Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

Pillars and practices for product managers to deeply understand their customers’ problems I am changing the name of the podcast to Product Mastery Now. The new name is coming soon.  You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Mastery Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing.  I expect you’ll find this episode very value because it is focused on how you can get better at making products, which is a topic important to all product managers and leaders.  I am joined by Heather Samarin and Vidya Dinamani, the co-founders of Product Rebels, a product management leadership training company. They have enormous experience in product management and delighting customers through product-market fit.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:09] How did your time at Intuit help you as product professionals? We learned how to stand in our customer’s shoes. We performed observational research that allowed us to have customer empathy and understand our customers’ pain and problems. Clayton Christensen introduced a program called Design for Delight, which helped us innovate by observing, experimenting quickly, and getting feedback from customers. Customer learning was infused into all the product decisions we made. [9:05] What led to your book Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products? We see product teams and leaders hitting the same pitfalls we have hit. Product leaders struggle with an overwhelming set of priorities and struggle to figure out where to put their effort, and investors shy away when they can’t see how you’re going to spend your money. Product teams struggle with making decisions. They argue about features, letting the loudest or highest paid person get their way instead of listening to what the customer wants. These problems lead to unclear value propositions, lack of clarity, and unhappy customers. We kept seeing problems like these over and over again, across all industries and in all sizes of teams. We wanted to get to the root cause of the problems and create tools and tactics to solve them. [14:53] Your book Groundwork covers two areas—the Pillars and the Practices. What can you tell us about them? The three pillars are the foundation for good decision making and focus: Convergent Problem Statement—defining a problem in a way that drives focus Actionable Persona—knowing your ideal customer to allow you to make trade-offs confidently Individualized Needs—intimately understanding your customers’ needs The three practices are daily actions that allow us to consistently get to the pillars: Developing a Hypothesis—clearly defining what you want to learn when you talk with customers Scrappy Research—researching continually without a ton of money and resources Getting Commitment—framing information to lead to an actionable decision [19:16] Tell us more about the Convergent Problem Statement. We naturally want to create solutions, but we need to first focus on the customers’ problems. When we observe and really understand the customer, we define multiple different problems. Think broadly about customers’ different problems, then converge on one. A convergent problem statement expresses the difficulty or pain the customer has with no attempt to address a solution. Often, we work on solutions when we think we’re working on problems. Take a look at your work and see if you’re just working on a feature or actually describing the problem. [21:32] Tell us more about the Actionable Persona. Once you have a clear problem, you want to know intimately whom you’re solving it for so you can make good decisions about how to design the product and prioritize features. Many teams don’t find personas valuable, but we’re redefining personas and making them actionable, simple, and something everyone can use. We define personas using character trait spectrums that help you understand different aspects of your ideal customer and take action to design the product for them. The more focused you are in targeting your ideal customer, the better you’ll be able to delight them. [24:49] Tell us more about Individualized Needs. In an ideal world, you’d solve one problem for one customer, but in reality you’re solving many problems for many customer segments. To create delight, you need to group together a persona and a problem statement. Think in silos. Understand the needs of each segment so you can make decisions about tradeoffs for each persona. Action Guide: Put the information Heather and Vidya shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Visit Heather and Vidya’s website, Product Rebels Check out Groundwork: Get Better at Making Better Products on Amazon Innovation Quote “Innovation comes from saying no to a thousand things.” – Steve Jobs “People don’t buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole.” – Theodore Levitt Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

The skills product managers need in a changing environment This podcast will soon be changing its name to Product Mastery Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Mastery Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing.  The role of product manager is shifting, and you can position yourself for future success if you know how it is shifting. Our guest has some unique insights about this as he is the founder of Product School, a large community of product managers. His name is Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, and he’s here to share the shifts that are emerging and how you can prepare.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:22] What are some of the shifts in product management you’ve seen in the last year or two? When I started seven years ago, product management wasn’t well-understood. Now, there’s more understanding about what product management is. Many companies have a chief product officer who reports directly to the CEO. More and more companies are hiring product managers, even though many companies are downsizing because of COVID. They still need product managers to make their products and sell online, and with remote working, they need more efficient collaboration. Product management isn’t just for high-tech companies anymore; all industries need product managers. [5:05] What changes have you seen in product managers’ influence? The power dynamic is definitely changing. Product managers now have more influence because they’re in the middle of the organization, connecting the dots between engineering, design, and marketing. They create the roadmaps and vision. Product managers feel empowered because many CEOS are coming from a product background, setting up a product culture in their organizations. [6:22] Why is the cross-functionality of product management important? Product managers are generalists. They understand the company’s different functions and the customer. Product managers connect everyone under a common vision, similar to what CEOs do, which is why many product managers become CEOs and many startup founders and CEOs later become product leaders. [7:26] How can product managers be more effective at relating to different functions? Learn about functions you don’t have a background in. If you are trying to move toward a product manager role, and you have experience in marketing, take a year to learn about design and engineering. Become more complete by picking up skills outside of what you’re really good at. [9:04] What are the key capabilities a well-rounded product manager has? Technical acumen: You don’t have to be an engineer, but you will be working with engineers, so you need to speak tech and be able to earn engineers’ respect. Industry domain or business acumen: You don’t need an MBA, but you need to understand your customer, market, competition, and product, so you can be passionate about the problem you’re solving. Communication skills: Be comfortable communicating with different stakeholders, not only in big presentations but also over email, in-person, and online. You need to be there for your team and have time to support and coach others. [11:54] Tell us about your journey to become an effective communicator. It wasn’t easy. I immigrated from Spain, so I’m a non-native English speaker, and I still make a lot of mistakes when speaking. I had nothing to lose and no experience at all, so I pushed myself to practice, practice, practice. It’s okay to be uncomfortable; learning is a process. I encourage people to go for it and start practicing communication, even if they’re not native speakers or professional communicators. Non-verbal communication is important too; smiling while you talk goes a long way. Curiosity is also very powerful in making us more approachable and effective.  [15:51] How is the role of product management changing going into the future? We recently released a report called “The Future of Product Management,” and identified several trends in how the industry is moving. Product management is becoming more data-driven. It’s becoming more of a science than an art. You can’t get away with just having a strong vision and being a great communicator; you need to also look at the numbers and listen to your users. There’s much more technology available specifically for product managers. These tools are becoming more and more visual, meaning you don’t need technical expertise to use them. Product management is becoming more collaborative. Product teams now include engineers, designers, and marketers, in addition to product managers, and they all work together to generate ideas and create successful products. Product managers need to learn about others’ work so they can connect with their teams. The pandemic has accelerated product roadmaps dramatically. Companies may be downsizing, but they’re hiring more product managers. Traditional companies are now investing in digital transformation, creating more opportunities for product managers. Many people are doing the work of a product manager even though their job title is something else, like project manager or product marketer. If you want to become a product manager, but your company won’t give you the title of product manager, you can still help your product team, build something on your own, design a website, or participate in a hackathon. There are a lot of free resources for product management. You just need commitment. [24:07] What should product managers start doing now to prepare themselves for the future? Design is underrated but very important for product management. You don’t have to be a professional designer, but you do need to develop an eye for design. Design is about putting the user in the middle and solving a problem for them based on data and qualitative information. As a product manager, you’re hired to bring questions, not answers. Make data-driven decisions, but balance that with the intuition developed with experience. As product managers, we’re there to serve others, make it easier to build the product, and create value for customers. We’re orchestrating the work of our team, not adding more to people’s plates, but providing clarity and direction. Action Guide: Put the information Carlos shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn more about Product School and check out their free resources Connect with Carlos on LinkedIn Download the Future of Product Management Report Innovation Quote “There’s never been a better time in history to build digital products because the world is moving online.” – Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

How product managers can get their teams on the same page This podcast is getting a new name—Product Masters Now. The name officially changes in a few weeks, but I want you to know it is coming. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. The logo will look the same—just the name is changing.  Effective product managers are good communicators and can get team members aligned to meet the objectives of a product.  However, that is easier said than done. Knowing a few simple tools to create team alignment, getting everyone on the same page, makes a big difference in your success and the success of your products.  To help us with those tools, Dr. Stefano Mastrogiacomo, a project management professor, consultant and author fascinated by human coordination, joins us.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:30] Why do some teams underperform? Teams underperform when members work around each other and not with each other. This is caused by two factors: The team climate is unsafe psychologically—trust is lacking; there may be conflict. When the team activities are poorly aligned—when teams do not understand and trust each other, they experience confusion. [4:17] How can we recognize an unsafe team climate, and what are its effects? Visible symptoms of an unsafe climate include lack of recognition, disengagement, and team members losing the joy of working together. As Amy Edmondson said, psychological safety is the belief that the team is safe enough for interpersonal risk-taking. When the team is not psychologically safe, we’re afraid to speak up and share new ideas, and that undermines innovation. Because of fear, we won’t wake up the collective genius. Trust and psychological safety are cousins. Trust is the perception that I can be vulnerable with you, and psychological safety describes a climate of trust. We all can tell very rapidly whether we’re in a place that’s psychologically safe. When we are, we have joy and motivation. We want to wake up and go work with people we enjoy working with. During my academic research, we followed several teams to measure the impact of mutual clarity on task performance. We also included a question on motivation in our survey. We did nothing to encourage motivation, but surprisingly we found that the teams with greater mutual clarity had greater motivation. We concluded that motivation is a consequence of mutual clarity and mutual trust. [10:07] What are your tools to help teams improve? The high impact tools for teams improve the quality of everyday interactions, especially related to clarity on team processes and psychological safety. The five tools are: Team Alignment Map—structured discussion to help every team member clarify their individual contribution to the team Team Contract—clarifies the rules of the team before problems occur Respect Card—checklist of ways to show respect and recognition Fact Finder—helps team members ask good questions to decrease perception gaps and improve mutual understanding and trust Non-Violent Requests Guide—manages conflict and allows team members to express discontent or disagreement in a non-judgmental way leading to a constructive dialogue I divide the tools into blue pill tools and red pill tools. The Team Alignment Map is a Blue bill tool that clarifies team processes, mission, and goal. Red pill tools improve trust, and include the Team Contract, Respect Card, and Non-Violent Requests Guide. The Fact Finder is a hybrid of a blue pill tool and a red pill tool. [16:08] How does the Team Alignment Map help teams? The Team Alignment Map is most powerful when used for a new team, new project, or new collaboration. The map is a poster divided into four columns. Teams put the poster on a whiteboard, discuss each area, and fill in the columns. The four areas are: Joint Objectives: What do we want to achieve together? Write down the team’s objectives categorized under the team’s joint missions. Joint Commitments: Discuss everyone’s contribution to make the joint objectives happen. Joint Resources: What resources do we need to keep the commitments? Do we have what we need? Joint Risks: What might prevent us from achieving our objectives? Once you’ve filled