Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

The secret sauce product managers need for success 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 up in your podcast player not as The Everyday Innovator but as Product Masters Now. This is another episode in the series on a product management body of knowledge curated by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA). If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, it is the longest running volunteer-led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. I’ve been publishing this series every-other-week, starting with episode 307, which was an introduction to the body of knowledge. Today we cover topics related to culture, teams, and leadership, which are essential to forming and maintaining an innovative environment that enables, encourages, and rewards product management and innovation processes and practices. Our guest is Dr. Teresa Jurgens-Kowal, founder of Global NP Solutions, which helps individuals and organizations learn, adopt, transform, and sustain innovation. Previously, she worked in R&D, process technology development, and as an internal innovation expert at ExxonMobil Chemical Company. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:12] How are Culture, Teams, and Leadership important to product innovation? It’s easy to implement systems, templates, and checklists, but culture, teams, and leadership really make for success. Teams need collaboration, expertise, and autonomy. You need trust among your teams and effective leadership that bridges the gap between strategy and execution. [4:45] What is culture and how does it impact organizations and product teams? You can feel the culture when you enter an organization—an innovative culture or a hindering, bureaucratic culture. The culture teaches how we do things in an organization. It’s how people behave and accomplish the mission. Culture allows a company to understand important qualities such as their risk tolerance, how much they can trust their teams, how much they interact with customers, how they work together, the pace of work, and how they bring an idea to commercialization when there’s risk involved. Culture is the “secret sauce” to unlocking success. [9:20] How does culture relate to strategy? Strategy consists of vision, mission, and values. Vision is who we are as an organization and includes our long-term goals for interactions with our community, employees, and environment. Mission is how we accomplish the vision. Values are the driving behaviors. Culture is closely tied to values because culture includes behaviors that allow an organization to have a reasonable approach to risk, fulfill their mission, and meet their vision. [13:19] What is the importance of teams to innovation? Lone geniuses don’t create spectacular innovations. For innovation, we need teams, particularly cross-functional teams that start together, work together, and launch the product together. Cross-functional teams can take many forms: Functional work groups for depth of innovation Lightweight teams for minor tweaks Heavyweight teams for large innovations Autonomous teams for something brand new Important elements of a successful innovation team include: Trust Autonomy Ability to learn from mistakes and not be punished for them Being close to customers [19:31] How do work styles impacts teammates and team performance? The Z model identifies four categories of preferred work styles: Creators like to come up with ideas. Advancers are good at communicating ideas, interacting with customers, and getting feedback. Refiners are good at making plans. Executors want to get their hands dirty, jump in, and do the work. Teams find that understanding each others’ work styles helps them communicate more effectively, and communication is what makes an innovation team successful. [23:35] What assessments do you use to identify people’s work styles? The Z model from PDMA has a very short assessment that teams can take together. Additionally, I use the DiSC assessment, which has four categories of work styles: dominant, influential, steady, and conscientious. These work styles relate to how people think, their preferred pace of work, and whether they rely on people or data to make decisions. [25:29] What are the characteristics of an effective leader of an innovation team? The DiSC assessment and Z model profiles help leaders build their teams and encourage their team members to understand each others’ work styles. Equally important for leaders is emotional intelligence, which includes: Self-awareness—can come from a DiSC Assessment or Z model profile Self-regulation—being proactive but not reactive, especially when addressing uncertainties Understanding motivation—self-motivation and how to motivate the team Empathy—for customers and team members It’s also the leader’s role to understand their team members’ work styles, priorities, and strengths. They must understand and address conflict and help their team members see each others’ viewpoints calmly and with control. Leaders should lead by example, demonstrating their skills. For example, Home Depot’s executives spend a couple of weeks every year working on the floor at Home Depot stores. They understand the challenges of their customers and employees. Leaders have to get into the field to understand what their customers need. We follow leaders we admire, so leaders should behave how they want their team members to behave. Action Guide: Put the information Teresa shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Teresa’s Innovation Answer Book on Amazon Take the free Innovation Health Assessment Find more useful resources at GlobalNPSolutions.com Learn more about the Z model in the previous episode with Teresa, TEI 303 Email Teresa at teresa@globalnpsolutions.com for a complimentary DiSC Assessment and one-hour coaching session (one per company) Innovation Quote “Rigor, zeal, and faith.” – Teresa Jurgens-Kowal’s life quote  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

Insights on roadmaps, metrics, OKRs, and more for product managers It is a new year and this podcast is getting a new name. In a few weeks, the name will change 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—The Everyday Innovator will be renamed to Product Masters Now.  Chief Product Officers (CPOs) have many responsibilities, such as mentoring product managers, defining product strategy, leveraging cross-functional resources, developing products to meet an expected schedule, and more. They use tools to help them with these responsibilities. Joining us for this episode is a CPO who shares some of the tools he uses, including roadmaps, metrics, and OKRs. He knows a lot about tools as he is the CPO for Betterworks, a provider of enterprise OKR and performance management software. His name is Anup Yanamandra. