Product Mastery Now for Product Managers, Leaders, and Innovators

Five steps to securing success in product management in an uncertain world Are you taking steps to make yourself more valuable to your organization or the next organization you want to work with? Arguably, all the topics we address on this podcast are about career development, helping you improve in product management and innovation. However, occasionally we focus on the topic head-on, and with the impact of the pandemic on organizations, creating opportunities in some cases and hardship in others, now is an important time to discuss making yourself highly employable, or as our guest says, forever employable. What is interesting is that our guest is now offering career advice after becoming known as the Agile Product guy who helps organizations build better products. You may know him from his past books, including Lean UX, Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking, and Sense & Respond. His name is Jeff Gothelf and, as a product guy, he will give you the 5 activities for being forever employable. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [5:37] You recently wrote the book Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You. Who did you write this book for and what does it mean to be forever employable? My target audience is mid-career knowledge workers, but the concepts apply to others too. Traditionally, job hunting is a push process, meaning we push our resumes and experiences into job listings. If we have to keep pushing for the rest of our careers, we’ll lose more and more often because as we rise on the corporate ladder there are fewer positions, and our skills will never be as good as when we were younger. Forever Employable changes the dynamic from pushing ourselves into jobs to pulling opportunities toward us. As you build a platform of recognized expertise around your unique experience and as you share generously and give back to your community, you create the environment for jobs to find you. Take us through the steps to become Forever Employable. [10:40] Plant a flag. Decide which slice of your expertise you’re going to build a platform on. For example, product management is a huge field, so you might decide to plant a flag in product management for the real estate industry or product leadership. [11:33] Tell your story. Share your expertise. Participate in the conversation; have a presence in the industry; and give your knowledge back to your community. There are many ways to tell stories, so experiment to find one that works for you. Tell your story with persistence and consistency. As Jeff Weiner said, right about the time you’re tired of saying it is when they start hearing it. Persistence means continuing to tell your story even if it feels like you’re shouting into the void because initially no one’s ever heard of you. Consistency means you’re on topic, wherever you planted the flag. [16:44] Follow the new path. Take the new opportunities that telling your story generates. That could be talking at a meet-up, attending a conference, or writing a book. Following the new path may stretch you in new directions, and you won’t be doing exactly what you used to do, but the whole reason you’re following the new path is to attract new audiences and reach people in different ways, driving even more opportunities toward you. Not everything you try will work out 100%, but the nature of becoming forever employable is experimenting and learning, then following the paths that generate bigger and better opportunities. [21:16] Teach. Teach what you know. Everything I do is teaching—conversations like this, workshops, coaching, speeches. Teaching is how you get better at your practice, because the better you can teach it, the better you can do it. Teaching is also how you get better at storytelling. [23:27] Give it all away. Share your expertise for free. This is hard because your expertise is valuable and you want to be paid for it. But I’ve learned that every time I give stuff away, stuff comes back in. When I give away free content, people see it and offer me new opportunities. The more you make your content available and easily accessible, the more traffic you drive to yourself and the bigger platform you’ll have. It’s tough to give your hard-earned experience and knowledge away for free, so start small. Write one article about something that worked well for you in the last month. Post one comment on an online discussion in your area of expertise. Then do it again and again and again. [29:24] In the midst of uncertainty, how can we future-proof our careers? Future-proofing your career is putting in the investment of doing the steps I’ve just described. By becoming known and valuable to your community, you’ll begin to develop a steady stream of opportunities. During a financial crisis, whether a pandemic or stock-market crash, the people who survive and thrive are those who are known in their communities because companies go to people they know.  Action Guide: Put the information Jeff shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out Jeff’s website Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn or Twitter Buy Forever Employable on Amazon Learn more about Jeff’s events Innovation Quote “Do less more often.” – 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