in all four columns, you’ve completed the forward pass. Now everyone has a big picture of the collaboration ahead. Next, you must perform a backward pass to address missing resources and risks. Each missing resource or risk must be connected to a new objective and a new commitment. For example, suppose your objective is to run interviews with clients, and a risk is that the clients might not be available for interviews. In the backward pass, your new objective is to schedule all interviews. You assign a team member to do it and identify resources needed. The backward pass increases the resilience of the team by transforming problems into new activities and commitments. The Team Alignment Map gives the team members common ground to increase our ability to achieve. [23:37] How does the Team Alignment Map contrast with traditional product management processes? Often, traditional product management teams receive tasks to complete, but there’s not a common understanding of how each person’s work contributes to the project. The Team Alignment Map gets everyone on the same page and provides the big picture. The map doesn’t replace any product management methods, but it does improve communication, which is a key element of many methods. Mutual understanding is a collaborative process, and the Team Alignment Map helps the team align from the beginning. There’s less need for them to use memos and other documents to communicate during the project, since they’re already on the same page. Action Guide: Put the information Stephano shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn more about Strategyzer Check out Stefano’s blog, Team Alignment View Stefano’s book on Amazon Innovation Quote “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.” ― Niels Bohr Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

Powerful actions and mindsets to take product managers to the next level This podcast is getting a new name to better reflect our objective here—helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now.  You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now.  Product managers are in a perfect role to become senior leaders and part of the C-suite. Your role is in the middle of the work the organization does, giving you insights that few executives have, which is why you should become one. To prepare for that, you need to adjust your mindset, stop doing certain things, and start doing other things.   Our guest, Evan Roth, is an expert on this as he has coached many product executives. We first met way back in episode 102 after a product VP and coaching client introduced me to him. Today, he’ll help you prepare a path to leadership roles.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:28] How can product managers change their mindset to prepare for a senior leadership role? Stretch out your thinking about the future—think longer term, wider breadth Embrace the gray—recognize that there won’t be perfect answers Focus on the big picture— when you’re a senior leader, someone else will focus on the details Stop thinking about urgent products and start thinking about important products—focus on solutions, opportunities, and possibilities Stop thinking about the details and start thinking about themes and trends Anticipate the future (future proofing) [10:38] How do we think bigger? Examine your mental models. Ask yourself, What is my framework? How far out am I thinking? Is my thinking unlimited or limited? Spend time with other people who think big. Change your mental models by being influenced by mentors. [13:53] Tell us more about how can mindset help product managers. I coach people on four aspects of mindset, using the acronym GAIL: Gremlin (inner critic) Assumption Interpretation Limiting Belief Our brains don’t distinguish between limiting beliefs and positive beliefs. A thought leads to a feeling, which leads to a behavior, which lead to an action. If we want to change our behavior and achieve a goal, we have to change our feelings and thoughts. We need to reframe the messages we tell ourselves. The brain is a pattern-recognition machine. If you want to create a new neural synapse, you have to practice mentally. Your mindset is not in your DNA. You can choose to change. The brain is seeking certainty and will continue to stay the same unless you actively change yourself. Awareness is big. If you want to change your mental models, you have to become aware of them. [20:21] What actions should product managers take as they’re moving toward senior leadership? First, list the things you’ll need to stop doing. When you advance to the next level, you can’t keep doing all the things you’re already doing or you’ll burn out. Identify the most valuable activity (MVA) you’ll be doing at the next level. Find out how senior leaders spend their time in ways that lead to economic or product success. Think differently by reading differently; read about what your next position may be like and read about things you don’t understand yet. At the executive level, you’ll be faced with things you don’t know all the time, so prepare yourself now. [22:28] What books can leaders read to expand their thinking?  All great leadership starts with self leadership. Read about you can become better, self-actualize, and become aware of blindspots. Leadership and Self-Deception is a great book on how we’re deceiving ourselves all the time and how becoming aware of that can help us. Read about emotional intelligence and change methodologies. [23:44] What is a 360 review? The 360 review is a process I use when I’m coaching clients. I call it the “human pincushion experiment.” You get feedback from people above you, beside, and below you in the organization, and sometimes from customers too. You end up with a list of actions to start, stop, and continue based on everyone else’s input. The 360 review can be done quantitatively with a survey, but I do qualitative interviews. I talk to each person for a few minutes about the client I’m coaching. The conversation is confidential, but I use what people share to create buckets of actions to start, stop, and continue. These actions can be related to behavior, leadership, conflict, or collaboration. You get a rich set of feedback to help identify blindspots. The bigger the gap between other people’s view and your view, the better the coaching opportunity, because you can grow in self-awareness. [26:03] How can product managers ask for feedback to prepare them for a senior leadership role? Some people are hesitant to ask for feedback, because they’re afraid they’ll find out they aren’t as good as they think they are. But the beauty of it is you can ask people to bundle their feedback. Ask them to tell you two things you did really well and two things you could do better. Assure them you won’t take it personally. Develop the habit of asking for feedback now, and it will serve you well at the senior level. When senior leaders ask for feedback, they demonstrate trust and vulnerability and increase connection. Our brains react to trust by releasing oxytocin, so we can physically communicate better with one another when there’s trust garnered through vulnerability. Action Guide: Put the information Evan shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn about Evan’s executive coaching at CoachEvanRoth.com Connect with Evan on LinkedIn Listen to TEI 102 with Evan Roth Innovation Quote “Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston S. Churchill Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

