfactory answers to before moving. Create your own list and don't get buyer's regret. Product leaders should be Chief Storytelling Officers Storytelling is one of the best ways to drive cross-functional alignment and get everyone in the company on the same page. You should craft an inspirational story and ensure that everyone from top to bottom knows it. Creating stories collaboratively drives alignment Don't just go off into your ivory tower and write something yourself. Build shared ownership by getting the team to collaborate. This means you can start to let go, not need to be in every meeting, and empower the teams. It's important to be in control of your own story Ronke has had some bad work experiences in the past and this has inspired her to "run her race her own way", be her authentic self and give back to the community. We can all make a positive difference to other people's lives. Contact Ronke You can catch up with Ronke at her website. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter .

About the Episode Jeff Gothelf is a product coach, author, speaker and trainer who is currently trying to get companies to work with outcomes, not outputs. He's written two classic books: Sense & Respond, and Lean UX, as well as a variety of other books covering various aspects of product management and design thinking. A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring, and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both! Episode highlights:   Lean, Agile & Design Thinking can get along These came from different places, but the philosophies that underlie all of these ideas are the same: understanding our customers, working in shorter cycles, making decisions based on evidence, and continuously improving. Managing for outcomes is the hinge that everything else pivots from There are many principles of good product management, but moving away from output enables focus on the change in behaviour you want to see & have the humility to accept you don't have all the answers upfront OKRs are the gateway drug to agility and good product management OKRs are easy to explain, but difficult to implement. Used right, they can empower teams to make measurable impact towards an aspirational goal, without micromanagement or deciding on a fixed plan upfront. OKRs are for teams, not individuals OKRs enable teams to focus on impact, changing customer behaviour in a way that matters to their business & knowing whether they've succeeded. Cramming individual task lists into the OKR format doesn't achieve anything. Change is scary & might not work the first time Some people start with OKRs by mistake or give it a quarter & then give up. Using OKRs well takes work. If it's not working, make sure you have open & honest retros to understand whether it's fixable & whether you can try again. Buy "Lean UX" "Lean UX is synonymous with modern product design and development. By combining human-centric design, agile ways of working, and a strong business sense, designers, product managers, developers, and scrum masters around the world are making Lean UX the leading approach for digital product teams today In the third edition of this award-winning book, authors Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden help you focus on the product experience rather than deliverables." Check it out on Amazon. Buy "Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking" "As companies evolve to adopt, integrate, and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams -- product management, design, and software engineering -- learns a different model. This short, tactical book reconciles the perceived differences in Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Agile software development by focusing not on rituals and practices but on the values that underpin all three methods." Check it out on Amazon. Check out Jeff's courses Jeff is running some self-paced courses on OKRs, including in Spanish! Check them out here. Contact Jeff You can catch up with Jeff on his website. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.

About the Episode Itamar Gilad is a product coach, consultant and regular content author who's worked at IBM, Microsoft and Google. Nowadays, he's trying to help companies get away from the feature factory and into the world of evidence-based product development with the GIST framework. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights:   Big Tech firms aren't exemplars of how to "do product" We look to these firms for guidance, but they all build products differently & have created processes that work for them. What they do have are principles. We should copy the principles but work the way that works for us. Prioritisation frameworks have a place but aren't going to create your roadmap The numbers are guesses but are useful to start conversations & make sure you're asking the right questions. It's important to revisit scores over time to see what's changing as you learn new things. Confidence is a logarithmic scale Itamar uses the Confidence Meter to describe the different levels of confidence. This brings to life what you are describing when talking about confidence & shows it's not linear; the best evidence is substantially better than the weakest. Refocusing on goals gets you away from rigid roadmaps Itamar uses the GIST framework (Goals/Ideas/Steps/Tasks) to break down opportunities, prioritise for impact & get away from the feature factory. It's important not to kill ideas too quickly, and continuously revisit them. Product management is about principles The principles are customer focus, evidence-guided decision-making, adaptive planning & empowering teams. These are the cornerstones of product management. Customer focus is still the most important & everything else can flow from there. Contact Itamar You can catch up with Itamar on his website, where you can sign up to his mailing list and get access to his tools. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Matt LeMay is a product management consultant, coach and author of "Product Management in Practice", a book that aims to demystify product management and give you a practical, tactical guide for every day of your career. The book's recently had a 2nd edition released, and we spoke about some of the themes from the book. A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast! Episode highlights:   1. You should read all the PM books, but question them Books have to take a position, and they're always going to be simplified versions of reality. It's positive to disagree with what you find in these books, but you can learn something useful from just about any book. 2. It doesn't matter how Agile you are, or what framework you use Getting into holy wars about frameworks is not constructive. Not everything works in all contexts, and if it doesn't work you're not a "bad" product manager. Concentrate on delivering value the best way you can. 3. Product managers have a CORE set of skills There's no one standard job description for a product management role, but Matt likes to boil it down to CORE: Communication, Organisation, Research and Execution. Depending on the company, there might be additional important skills. 4. PMs need to make peace with not always being the decision-makers PMs need to concentrate on enabling good decisions. PMs are not "CEOs of Product" & may not be able to influence senior stakeholders all the time. There may be reasons for decisions outside of their control 5. PMs need to stop being defensive If you find yourself in a defensive posture, you're already behind. Often, the harder you try, the worse you can make things. Do what you can to affect change, but try to avoid fighting with your leadership & concentrate on helping your users. Buy "Product Management in Practice" "Updated for the era of remote and hybrid work, this book provides actionable answers to product management's most persistent and confounding questions, starting with: What exactly am I supposed to do all day?" Check it out on Amazon. Contact Matt You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn or visit his website.