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers  [1:58] What are your responsibilities as a Chief Product Officer? My primary responsibility is defining the product strategy for the company. Increasingly, CPOs are also thinking about the user experience strategy. It’s becoming important for CPOs and product managers to dig into data and make decisions based on data rather than pure intuition. In my company, I help with hiring great people across the company and explaining why the company is going to win using its great product vision. Product advocacy, internally and externally, is important for CPOs. [5:42] How do you use roadmaps? I use PowerPoint or Google slides for my roadmaps. I structure these roadmaps very clearly. We start with the company’s high level goal. Then we identify two or three themes that we’re trying to build through the product or portfolio; it’s important to communicate these themes internally and externally. Next,  we create individual product ideas. We identify two or three big goals and create a slide for each one. Then we create more detailed slides under each goal, answering the questions, What is the business problem? What is the solution? What is the benefit? The roadmap will be slightly different for a new product than for a product that’s already in the market. When you’re launching a new product, the important questions are, What is the problem you’re trying to solve? Who is the persona that’s going to benefit? What is the core of the problem? When you’re creating a roadmap for a product that’s been in the market for a few years, you need to focus on four different types of problems: How do we generate new sales? How are we helping with renewables? Technology infrastructure as your underlying frameworks change over time. Support tickets that existing customers are logging. Put badges on your slides to show which features address each of these problems. This helps you be clear about why you’re creating each new capability and how it will benefit both your organization and your customer. [14:44] Do you use roadmaps at different levels? As a CPO, I like to have one roadmap slide that gives a high-level picture. I use a 12-18 month roadmap and break it down by quarter. This provides a strong foundation to build a great product. You must have a strong platform to have a successful long-term product strategy. As a CPO, I create a 4-5 page roadmap that highlights two or three goals to accomplish for each quarter. Then each director of a product line develops a more detailed roadmap, about 15 pages. All our roadmaps are available to everyone in our company. We’ve found that the 4-page, high-level roadmap is best to share with customers; once we have a commission, we can share the 15-page, detailed roadmap. [18:00] What metrics do you find useful? Adoption: If no one is going to use the product, what is the point of building it? While you’re building a new feature or product, have in mind four or five customers who would use it right away. Make sure that those customers will pick it up in its first phase. A month or two after the product is out, it should be used by at least 10% of the existing customer base. Every product, feature, and button should be instrumented. We need to know which pages and buttons are being used. If people aren’t using a certain feature, we can find out why. Net Promoter Score (NPS): There are two parts to this: First, we survey the satisfaction of product sponsors who purchase our product, typically just one or two people. Second—and more exciting—we ask end users to rate their experience on each of our pages. We get hundreds of responses every day with specific information, and we connect the responses to a Slack channel that the entire company sees. User feedback can be pretty tough on product managers, but good product managers don’t shy away from it; they want feedback and work to fix problems. Revenue: At the end of the day, people have to purchase your product. You need to become a market leader and drive revenue. Product managers don’t control selling the product or pricing, but it’s important for them to understand those metrics. CPOs and PMs need to understand how many engineers you need to support a product based on the amount of business it’s generating. [28:02] How do you use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)? OKRs make a useful framework, but you need to know how to use them or they’re just a bunch of text on paper. First, we look at the business strategy. The leadership team meets with the CEO to discuss where we want to take the company on a quarterly basis and agree on company OKRs. The CEO and I discuss high level goals for my department to support the business. Next I share the business strategy with my department’s leaders and discuss OKRs that we can put in place. We then take a bottom-up alignment approach and discuss our goals with the entire department. Once our OKRs are in place, we connect our key results to our Jira tickets. We have complete transparency within the company about how the product team is doing. It’s very motivating for product managers to see the entire company supporting them. We also use social features called Cheers and Nudges. People cheer for projects and initiatives that are going well. As a leader, I can nudge people who are behind on their initiatives. At the end of the quarter, we reflect on the OKRs that failed and those that were successful and determine what to do next time. Action Guide: Put the information Anup shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Anup on LinkedIn Check out the book Measure What Matters on Amazon Innovation Quote “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.” – Steve Jobs 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 take an idea to a market-ready product This is fourth in the series on a product management body of knowledge I’m doing every-other-week. We are exploring the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, they are the longest running volunteer-led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We started in episode 307 with an introduction to the body of knowledge, explored strategy in episode 309, portfolio management in 311, development process in 313, and now we are discussing Design & Development Tools. These are tools that are used in a product process to move from idea to market-ready product. Our guest is Carlos Rodriguez, who is an associate professor of marketing and quantitative methods and also the director of the Center for the Study of Innovation Management (CSIM) in the College of Business at Delaware State University. He recently published a book, Product Design and Innovation: Analytics for Decision Making.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:36] You contributed to the “Product Design and Development Tools” chapter of the PDMA Body of Knowledge Guide. What is the purpose of that chapter? The purpose is to guide product designers, product developers, marketing managers, and other innovation managers toward selecting the most relevant tools and techniques to take them from the ideation process to getting ready to launch the product. [4:06] What are some Ideation tools you’d like to highlight? Ideation tools are used to generate ideas for products. Storyboarding: Focuses on the development of a story about the consumers’ experience with the product or service. This technique allows us to understand the problems the consumers face in trying to connect with the product. Day in the Life of a Customer: Focuses on the routines, behaviors, and circumstances of users interacting with the product. This allows us to observe consumers’ behavior in natural settings. Journey Maps: Allow us to understand the customers’ process before, during, and after a sale. Recent data show that measuring the journey at the end of the cycle may not be a good indicator of the consumers’ experience. Ethnography: Allows us to find insights we might otherwise miss by observing customers in their environment. [8:41] What are some of your favorite Concept Design tools? Concept design helps us to better understand the value proposition that is meaningful to the consumer. Concept Engineering: Translates the voice of the customers into customer requirements—what exactly is the customer asking us? This technique avoids the mistake of trying to find a solution during the development process. Kano Method: Helps us clarify which attributes of a product are important and which are not, so we don’t waste resources or distract by including features the customer doesn’t value. [16:32] What are your favorite Embodiment Design tools? Embodiment design moves from the basic concept definition to more technical and economic criteria. Functional Analysis: Allows us to draw a map of all the functions that define a product. It’s a useful tool for communicating across cross-functional teams as the designers correct and improve functions. Function Analysis System Technique (FAST) Diagrams: Allow us to set the boundaries of the product. [19:31] What are some of the Initial Design Specification tools? In Initial Design Specification, we move into quantification of all the specific requirements consumers are looking for. These tools ensure the product satisfies the dictates of the design. Let’s be very clear that the design doesn’t belong to the designer; it belongs to the team supporting the new product development process. Design for Functionality Design for Production: Helps us be sure all the elements can be appropriately manipulated in production. Design for Maintenance: Allows us to market to consumers who often want to maintain their own products. Design for Recycling and Reusability: Reminds us to be aware that consumers are increasingly selecting products that are more environmentally-conscious. [21:59] What are some tools for Detailed Design Specification? Detailed DesignSpecification takes us to the details, particular features, and specifications that are important. During design, we need to communicate with other colleagues, and detailed design allows us to connect with engineering. Quality Function Deployment: Allows us to bring in the customer requirements from the Kano method and connect with the technical requirements. It helps us translate the voice of the customer into the language of the technical and engineering team. It allows a comparative analysis of competing products and allows us to define the cost of making modifications. Emotional Design: Helps us think carefully about which emotions we’re going to design into the product. It is not important what the product does for me—it is how the product makes me feel about myself when I use it. Kansei Engineering Method: Analyzes the meaning of words to customers and how those words trigger specific emotions. Our job as designers is to build an emotional relationship between the product or service and the consumer. [29:49] What are some Fabrication and Assembly tools that you like? Functional Prototyping: Confirms that the product’s functions are effective, robust, and doing their jobs. If products do not satisfy functions, consumers are not going to buy them. Experience Prototyping: Takes us through the experience of using, assembling, maintaining, and/or adjusting the product. Design for Sustainability: Allows us to think about the sustainability of the product from several angles. Unfortunately we don’t yet have very concrete, robust measures of sustainability, but the PDMA Body of Knowledge provides criteria to use. We consider sustainability from the perspectives of service design, improvement, and material design. Product Sustainability Index: Analyzes sustainability effectively with a consolidation of several criteria. Action Guide: Put the information Carlos shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Learn more about the PDMA Body of Knowledge at the PDMA Knowledge Hub Check out Carlos’s book, Product Design and Innovation: Analytics for Decision Making, on Amazon Get useful information from DSU’s Center for the Study of Innovation Management Innovation Quotes “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  - Albert Einstein   “Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that’s a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.”  – Jonathan Ive 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

Insights for product managers from an R&D Engineering Director How does an R&D Product Line Director lead the development of products and help to mentor product managers? That’s what I wanted to know when I talked with our guest, Shankar Achanta. He has had a number of engineering product roles at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, which designs and manufactures products for the power industry. Shankar shares several tools for getting ideas for new products along with practical tips for how product managers can frame their ideas and gain support from colleagues as well as leaders.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:30] What are your responsibilities as an R&D Engineering Director? I’m responsible for a large portfolio serving the global energy industry. My role includes vision and strategy for my portfolio projects, as well as executing the strategy by introducing the right products at the right time. I’m also involved in portfolio management. I lead product development teams and product management teams. [2:51] Where do you see ideas for new products coming from? Great ideas come from anywhere in the organization—sales, talking to customers, product development, etc. Recently, my team and I experimented with a three-month Innovation Framework. We brought together product managers and product development leaders to solve difficult problems our customers are having. We let them create self-forming teams, with a maximum of five people per team. After we provided the problem domains, we asked the product managers and product development leaders to read the problem domains and ask us questions in the first one to two weeks and then provide a one-page abstract with all the solutions each team came up with. We saw a lot of participation, and many teams came up with the one-page abstracts. [6:05] How did the product managers and product development managers come to have good insights into the problems that customers encounter? These insights are key for the Innovation Framework to work. The product managers and product development leaders engage with customers at conferences and in one-on-one meetings and get input from the sales organization. Once we have the ideas from this variety of avenues, we compile a list of problems for a particular segment of customers or enhancements to an existing product line. [6:52] What’s an example of the Innovation Framework in action? We had a couple of challenges with our sensors for power lines: They communicate wirelessly, so they need to have a line of sight between the transmitter and receiver, and they need to last for 20+ years. Using the Innovation Framework, one of our engineers solved these problems with a device that repeats the signals and doesn’t need batteries. Once the teams created their abstracts, we selected a few and allowed the team members to use 20% of their time every week to explore those ideas. We found that they spent additional time on their own to come up with solutions, and one team put together a prototype of the sensor. [10:37] How do you select which solutions to pursue? First, we consider how practical the solution is to commercialize. Second, we consider how it fits within the company’s strategy. Third, we consider the effort, technology, and time to create the solution. [15:19] Do you get customer feedback on the solutions being created? Once we have the early prototype, we engage with customers who give us feedback about the solutions. We didn’t engage with a large number of customers because the Innovation Framework was limited to three months, but we got early customer feedback on the ideas, and we had upfront research that we’d already done on the problem domain. [17:06] How can product managers share ideas and draw attention to them? I ask my product managers to think like scientists. You have a hypothesis that your idea solves Problem A by creating Solution B for the Customer Persona C. Fill in the blanks and write down your hypothesis. Then understand and document your assumptions. Answer questions: Is the problem I identified really a problem? Does my proposed solution solve the problem? Does the customer persona want this problem to be solved? If so, are they willing to pay for it? More importantly, are they willing to switch from their existing solution and pay any switching costs? Once you have the answers to these questions documented, show the strategic fit of your problem statement, which is extremely important to get the stakeholder buy-in from the executive level. [20:07] How do product managers frame their ideas to show strategic fit