How product managers can work backwards to amazing products In a few weeks, the name of this podcast will be changing to Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming. If your player is like mine that lists podcasts alphabetically, it will be displayed further in your list of subscribed podcasts as the first letter of the name is changing from “E” to “P.” The logo will look the same—just the name is changing.  To be a better product manager, it is worthwhile to examine organizations known for their product management capabilities. Amazon is such a company. In this episode we are joined by not one but two product professionals who built much of their career at Amazon—13 and 15 years. They are Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. They document the process Amazon uses to create successful products in a book titled Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. And, they are here to share their insights with us.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:42] What makes Amazon so innovative? Innovation is a necessary part of everyone’s job. Our 14 leadership principles are woven into the DNA of everyone who works there and every process in the company, and six of them are directly related to innovation: Customer obsession—people wake up every day trying to figure out how to delight their customers. Invent and simplify—leaders expect invention and innovation from their teams, and they’re always finding ways to get better. Leaders are right, a lot—they seek diverse perspectives and try to prove themselves wrong to make sure they have the right thought. Insist on the highest standards—we’re continually finding ways to get better. Frugality—constraints breed innovation. Necessity also drives Amazon to innovate. Amazon operates at a scale that often can’t be supported by any commercial solutions, so they have to create solutions themselves. Amazon accepts failure as part of invention. If you’re not failing enough, you’re not inventing enough. When we started working at Amazon in 1998 and 1999, Amazon was an ecommerce business when ecommerce was completely new. We were inventing a whole new form of commerce from the beginning. The people who found it fun and exciting to invent something new thrived. As the company progressed, that mindset pervaded the company and drove them to move outside ecommerce. Also, some of Amazon’s raw materials like computing power, storage, and bandwidth, get cheaper over time. We use those advancements to invent new things, like scanning and storing every book in the world. [7:47] How did you see customer obsession encouraged at Amazon? Remarkably, Jeff Bezos and Amazon figured out how to create reinforcing processes to make customer obsession part of people’s jobs. Weekly business review meetings included a section called Voice of the Customer. At these meetings, a leader of the customer service group brought forward a customer problem that Amazon didn’t have a good solution for. The senior leadership assigned people to tackle the problem and create a solution so it never happens again. Another process, the COE (Correction of Error) process, tasked teams with diving deeply into the details of a defect, figuring out why the customer had the problem, and creating a detailed plan to fix the problem. Unlike most companies, Amazon created methods for leaders to programmatically seek out problems and solutions. [11:40] Who is responsible for innovation at Amazon? Everyone. Innovation is the lifeblood of the company. We don’t have a chief innovation officer, because that would be like having a chief breathing officer—everyone has to innovate, so you don’t assign that task to one person. We have found the best innovations come from people who are closest to working with the problems at hand, rather than having a management team several levels removed from the problem dictating how to innovate. Many of our innovations are small, and customers never see them, but they make Amazon work more efficiently and allow us to provide lower prices for our customers. In a lot of companies, people think of innovation as a product function. At Amazon, it’s a job for everyone, not just the product organization. Amazon celebrates innovation. Employees receive awards for finding ways to cut costs, going above and beyond to serve a customer, and filing patents. The awards have no monetary value, but they’re some of the most prized possessions of people at Amazon. Everyone is expected to innovate, and everyone celebrates and recognizes innovation. [17:37] What is Amazon’s Working Backwards methodology? Working Backwards is Amazon’s method for developing new products and services. We start with the customer needs and work backwards from there. Most companies take a skills-forward approach, meaning they develop new products based on what they’re good at. Instead, we start with our customers’ needs. In 2004, we started thinking about how we could build an ebook service. If we had taken a skills-forward approach, we would have focused on expanding our ecommerce site, which was already working well. Instead, we focused on invention on behalf of the customer. We identified what the customer would need to read ebooks—a device to store ebooks, a paper-like reading experience, the ability to download more books, etc. To come up with these concepts, teams use the PRFAQ process, which stands for Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions. As we were developing the Kindle, we figured out that we needed to start with the press release, which is normally at the end of the process. If you can write a press release that describes the product as something that people are going to jump out of their chair to buy, then you’ve got something. If it doesn’t sound exciting, then it’s probably not worth building it. We also answer FAQs at the beginning of the process. We describe the problems we’ll have to solve and potential solutions, answer questions the customer would ask, and answer internal questions like “How long will it take to build?” Set aside the skills you have today, focus purely on what the customer needs and work backwards from the end of the process. Working Backwards works for anything—small features, large businesses, or which country or industry to move into next. [23:48] Where do ideas come from in the Working Backwards process? The best ideas come from people who have a deep, fundamental understanding of the customer experience and the problem they’re trying to solve. Market research and focus groups can verify some hypotheses, but the best ideas come from looking for a unique solution to a customer problem. It’s an iterative process. Few, if any, products get the green light on their first PRFAQ process. The press release might be missing a few things that still need to be solved, the customer value proposition might not be right, or the product might not have a big enough impact to be worthwhile. [25:23] Tell us more about the PRFAQ process. The press release is an enticing description of the product. If you read the press release and aren’t saying, “Wow, the customer really wants this,” then there’s no point in continuing. After you’ve described something that’s amazing, the FAQs tell how it can actually happen. Your team should develop and review multiple PRFAQs for multiple ideas to figure out which ones are worth doing. You may write a press release that sounds exciting but realize once you delve into the FAQs that there is a problem that will prevent you from achieving your goal. Again, everyone is responsible for innovation—both the team that writes the PRFAQ and the people who read, comment, and make it better. The FAQ is both a business case and a feasibility case. When we developed the Kindle, the press release said the device needs to always be connected to the internet. In 2005, when the PRFAQ was written, wifi was not prevalent, so we didn’t know how we could solve that problem. The team problem-solves and brainstorms to understand the constraints and challenges and solve them in a way that is economically viable. [29:31] How do experiments fit into innovation at Amazon? Amazon used a lot of experiments to figure out how to operate. The PRFAQ process took a while to develop. Through experiments, we also learned how to make our meetings more productive. Customers never see these innovations, but Amazon spends a lot of time and effort on innovation related to its operation. Amazon also does A/B tests to optimize the website. Another example is Amazon Fresh. Amazon knew if they wanted to be big in retail, they needed to sell food, because food is a big portion of overall commerce. We didn’t know how to do it, but we knew from customer feedback that we had to do it. We experimented with a small geography; don’t go big until you’ve cracked the nut. As another example, in the early 2000s, Amazon did a big longitudinal test for radio and TV advertising. They tested markets in Minneapolis and Portland for a year but found that it was too expensive to roll out that advertising nationwide. Twenty years later, Amazon has become the largest advertiser. When it was time, Amazon went back and used what they had learned from that early advertising experiment. Jeff Bezos has a saying, “Stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details.” We know what the endpoint is, but we don’t know exactly what product will get us there. For example, it didn’t take long to figure out that shipping costs were one of the biggest barriers to customers’ purchasing from Amazon. We ran multiple experiments of different free shipping promotions, finally creating Amazon Prime. We were very clear on the vision—making shipping free—but we didn’t know what the right formula was. Action Guide: Put the information Colin and Bill shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Working Backwards on Amazon or workingbackwards.com Innovation Quotes “We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.” – Jeff Bezos Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

Four steps for product managers to make an awesome First Time User Experience This podcast is where product leaders and managers become product masters. That has been our purpose from the beginning, and it is why I’m changing the name of the podcast to Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. If your player is like mine and lists podcasts alphabetically, it will be displayed further in your list of subscribed podcasts, as the first letter of the name is changing from “E” to “P.” The logo will look the same—just the name is changing to Product Master Now. How much do you think about the user experience of your products? The entire user experience? I know I have put my focus in one area and neglected other aspects of the user experience—for example, the functional experience with the product, while perhaps ignoring the onboarding aspect or the customer support aspect. Even if you argue that such areas are someone else’s responsibility, I believe you, as the product manager, have important insights for improving these areas.  Our guest, Elizabeth Ferrao, has a practical framework for quickly evaluating UX called First Time UX, or FTUX, which is an acronym for a 4-step process. She’ll take us through the steps and an example so we can understand how to apply the framework.  Elizabeth is the founder of Product Mindset, a product consultancy focused on FTUX and onboarding.   Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:01] What is your focus as a UX product person? I’ve worked as a product manager for many companies, repeatedly working on onboarding—getting customers into the funnel. I started thinking about the first time user experience. I learned that 77% of mobile users download an app, then never use it after 72 hours. That means the money spent on getting those customers to download the app is wasted. The funnel is leaky. How do we make sure that the first time user experience is fantastic and offers immediate value that keeps users coming back? [6:38] What is First Time UX? First Time User Experience (FTUX) is the experience a person has the first time they encounter a product. FTUX is important for physical products and digital products. For digital products, it’s very measurable because we can measure our bounce rate, why people are dropping off, and what they’re looking at. [9:45] What are the steps of your First Time UX evaluation? I have a set of four steps that I walk through in any product experience, physical or digital. [9:54] Step 1: Landing Page On the landing page, I look for… Really strong message strength. Are they speaking directly to my pain point? The customer persona. The landing page tells whether the team understands whom they’re building the product for. I should be able to identify the key customer persona from the landing page. Are there any barriers to entry? I don’t want to have to enter a credit card number or talk to a salesperson. [11:09] Step 2: One Minute Magic Moment This is what the customer sees in their first minute with the product. For example, if an orange juice bottle tells me it has no sugar, and that’s my pain point, I’ll keep reading the bottle and might purchase it. As another example, when you first start using Spotify, it asks what music you like to listen to and automatically recommends songs you might like. It’s important to note that as a product manager you can’t satisfy your super fans and first-time users at the same time. You have to focus on one. Often product managers are focused on creating more value for current users, and they might not think about first time user experience. It’s important to have someone focused on getting users into the funnel. [15:06] Step 3: Five Minute Magic Moment In five minutes, you can give your customer a lot of information about your product. Within five minutes, you should be able to give them something fantastic, beautiful, or magical. For example, on a photo sharing app, in five minutes you can create an awesome photo album you can share. [15:45] Step 4: Grit Score The grit score measures how gritty your customer has to be to understand the product, keep using it, and convert from a free user to a paid user. I measure the grit score from 1 to 10. A low grit score is good, meaning customers don’t need to be very gritty to understand the product. [19:27] Let’s talk about an example of great FTUX—from Lemonade Insurance. I loved the Lemonade Insurance landing page and the entire experience. The landing page made it obvious that they were talking to me, a millennial who is purchasing home insurance for the first time and has heard things that scared me off before. Other insurance companies ask you to spend 15 or 20 minutes putting in information, and then they tell you that they’ll call you. Lemonade asked for a 90-second questionnaire, and I didn’t have to talk to anyone. The one minute magic moment was answering the questions and getting my initial quote, which was just $150. Then, in the five minute magic moment, I could add and subtract different values like pet insurance or the cost of staying in a hotel if my home had a fire. They had only asked for the information they needed to provide an accurate quote, and then they collected more information by allowing me to make choices based on my situation. As a user, I felt agency. Answering their questions was easy and made me feel empowered. To get someone to go from a free prospective customer to purchasing the product, you need to empower them, and you can only do that through first time user experience. The grit score was 1 out of 10, because I was engaged in just 90 seconds and got fantastic results in five minutes. [25:41] Anything else you’d like to share about FTUX? Any hiccup in the customer journey is felt really deeply. If you lose a customer after their first experience, you’re not going to get them back. For a customer to give you five minutes of their time, you have to have given them value in the first one minute; and for them to give you one minute, you have to have given them value in the first 10 seconds. If you have low conversion, it means people weren’t spending five minutes, one minute, or 10 seconds with your product. Making great First Time UX doesn’t depend on company size or funding. Two engineers can make FTUX even better than 500 engineers. Action Guide: Put the information Elizabeth shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Elizabeth’s website, Product Mindset Check out Elizabeth’s YouTube channel, Product Sins, including the video about Lemonade Insurance Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “Don’t be ordinary.” – Elizabeth Ferrao’s dad Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