Chui Chui Tan is an International Growth Adviser and Culturalisation Strategist who has worked with big brands like Spotify to ensure they have successful market expansions. I spoke to her about some important issues around internationalisation, global market expansion, and some of the pros & cons of different approaches. A message of support I recently found out that my former leadership coach has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tracy helped me through some tough times, and helped me improve in various areas. I'm grateful to her to this day. Tracy's friends are trying to raise funds so that she can enjoy some final experiences with her family, and leave behind fond memories for after she's gone. If you'd like to donate anything at all, please visit the link here. Episode highlights: 1. You should start thinking about international growth before you're ready for it You don't need to overengineer from the start, but you do need to make sure you have flexible building blocks in place so that you're not starting from scratch when you do want to expand. 2. It's not good enough to just translate text - you have to understand the cultural context Countries aren't defined solely by their languages - they have different currencies, different date formats, and different norms - you can't just do "International Spanish" and be done. 3. There's a framework to help you choose the best markets You can map potential market size & return on investment against efforts required & ease of entry to help you decide where to prioritise. You'll be working off imperfect information but it's important to think it through. 4. There are two main ways to go into other markets and both have pros and cons You can sell to local companies with global offices counterparts or you can set up an organisation/partner in other countries. They both have pros and cons and it's important to be intentional. 5. Going into unpromising markets is OK but start small Sometimes, big whale customers or globally-minded investors will heavily encourage you to get into a market you don't really want to go into. This is OK, but it's important to take an MVP approach rather than go all in. Contact Chui Chui You can connect with Chui Chui on LinkedIn or visit Beyō Global's website.

Douglas Squirrel, or Squirrel to his friends, is a long-time tech and agile consultant who claims to have been fired from every CTO job he's ever had. He's here to try to get tech teams closer to "the business", promote constructive tension to make better decisions, and have effective conversations across the organisation. He's also the co-author of a practical playbook on the same topics, "Agile Conversations". A message from this episode's sponsor - One Knight Consulting This episode is sponsored by One Knight Consulting. Spoiler alert, that’s me! I started One Knight Consulting because I have seen variations of the same problems plaguing product companies and I’ve seen them again and again. If you’re looking to get an independent diagnosis of your business with actionable next steps, trying to hire product people or coaching the ones you’ve already got, you can book a call with me. We can discuss your needs and how I can help. Episode highlights: Tech teams need to get closer to "the business" and care about profit Companies hire expensive engineers then get them into endless discussions about nothing, and lock them into backlogs. If engineers are given full business context, they can help to change the world. Leaders need to get used to less control to get more productivty Teams need to stop planning. It's less like a fire-and-forget rocket ride to a predetermined destination, and more like being on the Enterprise and responding to interesting signals from nearby planets. We can increase trust with stakeholders with "Test Driven Development for People" You can structure conversations with sceptical stakeholders like a series of tests and follow a process to build trust outside of the technology organisation. There's a method and it works. It's important for teams to be accountable, but not to be held accountable "Accountability" is often used as a stick to hit teams with by untrusting managers looking to maintain control. Teams can work with stakeholders to maintain buy-in and engagement. Everyone can do something to improve their situation It's no good complaining about your company or stakeholders, blaming them for everything & having a defeatist attitude. By having constructive conversations, everyone has a chance of affecting the change they want to see. Buy "Agile Conversations" "Agile Conversations brings a practical, step-by-step guide to using the human power of conversation to build effective, high-performing teams to achieve truly Agile results. Consultants Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick show readers how to utilize the Five Conversations to help teams build trust, alleviate fear, answer the “whys,” define commitments, and hold everyone accountable. These five conversations give teams everything they need to reach peak performance, and they are exactly what’s missing from too many teams today. " Check it out on Amazon. Join the Squirrel Squadron If you want to join a free community of tech & non-tech execs who are all learning from each other, check out Squirrel Squadron. Contact Squirrel You can connect with Squirrel on LinkedIn or visit his website.

