Product Perspectives

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#64 How to make the collaboration between PM and Product Ops work, with Julie Robles, Product Ops @ Payfit (2/2)

2024-02-0630:19

My guest today is Julie Robles. Julie is leading the Product Ops team at PayFit, and her role is to maximise efficiency, and impact of the Product and Tech teams. She has over 13 years of experience in product and program management for both startups and large corporations, exploring ecosystems in Europe, Middle East, and Asia. She is also a product and OKRs mentor (for Google for Startups and ADPList). I’ve split my conversation with Julie into 2 episodes, because there were lots of topics to discuss. In this first episode, we talk about her background and journey into product ops, and the relationship between product managers and product ops - how the roles overlap, when is the right time to set up a product ops functions and how to ensure everyone has time for glue work. In the second episode, we talk about how AI is changing the role of product managers, and how product ops can help leverage this technology. We also discuss the different types of complexities to manage, including the biggest ones: managing change with human beings. If you’re tired of doing the ops work yourself because you don’t have such dedicated team, if you dislike your product ops team who keeps on giving you processes to follow, these two episodes are here to reconcile you with product ops and giving you hints to move forward and be a better product organisation.

#63 How to make the collaboration between PM and PM Ops work, with Julie Robles, Product Ops lead @ PayFit

2024-01-3036:10

#62 Human Computer Interaction and AI, with Niloufar Salehi, Assistant Professor in the School of Information at University of California, Berkeley

2024-01-2353:33

My guest today is Niloufar Salehi. Niloufar is an assistant professor in the School of Information at University of California, Berkeley. She studies human-computer interaction, with her research spanning education to healthcare to restorative justice. Her research interests are social computing, human-centered AI, and more broadly, human-computer interaction (HCI). Her work has been published and received awards in premier venues and has been covered in Venture Beat, Wired, and the Guardian. She is a W. T. Grant Foundation scholar for her work on promoting equity in student assignment algorithms and is a member of the advisory board on generative AI at NVIDIA. She received her PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2018. In this episode, Niloufar shares her inspiring journey into Human Computer Interaction, reflects on the field's evolution and the interaction between corporate world and academia. We delve into her dual expertise in UX and AI, her impactful research, and the critical role of product managers in responsible tech development. Stick around for personal insights, audience questions, and Niloufar's advice for PMs aspiring to dive into AI. Let's get started! Mentioned in the podcast: https://tarotcardsoftech.artefactgroup.com/ https://www.aisnakeoil.com/ Survey: https://allourideas.org/PM-magicwand (You can vote as little or as much as you want, and you can stop voting at any time.) Thank you to Ketaki Vaidya, AI product manager at Oracle, for her question. To contact Niloufar: nsalehi@berkeley.edu https://www.linkedin.com/in/niloufar-salehi/

#61 UX Researchers embedded in Product teams with Agnieszka Rzesniowiecka, Senior UX Researcher @ Wise

2024-01-1639:32

My guest today is Agnieszka Rzesniowiecka. Aga is a Senior UX Researcher at Wise, where she leads research on Wise’s business customers. As Product teams at Wise are cross-functional and autonomous, she collaborates with PMs, Engineers, and Designers every day. After graduating from the MSc Human-Computer Interaction course at UCL, she's worked in-house in B2B and B2C companies ranging from fintech start-ups to corporations like IBM. Agnieszka is the president of City Women Speakers, and regularly does speaking engagements on breaking into the UX industry. She also founded Hevelianum Science Days, one of the biggest science festivals in Poland. Outside of work, Aga does personal branding photography and likes to learn new dance genres. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of UX research! We talk about her career in B2C and transition to B2B, witnessing remarkable growth and transformation, and working as an embedded researcher within product teams. Data, customer empathy, AI, influencing, we touch on all the topics that UX teams and Product Managers should be collaborating on to make great products.

#60 How Product Managers Can Effectively Manage Products Post-Launch: Insights for Product Management and Customer Support Collaboration

2024-01-0944:56

Anne Cooper is the Vice President of Global Customer Care at Board International. She started her career in sales and has an MBA with an emphasis in Brand Management and Marketing. She has worked in Loyalty Marketing for Visa and managed relationships with vendors on behalf of Visa. She then transitioned into Account Management, which is now called Customer Success. Afterward, she made a switch to Operations at Best Buy Corporate, where she learned the Customer Care side of the business and managed a large organization focused on phone, in-home, store, and remote delivery of service and support. However, she decided to return to her Customer Success roots in a software company because she missed direct customer roles. At Anaplan, she was fortunate to merge these two roles, allowing her to work with customers while applying her love for operations and support delivery. In this episode of the podcast, Anne Cooper discusses the significance of customer care in product management. Anne Cooper shares her career journey, from marketing and advertising to customer care at a large corporation, and her transition into the software industry. The conversation covers the importance of empathy, collaboration, and understanding customer pain points to drive product improvements. Anne Cooper talks about key metrics in customer support, the proactive management of products post-launch, and the challenges of orphaned features. She stresses the value of customer feedback, the need for humility in product management, and the importance of a collaborative relationship between product and customer support teams. Anne Cooper's assertive style and cultural adaptability in her ascent to the C-suite are also discussed, highlighting her dedication to customer care and the emotional aspects of support work.

