One Knight in Product

Hope Gurion is a seasoned product coach and one of Marty Cagan's recommendations from his new book, "Transformed". Hope also works closely with Teresa Torres, teaching continuous discovery, as well as working directly with incoming product leaders to help them make an impact in their organisations. We spoke all about knowing your customers, gathering evidence, and whether continuous discovery is really a threat to user researchers. Episode highlights:   1. Product coaching is more than just being there to ask good questions When working with incoming product leaders, potentially without a product background at all, it's important to have a coach who has product experience who can help you identify your weaknesses, assess the state of play and provide actionable advice. Ultimately, it's important to empower the coachee. 2. It's really hard to make decisions if you have no idea who your customers are It's important to define who your target customer is and what are their key attributes. This could be demographics, firmographics or whatever characteristics you need to know who you most need to learn from to calibrate your decisions as a product team. But, too many product teams end up resorting to proxies in other functions who "know the customers". 3. Many leaders are overconfident, but evidence is everything Some people are just naturally confident about everything and can react badly if their ideas are challenged. But, as product people, we absolutely need to look beyond innate confidence and work out what informed the perspective. Which customers are we basing it on? Can I speak to some of those customers? It's not about trashing people's ideas but moving forward with confidence. 4. It's important to get comfortable with making bets and understanding the difference between one-way and two-way-door decisions Sometimes teams get stuck into cycles of trying to do "perfect research", possibly because they're afraid that they're only going to get one shot at it. This means that they end up not making any moves at all, and everyone ends up getting frustrated at the amount of time product teams take to do anything. 5. Continuous discovery is about removing as many blind spots as possible and probably isn't responsible for mass user research lay-offs All teams have an imperfect understanding of their product, the pain points associated with their product and their customers. Continuous discovery helps address this by removing blind spots but doesn't aim for perfection - simply evidence about how to make your next move. Is it contributing to user researcher lay-offs? It feels difficult to argue this when it feels like the majority of companies don't do any user research in the first place. User researchers and continuous discovery can co-exist. Contact Hope You can catch up with Hope at Fearless Product or follow her on LinkedIn. Related episodes you should like: Data-Informed Decision Making and the Three Cs of Product Management (Roger Snyder, VP of Products & Services @ 280 Group) Adventures in Product Management (Dan Olsen, Author "The Lean Product Playbook") Getting into the Habit of Continuous Discovery (Teresa Torres, Author "Continuous Discovery Habits") Build High Growth Products by Following the Product Science Success Path (Holly Hester-Reilly, Founder @ H2R Product Science) Selling Product Thinking by Influencing Companies at the Right Time (Anthony Marter, Product Coach) Putting Customers at the Heart of your Product Decisions (Hubert Palan, Founder @ Productboard) Servitising Product Management & Setting Up Product Teams For Success (Jas Shah, Product Consultant) Build What Matters with Vision-Led Product Management (Rajesh Nerlikar, Author "Build What Matters")

Marty Cagan is the founder and a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, a leading product consultancy that aims to get companies to work "the way that the best companies work". He is the author of two desk references for product managers: "Inspired", aimed at product teams, and "Empowered", aimed at product leaders. He has since come to realise that "the way the best companies work" is too vague a term, and also that many companies have no idea where to get started. He's now back with "Transformed", a book that aims to get companies to adopt the Product Operating Model. A message from this episode's sponsor - New York Product Conference Join hundreds of other product people in New York City on April 18th 2024 for the New York Product Conference! You'll learn from some of the best minds in product today — including Dennis Crowley (Founder of Foursquare), Sahil Lavingia (Founder of Gumroad), April Dunford (product positioning expert and bestselling author) and so many others through masterclass keynotes, interactive working sessions, small group discussions and more. Topics covered include Product Strategy, Product Leadership, AI for Product Managers, Customer Research, and more.  Pricing increases on the first of the month, so you'll want to register soon. Plus, use the code OneKnightInProduct and save another $50 when you register! Episode highlights:   1. It was finally important to give the Product Operating Model a name Whilst Marty doesn't like to unnecessarily label things, or have any sniff of "process" for the sake of process, he started to realise that just saying "the way the best companies work" was too vague and handwavy. However, the core principles of great product companies and product teams have not changed, and this isn't a framework. 2. Marty and SVPG didn't invent any of this stuff, and you shouldn't listen to him (or anyone) uncritically These days, it's fashionable to beat up product "thought leaders" and complain that they're being too dogmatic, idealistic, or unrealistic. But, SVPG didn't invent any of these principles, they just observed them in the best-performing product companies. It's still important to apply critical thinking and make sure they make sense to you and your organisation. 3. Product managers and product leaders have more power and more responsibility than they realise It's not always easy to transform, and there are limits to how far you can go bottoms-up, but you can generally make progress one step at a time. There's an incredible amount of onus on product leaders to evangelise and champion this change and, if they can't (or won't) do it, they shouldn't be product leaders. 4. Not everyone in an organisation will understand why it's transforming, or want to be transformed It's easy to see this as something that just affects product teams, but the whole organisation needs to buy into the change. Reading bits of "Inspired" at them, or talking about the number of experiments you've done this week, is unlikely to sway them, You need to show business results and real impact and make them care about it on their terms. 5. There are four key competencies for a successful transformation, and they need investing in The competencies remain the same... Product Managers, Product Leaders, "proper" Product Designers (not just pixel pushers) and Tech Leads who care as much about what they're building as how they're building it. If you just expect to get results with a disengaged, outsourced engineering team, graphic designers and product owners, you're going to be disappointed. 6. Sometimes you need help to know what good looks like It's easy for people like us to sit there and talk about the benefits of product transformation and how we should all definitely do it but, for some people, this is all alien. In cases like this, a good product coach can be the difference between success and failure. But, there are so many product coaches these days, so make sure you get a good one. Check out "Transformed" "The most common question after reading INSPIRED and EMPOWERED has been: "Yes, we want to work this way, but the way we work today is so different, and so deeply ingrained, is it even possible for a company like ours to transform to the product model?" TRANSFORMED was written to bridge the gap between where most companies are right now and where they need to be. The leaders of these companies know they must transform to compete in an era of rapidly changing enabling technology, but most of them have never operated this way before. " Check it out on Amazon. Check out "Empowered" "Most people think it’s because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products. The goal of EMPOWERED is to provide you, as a leader of product management, product design, or engineering, with everything you’ll need to create just such an environment. " Check it out on Amazon. Check out "Inspired" "How do today’s most successful tech companies―Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla―design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than most tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love―and that will work for your business. " Check it out on Amazon. Contact Marty You can catch up with Marty at Silicon Valley Product Group or follow him on LinkedIn. Related episodes you should like: Survive the Feature Factory by Applying Product Thinking to Product Thinking (John Cutler, Product Evangelist & Coach @ Amplitude) The Five Dysfunctions of Product Management Teams (Saeed Khan, Founder @ Transformation Labs) How to Build an Effective Product Organisation (Marty Cagan, Author "Empowered" & "Inspired") Pragmatic Digital Transformation in Traditional Industries (Dan Chapman, Director, Product Line Leader @ Merck) Optimising Product Planning with the Quartz Open Framework (Steve Johnson, Product Coach) Surviving a Lack of Product Thinking & Riding the Product Maturity Curve (Nis Frome, VP Product @ Feedback Loop) Is this Seriously Game Over for Scrum? (David Pereira, Editor @ Serious Scrum) Transforming companies & instilling a product mindset (Dave Martin, Founder @ Right to Left)