so they can draw attention to their ideas and get resources? We already have a pipeline of existing projects, so when a new idea comes up, we have to choose to either displace or slow down what we’re doing or put the new idea in the backlog. We compare new ideas to the company strategy and to a document that I write every year for my division that explains where we fit into the company strategy. We look for new ideas that are connected to those strategies and will take us forward. We’re not trying to be rigid, but we are very clear about our goal for the portfolio of products we’re responsible for. For mature product lines with low business risk, we can have bigger budgets and keep the product line going with improvements. For new products, we use a “pay as you go” approach. Feature by feature, we release the product and test the customer base and generate some revenue, then invest little by little. [24:00] How do you pay as you go when projects need more resources upfront? There’s definitely a critical mass to a get a project going. When we evaluate ideas, we ask who the pilot customers are. We follow the 80/20 rule—80% of the customers use only 20% of the features. We need to know what the pilot customers need before we just put a lot of features into the first product. We want the minimum valuable product—the minimum product that creates value for the customer. [26:12] In your organization, what do product managers need to get support for their ideas? They need a mix of story and data. We’re a very engineering-centric organization, and we look at data, business cases, return on investment, etc., but I’ve been extremely happy to see great ideas come from anywhere and get approved fast. For example, we were building a power controller. We brought in product managers, product developers, engineers, and the developer who was building the product, and we were able to look at the entire system, not just the power controller product we created. We created a new sensor that worked with the power controller and build a rapid prototype in two weeks. We went all the way to our executive team with just the prototype—no PowerPoint presentation—and they approved it and gave support throughout the process until it became a product. Our customers really love the product, and it’s taking off. We had some data, but we went beyond our “box,” looked at the whole solution, and created new value. Action Guide: Put the information Shankar shared into action now. Click here to download that Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Shankar on LinkedIn Learn about the company Shankar co-founded to help small businesses, Apex Specialist Innovation Quote “Engage early (with your customers) and iterate often (your product or service based on your customer feedback)”. – Shankar Achanta  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

What product managers need to know about the journey from idea to product This is another episode in the series on the product management body of knowledge I’m doing every other week. We are exploring the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, they are the longest running volunteer-led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We started in episode 307 with an introduction to the body of knowledge, explored strategy in episode 309, portfolio management in 311, and today we are discussing Product Innovation Process. These are the processes and tools for making a product real. Our guest is Jean-Jacques Verhaeghe, who authored the new chapter on process in the PDMA body of knowledge book. He has many years of experience in a variety of senior product roles and is now serving as the Research, Development, and Innovation Program Manager for the Minerals Council in South Africa, with a focus on Digitalization, IoT, AI, and Technology Research. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:24] What is the purpose of product innovation process? Product innovation process takes us on the journey from an idea to putting the product in the customers’ hands. The purpose of process is aligning our organization and team around a common goal. It creates a baseline of consistency and repeatability while allowing for change, and it allows us to balance reward and risk when developing products. [5:22] What is the Product Innovation Charter (PIC)? The front end of product design is uncertain or fuzzy, and the PIC allows us to get what’s in people’s minds into a structured format on paper. It causes the team to think about key elements like the goals and metrics they want to achieve, sustainability factors, the rationale for doing the work, and assumptions that need to be tested. The PIC validates what’s in scope and what’s not and explores the environment. It shows the direction we’re heading. It also elaborates on day-to-day management of the product. Let’s walk through a few product innovation processes. [9:18] Stage Gate The idea behind Stage Gate is managing uncertainty along the journey. Typically, the first stage is about discovering and exploring. Then we reach a gate, which is a decision-making event. The team uses criteria to determine what they need to get out of each stage and how to proceed going forward. The focus of Stage Gate is quality decision making. Stage Gate is very transparent and adaptable. Recently, a methodology has been created combining Agile and Stage Gate; in this methodology, the team always thinks in terms of customer needs. Stage Gate increases team morale and improves communication. People know what to expect; quality decisions can be made and focus is maintained. [14:34] Lean Product Innovation Lean Product Innovation originated in companies like Toyota where eradicating waste in production and innovation is of primary importance. Lean Product Innovation is about gathering information and knowledge as early as possible. It’s unique in that it includes gathering knowledge all the time and incorporating it back into the process of eradicating waste and improving. In this process, the team develops a sense of ownership, so it doesn’t require heavy governance. It does take time for the team to buy into it, but it’s a fantastic way of managing risk, quality, and performance in the long run. It’s also easy to scale. [18:36] Agile Agile is an iterative approach, a quick way of achieving milestones and iteratively checking what’s working and what’s not throughout the life of the product. Agile was made to be done by self-organizing teams who collaborate, share ideas, and develop solutions that fail fast and fix fast. Working in small stages allows you to change plans quickly, so it’s especially useful in an unpredictable environment. You can’t spend too much time on any one phase, so you work in sprints. Agile is underpinned by pillars. One pillar is the interactions of individuals—the team players work in specific roles. Another pillar is the heavy customer involvement in product development. [25:02] What do you tell organizations that want to improve their innovation process? First, evaluate the problem with the existing methodology. Remember that culture is key; it is people who create, ideate, and innovate. Include all the stakeholders on the journey to improving the innovation process, and don’t bring in anyone who would disrupt the process. Be clear about the roles, accountabilities, and responsibilities that everyone has in the process. Be clear about the product—remember that any process is a means to an end. Give the new process time and check it again. Action Guide: Put the information Jean-Jacques shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful link: Connect with Jean-Jacques on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “The most important invention Thomas Edison gave us was not an invention at all. It was the process of invention, the codification of the discrete steps to take a raw idea to a commercial product.” – Harry Roman, in an IEEE publication 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 empathize with customers and colleagues in five steps You’ve heard it before, product managers need empathy. One way we talk about empathy in our role is “walking in the customers’ shoes,” meaning that we understand the customer, the problem they need solved, or the job they want done. Indeed, product managers who use empathy wisely are more likely to gain customer insights that others miss, leading to products that create more value than competitors and products that customers love.  