What product managers need to know about customer validation and alpha, beta, and delta testing Product testing is about more than determining if a product functions properly or not. A larger perspective, and one that our guests shares is Customer Validation. We discuss how to use the various types of product tests, including alpha, beta, and delta tests, to judge product performance, customer satisfaction, and areas for improvement. Our guest is Luke Freiler, CEO and co-founder of Centercode. Luke has spent most of his career improving product testing. Centercode is a Customer Validation solutions provider that helps tech companies bring products to market. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:46] How did you become a testing expert? Early in my career in software, I became very passionate about the new field of usability—making technology easy to use. I was asked to run a beta test for one of my company’s products, and although we were a large, established company, we had no process for running testing. As I looked for solutions, I realized I’d found a hole—everyone had the problem of testing but nobody had solved it. I realized that testing with customers aligned with my passion for usability; customers can help you make technology more accessible. At age 21, I started a company to do tests, and I’ve learned a lot and have been doing it ever since. [6:55] How do you relate customer validation to testing? We realized that there is no single standard term that people use to refer to testing. We wanted to establish a better vocabulary and methodology that could scale and be adaptable to any company. We chose customer validation as an umbrella term for the various ways we engage with customers to develop a product. Customer validation includes three forms of testing: Alpha testing looks for quality. Beta testing looks for satisfaction. Delta testing, where we’re seeing a lot of innovation, is a continuous test throughout the life of the product to gather feedback about specific details. [15:49] Tell us more about alpha testing. The goal of alpha testing is to make sure the product works. We focus on technographics—the technology that surrounds people and products. Alpha testing is about targeting diverse ecosystems rather than your target market. Alpha testers can be internal employees or strangers. [23:50] Tell us more about beta testing. A beta tester should be someone who matches the target market, is enthusiastic enough to provide feedback, and is a stranger rather than an employee. The goal is measuring satisfaction. We start a beta test with a test plan, which is a list of features we want tested. Each feature has a basic description. Using a 1-5 scale, we rate the effort or time we want to put in and the value of the feedback to us. Then we design activities that tell the tester where the features are but are not overly directive. We use these activities to take testers on a tour of the product and engage them over a period of time. We want the beta testers to collaborate and communicate with each other about the product as they complete activities to explore features. We look for actionable, prioritized feedback. Out of each test, you want to discover: issues—what needs to be fixed ideas—what needs to be improved praise—what needs to be promoted We ask testers to rate their satisfaction with each feature on a 1-5 scale. Then we ask why they gave that rating. We prioritize and act on the results. [31:27] What is the timeline of alpha and beta tests? Our average alpha test takes two weeks, and our average beta test takes three weeks. This is not very time-consuming. [33:57] Tell us more about delta testing. Delta testing is concerned with the next version of the product. We want to maximize small data to find quality issues. Delta testing is a continuous process as the product changes, and we believe it is the wave of the future.  Action Guide: Put the information Luke shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide.   Useful links: Find out more about Luke and customer validation at Centercode.com Innovation Quote “Technology is a word for something that doesn’t work yet.” – Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) 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

Five factors of successful product managers Do you and your product teams have the characteristics required for success? The Product Team Performance study has been identifying the characteristics of high-performing teams since 2012. Of the 31 factors found through the studies, I discuss five of the most significant ones with Greg Geracie, principal researcher. Greg is the CEO of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management training, consulting, and advisory services to some of the world’s most well-known organizations. I’ve known Greg for several years, through his work on the ProdBOK book, which is the The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge, as well as our mutual involvement in PDMA and AIPMM professional associations for product managers. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:50] Tell us about the survey of product managers you’ve done since 2012. It’s a performance study comparing factors of product teams that excel versus those that struggle. We use an independent statistician who conducts regression analysis on the survey data. [3:15] What’s new this year, in your sixth study? Approximately 40% of the questions are new, derived from our consulting, Q&A with live audiences, and our sponsor Planbox, who submitted five questions related to innovation. The rest are questions that we’ve been tracking on a longitudinal basis and demographic questions that help us better understand our respondents. Another important change is that when we started the study, it was very difficult to find hard data on the topics that our consultants were interested in; now, after years of research, anyone interested in answers to questions about product management and innovation topics can easily find information from our studies. [7:37] Who are your survey respondents? We’re interested in hearing from anyone actively involved in product development. Ninety-seven percent of survey respondents have an active role in creating or enhancing products