Miloš Belčević is a product manager and author who believes that product management principles are powerful not only when managing products, but also when managing the ultimate product; your life itself. He has written a book on the subject, "Build Your Way: Applying Product Management to Life". We spoke about the book as well as some of the lessons inside. Episode highlights:   1. We can apply product management principles to life We can apply product management principles to one's life, beyond just professional settings. This includes using prioritisation frameworks to manage personal goals and tasks, and considering whether there's a "North-Star metric" that can help guide personal growth and decision-making. 2. Context switching can be hell at home as well as work Whether we're switching contexts between different roles in our careers or having to balance multiple responsibilities, we can apply product management strategies to help us prioritise our time and manage our mental bandwidth. 3. We can define "Value" for our life as well as our products There's no magic formula for "value", but it's important to understand the deeper meaning of the concept of value, whether delivering value to customers or identifying what brings value to one's life. 4. Our time is limited and we need to prioritise what's most important to us We don't have to use prioritisation frameworks for everything, but applying product management prioritisation techniques can help us focus on what is most important. If we practice enough, we can get into the habit, and it even becomes somewhat intuitive to our life decisions. 5. Product discovery techniques can foster better interactions and conversations in life We can use our empathic and discovery mindset to help solicit genuine feedback and dig into people's motivations in conversations. This offers the tantalising prospect of being able to bridge ideological divides and improve the quality of our interactions with society as a whole. Check out "Build Your Way" "Perhaps you have heard about product management. Maybe you use it in your work. If that’s the case, chances are high that you know that product management is full of useful frameworks, principles, and tools that focus on prioritization and maximizing value, better planning, agile delivery, and more. But what if you want to use these tools in your personal life? How would you do that in a way that will make sure you will live a better, happier, and more fulfilled life? In this book, author Miloš Belčević will show you how." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Miloš You can catch up with Miloš on LinkedIn or check out his website. Related episodes you should like: Survive the Feature Factory by Applying Product Thinking to Product Thinking (John Cutler, Product Evangelist & Coach @ Amplitude) Practice Makes Perfect: Embracing the Messy Reality of Product Management (Matt LeMay, Product Management Consultant & Author "Product Management in Practice") The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Productization (Eisha Armstrong, Co-founder @ Vecteris & Author "Productize") Achieving Product Excellence with the Product Operations Manifesto (Antonia Landi, Product Ops Consultant & Co-Author "Product Operations Manifesto") Paying Off Your Organisation's Human Debt Through Agility & Psychological Safety (Duena Blomstrom, Founder & CEO @ People Not Tech) Embracing Change to Innovate in Product Management (Greg Coticchia, CEO @ Sopheon) Fearlessly Defeating the Four Horsemen of a Product-Friendly Culture (Eisha Armstrong, Co-founder @ Vecteris & Author "Productize" & "Fearless") Pragmatic Digital Transformation in Traditional Industries (Dan Chapman, Director, Product Line Leader @ Merck)