Secrets for working with customers to create products they will love This podcast is getting a new name to better reflect our objective here—helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now. You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. You are in store for an enriching discussion with someone who has more experience delighting customers than most of us will ever see. You’ll learn a few important tools along with deepening your understanding of what it means to create products customers love. Helping us with this is Chip R. Bell, who has been ranked for six years in a row as one of the top three keynote speakers in the world on customer service. Bell has appeared on multiple TV networks, and his work has been featured in several prominent publications. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:18] What is co-creation? Co-creation is a partnership of creating collaboratively. I’ll be discussing the application of co-creation between a customer and an organization. The customer and the organization work together with equal license to make contributions to the product. Many organizations make products for the customer, but in co-creation, you’re making products with the customer. It’s a win-win partnership. [3:47] How do you find co-creation partners? Good co-creation partners have a need and the knowledge to contribute effectively. For example, a contributor to an electronic device needs to have knowledge about electronics. Choose a partner who can make a contribution in a way that’s unique and different from how you would normally approach the problem. Another group of contributors are catalysts. For instance, I might bring in third graders who will ask questions that stimulate product development. They don’t have the expertise to create a product, but they will help us break out of our normal way of thinking. Talk to people like drivers or security guards in your company; they have a different viewpoint and can often bring intelligence you might otherwise miss. A friend of mine who manages a hotel got valuable insights from taxi drivers about what customers liked and disliked about the hotel. [10:44] What are the five secrets for creating co-creation partnerships? For many years I’ve worked in customer service innovation. In contrast to value-added innovation, customer service innovation is value-unique—it’s all about creating new experiences that your customers will want to tell someone about. I wanted to write another book about this topic, and I decided to focus on including the customer in the innovative process. I found five secrets that the cultures of the most innovative companies share. My book Inside Your Customer’s Imagination is about applying those secrets to a relationship with the customer. The customer’s imagination is a door that can only be opened from the inside. The question is what to do to get the customer to open the door and share their crazy, unique, or unusual insights. Customer service innovation is about looking for opportunities to add something that delights the customer in an unexpected way. If you involve the customer in this, you get their cool ideas mixed in with your creation, and your customer will be loyal to a product they helped create. [15:55] Curiosity that uncovers insight Curiosity is approaching an inquiry without having any clue where it’s going. Normally, when people do customer interviews or focus groups, they are looking for confirmation of something they already expect. Product managers know better than to ask leading questions, but the expected answers are in their heads. Instead, what if you took a treasure-hunting approach? Invite the customer to be part of the treasure-hunting process, and be curious, not knowing where the process will take you. For example, I worked with a pizza delivery company, and we were getting the same comments from customers again and again because we were focused on their needs and expectations. We switched to focusing on their hopes and aspirations. We asked dreamer questions, like “What’s something that no pizza company does that would be really cool?” Customers imagined having something useful or fun to do with the box—the inside of the lid could be a puzzle or coloring book. Several years later, the company added fun activities to their boxes. That insight only came from demonstrating real curiosity about the customer’s desires. Make your customers feel valued by demonstrating that you are truly curious about their needs. If you can “be the customer,” you will see their world from a different angle. Experience what your customer experiences and demonstrate understanding in your relationship with them, and they will be more open to sharing the ideas you need. [22:00] Grounding that promotes clear focus In the creative process, rabbit holes are attractive, but great product companies are incredibly focused on the intersection between customers’ hopes and aspirations and the organization’s mission. I live on a golf course, and there’s one hole that’s separated from the tee by a lake. There are a lot of balls in the lake, but good golfers don’t pay any attention to the lake; they focus on the hole where they’re going. Likewise, organizations need to stay focused on what their mission is really about and what customers really want. For example, the tenants of a high-rise office building were complaining that the elevators were too slow. The building contractor did a lot of studies, and their engineer said they just needed to build another elevator. But then they talked to tenants and found the issue was less about the elevators and more about people’s impatience as they waited for the elevators. The contractor installed mirrors around the elevator lobby and shaft so that people would be preoccupied with looking at themselves and not notice the wait. They found the solution by focusing on the customer’s true problem. Grounding gives you a sense of what you’re about and why you’re here and guides you to making decisions and pursuing ideas consistent with those goals. [25:22] How can customer journey maps help us with grounding? I invented customer journey maps. In the early 1980s, Ron Zemke and I were working at a large telephone company, and we needed to help management understand the customer’s experience with telephone repair. We met with the senior leader in telephone repair and drew a flip chart of what the customer goes through, but the senior leader didn’t believe it. We said we would take it to the customer to verify it. In the cycle of service, this is a moment of truth—when the customer interacts with your organization and can give a thumbs up or thumbs down. We drew a map and asked the customer, “Is this what you go through?” We kept asking, “And then what happened?” The senior leader realized he had no idea what the customers were going through. He started having executives go through the same process as the customer and realized why customers were so frustrated with phone repair. It’s not about what you think. It’s about what the customer thinks. Your drawing of what you think is guaranteed to be wrong. The only way you can learn about the customer’s journey is to get them to talk you through it. [29:35] Tell