#59 [Bonus] Trends in Product so far and predictions for the future

2023-07-3101:05:25

Product organisations have faced challenges and undergone a huge amount of change over the past few years, and this isn’t slowing down in 2023 and beyond in the aftermath of the global pandemic and in light of ever-faster technology development. The session will cover the trends we’ve seen accelerating recently in Product management, from the lenses of people, processes, data and technology. Then I’ll share my predictions about what is going to shape Product Management in the future, and have the most impact in the way Product organisations work. The talk will help both leaders and individual contributors in the audience get ready for the future of Product, with take-aways for them to think about and implement in their organisation, as well as insights into what other people in the audience think since the session will include interactive polling. From the use of data to the talent and skills challenges, through leveraging technology to support product decisions and evolving the very definition of “product”, let’s dive into the future of product management. Are you ready?

#58 [Bonus] How to become a top 1% communicator with Brenden Kumarasamy, Founder @ MasterTalk (already published as #27)

2023-05-3036:42

This is a bonus episode with Brenden Kumarasamy who is the founder of MasterTalk. He coaches ambitious executives and entrepreneurs to become top 1% communicators in their industry. He also has a popular YouTube channel called MasterTalk, with the goal of providing free access to communication tools for everyone in the world. In this podcast, Brenden talks about his journey and the challenges he’s faced along the way, but also gives product managers some practical tips on how to improve their networking and public speaking skills. This is one of the episodes that gets you thinking about your career and how to go to the next level, and what you might want to practice during your shower. If you want to understand the joke, listen to this episode! Reach out to Brenden on Linkedin: Brenden 🎤 Kumarasamy | LinkedIn or watch his Youtube channel.

#57: Measuring the success of support teams beyond volume, CSAT and resolution time with Sophie Heller, CX Services Lead @ Outschool (already published as #23)

2023-05-2346:49

My guest today is Sophie Heller. Sophie leads the CX Services team at Outschool, a marketplace of live-online classes for kids. She joined the company as employee #2 as its first customer support agent and has since seen the company grow to 200; the support inbox now contains 100+ people, spread over several internal teams and an outsourcer. Sophie's team works to equip the inbox, including 50+ outsourced agents, for any changes to Outschool's website or policies, providing services including documentation, training, and quality assurance.Sophie explains how she helped to scale the business and how they support 10,000 teachers and respond to 5,000 tickets per week. She has mastered the art of knowledge sharing within her company, with a mix of different training material, good release preparation processes and also a feedback loop with the product team. I've enjoyed learning about how Outschool measures quality of the replies to customers, as opposed to usual metrics like CSAT, volume and time to resolve queries. I hope you'll love hearing her real-life stories and you'll better understand how support teams operate after this episode.

#56 UX-inspired Product Marketing with Charlie Penwarden, Marketing Director and UX Consultant @ Rank Robin (already published as #3)

2023-05-1629:40

Charlie Penwarden is a British Marketing Director and UX Consultant who focuses on organic growth strategies that blend the user’s needs with the search engine’s needs, to ultimately create a master plan for long-term success. Over the past 10 years, Charlie has worked on a number of exciting projects for in-house teams, agencies and start-ups with a variety of clients including one of the world’s first adaptability assessment platform in AQAI, online course enhancements to the Futurelearn platform and event management software for Astrazeneca. He has a background in psychology, having practiced mental health care in psychiatrics hospitals and is currently redesigning a new human-centric mental health system as we speak. When I first saw Charlie's profile, I was curious: someone working in marketing and UX together, quite an unusual combination for two functions which are usually rather siloed. Charlie has showed me how marketers can learn from the user research practices, and how a new product trio (Marketing/UX/Product) could benefit an organisation. Listen and be immerged in a world of data, communication and user empathy! You can contact Charlie via his marketing agency rankrobin.com, his UX consultancy practice usercharlie.com or social media like LinkedIn. All his links are available here. Thank you Elaine, product manager at FutureLearn, for her question.