Debbie Levitt is a long-time UX and CX consultant who wants us all to get better at putting our users at the centre of the conversation, rather than paying lip service. She's the author of a few books, including "Customers Know You Suck" and runs a thriving community of UX professionals. Some of the stories from that community have concerned her, alongside the general perceived decline of the strategic role of UX, and she recently came out all guns blazing against continuous discovery, PM-led research, and one particular author who champions it. We spoke about the role of UX and CX in organisations, what's happening to user researchers, and whether PMs are really to blame for it. Episode highlights:   1. User Experience and Customer Experience used to be the same thing, and they can be again In these digital days, it seems like most people think UX people are just there in the corner to colour in people's ideas, but UX should be a strategic role that enables user and customer-focused decision-making and makes sure we always balance our business's needs with those of our users. 2. We prize and prioritise speed over quality - we just have to get it done We've been moving fast and breaking things for long enough now to realise how often it doesn't work. User research feels unconscionably slow to some people, but it doesn't have to be slow, and doing good user research (whoever does it) is an investment in trying to get things right. 3. No matter how much product managers feel they're disempowered, they're still the Golden Children of the company Back in the old days, product managers were hiding in the corner with the UX people, as agilists and engineers rode through the company calling all the shots. Now the UX people are hiding with the engineers whilst the PM makes all of the decisions. There's a power imbalance, and it's not a true "trio". 4. User researchers are getting laid off, some of the jobs are gone for good and, at least in some cases, this is because leaders think they can just hand the work off to PMs It's not fair or reasonable to lay all of this at the doors of PM thought leaders championing certain approaches. There are plenty of UX thought leaders who champion them too. But, people are getting laid off and at least some of them are blaming PM-led product discovery as the root cause. 5. We should be able to look at books and take what works from them, but apply critical thinking and ensure that we don't follow any message blindly Most books have something useful in them, and all approaches can work in some contexts. Debbie has her approach, others have their approaches, and there's no one "right way". But, it's important to make sure that approaches can be challenged, expanded upon, and that the approaches and techniques are described clearly and without room for interpretation. Check out "Customers Know You Suck" "Customers Know You Suck is the how-to manual for customer-centric product-market fit. Its highly actionable models, maps, and processes empower everyone to improve the Customer Experience (CX). Learn how to investigate, diagnose, and act on what's blocking teams. Gather the evidence and data that better inform decisions, leading to increased satisfaction, conversion, and loyalty. Use our governance model for implementing and monitoring the progress, success, and failure of internal process changes and experiments." Check it out on Amazon or pay what you want. Check out how to use a Knowledge Quadrant Debbie is a fan of doing good discovery, naturally. Here's a video of an approach she recommends called the Knowledge Quadrant: Workshop: Discovery Phase - Knowledge Quadrant Contact Debbie You can catch up with Debbie on LinkedIn or check out Delta CX. Related episodes you should like: Using Solution Tests to Make Sure You're Building Products Users Want (Jim Morris, Founder @ Product Discovery Group) Getting into the Habit of Continuous Discovery (Teresa Torres, Author "Continuous Discovery Habits") We're All Responsible For Accessible Product Design (Holly Schroeder, Senior UX Researcher & Accessibility Advocate) Making Sure You Make an Impact through User Research (Steve Portigal, User Research Consultant & Author "Interviewing Users") Product Leadership Principles for Tumultuous Times (Giff Constable, Author "Talking with Humans" & "Testing with Humans") How to Deploy Empathy to Truly Understand User Needs (Michele Hansen, Author "Deploy Empathy") Chinese Startup Culture & Putting the Minimum into MVP (Carlos Lastres, Creative & Marketing Director @ Kaiyan Medical) Building a Culture of Continuous Discovery (Cindy Alvarez, Author "Lean Customer Development")

Lloyed Lobo got his first understanding of the power of community when visiting his grandparents in the Mumbai slums, and watching people come together in his childhood during the Gulf War. He has since turned this into an entrepreneurial superpower and used community-building to catapult his bootstrapped startup into the big time. He's since written a book about all of this stuff called "From Grassroots to Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community-Led Growth". We spoke about the book and many of the topics within. Episode highlights:   1. Community is a company strategy, not a marketing strategy It's not enough to just sit there and layer "community" on top of your existing marketing and expect it to pay back instantly. It has to be part of your company's DNA, something that your customers and your employees can be inspired and motivated by. Attribution is hard, but the results will come. 2. You need to show up for your community or they won't show up for you You cannot take your community for granted. You need to provide them with constant, consistent value with no immediate expectation of reward. They will keep coming for the value, and you are engineering serendipity for future conversations. 3. Don't be afraid to have the sales conversations That said, if you don't ask, you don't get. You cannot be afraid of trying to offer paid value to your community, even if it feels uncomfortable to ask. If you are providing value then people will be happy to talk to you. Not everyone will become a customer, but some will. Use the reciprocity bias to your advantage. 4. There is power in finding your niche and sticking to it Don't try to go too wide chasing vanity metrics. You will get more value out of a smaller community of people who share your exact passions than out of a generic sea of people who couldn't care less. Make sure you identify your people, show up for them, and own your white space. 5. Community can be as much of a moat as technology or industry expertise There are more communities and products to solve problems for communities than ever before but, if you have the right community, you can use it to your advantage. Having an engaged, passionate community can help prevent your company from becoming a commodity. Check out "From Grassroots to Greatness" "In a world where traditional marketing is losing its edge and products are struggling to stand out, a thriving community is your biggest asset. Recognizing that true success lies not in products or technologies, but in the power of people, author Lloyed Lobo explores the intricate art of harnessing the community's strength as your ultimate acquisition channel, brand differentiator, feedback source, retention lever, and catalyst for transformative change." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Lloyed You can catch up with Lloyed on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Shyvee Shi is a Product Lead at LinkedIn, a community-builder, content creator and educator. She's been making waves through her online courses but she's now co-authored a book, "Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI", which aims to help all of us survive and thrive in the new normal of AI-powered products. We talked about some of the themes from the book, and why it was important for her to write it. Episode highlights:   1. Now is the time for product managers to get into generative AI Whether you're experimenting with putting it in your own products or using it to turbocharge your product management duties, you need to check out generative AI if you want to stay ahead of the curve. It's not going to replace product managers any time soon, but it can help us dream bigger. 2. If your competitors can use AI to serve your customers better than you, your business could disappear overnight 75% of CEOs are terrified that generative AI will kill their business. It's like the Kodak story on steroids, and it's not even about tankers getting outmanoeuvred by speedboats anymore. Big companies are also getting in on the game and you need to have a response. 3. PMs have a responsibility to concentrate on the problem, not the technology It's as important as ever for product managers to focus on solving real user problems, no matter what the tech. We can't just slap ChatGPT onto everything and call it a success. Generative AI can help us and our customers in new and interesting ways but we must concentrate on solving their real problems. 4. It can be hard to craft a workable go-to-market plan for AI products This could be down to falling in love with the technology, struggles with pricing or quality, lack of explainability or poor understanding of your customers' most important jobs to be done. Make sure you're intentional about your go-to-market plan to avoid failure. 5. It can be hard to create moats when using generative AI solutions So many of these solutions are built on the same back-end, and there are de facto default LLMs. In some cases, startups building on top of things like ChatGPT end up disappearing overnight because OpenAI has developed a new feature of its own. It is possible to create moats through proprietary data, excellent UX and good old-fashioned verticalisation. Make sure you create a moat! Buy "Reimagined" "Did you know that incorporating AI into products is now a pivotal strategy for businesses worldwide? According to a 2023 study from Accenture, a staggering 75% of C-suite executives agree that failure to integrate AI effectively in the next five years could lead to business obsolescence. "Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI" is your essential guide in this transformative journey. It's not just about understanding AI and Generative AI technologies; it's about strategically harnessing them to drive innovation, team efficiency, and market success. Check it out on Amazon. Contact Shyvee You can catch up with Shyvee on LinkedIn or check out Product Management Reimagined.