us more about moments of truth. We use moment of truth impact analysis. We looked at a customer’s moment of truth, or one of their actions, and asked them, “What should happen here?” They list what should happen in a particular encounter. Then we ask, “What would be a detractor? What would be a delighter?” We found that the detractors weren’t just the opposites of the delighters; they were completely different. This analysis gives us a deeper understanding of the customer’s encounters with our organization and gives us insight into creative ways to enhance these moments. For example, at Hampton Inn, customers have an encounter with coffee cups. If someone is travelling with their spouse, and they both get coffee, they didn’t have any way to tell their cups apart. Hampton Inn put drawings of lipstick and mustaches on their cups so they would be easy to tell apart. This is called anticipatory innovation; Hampton Inn predicted a problem that the customers might have. It’s not a big deal, but it would be nice for them to not have to worry about which cup is which. They came up with an innovative solution. It’s a small enhancement but fun and imaginative. Action guide: Put the information Chip shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Inside Your Customer’s Imagination on Amazon Visit Chip’s website Innovation Quote “We wait, starving for moments of high magic to inspire us, but life is full of common enchantment waiting for our alchemists eyes to notice.” – Jacob Nordby  Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

In this engaging discussion, Amy Balliett, an expert in visual storytelling, shares her insights on how product managers can elevate their ideas through effective visual communication. She delves into the evolution of visual storytelling and the impact of infographics in modern marketing. Amy emphasizes the importance of custom designs over stock images and the pivotal role of color and typography. Additionally, she addresses overcoming imposter syndrome and the valuable lessons learned from mistakes, encouraging listeners to embrace growth through visual strategies.

How product managers can innovate throughout the entire product lifecycle As we move into 2021, the name of this podcast is changing to better reflect our objective here—product managers becoming product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now.  You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now.  This is the final episode in the series on a product management body of knowledge. Every-other-week starting in episode 307, we have explored the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. PDMA is the longest running professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We end the series by discussing product innovation management, which is the knowledge area for maximizing the return from product innovation through application of sound management practices throughout the product life cycle.  Our guest is Jerry Fix, a global Product Management professional who has successfully launched numerous products. He has significant experience managing global organizations to develop and support products and guide the commercialization of products and technologies. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:35] What are the key topics addressed in the chapter you wrote, Product Innovation Management? Innovation is a theme woven throughout the Body of Knowledge. We don’t treat innovation as a static event but as a process that winds through the entire new product development lifecycle. This final chapter wraps up the theme of innovation and highlights the idea that innovation should be managed throughout the process. [4:29] What responsibilities and skills do product managers have? I like how Marty Cagan describes the job of a product manager—to discover something valuable, useful, and feasible. Product managers’ main responsibilities are… Understanding the customer experience well. Internalizing a vision and communicating it to others. Assessing and prioritizing processes and activities. Managing pricing and roadmaps. Building business cases. Working with stakeholders. Effective product managers’ key skills are… Understanding the market. Understanding what innovation is. Switching easily between thinking strategically (big picture) and tactically (immediate actions). Being able to explain technical requirements to users and stakeholders. [11:58] What is the product life cycle? The product lifecycle is a curve that describes the stages of a product from the time it’s introduced to the time it’s retired. It includes the areas shown in the graphic. Historically, the introduction, growth, or maturity phases could last years or decades, but today we’re seeing the whole process getting shorter. As technology develops, consumers become more demanding, leading to more new technology, causing consumers to become more demanding, etc. Some product managers aren’t aware that retiring the product is part of the product lifecycle. They say their products never go away, and they have to continue managing them. They’re overextending the maturity phase. During the maturity phase, the product doesn’t change much. You’re generating as much revenue as possible while holding off decline as long as possible. If you extend that phase too far, your competitors will develop alternatives to your mature product, and you’ll miss opportunities for revenue and innovation. [18:08] What should product managers be thinking about as they’re taking a product through its lifecycle? During  introduction, product managers are subject experts; during growth, they’re growth hackers; during maturity, they’re retention strategists; and during decline they’re solution seekers. In the growth period, product managers are looking to expand the reach of the product; they’re making sure it’s competitive and ready to scale. Their focus is on supporting as many users as possible while optimizing for the fastest growth possible. During maturity, product managers focus on retaining customers and sustaining their market share. They stay aligned with how the value to the user is evolving. Their goal is to deliver customer satisfaction and customer delight. Reframing a product is a very smart, low-cost way to stay in maturity. For example, Wisk detergent extended their maturity by 30 years simply by reframing their product as a solution to the ring around the collar. [23:09] What metrics should we use for managing product innovation? What gets measured gets managed. If you want to improve something, you have to measure it. If you think of innovation as a singular “ah-ha” moment, you can’t manage it. But if you think of innovation the way PDMA does, as a process woven throughout the entire product lifecycle, then you can definitely manage it. Some metrics for managing innovation are: Balanced scorecard—considers people, process, and organization KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)—indicate how well you’re achieving a business goal by measuring the status of processes and outputs Percent of revenue coming from new products ROI (Return on Investment) Ability to capture new markets and market share in existing markets Action Guide: Put the information Jerry shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn more about PDMA and the PDMA Body of Knowledge Get the PDMA Body of Knowledge for yourself on Amazon Learn about NPDP Certification Connect with Jerry on Twitter or LinkedIn Catch up on any episodes you missed in the PDMA Body of Knowledge series: TEI 307, TEI 309, TEI 311, TEI 313, TEI 315, TEI 317 Innovation Quotes “Vision without execution is hallucination.” – attributed to Henry Ford “Strategy without execution is daydreaming.” – Jerry Fix Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source