or services in their organizations, so targeting has been very good. Some additional demographics about our respondents this year: 54% are product managers or product owners (higher than the norm from past years) other 46% are from a wide variety of roles including development managers, engineers, project managers, UX professionals, and more slightly more than half report to a C-level executive or VP 51% are in hardware software technology vertical 45% are from companies with revenue $50 million to $2 billion, with a strong response in the two other segments we identified [11:21] The study identified 31 significant factors that successful product teams exhibit, including five factors that are new this year. Let’s talk about one of those five new factors, connecting activities to business strategy. The study shows that a product team’s ability to connect their daily activities back to the company’s overarching business strategy is highly correlated with financial success. However, only 27% of survey respondents indicated that their product team is able to connect their daily activities directly to the company’s business strategy. Most respondents indicate that their organizations either fail to effectively communicate the company strategy or don’t have an overarching business strategy at all. Sadly, the number of product teams that can connect their daily activities with their company’s business strategy has decreased from 37% seven years ago. To improve their product and financial performance, companies need to shore up communication and transparency about their company strategy and how product teams connect to it. This will give product teams the context to make better short- and longterm decisions, and it will clarify the organization’s strategic priorities. This will also increase product team members’ commitment to their work efforts as they understand the value of their work. [17:58] Tell us more about the next factor, accountability for customer satisfaction objectives. Customer satisfaction is becoming increasingly important to product teams. In 2015, there was no dominant metric that teams were accountable to, but now customer satisfaction is the dominant metric, used by 51% of organizations. Being accountable to customer satisfaction is highly correlated with improved performance. [21:28] Another factor is stories in the backlog. What did you discover? Product teams that size the entire backlog of user stories demonstrate higher levels of performance. However, only 17% of respondents size the entire backlog. [24:11] What did you find out about the next factor, time that product managers spend in the field with customers? Product managers who spend at least 30% of their time in the field with customers improve the performance of their teams and organizations. Unfortunately, only 11% of organizations enable their product managers to spend that much time in the field with customers. One problem is lack of executive support—leaders must champion the concept and provide financial support. Another problem is that many product managers don’t feel comfortable spending time with customers. Fortunately, interacting with customers is a learned skill that we can train ourselves in. [32:11] Tell us about one more new factor, using profitability when prioritizing requirements. Emphasizing profitability as the primary criterion in requirements prioritization processes positively impacts performance. Only 39% of organizations use profitability as a requirements criterion. Profitability is the seventh most used prioritization metric, but it’s the one that’s most closely correlated with success. Action Guide: Put the information Greg shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide.   Useful links: View the study at ActuationConsulting.com,  PDMA.org or Planbox.com Email Greg to get access to past success factors at Greg@ActuationConsulting.com TEI 031: 4th Annual Study of Product Team Performance – with Greg Geracie Innovation Quote “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” – Joseph Campbell  “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison, inventor  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 to create powerful customer experiences The experience that customers of our products encounter impacts the value they find in our products. The customer experience is intertwined with customers’ perceptions of value. To explore customer experience, I talked with two people who design the customer experience for theme parks, zoos, museums, and other venues. Part of the conversation is about a recent book they wrote, The CEO’s Time Machine, which uses historical innovations and a story about careful listening to create new innovations for a fictional company. We share useful insights to help innovators in a more personal context in this interview. That is because my guests include the Chief Creative Officer at Creative Principals, Geoff Thatcher, and Designer, Zoe Thatcher, who is his daughter. Consequently, it was fitting for my daughter, Kaitlin, to join me as co-host for this episode. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [1:55] What work do you do? We have a design firm called Creative Principles, and we work on experiences including corporate brand experiences, museum exhibits, and theme parks. As designers, we get to visit a lot of fun places to do research, because you can’t innovate unless you have a stimulus. [10:41] What makes a good customer experience? All great innovation begins with a powerful story. To create an experience, you have to translate the story. We use this formula: Attract people with an iconic element Build trust Provide the information to move forward (e.g., a pre-show) Internalize the story (e.g., the main experience, like a theme park ride) Exit through retail—this isn’t just about making money; you’re challenging people to act and become part of the story [18:27] Let’s talk about your book, The CEO’s Time Machine. The premise of the book is that there is a CEO who is ahead of the game, making his company super successful, and nobody knows how he does it. He has a secret R&D garage, and it’s rumored there is a time machine inside. As the story begins, the CEO is about to retire, and he allows his young protege into the garage to show her the time machine. Part of being a leader is creating the branding and mystique that the CEO creates with his secret garage. [22:01] What was Zoe’s work as illustrator like? In October 2019, Zoe participated in an Instagram challenge to post an inked picture every day. Zoe drew a girl in a red scarf in a futuristic woodblock ink style, and we thought it would be perfect for the story, which we had already written. When our business slowed down during the pandemic, we decided to get the book out before the lockdown ended. Zoe did forty-three illustrations in three weeks, and we got the book published. The great thing about being young, when it comes to innovation, is that young people don’t know something isn’t possible. A more experienced illustrator might not have attempted all those illustrations, but Zoe thought, Why not? [29:10] What lessons can product managers and innovators learn from the book? History is important to innovation. As Bruce Weindruch says in our foreword, in innovation you have to start with the future and look back. You want to invent the future, but you have to look back to examples from history to inspire you. [30:45] What are some innovation insights from history? I am fascinated by the Wright brothers because they invented the airplane. However, within a decade or two, they were completely out of business. After their amazing innovation of flight, they spent all their time litigating and arguing. It’s an important lesson for innovators to not lose focus on innovation. Charles Kettering, the head of R&D for General Motors, was trying to convince manufacturing that they could paint a car in an hour instead of several days. Kettering invited the head of manufacturing out to lunch. After lunch, the man couldn’t find his car because Kettering had his engineers paint it while they were at lunch. Having that personal experience convinced the head of manufacturing to embrace this new innovation. Action Guide: Put the information Geoff and Zoe shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Check out The CEO’s Time Machine on Amazon The CEO’s Time Machine on the Creative Principles website The Experience Model from Creative Principles Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi promotional video with Creative Principles Innovation Quote “Research is turning dollars into ideas. Innovation is turning ideas into dollars.”– Steve Hoover, CEO of Palo Alto Research Center 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 three powerful questions can lead to better product management I hosted a virtual summit in April this year (www.theeverydayinnovator.com/summit) and I met many wonderful people. One introduced me to her Slinky Dog metaphor for product management and a methodology called FAST Goals. She calls FAST Goals a winning methodology as it enables you to win, solving problems and creating value for customers. It connects what you need to accomplish with how you will accomplish it along with the why for taking specific actions. In the discussion, we role-play using FAST Goals to solve problems I have had as a frequent traveler — something most of us are doing far less of now but will return to eventually. Her name is Jeannine Siviy. She has been a software and systems engineer, contributing to and leading product development for several organizations, including Kodak and the Software Engineering Institute. She is currently the Director of Healthcare Solutions at SDLC Partners. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:48] What is the Slinky Dog metaphor for product management? The Slinky Dog metaphor reminds people when they’re running ahead of everybody else. If you’re ahead, you need to pause and let your team, peers, clients, etc., catch up in an organized way. You don’t want them to catch up by slamming into you. If the Slinky Dog is stretched too far, it breaks. [5:11] What problem does the FAST Goals methodology solve? When you’re working on product management and innovation, there are a lot of perspectives and different voices in the room. FAST Goals unifies those voices to create a clear line of sight between top-level objectives and day-to-day work. It empowers people to make decisions in day-to-day work with confidence and know that their work is contributing to the big picture outcome. [8:25] What are the key components of FAST Goals? It’s a ladder of abstraction method. FAST indicates the rapidity of the method and is also an acronym for Function Analysis Systems Technique, a manufacturing technique that I modified into FAST Goals. It uses a diagram to answer three questions: “What goals are you pursuing? How do you intend to achieve those goals? Why do these goals matter? Every goal is paired with a success metric so that you’ll know when you’ve achieved it, and each goal has strategies and tactics that are also measured. [13:15] Let’s walk through an example of using FAST Goals to improve customer experience at an airport. Our top goal is to improve customer experience at the airport. We brainstorm pain points and unsolved problems, like not knowing how much time it will take to get to your gate, food needing improvement, and difficulty navigating through the airport. Then we synthesize, looking for common themes and determining the meaning of each idea. Next we organize and simplify