Becky Flint started her career at Paypal and helped build out their portfolio management and product operations functions before product ops was a thing. She's since moved through a variety of startups and larger companies before forming her own firm, Dragonboat, through which she hopes to provide tools to help companies manage product portfolios at scale.   Episode highlights:   1. Even if you have one product, you might still have a portfolio People tend to think about a product portfolio, they think about a massive web of products, but even one-product companies may have multiple product managers working on different aspects of the product and these may well still need to be traded off against each other. 2. It's not enough to make strategic decisions, you need to be able to explain them We're always told to create visions, strategies and roadmaps, but you need to be able to lay these out for a variety of stakeholders and explain them in ways that resonate with them. 3. As soon as you have product management, you have product operations You may not have a Product Ops team, but someone is doing the product ops work. When you have a small team, maybe you can handle the work but, eventually, you'll need a team to ensure the product teams deliver. 4. All product operations professionals should be comfortable with portfolio management Going further, product ops professionals who aren't comfortable with managing a portfolio shouldn't be in the job. Product ops people aren't babysitters for the product management team, they're senior, strategic partners. 5. ROI isn't enough to make good strategic decisions for your portfolio Sometimes, you might not make big, strategic bets with unclear payoffs if you only use financial ROI metrics. You may also make bad resourcing decisions if you don't consider which teams are available when, and not taking account of bundles of value when making trade-offs. Contact Becky You can connect with Becky on LinkedIn. You can also check out Dragonboat. Alongside their SaaS software, they also have a bunch of available resources.

Orly Zeewy is an experienced marketer who "makes the fuzzy clear". She's passionate about helping startup founders get their branding right, and enabling them to identify their own "zones of genius" where they win. She does this through her consultancy, Zeewy Brands, as well as her book, "Ready, Launch, Brand". We spoke all about the ins and outs of branding, and why startup founders need to rethink marketing. A message from this episode's sponsor This episode is sponsored by Succeeding in B2B Product Management, a cohort-based, live course that Saeed Khan and I are launching on Maven in January. If you're a B2B product manager struggling to make an impact, a B2B product leader looking to promote healthy product practices, or a B2B founder looking to get your teams to be true business partners, check the course out here. You can use discount code OKIP to get $100 off the price of admission. Episode highlights:   1. Branding is not just a fancy logo and a cool company name The true definition of a brand is that it is the sum of all experiences that customers have with an organisation over time. Brands don't live in the minds of the company, or its founders. They live in the minds of their customers. 2. Marketing is not just a widget, it's a fundamental cost of running your business, and results take time Some startup founders either don't bother with marketing at all, or they give up as soon as the first thing they try doesn't work. But, you need to start early and invest for the long term. There are so many brands competing for mindshare and you need to make sure that you remain part of that in an attention-poor market. 3. Your company website is your front door, and you need to explain clearly why people should care about you It can be pretty common for companies to either ignore their website entirely or try to cram as much information as possible on there and overwhelm potential customers. Your website is likely to be the first touchpoint that a potential customer has with your brand, and you need to clearly and concisely explain why they should care about you. 4. Not everyone has done this work upfront, but it's important to meet people where they are Yes, it's easier to intercept avoidable problems before they occur, but there are plenty of good conversations you can have whatever the situation within the company. It's never too late to try to make a difference, and you can find that the entire company will get energised and rally to the cause once you've put the work in to define what the cause really is. 5. People, and organisations, have Zones of Genius and they should focus and stay in their lane It can be really common for founders and solopreneurs to try to solve every problem for everyone because they're interested in everything and they think that it will increase their chances of success. But, if you can find the thing you're uniquely good at and focus your efforts there then you have a much higher chance of sticking in someone's mind and being their go-to solution for that specific problem. Buy "Ready, Launch, Brand" "You may be familiar with the Silicon Valley expression about the iterative approach to software development, "We’re learning to fly the plane while we’re building it." If so, think of a startup―with all its moving parts, phases, and personalities―as flying a plane, while you’re building it, booking passengers, marketing the airline, interviewing co-pilots, and serving coffee. In this book, Orly Zeewy navigates the turbulence and provides a flight plan so you know when you’ve landed in the right airport." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Orly You can catch up with Orly on LinkedIn or visit Zeewy Brands.

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher and author of two books, "Interviewing Users" and "Doorbells Danger, and Dead Batteries". Steve is a passionate advocate for the value of user research, and ensuring that people can find out compelling insights from their users. He's recently re-released a 10th-anniversary edition of "Interviewing Users", and we spoke about some themes from the book and how to make an impact with user research. Episode highlights:   1. Some people are still wary of user research, or think they don't need it, but it remains as important as ever It can be tempting for founders to think they know exactly what they need, rely on feedback from customer-facing teams, or not speak to anyone until they've already built the thing they want to build. Feedback from sales teams and founders is an incredibly important vector, but should only be the start of the discussion never the end. 2. Continuous discovery and point-in-time research both have a place in a researcher's armoury There are methodological constraints to continuous research, alongside the difficulty of finding the time and buy-in to do it but, on the other hand, it can be incredibly impactful to have rapid research tightly coupled to the product team. On the other hand, well-planned up-front research can still help you to find truly disruptive insights for your company. Do both! 3. We all have cognitive biases - we should accept that and be honest with ourselves about their effects People look at the word "bias" and worry about the negative connotations, but "bias" just represents how our brains are wired. Cognitive biases will affect how we interview people, and we should do our best to counteract their effect and improve on getting better (even if we're not perfect). 4. The best research has a tangible impact rather than being research for research's sake It can be a heavy burden to bear if all of your well-planned and well-executed research ends up having no effect on decision-making at all. It's important not to get downhearted, and work out ways to build actionable, accessible repositories to enable your stakeholders to make the best decisions possible. 5. There are a lot of similarities between good user research and improv We don't need to be able to create 45-minute plays off the cuff, and knowing when to stick to our interview plans and when to deviate from the script, enables us to get to the real generative insights that we need from our users and find out what we don't know we don't know. Buy "Interviewing Users (2nd edition)" "Interviewing people is a skill that most professionals who do research assume they already possess. But not everyone knows how to ask questions well. Expert researcher Steve Portigal updates his classic Interviewing Users to provide fresh guidance on interviewing techniques, as well as new content. This edition includes a new foreword by Jamika D. Burge and features two new chapters: one about analysis and synthesis and sharing research results, and another about ensuring that your user research efforts will have an impact on your organization. There are seven new short essays (we call them sidebars) from guest contributors. Plus, you’ll find updated examples, stories, and tips for leading interviews, and new sections about bias, remote research, ResearchOps, planning research, and research logistics. You’ll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people." My listeners can get 20% off with promo code KNIGHT on the Rosenfeld Media website. This code is valid until 21st December, 2023. Alternatively, check it out on Amazon. Contact Steve You can catch up with Steve on LinkedIn or visit Portigal.com.