Saeed Khan is a product consultant, coach, speaker and founder who wants to give all of us product managers some tough love. In a long career, he's seen the same five dysfunctions across multiple product organisations and wants us to all be honest with ourselves so that we can have a chance to fix them. I actually interviewed Saeed in one of my first podcast episodes. It has a certain "Simpsons Season 1" quality about it but, if you're curious, feel free to check it out! A message from this episode's sponsor - One Knight Consulting This episode is sponsored by One Knight Consulting. Yes, yes, that's me. But listen up. I started One Knight Consulting because I have seen variations of the same problems plaguing growing startups, scale-ups and larger, digitally transforming companies again & again. These problems can cause friction between teams, slow product development, lacklustre sales, and ultimately lead to constrained growth. If you're scaling your product organisation, struggling with cross-team alignment or having trouble executing your product strategy to support your business goals, book a call with me and we can discuss your needs and how I can help. Episode highlights: It's important to be honest about the state of product management It's not about being negative or blaming "bad product managers" for everything. But, there are repeated dysfunctions across a large number of companies and we can't fix them if we ignore them. Product managers suffer from poor job definitions, which makes it hard to succeed Bad job specs are a symptom of a deeper truth: Not many people outside product management really understand it, or what "cross-functional" working means at all. We should avoid being "glue". There are lots of smart product managers out there but they don't all have the skills they need Product management is the ultimate "school of hard knocks" trade & many people practising it speak only in the theoretical/struggle in different contexts. PMs need good coaching. "Process" is too often seen as a dirty word. You don't need too much but you need some There needs to be some level of rigour within PM teams to help set them up for success. Doing everything ad hoc gives you ad hoc results. Don't overegg it, but don't underegg it either. Our objectives are often unclear, and we need to do our best to connect to the company's goals We need to be able to define leading measures of success and connect our efforts to actual business success. PMs need to have a far higher level of interest in business outcomes. Product leadership is often weak & is needed to fix all of the dysfunctions It's better to have a former PM and coach them into a leader than to have a non-product businessperson brought in. Someone with good pattern recognition who can bring everything together is essential. Check out the blog article "The 5 Dysfunctions of Product Management Teams" You can read the article that inspired this interview right here. Contact Saeed You can connect with Saeed on Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon or check out Transformation Labs.

My good friends Andrea Saez and David Martin recently put a whitepaper out called "Product-Market Fit is Dead", and we decided to have a chat about it. Our original plan was a Twitter Space with audience interaction but it turns out that Twitter Spaces is awful. Undeterred, we did an "as live" session, uncut and unedited, to get as much of the live feel as possible. Check it out! Contact Dave & Andrea You can reach out to Andrea on LinkedIn or on Twitter. You can catch up with Dave on LinkedIn or Twitter Find out more about Right to Left at their website: https://www.righttoleft.io. You can also grab the white paper "Product-Market Fit is Dead" and browse the rest of their free content.