Clearly, empathy is important, but not all product managers have gained this skill, and others are not using it correctly.  Our guest, Rob Volpe, will help us use empathy better. He is the CEO of Ignite 360, a consumer insight firm, and a self-proclaimed Empathy Activist. He uses his years of experience in marketing research and promotions to help organizations launch and position better products, including at Kraft Foods, Wild Planet Toys, Pepsi, Sprint, Target, Pinkberry, and many others.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:37] What does empathy mean and why is it important to product managers? Empathy is the ability to see the point of view of another person. That’s important for product managers because if you’re creating a product, you need to understand your customers, how your customers view the world, and how your product is going to solve a problem or do a job for them. Some people are afraid of empathy because it’s an “E” word like emotion, and they’re afraid of their emotions. It’s important to know that there are different types of empathy. The type that’s relevant for innovation and product management is cognitive empathy, which means seeing another person’s point of view. It’s not about feeling their feelings; it stays in the head. Cognitive empathy doesn’t mean sacrificing your belief; it’s just recognizing another way of seeing the world. Affective empathy means having deep emotion, and that can be harder for people to control. Cognitive empathy still includes an emotional component—it’s still below the surface—but affective empathy is deeper. The trick is to marry cognitive empathy and affective empathy. This combination of the head and the heart can create conviction. Empathy helps us understand a problem so we can solve it. [9:07] Tell us about your system, Ignite 360, with five steps to empathy. We created the five steps because we were seeing empathetic failure in our work. Everyone wants empathy, and everyone is born with the trait of empathy, but empathy is in decline, like a muscle that’s atrophied. We need to exercise and focus our empathy. The five steps explain what it takes to get empathy. [12:47] Step 1: Dismantling Judgement Judgement is made up of our biases, stereotypes, and limited experiences. Passing judgement on others is a brick wall you’ll keep running into until you’re aware that you have it. Just recognizing that you have judgement helps. Example of dismantling judgement: I working with a client to talk with customers about food products in convenience stores. One respondent talked about how his brother would take home a pizza from the convenience store and get a second pizza to eat on the way home. Later, my client told me that he felt judgement and was having trouble listening because that seemed crazy to him, but he decided to drop his judgement and then was able to listen and understand. [16:52] Step 2: Asking Good Questions Good questions are exploratory and open rather than closed. Good questions are important in innovation because you don’t know the story someone will tell you; you need to be open and hear what they’re saying. Example of asking good questions: I was interviewing people about soup, and one respondent kept referencing his nephew who had recently passed away. I asked the open question, “Tell me about your nephew,” and we spent 45 minutes having a conversation much richer than we would have just talking about soup. [19:45] Step 3: Active Listening Active listening is not just what you hear with your ears; it’s what you experience with all your senses, including your sixth sense of intuition. It means paying attention and being present in the moment with somebody else. Example of active listening: When I was talking to the man about his nephew, I could feel the nephew’s presence in the room because my intuition was at work. When you’re doing an in-home interview, observe everything in the room. In a conversation, even over Zoom, notice body language and nonverbal cues. Bringing a second person with you to take notes helps you catch all the nonverbal observations. Debrief with that person afterward and talk about what you each noticed. [27:33] Step 4: Integrating into Understanding Integrating into understanding means reconciling others’ beliefs to your beliefs. It goes beyond dismantling judgement to making room for other perspectives, including customers’ perspectives. Example of integrating into understanding: When Chobani and Fage came out with Greek yogurt, one of our clients could not understand why someone would pay more than a dollar for a cup of yogurt. That belief was preventing them from having empathy. They had to make room for another perspective and understand that some people choose to spend more money on certain products, in this case yogurt at Whole Foods. If we were going to create a successful product at Whole Foods, we had to understand that our customer was looking for a whole different premium product. [32:04] Step 5: Using Solution Imagination Solution imagination is imagining yourself as another person. A common mistake that product managers make is only thinking about their customer in the moment of purchase or use of the product; instead consider the 360 view of them as a person. Example of using solution imagination: Continuing the Whole Foods example, you need to understand the role of Whole Foods in the customer’s life, their beliefs, and their priorities. Get into their mindset and take their perspective. Action Guide: Put the information Rob shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Ignite 360’s website Visit Ignite 360’s blog Connect with Rob on LinkedIn Rob’s book Everyday Americans—see Rob’s website for more info when the book becomes available Innovation Quotes “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” – Henry Ford  “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” – Jonas Salk  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

What product managers need to know about selecting and managing projects This is the next episode in the series on a product management body of knowledge I’m doing every-other-week. We are exploring the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) guide to the body of knowledge for product managers and innovators. If you are unfamiliar with PDMA, they are the longest running volunteer led professional association for product managers, existing since 1976. We’ve had an introduction to the body of knowledge in episode 307, explored strategy in episode 309, and today we explore portfolio management.  Our guest, who also authored the portfolio management chapter of the PDMA BoK book, is Steve Atherton. Steve has over twenty years of professional experience in product management and related roles for some of the world’s largest industrial technology companies. He currently serves as the senior product manager for Fujifilm’s inkjet technology integration group, which designs and produces Nano-technology products for industrial applications.  Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:23] What is a product portfolio? A product portfolio is a set of products an organization is investing in that have certain trade-offs. Like an investment portfolio, a product portfolio should be balanced and diversified. [3:19] What is the purpose of portfolio management? Choosing the right group of products to achieve balance. Aligning with your business strategy. [4:51] What’s an example of a portfolio that reflects the strategic objectives? All the techniques for developing a portfolio involve metrics that reflect the strategy. For example, if you’ve been working on cash cow products, and you want to be more innovative, you need a metric that captures innovation. That could be a simple pass-fail scoring or a more complex system. [8:21] Who is involved in portfolio management? Cross-functional involvement in portfolio management is very valuable, in order to… Capitalize on the organizational knowledge, allowing business leaders to make decisions by tapping into the knowledge and experience of everyone in the organization. Keep everyone informed and motivated, because they can see how their contribution fits into the big picture. The level of complexity of the portfolio management system needs to line up with the decision-making pace of the organization. In some cases, a simpler system is better than a complex system. Portfolio management includes choosing projects to put into the portfolio and managing projects while we’re working on them. We might slow down a project and use resources for something more important, or we might even kill a project in order to focus on better projects. A facilitator is important to remind people of the context of portfolio management and understand that their individual projects fit together to move the organization forward in the direction aligned with the strategy. We can get protective of our work, so the facilitator helps us be objective and make good business decisions. [16:59] How are portfolios created to reflect the strategy of the organization? One approach is the three horizons. We might put 70% of our money toward making current products better, 20% to adjacent but new areas, and 10% to work that’s really outside the box. A top-down method would be deciding that 80% of any new products must be strongly innovative, or 80% of new product development dollars need to go toward innovative projects. A bottom-up method starts with setting goals. Then your innovation mechanisms come up with ideas, which are reviewed against the goals, and some projects may be cut to align with the goals. If you’re focusing on innovation but have a lot of cash cow projects, you might cut one. Ideally, have a mix of top-down and bottom-up. Allocate portions of your spending to finding projects and opportunities; then have review on top of that. This starts people off the right way and confirms that what’s produced aligns with strategy. It’s all about prioritizing limited resources and deciding how much you can give to each project. [20:57] What are some tools for selecting projects for the portfolio? One of the arts of portfolio management is selecting the right metrics that line up with the goals you’re trying to achieve. There are two broad categories of doing this. To use judgement-based criteria, choose a criteria that aligns with your strategy, and assess projects based on a simple high/medium/low or pass/fail test. If you’re trying to do more innovative projects, judge whether a proposed project stretches you to be more innovative. The other option is more sophisticated metrics like engineering economics, financial metrics, or return on investment. You must pick the right metric that aligns with your strategy and has the appropriate level of complexity for your organization. If you’re starting a portfolio management system from scratch, start with something simple—perhaps just a list of opportunities. [26:31] What are some tools for resource allocation? Resource planning is a discipline of its own, and it’s especially difficult when you’re looking at new opportunities because there’s so much uncertainty. One simple technique is for the facilitator of the portfolio management system to communicate closely with the manager of the resources, who already has experience and will likely be happy to help because it will help them with their job. Resource management can also be daunting because it’s multi-dimensional; you have to consider number of resources, time period, skills, scenarios, etc. Understand that estimates don’t have to be perfect; sometimes simple estimates are better than something more sophisticated that will take too much time. [30:58] What metrics are helpful for managing projects? You need to use performance metrics to manage your projects. The metrics you used for selecting projects for your portfolio won’t always work for determining how your portfolio is performing. Action Guide: Put the information Steve shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful link: Connect with Steve on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “There are two ways to succeed with new products: There’s doing the right projects, and there’s doing projects right.” – Paul Belliveau 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

Lessons on innovation and product management from the pandemic Dr. Joseph Michelli is a returning guest, having previously brought us insights for creating incredible customer experiences with products and services in episodes 147 and 251. Much has changed in 2020. It is not the year we expected. The adversity has created a need for resilience. Some product managers have responded to the challenge, making pivots and finding value where it had not previously existed. Many organizational leaders have learned on the fly how to navigate the challenges. We can learn from the leaders who have been successful and that is what Joseph will help us with. He talked with over 140 global business leaders, includes leaders at Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Feeding America, United Way, Verizon, Southwest Airlines, and many more. He compiled the timely lessons-learned in a new book, Stronger Through Adversity. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:47] Tell us about the product journey of your newest book, Stronger Through Adversity. In the beginning of 2020, I was scheduled to write a book about the success of the chocolate company Godiva, but COVID put that project on pause. Meanwhile, I was working with other clients on positioning their products for survival through the pandemic, and I asked leaders, “How are you even trying to approach this?” I realized a lot of people are struggling and doing their best, and maybe we can learn something from them. I decided to create a new book about how leaders are coping with adversity. We needed the book to come out in 2020 to be relevant, so I interviewed 140 leaders and expedited my process to write in six weeks what I would normally write in six months. [8:58] What have you learned about managing uncertainty? A lot of C-suite leaders weren’t used to dealing with uncertainty. For example, Marriott was trying to figure out how to deal with an environment in which no one was staying in hotels. Microsoft Teams had to figure out how to scale and service their product when its application was far greater than they had anticipated. Leaders tried to grab on to something they could rely on. Sometimes that was consumer data, which is part of the iterative design process product managers are already familiar with, but now they had to do it on warp speed. They were agile beyond agile, and for a lot of brands that’s just not part of their DNA. These leaders had to follow the terrain. They had a roadmap they were used to following, but suddenly their roadmap and the terrain diverged. The changing environment made it so that they could no longer act on the timelines that the roadmap specified. When the roadmap and terrain diverge, you must watch the terrain vigilantly. We saw companies doing more sampling of teammates and consumers. They were very focused on the data in front of them and responded to the environment rather than thinking about the roadmap. [14:53] What have you learned about rapid innovation? Many organizations became myopic, just