Richard Blundell is a serial entrepreneur and startup advisor who helps B2B startups win by getting them uncomfortably narrow and solving critical problems. He also believes that startup founders are heroes, and recently published a book trying to help them avoid common mistakes and have the best chance of putting a dent in the universe. We discussed his approach, and what on Earth he's got against product managers. A message from this episode's sponsor - SuperProduct This episode is sponsored by SuperProduct. Have you ever wished you could simplify competitive research, and reduce time commitment and effort but still get extraordinary insights? Well, have I got news for you! You can try SuperProduct's new course which teaches you how to unlock the potential of AI-powered insights about your competitors and about your market. This course demystifies AI and teaches you how to be the mega prompt maestro that will transform ChatGPT into your personal research assistant. Check the course out here, and make sure to use code KNIGHT to support this podcast. Episode highlights:   1. Your best chance to win in B2B is to get "uncomfortably narrow" and solve a visceral problem Startup founders often start off spraying and praying, hoping to get any traction at all and start to build their revenue. This is understandable, but generally a mistake. It's important to start off way more narrow than feels comfortable and have a really solid plan to get your next 25 customers. Everything else can follow. 2. It's easy to get misaligned and lose sight of your core value proposition Even when organisations start off with a solid value proposition, this can change over time. But, in any case, one of the main problems with startups slowing down (or failing to scale up) is often not a lack of sales ability, but a lack of fundamental GTM narrative. You need to fix it upstream. 3. Startup founders are heroes... Startup founders put everything on the line to bring a sometimes impossible-seeming vision to fruition. It's easy to criticise them when things are going wrong, but no one has invested more time and effort into their startup than them. 4. ... but even heroes have weaknesses It's important for founders to be self-reflective and understand their own weak spots. In some cases, this is the first leadership position they've ever held. In other cases, they'll have glaring gaps based on their own past experience. It's OK to have gaps! But, it's important to be honest about the gaps and get the right people to help you. 5. Your first hire at a B2B startup shouldn't be a Head of Sales (or a Product Manager!) It's tempting to get a seasoned seller into the business to get the numbers in but, actually, there's an even more crucial role that you need to hire first. Listen to the episode to find out who, but it's not a product manager - this can come later after you've got a foothold in the market and the founder can no longer scale. Buy "The Go To Market Handbook for B2B SaaS Leaders" "There are few people we admire more than the Founders and Leaders of software companies who have the courage, determination and, some might say, sheer madness to put their livelihoods and reputation on the line, to leave their own ‘dent in the universe’. It's a day to day, up at dawn, pride swallowing siege to lead such a business. And we know this for a fact because we’ve walked in your shoes many times. Over the last 25 years, we’ve been involved in the start-up, scale up and exit of several successful technology businesses, that between them have realized close to billion dollars of shareholder value. But along the way we've also had more than our fair share of disappointments and have the mental scars and bruising to prove it. We’ve made mistakes and fallen in what felt like bottomless pits. But fascinatingly enough, we learned as much from the ones that didn’t work, as we did from the successes. It’s these lessons which we thought we'd share in this book." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Richard You can catch up with Richard on LinkedIn or visit Vencha.

Petra Wille is a product leadership coach and the author of "Strong Product People" and "Strong Product Communities". Petra is passionate about helping product teams excel and found that some of the best companies she's worked with use "Communities of Practice" to support product manager growth. We spoke all about this, and how people can get started. A message from this episode's sponsor - SuperProduct This episode is sponsored by SuperProduct. Have you ever wished you could simplify competitive research, reduce time commitment and effort but still get extraordinary insights? Well, have I got news for you! You can try SuperProduct's new course which teaches you how to unlock the potential of AI-powered insights about your competitors and about your market. This course demystifies AI and teaches you how to be the mega prompt maestro that will transform ChatGPT into your personal research assistant. Check the course out here, and make sure to use code KNIGHT to support this podcast. Episode highlights:   1. Product managers forming communities of practice leads to great outcomes. Organisations where product teams form bottoms-up communities of practice are more up to date in their knowledge and thinking, work more closely together and break down silos. Forming these communities makes better product work easier. 2. No two communities of practice are the same (but they're all valuable) Sometimes, it's just a peer learning group. Sometimes, it's a book club. Sometimes it's just a bunch of people going to conferences together. Sometimes it's just a way to share updates with each other. The precise format of a community, and the rituals it observes, are less important than that it exists. 3. You need to get a rhythm going earlier to build the muscle memory of a community It's easy to see community engagement as something that will atrophy over time, and this is possible, but it's relatively straightforward to build an early rhythm to bed in practices and build muscle memory to make sure that the community sticks. 4. The best way to get started is to focus on human-to-human connections, not canvasses, for your minimum viable community It's important to focus your community on solving real problems that the team has, rather than the philosophical concept of "learning", which is valuable, but not tangible enough. Find things that matter, and get people together around those things. 5. Even if you're in a small company, there are still communities there for you. You might think that communities of practice are just for bigger companies and, to some extent, they are. However, there are always communities out there that will help you; either communities of people with a specific interest or just general meetup communities where you can chat with peers. Buy "Strong Product Communities" "STRONG Product Communities is a comprehensive guide that empowers product people, product leaders, HR, and Learning & Development professionals to develop and nurture successful product Communities of Practice (CoP). The book offers valuable insights gathered from survey data, interviews with CoP leaders, and the author’s hands-on experience." Check it out on Amazon. Buy "Strong Product People" "Are you a product leader looking for advice on how to be certain that every product manager on your team lives up to their full potential? Do you want to make sure your product people are competent, empowered, and inspired, and would you like to know how you can best help them on this journey? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then this book is for you!" Check it out on Amazon. Contact Petra You can connect with Petra on LinkedIn. You can also check out Strong Product People, or Petra's coaching website.