Bob Moesta is the co-creator of the Jobs to be Done Framework, a now-ubiquitous methodology to identify "struggling moments" and understand the driving forces behind customer demand. He worked on this with the legendary Clayton Christensen to take it out the world and followed it up with books about demand-side sales and, now, how to use the principles of the greatest innovators to help you succeed as an entrepreneur. A message from this episode's sponsor - One Knight Consulting This episode is sponsored by One Knight Consulting. Yes, yes, that's me. But listen up. I started One Knight Consulting because I have seen variations of the same problems plaguing growing startups, scale-ups and larger, digitally transforming companies again & again. These problems can cause friction between teams, slow product development, lacklustre sales, and ultimately lead to constrained growth. If you're scaling your product organisation, struggling with cross-team alignment or having trouble executing your product strategy to support your business goals, book a call with me and we can discuss your needs and how I can help. Episode highlights: Bob is dyslexic, and Jobs to be Done was his hack to understand the world Bob has trouble reading and writing, and this forced him to admit what he didn't know and find ways to get customer insight that didn't involve reading reports. Jobs to be Done was the result. Clayton Christensen helped him turn his hack into a framework Bob's hack became an indispensable framework to identify customer motivation, with applications through sales, product, design... even religion & HR! The importance of uncovering "struggling moments" is universal. Bob is passionate about mentorship and paying it forward Bob has had great mentors throughout his life: Clayton Christensen, W. Edwards Deming, Willie Moore & Genichi Taguchi. They poured so much into him, all in different ways, & he feels obliged to pay forward what he learned In many organisations, there's more energy spent arguing between functions than serving customers Product, marketing, sales & customer success need to stop shouting at each other and concentrate on helping their customers make progress. We're all on the same side! All the best innovators in the world have a core set of skills The 5 bedrock skills of innovation are: Empathetic Perspective, Uncovering Demand, Causal Structures, Prototyping & Trade-offs. To have the best chance of success you must master them all or find people to help. Buy "Learning to Build" "This journey of entrepreneurship and innovation shouldn’t be a solo trip. If you’re missing something, struggling to begin, or have reached a plateau, fellow entrepreneur and innovator Bob Moesta knows your next steps because he’s been there himself. Now, in Learning to Build, Bob helps you develop the five fundamental skills every successful innovator practices to be their best. He provides you with the resources you need to learn these skills, grow through experience, and adapt your mindset." Check it out on Amazon. Buy "Demand-Side Sales" "For a lot of us, selling feels icky. Our stomachs tighten at the thought of reciting features and benefits, or pressuring customers into purchasing. It's really not our fault. We weren't taught how to sell, plus we've been sold before, leaving us with a bitter taste. Here's the truth: sales does not have to feel icky for you or your customers. In fact, with the right approach, sales can be an empowering experience for all.." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Bob You can connect with Bob on Twitter, LinkedIn or check out The Re-Wired Group.

Milly Tamati is a former "Director of Miscellaneous" who travelled the world before settling in a tiny island off the coast of Scotland with 170 residents, a castle and a distillery. She's always been a generalist at heart and is now looking to support a global community of like-minded professionals with Generalist World. A message from this episode's sponsor - One Knight Consulting This episode is sponsored by One Knight Consulting. Yes, yes, that's me. But listen up. I started One Knight Consulting because I have seen variations of the same problems plaguing growing startups, scale-ups and larger, digitally transforming companies again & again. These problems can cause friction between teams, slow product development, lacklustre sales, and ultimately lead to constrained growth. If you're scaling your product organisation, struggling with cross-team alignment or having trouble executing your product strategy to support your business goals, book a call with me and we can discuss your needs and how I can help. Episode highlights: Not everyone needs to be a specialist, you could be a generalist! Do you not fit neatly in a box? Do you consider yourself a jack of all trades/someone who wears many hats? You might be a generalist & there are lots of generalists out there. Embrace it and find your people! The generalist sweet spot is in smaller companies & startups All companies could benefit from good people, but startups especially need people to be the connectors, tie things together and solve whatever problems arise whatever the domain. Generalism is a superpower here. If you've got a product that makes people's eyes light up then you're onto something Milly started Generalist World by speaking to a few people, but every single person's eyes lit up & they were all super-passionate. This is a perfect signal that you're doing something right! Applying a "Jobs to be Done" mentality to recruitment could be a step change in hiring practices We can make hiring less transactional & more human by not just talking about job roles, but problems that you need to solve and the skills you need to solve them. Milly believes in communities but believes 9 out of 10 will fail It's just so easy to create a community these days. Companies & brands are jumping on board, doing the bare basics & leaving a ghost town behind. Companies need to be strategic & intentional to be successful. Contact Milly You can connect with Milly on Twitter, LinkedIn or check out Generalist World.