#55 Helping PMs to be their best self with Patrícia Cadete, Product Operations Manager @ OutSystems (already published as #2)

2023-05-0928:24

In this episode, I interview Patrícia who is Product Operations Manager at OutSystems, where she is leading an internal product management academy as well as the external product evangelism programme, helping to grow the next generation of product leaders. Patrícia is the product manager’s best friend and I haven’t see many companies who have put that much thinking and effort into helping product managers being their best self. You’ll see that despite not having a product management background, she’s very tuned to the needs of PMs and aligned to the product approach. You can contact her on all social media via direct message (in particular Linkedin). Thank you to Angela Dinis, Lead Product Manager at OutSystems, for her question. If you have feedback, comments or questions, please reach out to me directly: magalipelissier@hotmail.fr

#54 The Power of Collaboration between PM and PMM, with Marty Bakal, Director of Product Marketing @ Labra.io

2023-05-0220:59

Marty Bakal is an experienced Product Leader who works in product management, product marketing and field application engineering. Marty understands user needs and how to translate them into products and collaterals. He has the ability to translate technical features into content understood by engineering and users alike, and a thirst for knowledge spanning multiple industries. In this episode, Marty talks about Product Marketing Management, or PMM, and how he collaborates with product managers on inbound and outbound activities. He debunks some of the misconceptions about PMM and highlights the challenges and opportunities in the PM/PMM relationship. This is a short episode but packed with lots of insights! Get 20% off you ticket for the Product-Led Summit in Las Vegas: https://ti.to/sequel-media/product-led-summit-las-vegas-2023/discount/ProductPerspectives

#53 Get your dream job in Product with Teagan O’Donovan, Managing Consultant @ ISL Talent

2023-04-2531:19

Teagan O’Donovan is a Managing Consultant at ISL Talent, who focuses on recruiting people in Product and Design. Her clients are start ups and scale ups in the tech space of all different industries. She loves helping her clients find the best people to drive business forward and watching her candidates flourish while they progress their careers. At ISL, they pride ourselves on being trusted partners for both job seekers and employers and her main focus is building lasting relationships within the market! Whether you’re new to product management or climbing the career ladder, there’s one person you can’t do without: the recruiter. In this episode, Teagan shares her view of the market (spoiler alter: it’s competitive!), how she works with candidates and companies, and how you can get the next role that really works for you. Listen for lots of tips for interviewing and taking full advantage of the candidate-recruiter relationship ! Reach out to Teagan on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/teagan-o-donovan-527803181/ and ask to be added to her monthly newsletter.

#52 [Bonus] Forget Product Led, it's all about Vision Driven with Radhika Dutt, Product Leader and Author of Radical Product Thinking

2023-04-1842:57

Radhika Dutt is the author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter which has been translated into several languages including Chinese and Japanese. She is an entrepreneur and product leader who has participated in five acquisitions, two of which were companies that she founded. She advises organizations from high-tech startups to government agencies on building radical products that create a fundamental change. She is currently Advisor on Product Thinking to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and serves on the board of the independent publisher, Berrett Koehler. Radhika has built products in a wide range of industries including broadcast, media and entertainment, telecom, advertising technology, government, consumer apps, robotics, and even wine. She graduated from MIT with an SB and M.Eng in Electrical Engineering, and speaks nine languages. In this episode, we talk about taking a vision-driven approach to building products and Radhika shares her toolkit to help create a detailed vision and measure progress against it. We also talk about how our products may contribute to digital pollution and unintended consequences, and how product teams must make conscious decisions about those. Lots of practical tips and real-life examples in this episode to level up your product management!

#51 Writers aren't robots and won't be replaced by AI, with David Bureš, Senior Technical Writer @ USU Solutions

2023-04-1126:35

My guest today is David Bures, who is a senior technical writer. After starting as a web developer, he moved to the documentation and text translation space and has worked for Microsoft business applications like PowerBI and Azure Suite, but also Apple and Amazon, as well as running his own company. In his spare time, he still codes apps for MacOS, his most popular project has almost 500 stars on GitHub. In this episode, we talk about documentation of course, but also translation and localisation. Don’t know the difference? This is why you should listen. David gives lots of tips for better collaboration between PMs and technical writers, and shares the good, the bad and the ugly about working for big tech. You can reach out David via these links: https://twitter.com/davidbures https://www.linkedin.com/in/buresdv/?locale=en_US https://github.com/buresdv

#50 Get more value from your user research with Nick Russell, Co-Founder @ Dualo

2023-04-0434:32

My guest today is Nick Russell. Nick is one of the Co-Founders of Dualo, a stakeholder-friendly research repository that helps product teams to organise, connect, and showcase their key research findings across the wider organisation. Prior to Dualo he worked for 10 years as a Product Manager, leading product teams at ASOS, Gousto, Thomas Cook, and The Telegraph. In this episode, we talk about the value of user research and how some of that is lost or wasted due to the difficulty in sharing insights across the organisation. Nick also shares his tips for moving from product manager to founder, and the product management leaders who inspired him to do better user research.