April Dunford is a world-renowned expert in product positioning who wrote the bestselling "Obviously Awesome" to help us all nail our product positioning. She then realised that companies were having trouble translating this positioning into a sales pitch that worked in the field, so she's back now with "Sales Pitch", a step-by-step process to craft a winning pitch. We spoke about the story behind the book and some of the themes within it. Episode highlights: 1. All companies have a sales pitch, but most people don't seem to know where it came from There hasn't been a standard sales pitch approach since forever and, most of the time, it seems that companies just hand the same document down from sales rep to sales rep without ever really considering what it says, or even who owns it. But, there's a method to create one that wins. 2. The sales pitch should be grounded in your positioning It's really important to move beyond just a big list of features with some marketing slides at the front and back, and have a sales deck that tells a story about your differentiated value, your view on the market, and why you are uniquely positioned to solve the problems that market has. 3. Your product demo should be done upfront, but not all features are equal so you don't need to demo them all You need to organise your product demos around your differentiated value and take prospects on a journey rather than clicking through every single button and tab in the product. You need to show them why the features you have matter, not just that you have them. 4. You need to call out your competitors because your customers are already thinking about them It's natural to want to talk about yourself, and not mention your competitors at all. But, if you don't position yourself against your competitors then you allow your competitors to position themselves against you. Prospects want help navigating alternatives, and that means not just concentrating on yourself. 5. There are always potential objections to your sales pitch, so get in front of these objections Again, it's natural to try to avoid calling out perceived weaknesses in your product, but good salespeople already handle these in the field. It's worth getting ahead of these objections so you can answer them upfront because prospects aren't always going to mention them explicitly. Buy "Sales Pitch" "World-renowned product positioning and marketing expert April Dunford knows that standing out in a crowded market is the key to getting sales. In Sales Pitch, she shows entrepreneurs, salespeople, marketers, and business leaders how they can achieve success by building a narrative that clearly communicates how your product is different and better than anything else on the market. Using a simple step-by-step method and compelling case stories, the author of Obviously Awesome guides you through a solid sales pitch structure that helps customers make confident buying decisions, while positioning you to clearly win in the market." Check it out on Amazon. Buy "Obviously Awesome" "You know your product is awesome — but does anybody else? Forget everything you thought you knew about positioning. Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn’t a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition or trying to attract the widest customer base. So what is it? April Dunford, positioning guru and tech exec, will enlighten you." Check it out on Amazon. Contact April You can catch up with April on LinkedIn. You can also check her podcast, Positioning with April Dunford or her newsletter, also called Positioning with April Dunford.

Maja Voje is a growth strategy expert who has worked with some of the largest tech companies in the world. Through her consulting, she realised that there was a problem holding companies back from product/market fit. Unable to find a playbook to guide companies to the promised land, she decided to research and write one herself. We chatted about the book and some of the themes within it. Episode highlights: 1. 95% of startups will not survive, but you can work together to beat the odds It's not normally a bad product that's the problem. There are a zillion reasons for startup failure, but beating the odds is not a product management or a sales or marketing problem. We have to work cross-functionally, join forces and work together to align the company around success. 2. Product/market fit is more than just delivering value, but being able to build a sustainable business Traditional definitions of product/market fit focus on whether you can deliver value to a specific market segment, but it's important to bring other dimensions into play, such as the most effective business model and people's willingness to pay. You have to capture enough value to build a sustainable business. 3. It's essential to pick a niche, define your ideal customers, and stick to the plan It's really easy for early startup founders to try to go wide and fix everyone's problems, but this is generally a mistake. It's important to maintain discipline, be strategic, and realise that not all opportunities are created equal. You don't have to make a sale at all costs. 4. You're probably not charging enough for your solution, but your customers aren't going to price it for you Founders sometimes fall prey to product imposter syndrome, where they fail to extract fair value from their customers because they're not sure the product is good enough, or feel bad asking for money. We need money! But, don't expect your customers to just tell you a fair price. It's important to do decent pricing research. 5. We can learn a lot from "special ops" thinking Business science has matured over the last couple of hundred years, but there are timeless principles from military strategy that can help us succeed. Pitting small resources against larger competition, being nimble, responding to change and executing fast can help us succeed in a crowded marketplace. Check out "Go-To-Market Strategist" "In Growth and Marketing, we were taught how the “big tech” companies grew to their heights more than a decade ago. They had bigger budgets, teams, and global talent. Markets were less saturated. Customers were more excited about innovation. You need a different playbook for GTM. One that applies to bootstrap startups, clever leaders in innovative companies, and independent innovators. So I went on a journey. I devoted a year of my life to interviewing 54 experts from companies such as: Hubspot, Miro, Figma, Metabase, CXL, and many more to ask them to share their “go to market” advice that will most securely and successfully guide you to product-market fit." Check out the book website. Contact Maja You can catch up with Maja on LinkedIn.