Adrienne Barnes started out working to help people with their user personas but found that her work pointed to an even bigger problem - companies entering growth stalls and unable to recover. She is now here to tell us all how we might maintain our flightworthiness and get back onto the path of sustainable growth. A message from this episode's sponsor - Product People This episode is sponsored by Product People. If you’re a company founder or product leader who needs to get a product management team up and running quickly or cover parental leave check out Product People. They’ve got a thriving community and 40 in-house product managers, product ops pros, and product leaders. They onboard fast, align teams and deliver outcomes. Check out Product People to book a free intro chat and quote code OKIP to get a 5% discount. Episode highlights: Growth Stalls can happen to anyone and often happen after really strong growth Companies can be growing, growing, growing and then all of a sudden just stall. There are factors that influence this, but if they're not addressed then growth stalls can last for years or decades There are some red flags that indicate growth stalls and leaders need to listen Too many leaders believe in themselves too much that they miss the signs of a growth stall & fail to address them. Status quo bias and ignoring dissenting opinions can impede efforts to fix it. The earlier you catch a growth stall the better but it's never too late Identifying stalls early naturally helps, but if you catch it late then you can still turn it around as long as you're realistic about what "turning it around" means and adjust your expectations. Growth comes from understanding your customers & too many companies don't If teams have different user personas defined, no one has user personas defined. There needs to be a concerted effort to understand your ideal customers and it should be a top-down, aligned effort. Alignment is crucial for any of this stuff to work The top reasons for growth stalls are: Not understanding your customers, Not understanding your positioning, Knowledge gaps & misalignments between teams. You need everyone to know the same stuff & pull in the same direction! Contact Adrienne You can connect with Adrienne on LinkedIn, Twitter or check her website, AdrienneNakohl.com.

Heidi Helfand is an engineering leader, consultant, coach, speaker and author who says that we need to "make the most of the time we have with people". Throughout her career she's noted how team change is inevitable and wanted to help companies navigate it with her book "Dynamic Reteaming". A message from this episode's sponsor - Product People This episode is sponsored by Product People. If you’re a company founder or product leader who needs to get a product management team up and running quickly or cover parental leave check out Product People. They’ve got a thriving community and 40 in-house product managers, product ops pros, and product leaders. They onboard fast, align teams and deliver outcomes. Check out Product People to book a free intro chat and quote code OKIP to get a 5% discount. Episode highlights: Team change is inevitable but what's important is how you deal with it Even if you're going for long-lived mission-based teams, they're still going to change through attrition, company growth, lay-offs or mergers. It's important to manage this change effectively. Dynamic Reteaming helps you however you decide to set up your teams Books like Team Topologies tell you how to set up your teams to deliver value effectively. Dynamic Reteaming can work hand in hand with that approach and help you get there. Team members don't always get to choose what happens Sometimes people & teams will get moved around & sometimes this change will come top-down. It's ideal for team members to have a say, but ultimately it's important for the leadership to communicate, communicate. communicate Bottom-up reteaming can work but your mileage might vary Some companies allow people to decide what teams they work on, but your mileage may vary and, ultimately, in many companies, it's important to mix grassroots and executive input to get true success Dynamic Reteaming offers a playbook for different types of team changes The patterns within Dynamic Reteaming include people-focused approaches to use before and after team changes. The most important principles are to be kind, thoughtful and to treat people with respect. Buy "Dynamic Reteaming" "Your team will change whether you like it or not. People will come and go. Your company might double in size or even be acquired. In this practical book, author Heidi Helfand shares techniques for reteaming effectively. Engineering leaders will learn how to catalyze team change to reduce the risk of attrition, learning and career stagnation, and the development of knowledge silos. Based on research into well-known software companies, the patterns in this book help CTOs and team managers effectively integrate new hires into an existing team, manage a team that has lost members, or deal with unexpected change" Check it out on Amazon. You can also check out the book website Contact Heidi You can connect with Heidi on LinkedIn.