#49 [Bonus] Unlocking the Secrets of Product Strategy with Founder and Lead Mentor @ Prod MBA

2023-03-2840:21

My guest today is Henry Latham. After 10 years working with different product teams & start-ups to understand what makes products succeed - & others fail - he launched Prod MBA, an 8-week hands-on bootcamp to fast-track aspiring product leaders’ path to Head of Product. He’s coached over 280 Product Managers on product strategy over the last 3 years. In this episode, key take-aways include: 1. What product strategy is, and why it shouldn’t be so complicated 2. Using the Product Thinking Template and the Minimum Viable Offer Framework to ensure maximum impact and focus 3. How to communicate with stakeholders effectively Link to the frameworks mentioned in the episode: https://miro.com/miroverse/product-thinking-board/ Give your feedback on Product Perspectives: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeMvjCpi_PHp49O82iSyw8va9-A4VzPR-RR9s3Ndt222E3Q2Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

#48 Unlocking the power of data for better product decisions with Tristan Burns, ex-Global Head of Analytics @ Pizza Hut Digital Ventures

2023-03-2134:32

Tristan is formerly a senior data leader within a US $1BN+ global E-commerce business. He has over 15 years experience in data, financial analysis and strategy roles. He has data experience from startups, scale-ups and the high pressure world of banking where he worked for one of Wall Street's most well known banks: Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Tristan is deeply passionate about technology and startups and has been endorsed by the UK's Tech Nation as a Global Talent in Tech. He speaks frequently at tech events and has experience as a founder having started two marketplace businesses. In this episode, we talked about how PMs need to be data literate and how much they really need to know about data to be able to self-serve, but also how they can partner with their analytics team to run experiments that lead to better insights and products, and how AI/ML is changing analytics.

#47 Successful, consistent and scalable customer onboarding with Rachel Wilde, Head of global implementation enablement @ Harri

2023-03-0742:03

My guest today is Rachel Wilde, who is an leader with over 20 years of experience, specializing in SaaS adoption and growth for startups, with a deep understanding of SaaS technology and customer experience. She has worked at various early and late-stage startups, including Healthy Pet (acquired by VCA Antech), OSI, Next2Friends, and currently as Head of Global Implementation Enablement at Harri, an end-to-end talent acquisition and workforce management platform for the hospitality industry. At Harri, Rachel works closely with product managers to scale technology onboarding for new clients, leveraging her business acumen and technology expertise to drive the company’s success in the highly competitive SaaS industry. In this episode, we talk about how, to ensure successful onboarding and customer success, the product team needs to understand and prioritize customer needs of course but also consider compliance needs, user efficiency and scalability. We discuss how Harri leverages the latest technology to onboard its customers and how Rachel works with the product team to establish onboarding processes that are predictable, scalable, and provide a consistent experience.

#46 [Q&A] What will you do in the first 90 days if we hire you as a Product Manager?

2023-03-0208:36

Welcome to this new episode type, Product Q&A, a weekly bite-size episode, part of the Product Perspectives podcast, where I answer the most common questions that product managers encounter at job interviews and in their day-to-day work. Whether you're a seasoned product manager or just starting out in your career, this episode format is for you. Each week, I tackle a different question related to product management, from strategy and planning to user research and design. Not only is this podcast a great resource for product managers looking to expand their knowledge and skills, but it's also a valuable tool for interviewers who want to ask insightful questions and for product stakeholders who want to better understand what they can expect from a great product manager. So, tune in every Thursday for a new episode of Product Q&A, and join me as I explore the exciting world of product management and answer your burning questions. Give your feedback about Product Perspectives: Product Perspectives feedback form (google.com)

#45 Establishing a Successful Customer Education Program with Jasonda Desmond, Director of Operations @ Leah Chang Learning Group

2023-02-2829:56

My guest today is Jasonda Desmond who is the Director of Operations at Leah Chang Learning, a women-led digital learning agency. She has spent the last 10 years building and delivering outcomes-focused, scalable customer education programs for B2B SaaS products. In this episode, we talk about how Customer education programs have become a key differentiator in the market, helping with sales, adoption and retention. We discuss how product and customer education teams can work together to develop strategies and provide resources for customers, as well as internal training and enablement. Whether you have a team in charge of customer education (or CE as Jasonda calls it) or you’re doing it yourself, this is a great episode to understand the value of those programs and think about them early on in the product lifecycle. Give your feedback about Product Perspectives: Product Perspectives feedback form (google.com)

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