Eisha Armstrong is a company founder, digital transformation consultant and author of "Productize" and new book "Fearless". This new book goes deep on the cultural underpinnings of productisation, and how company leader can align their teams and quell their own fears. Episode highlights: 1. Many leaders are afraid of productisation... Leaders want the benefits of productisation, but are afraid to jump in because of the investment required, and whether the bets are going to pay off. 2. ... But their employees are afraid too Employees are afraid that they are going to lose their jobs, that their skills and knowledge will become less valuable, or that the client they have invested time in will reject the new model. 3. It's important to sell the vision and the "why" behind productisation It's no surprise that products need a vision, but it's even more important to explain the "why" of productisation, and to connect an aspirational vision to the hard business metrics and KPIs that resonate with a service-mindset organisation. 4. The hallmarks of a successful services firm can kill a product-friendly culture Eisha talks about the four horsemen of product-friendly culture: Knowing, Perfectionism, Scarcity Mindset and Individual Heroics. Productisation changes the game and these traits can sink productisation efforts. The company needs to shift mindset and probably needs to bring in new expertise. 5. Product leaders in service-mindset organisations have to be different Product leaders in transforming organisations are not the same as product leaders in tech-first product organisations. Technical chops are secondary, and they need to have much better stakeholder management and communication skills to succeed. They need to ensure there is no tissue rejection by an organisation that just doesn't understand. Buy "Fearless" "Transforming a B2B services business model to a more scalable, profitable, productized company can have many points of failure - but the biggest and most underserved is the cultural transformation required to support successful productization. The encore book from Eisha Armstrong and her team at Vecteris, Fearless tackles this frequent point of failure and dives deep on the change management required to build a Product-Friendly Culture." Check it out on Amazon. You can also check out the book website 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.

Saagar Bains is a fractional product leader and product advisor who started out digitally transforming his family's wholesale business and launching its e-commerce site before moving into consulting and into startups. One of those startups was The Body Coach, started by celebrity fitness guru Joe Wicks, where Saagar had the job of translating their vision into scalable reality. For this episode, we travelled to Saagar's hometown of Birmingham for a LIVE interview and Q&A about the pros and cons of building for celebrity creators. Episode highlights:   1. Being an early entrepreneur can really help your product management game Product managers often get tied up in the craft of product management and the latest frameworks, but Saagar started out working for his family business and had to work out everything as he went. This gave him an incredible bias for action, to do things that don't scale and to get scrappy where needed. These are traits that many PMs should develop rather than getting precious about process. 2. Product Management is all about the "Why" Saagar spent some time working for Deloitte Digital and, in many cases, building stuff without being told why it was being built. This left him feeling unsatisfied, and like he wasn't doing "Proper Product". Luckily, even though The Body Coach started building with an external agency, the "why" was so strong from the founders that Saagar could take over something that made sense. 3. Creator-led businesses have a built-in audience, which means that "move fast and break things" doesn't work If you have millions of users with a direct relationship with the brand upfront, you can't just throw anything out the door. There's an incredible amount of brand equity and trust that needs to be satisfied, and there is a higher quality bar. That said, you still have to pick your battles, and there's still good product prioritisation work to be done. 4. All founders are going to come with feature requests, and smart PMs are going to do some of them When you have an incredibly well-respected founder who lives and breathes the product, you're going to get requests. Some of them will even make sense. But, product people who don't have evidence against the requests, or a better plan in general, are going to get overridden and they only have themselves to blame. That said, it's important not to rail against feature requests just because they're from a founder. 5. Building proper, trusting relationships with the founders is incredibly important When working with creators with a massive following, who have invested so much of themselves into a company, the worst thing you can do is just walk in expecting them to bend to the awesome power of product management. Saagar spent several hours walking and talking with the founders before even getting the job, to understand their motivations and forge a bond. This ultimately helped him be more successful. Contact Saagar You can connect with Saagar on LinkedIn.

Namrata (Nam) Sarmah is CPO at INTO University Partnerships and the founder of Women in Product UK, a community through which she hopes to build a pipeline of female product management talent and finally put to bed the excuses that hiring managers currently fall back on when challenged on their female talent acquisition. She's also passionate about making sure we get more product people into the C-suite, and will soon be launching the CPO Track community to support this. We chatted about all this, and much more. Episode highlights:   1. You don't need an MBA to get into product, but it's not unhelpful There's a lot of controversy about the merits (or lack of) of MBAs in product management. MBAs are not essential, but they can be helpful when trying to crack the C-suite as you've already spent a lot of time working on your business sense. There are other ways to get this though; the most important thing is to develop that business sense one way or another. 2. Just because you're great a product management, doesn't mean you'll be a great CPO It's hard to land a Chief Product Officer job, and even harder to stay in there. You require a mix of skills, and just being the best at product management doesn't help. It requires a mix of business acumen, executive presence (sad, but true) and the ability to tell a story in terms that resonate with your leadership peers. 3. Building a community is hard, but you can treat it like a product Community-building is not an easy skill to teach someone; it requires a certain mindset and certain instincts. There are different types of people in the world, and some of them are natural "connectors" who just know how to join the dots and get people together. 4. Women in Product UK is its own thing, and its superpower is diversity There are various communities around the world that support product managers, or female product managers specifically, but a lot of them have quite a narrow focus on certain job levels or roles. Having top female CPOs available for free in a community is a superpower. 5. The name of the game is pipeline building, and allies are welcome Some sad sacks will sit and grumble about having a "women in product" group rather than just a generic "people in product" group. but the numbers don't lie. Women are still underrepresented in senior positions, and it's easy for companies to blame "pipeline problems". So let's all build the pipeline, so they don't have an excuse anymore. Contact Nam You can connect with Nam on LinkedIn or check out Women in Product UK, where you can interact with the community and get onto the WhatsApp group.

Duena Blomstrom is a renowned fintech thought leader who got tired of seeing the same problems in the workplace and decided to go out and try to solve them. Duena took on banking culture with "Emotional Banking" before moving onto wider organisational change with "People Before Tech". We spoke about some of the common problems faced within organisations, how to try to solve them, and some of the reasons why companies resist those solutions. Episode highlights:   1. Santa Claus is not going to come and "puke a generative culture on your enterprise" There are no magic bullets to organisational transformation, but it's also simpler than it sounds. You need to take a number of smaller, measurable steps that move the needle. And teams have a lot more power to affect change than they think - they don't need to await permission. 2. We're not fixing it because we get in our own way We let the status quo persist because we don't challenge ourselves, and think this is just the way business works. There's too much fear in the workplace and it's holding us back. 3. Impression Management is a big problem at work People are afraid of looking incompetent, intrusive or troublesome at work. This is natural, but it limits us in the workplace. Start noticing when you exhibit these behaviours, and they'll start to go away automatically. It's important to speak up. 4. All companies have some level of Human Debt As with tech debt, all companies accrue Human Debt as they grow. Human Debt is the result of all the abandoned initiatives and missed opportunities to affect change. It adds up and the interest repayments can start to cripple you. 5. You don't need to pay all the Human Debt off at once Some bad behaviours will eventually naturally expire. As a society, we've gotten better at standing up for what's right (although there's still plenty of work to do). But, ultimately, you should pay the most burdensome Human Debt off first. Buy "People Before Tech" "Built upon fascinating research and an international array of case studies, People Before Tech is an incisive examination of how organizations through their digital transformations become stranded with unoptimised teams and disenfranchised employees. Duena highlights that it is vital not just to implement technology, but also to integrate it into the existing organizational culture and structure, before providing practical guidance and advice on how business leaders and HR professionals can heighten efficiency and effectiveness of workplace teams through collaborative and innovative initiatives." Check it out on Amazon. Contact Duena You can connect with Duena on LinkedIn or on her website DuenaBlomstrom.com, where you can find links to all her various endeavours!