trying to hold on and not looking for opportunities. A few organizations invested in the opportunities they saw in adversity. In the book, I talk about the leadership style in a wild horse herd, which has an alpha mare leading in the front, an alpha sire in the back, and some horses within the herd that shape its behavior. Sometimes leaders have to be out front; they have to be visionaries, lay out the strategy, and go beyond the boundaries. Other leaders stay in the back, encouraging and moving the pace of the pack; they don’t lead their team through the struggle, but they know their team can innovate solutions. Often the leaders in the middle of the herd make it happen; they roll up their sleeves and become part of the action teams, thinking through problems together. [18:54] What’s an example of a personal transformation of a leader? The CEO of Farmer’s Insurance, Jeff Dailey, shared with me that he has become more vulnerable and humble than he had ever been before COVID. He apologized to his entire organization for not listening to his team about an opportunity for innovation they could have taken. He would not have imagined publicly apologizing before COVID. His engagement scores among employees went up meteorically. People don’t like to follow perfect people. If you’re authentic and vulnerable, admit your mistakes, and show that you use reasonable judgement, most people will follow you because they know that you’ll permit them to be imperfect as well. Similarly, the FTD Flowers CEO was appointed during COVID, and his message to his team was “No hiding bad news.” He was concerned that people didn’t know him well enough to know that it was okay to tell the truth about the good, the bad, and the ugly. How can we make things better if we don’t recognize where the problems are? [25:21] How do we take care of ourselves when “normal” is rapidly changing? Put your mask on first. I don’t mean the controversial face mask. I mean follow the instructions of a flight attendant: take care of yourself first. Remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to condition yourself to take care of yourself in the long run. Every day, choose what today is going to be about. If you want to focus on the negative news, you’re going to be completely miserable every day. Don’t live with a false narrative, but live with an honest lullaby that says it’s going to be difficult, but there’s great wonder in achieving and accomplishing and getting stronger through adversity. May the world be populated by innovators, because we need you right now more than ever. Action Guide: Put the information Joseph shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Pre-order Stronger through Adversity on Joseph’s website or Amazon Learn more about Joseph on his website Connect with Joseph on LinkedIn Listen to the other interviews with Joseph, TEI 147 and TEI 251 Innovation Quote “There’s a better way to do it. Find it. ” – Thomas Edison 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 importance of an organizational game plan for product managers I started a new series to explore the Product Development and Management Body of Knowledge. While it has since been updated many times, this is the body of knowledge I discovered in 2007 that led to many ah-ha moments for me as a product manager. It gave me a framework for integrating what a product manager does, and I have since taught it to many other product managers.  Every-other-week we are exploring one of the 7 knowledge areas. Today we are discussing strategy. This is the foundation for product managers as organizational strategy impacts product strategy. By aligning the two, we create more value for the organization and accelerate our careers in the process.  Our guest is Dr. Allan Anderson, past chairman of PDMA and the person who led the development of the first and second editions of the Body of Knowledge. He has had a long career in product management, primarily in food products, and is professor emeritus at Massey University New Zealand. He also joined us two weeks ago, providing an overview of the entire Body of Knowledge. Today, we focus on strategy. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:28] What is strategy? Strategy is an organization’s game plan for achieving its long term objectives in light of its industry position, opportunities, and resources. Strategy defines and communicates an organization’s unique position and says how organizational resources, skills, and competencies should be combined to achieve competitive advantage. Strategy positions the company in a way that it can use its resources and competitive advantage to achieve its specific goals as defined by the company. [14:16] What is organizational identity? Organizational identity is a statement of what the organization stands for and why it exists. It’s important to communicate this identity to the whole company. Organizational identity is a key element in creating the environment and underpinning, long-term culture of a company. You must develop organizational identity from a personal perspective within your company. Don’t just copy a vision statement from someone else; make it real for your company and the people involved in your company. [19:33] What is innovation strategy? Innovation strategy is embedded in overall business strategy. Innovation strategy is achieving the goals of the company using your resources to achieve competitive advantage, focused around product innovation. [20:46] What are some innovation strategy frameworks?  Porter framework Miles & Snow Landscape model  Business canvas None of these frameworks does the job on its own, so you can use them in combination. Innovation strategy provides the basis for selecting the right portfolio. [24:37] What is Open Innovation, and why do you include it in the Strategy section of the Body of Knowledge (BoK)? The definition from the book—Open Innovation is the strategy adopted by an organization whereby it actively seeks knowledge from external sources through alliances, partnerships, and contractual arrangements to complement and enhance its internal capability in pursuit of improved innovation outcomes. In other words, seeking knowledge outside the walls of the organization to meet the business goals. In my opinion, Open Innovation is a strategy because it’s something an organization employs to achieve its goals. [27:16] What is Sustainability, and how is it addressed in the Strategy section? Sustainability means doing innovation that is profitable and environmentally responsible and takes care of employees and the community. The first edition of the BoK covered Sustainability under lifecycle management. In the second edition, we decided to distribute Sustainability topics across the book. Sustainability is part of strategy because it should be part of your mission and vision, but we also cover Sustainability in other sections. We’re highlighting the importance of Sustainability by showing that it’s part of the innovation process all the way from strategy to delivering products. Action Guide: Put the information Allan shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Allan on LinkedIn Catch up on the first episode of the PDMA BoK series, TEI 307 Innovation Quotes “Product innovation is the lifeblood of companies.” – Unknown  “We haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think.” – Lord Ernest Rutherford 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