How product managers can understand and solve their customers’ problems This podcast is getting a new name to better align with its purpose of helping product managers become product masters. That new name is Product Masters Now.  You don’t need to do anything to keep listening, but I want you to know the name change is coming in a few weeks, and it will show in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now.  Today is a discussion with a listener who contacted me after hearing episode 304. I sent an email to listeners who are subscribed to receive the show notes in their email box that said, “If you thought your job as a product manager was building products right, think again. In this discussion, Ken Sandy shares why the job of a product manager is not building products right but building the right products.” I admit, I did phrase that to be intentionally thought-provoking. A Chief Product Officer of a global company responded to that message and we began discussing the responsibilities of building the right product and building it right. It’s such an important topic, which is why I invited the CPO to this episode. His name is Narasimha Krishnakumar, and he is the Global CPO for Wind River, a cloud-based IoT company, and he is also an advisor and a product consultant to startups and new ventures.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:16] What are your responsibilities as a Global CPO? At Wind River, we focus on software and tech for edge devices. I oversee product planning, product roadmap, vision, and strategy for our products. We look at the landscape of devices in the market and create innovative solutions for our customers. [4:42] Where do your ideas come from? We look at technology that has already been developed to know what our capabilities are. Ideas come from looking at our customers’ problems and finding ways to solve problems that we aren’t already solving. We consider how market dynamics and changing technology are relevant to our products and the problems we’re solving. We look at what our competitors are doing and understand what our value is and why customers like or don’t like us. It’s also important to think about how solving a problem will affect the business—how will we scale and grow through the products we’ve introduced? [6:56] In the many product management roles you’ve had, what is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned about product management? Product management is all about reducing the number of variables when you’re building a product. Product management begins with the customer problem—Who is the customer? What are you trying to accomplish for them? Why will it benefit them? After you’ve answered these questions, you must figure out how you will build the products. As you make decisions about building the product, make sure that your variables are easy to manage so you can meet the time to market requirements for the product. I was in a situation where we picked brand-new technologies for building a product, and we ended up facing an extreme delay because the technology was not mature. When we drive a product idea through execution, we have to make the right bets about technology choices. Product leaders must assess the risk and make the number of variables manageable. [10:20] What should our focus be—building the right product and/or building products right? We need both—building the right product and building products right. Building the right product starts with looking at your customer problem, market opportunity, and competitive dynamics, and using that information to create a product definition that has a fair chance of successfully solving the customers’ problem. Building the product right means making decisions to solve the customers’ problem. It also includes building a high quality product. While building the product, you will have to make tradeoff decisions. Work collaboratively with engineering teams, quality teams, your DevOps organization, etc., to make sure your product is meeting your customers’ requirements and is high quality. Product managers tend to focus on the market problems and customer problems—the who, the what, and the why. But product managers can also influence the how—determining the best way to build the product. Building the product tends to be an engineering activity, but product managers still have an important role to play. They should get active in the execution process and understand how the product is built. Product managers can also influence how the product is built by setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and quality standards. Effective product managers focus on the who, the what, the why, and the how. They’re curious and have a customer-first attitude. [19:48] Sometimes engineering creates a long-term architecture well beyond what the product is ready for now. What should product managers do in that situation? Product managers should take small chunks of the big problem and make incremental progress. You can have an architecture that includes a three- or five-year plan, but you need to know which components of the architecture can fit the time to market that you’re expecting. You don’t have to solve all the customers’ problems on day one. Focus on the top problem first, and work with engineering to solve it within your expected time to market. You can’t boil the ocean, so boil one glass at a time, and make sure that the glass you’re boiling is meaningful for the customer and the business. [24:05] How can product managers build the right product and build the product right when working with new products and existing products? When the company is introducing a new product, there’s often no clear problem definition. To build the right product, understand the customer requirements—do one-on-one interviews with customers to learn about their problems and what solutions they would value. Ideas can come from anywhere—have an open mind to listen to ideas and validate then with your customers. Other times, product managers step into situations where the product has already been built, and they need to take it to the next level. This situation can be challenging for product managers because the product may not be right for a new market you’re trying to approach. Again, dig deep to understand the problem you’re solving for the new market segment. Then capture the requirements for that segment and consider how the product needs to change. You’ll need to make trade-off decisions about your architecture, so it’s very important for product managers to carefully outline the requirements of the new segment to the engineering team. At the back of your mind, always ask yourself how you can build the product right for both the new and old segments. [29:34] How can product managers effectively work with engineering to give valuable insights but not dictate how to build the product? It’s always good for product managers to have technical curiosity and understand how the product is built, what the architecture is, and how it impacts the customer. Don’t question engineering’s build process, but always take a customer-first approach. Ask how the architecture solves the customers’ problem. Take the customers’ perspective and weigh-in on how every decision impacts the customer. As a product manager, you know what your customers’ objective is; work with engineering to determine how to best achieve that objective using the technology available. Have a very good understanding of what your customer wants and what the architectural implications are. Ask the right questions and engage with both customers and engineers. Action Guide: Put the information Krishna shared into action now. Click here to download the Action guide. Useful link: Connect with Krishna on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “Vision without execution is hallucination.” – Unknown Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below. Source