Jennifer Yang-Wong is a product leader who formerly worked at Uber, before moving into the rarified heights of Venture Capital. But, not as an investor but as the VP of Product for a tech-led VC firm. We spoke about why a VC firm needs a VP of Product as well as numerous reflections on the trouble that we can have when trying to apply product thinking and move beyond founder-led decision-making. Episode highlights:   1. There's no one way to do product management, and no one's doing it "right". There's no one way to do product management, and no one's doing it "right". It all depends on what you need for your stage of company, and whether you're sales-y, ops-y, or product-y in mindset. 2. There's no "number" or formula you can apply to decide whether to blow up your roadmap. In a sales-led organisation, it's common for big deals to torpedo the best-laid plans. Your appetite to do this work will vary, but it's not as simple as saying "X% of revenue and we do it!" But, whatever the number is, it should be really, really high. 3. It can be tricky to know when to bring on the first product hire and move away from founder-led product management One of the founders is generally the de facto "head of product", often with no specific product training. They do many of the same things that the product team would do, but not necessarily in the same way, and with less process. This can cause clashes when the first PM comes in. 4. Getting a super process-oriented PM in as the first PM might exacerbate the issue You do need some rigour from the PM you bring in, otherwise, what's the point of bringing them in? But, if you bring someone in who is too dogmatic or has worked for much larger organisations, you may find a cultural mismatch and inevitable clash when everything they do seems to slow you down. 5. In some companies, it might be the second "first product manager" that succeeds Founders may mis-hire if they don't have a strong understanding of what product managers bring to the table, or how they want to work. It's unpleasant to think of, but sometimes the first PM takes the hits, moves on and is replaced by a second PM who can start to make progress since the founders have a better idea of what they'll get the second time around. Contact Jennifer You can connect with Jennifer on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

Gabrielle Bufrem is a product leader and product coach who comes highly recommended by Sir Marty Cagan himself. She's passionate about developing product managers and product leaders, as well as helping them be true strategic partners to the business. We spoke about product vision, what to do when it's not there, the importance of product principles and much more. A quick message from Saeed Khan and me. My former podcast guest, Saeed Khan and I are thinking of putting together a B2B Product Management cohort course on Maven. Our goal is to help B2B PMs make peace with the differences between B2B product management and much of the classic product literature, and enable them to be true business partners rather than stuck in a remorseless feature factory. We're assessing interest right now, so if this sounds good, please fill in our course questionnaire. Thanks! Episode highlights:   1. A product strategy is the highest leverage artefact any product leader can have But it's also one of the hardest to do. It's serious, serious work, which is why so many product teams just end up with a list of tasks, or a "pizza strategy" (pepperoni! chicken! M&Ms!) 2. A lot of problems stem from being people pleasers No one wants to say "no" and people can suffer from the fear of missing out. People can be afraid to take a stance. But, it's essential to narrow your focus to the absolute essentials if you want to make any progress at all. 3. It's hard to push back on pre-agreed feature requests if you don't have a plan Product leaders need a deep understanding of their users and customers, but also of the wider business context. You need to be conscious of what the company (and the board) wants. 4. Sometimes companies don't have strategies either It's easy to get dragged into a neverending feature list, prioritising whatever the next thing is. Product leaders need to work with wider leadership to identify broad goals, how they can get there & what the 3-5 year plan is. 5. Product managers are there to represent the business UX designers are there to look after the users and the engineering team is there to look after the tech. It's absolutely essential for PMs to be trusted business partners if they want to make a big impact. Contact Gabrielle You can connect with Gabi on Twitter or on LinkedIn. Or, check out her website.

Julie Starr is a renowned coach and mentor, and author of several books on the topics. We had a deep and meaningful chat about the differences between coaching and mentoring, what it takes to be a good coach or mentor, and the impact of AI on coaching. Episode highlights:   1. The expectations we have of leaders have changed We're slowly moving away from Taylorist, resource-focused management to a less-directive style of leadership. Not all companies are there yet, but even laggards are seeing what other organisations are doing and the benefits it brings. 2. Coaching is a 1:1 relationship focused squarely on the person being coached Coaches facilitate conversations of inquiry and aim to support their clients to take action, evolve and, ultimately, empower them to be the change they want to see in themselves. 3. Coaches do not need to be functional experts At the heart of coaching is the art of coaching, not reflecting your own biases and life story onto people. A good coach can use fundamental coaching skills to coach anyone, whatever their life situation or career niche. 4. Mentoring is not the same as coaching, but it's also not binary It's less useful to look at the specific behaviours and more at the dynamics of a mentoring relationship; that of benevolence from and respect for a more senior practitioner who has seen your situation before. 5. Not everything that counts can be measured It's traditionally hard to attribute specific metrics to coaching or mentoring relationships, but that doesn't mean the effect isn't there. It's not always easy, but we can use qualitative data to show the impact of our efforts. Buy Julie's Books "Julie Starr’s books on coaching and mentoring are recommended reading on development programmes around the world." Check out all three books at Starr Coaching, or wherever you get your books. Check out Julie's free resources Julie has a huge amount of free resources at LearnStarr (free registration required). Make sure to check it out. Contact Julie You can connect with Julie on LinkedIn. You can also check out the Starr Coaching website.