Tips on driving innovation within organizations for product managers and leaders Our guest says that organizations need pirates. These are the people who make entrepreneurship a legitimate part of the business. They are the innovators and transformers. Pirates design value propositions and business models that scale.  Our guest’s name is Dr. Tendayi Viki, Associate Partner at Strategyzer, helping companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books, and his latest book is Pirates In The Navy: How Innovators Drive Transformation. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:46] Tell us about the title of your book, Pirates in the Navy. Steve Jobs said it’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy. The idea was that large companies are slower than startups, and he compared the team that built the Macintosh computer to pirates because they were working on a breakthrough technology. However, today, innovation has become really important in large organizations. It’s no longer better to be a pirate than to join the navy. Instead, it’s time for organizations to think about how they can create pirates in the navy. [3:01] Who are the pirates? If pirates get found, they walk the plank, so you don’t want to be a pirate like Steve Jobs, who was antagonistic to his own company and eventually had to leave Apple. Instead, make innovation a legitimate part of your company. Bring in aspects of entrepreneurs like innovation, confidence, testing assumptions, focusing on the market, and making sure you generate revenue, but don’t bring in aspects like ego, brashness, vanity, or overconfidence. Good pirates are a mixture of great innovator and great political acumen. Another analogy is privateers. Privateers were pirates who were paid by a country to complete a task. Many of them became explorers. You want to be a privateer or an explorer because someone sent you and is invested in your success. [ 8:18] Your book discusses innovation labs. What’s an example of a successful innovation lab? In innovation, we care about combining great ideas with sustainably profitable, scalable business models that create value. In an innovation lab, you need to be engaged in innovation, not innovation theater that looks like innovation but isn’t really creating value. One of my favorite examples of a successful innovation lab is at Intuit. Their lab is connected to their global organization, allowing people to be privateers within their company. Their program Design for Delight provides corporate coaches and allows employees to spend 15-20% of their time in the lab working on ideas. Intuit has been successful with their innovations because they’ve been focused on creating value. [13:49] What do we need to do to be more innovative? We need authenticity. The biggest challenge we have with innovation is that there are a lot of myths and behaviors that aren’t really productive. People blame their organizations, but that’s only 50% of why innovation doesn’t succeed. The other 50% is that innovators are much more interested in looking innovative rather than working on things that create value. [15:41] What should we do to be good pirates? First, care about creating real value. Think about the value you’re creating for customers, the value proposition, and the business model you’re going to use to take that value proposition to scale. There’s no chance an innovator can ever work on a product and launch it without collaborating with other key functions in the business. The question is, As an innovator, what agreements can you make as you’re working on your project that will allow you to succeed in the future? Many innovation teams try to avoid communicating with other teams as much as possible until they feel they’re ready, but then when they reveal their product no one else cares because they never knew it was happening. While you’re doing your work, you must also build bridges back to the core. Make connections with sponsors, legal and compliance, finance, etc. [18:25] What do you think about innovating in secret? Some teams innovate in secret because otherwise their innovation would be seen as too risky and be killed. However, successful teams always have a leader in on the secret—the CEO, CFO, head of marketing, etc. The leader helps protect the idea and navigate across hurdles. Another way to innovate, which I prefer, is to create a methodology, teams, and leaders for innovation management before ideas come up. Some people say that companies shouldn’t have an innovation department because innovation should be everywhere, but we need expertise to manage a systematic methodology that’s driven throughout the organization. The challenge for companies in the 21st century is to have an entrepreneurial function inside the organization whose job is to build the infrastructure and connections that allow teams to innovate. I worked on creating this entrepreneurial infrastructure at Pearson. We created systems for innovators to work incrementally, getting a little funding at a time as they showed that their idea was successful. We had approval from the CEO and board, but we also got agreement from the middle managers, because you have to show that you’re creating value for other stakeholders or else they’ll stifle your effort. [24:12] How can an organization become more innovative? The problem is that innovation doesn’t have the power and status of other key functions. Most innovation teams say they would be as easy to get rid of as an external consultant. We want innovation teams to be as hard to get rid of as a key function like finance. An organization can drive innovation top-down through an entrepreneurial CEO, chief entrepreneur, or head of innovation. However, many companies aren’t yet at a point where they can do that. Another method is to start from the bottom. Start by getting early wins. Identify the leaders who are early adopters for innovation and work with them on small projects, helping them succeed in areas that are important to them. Celebrating those wins helps you start a movement for innovation. The only way innovation succeeds inside large organizations is through collaboration. You need to invest in building up your network. Every time you encounter a problem, think about how you can create agreements with the people you need help from. It’s only hard to make the agreements the first time. The next time you encounter the same problem, you’ll already have the agreements in place. [30:23] What are some examples of successfully starting agreements? We asked finance how much money they would be willing to invest in an idea that hadn’t provided any financial projections. They said they would never do that; they’ll only give money if we promise a return. We then asked how many projects ever give the return they promised. Finance opened up about their frustration with people they thought were making up numbers and whose projects weren’t even being tracked. We asked them to imagine making small bets that bring information about whether or not something is worth investing in. How much money would they spend on that? That started the negotiation, and they were willing to give us up to $350,000; after that we had to have a business plan. People also try to avoid legal and compliance. When I was working with an airline company, we brought legal and compliance into the room early in the project and presented our innovation framework, then asked for all the criteria they needed before they could sign off on the project. They wrote down twenty-five criteria. We told them that during this stage of discovery, we were just talking with customers to find out if there was a real need, and we asked them which criteria apply to that stage. They gave us just two or three criteria. Step by step we built up our framework, finally presenting how the entire innovation framework aligned with their criteria. Legal doesn’t want to be a check box at the end of the process. They want to be involved in systematically helping you build your project; then by the time you need to scale, you already have their support. Action Guide: Put the information Tendayi shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Tendayi’s website Learn more about Strategyzer View Pirates in the Navy on Amazon Innovation Quote “When a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” – Alexander den Heijer 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