and write the ideas on the diagram, usually in a simple noun-verb format. Then we validate by asking how and why we’ll accomplish these goals. This process works best with a cross-functional team. [20:13] Let’s take a closer look at a specific problem—not knowing how much time it will take to get to the gate. At the top of the diagram, our main goal is to improve customer experience. We’ll write “Predict time to gate” as our sub-goal. Under that, we’ll write how we could do that, such as with an app on the phone or smart glasses. Then we’ll identify why we would implement a solution to this problem. One why is to predict the time to the gate, but we might identify other whys like optimizing the time to the gate, giving directions, or determining if there’s time to get a snack. Once we make sure our what, how, and why are all aligned, the people who launch the app or glasses have a good sense of why that product exists. After beginning development and research, the team may find another idea and change the diagram; that’s okay because the diagram still keeps everybody aligned. As we synthesize, we may reframe the problem and change the top goal. We can add other market segments to the diagram, like how we would solve problems for travelers with kids. We might expand our highest goal to improve the entire travel experience. [31:17] What artifact do teams end up with after FAST Goals? They end up with a diagram that becomes the North Star of the team doing the work. There’s usually a document behind the diagram further explaining the meaning of each goal, strategies, tactics, and measures. Bonus Question [35:58] What are some examples of when you’ve seen FAST Goals applied to make meaningful changes in organizations? A software and system development organization was working on flight systems, which involve human safety, so their quality was outstanding. However, their cost and schedule variability was very high. We tried to improve cost and schedule, but couldn’t get any traction because their customers were very happy with the quality and didn’t care about cost and schedule. We realigned our initiative to focus on improving market share. When the company understood that getting new business depended on the ability to predict when they’d be available to do the work, they realized why improving cost and schedule predictability was important. A military client was replacing an old system that was breaking. They were giving the general a one-inch thick manual of measures. They started using FAST Goals when they realized that was too much measurement. We created a diagram to fix the measurement, then realized that we could also improve strategy and alignment. The diagram helped the team be deliberate about how they spent their time and focus on key capabilities to maintain both systems during the transition. A healthcare provider used FAST Goals to unify the voices of more than 30 executives. They used the diagram to work as one to accomplish their goal of delivering great healthcare. The care provided remained the same, but how they delivered it changed, doing it faster and better and improving patient experience. I manage a healthcare service line, and we use FAST Goals. Whenever we’re thinking about adding something new to our portfolio, we run it against the same validation—Why are we doing this? How does it align? We use FAST Goals to validate whether our clients would value our service offering. Action Guide: Put the information Jeannine shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Connect with Jeannine on LinkedIn and ask her for FAST Goals resources Innovation Quote “We more frequently fail to face the right problem than fail to solve the problem we face.” – 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

How product managers can break through the barriers that are keeping them from taking action Product managers are doers. We make change happen. We are mini-CEOs after all, right? Here is the big difference between being a product manager and a CEO; CEOs actually can make change happen. They have the authority to do so. Us product managers, no so much, and yet we are doers and we still bring about change. We have to sell our ideas, overcome roadblocks, and get others to join our cause. It helps if we love the work we do. Our guest is going to help us accomplish these things. She is a doer herself, with a history of helping organizations create technology products to solve problems, including being a Product Manager Director at IDEO, Senior Director of Innovation at Autodesk, and a Mentor at Stanford Latino Entrepreneur Leaders Program. Most recently, she has codified the steps for being a doer in an organization in her book, Start Within: How to sell your idea, overcome roadblocks, and love your job. Her name is Karen Holst and she’ll share some of these steps in this discussion to help you excel as a product manager. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [3:32] What was a key takeaway from your time at IDEO? The people there are humble and eager to learn, even though they have many accomplishments. IDEO intentionally hires people like this because they contribute to the culture. [4:53] What was a key takeaway from your time at Autodesk? Innovation doesn’t look the same in every company, and it’s important to allow time to figure out how things work, where you’ll fit in, and how you can effect change. [6:17] What have you learned about dealing with barriers when you’re trying to create something new? You may be the smartest person in the room, and you may know the right solution, but it’s not enough to just be right. You also have to sell your idea. If others don’t buy-in, it’s going to fall flat. [8:31] Who is the audience of the book you wrote with Douglas Ferguson, Start Within: How to sell your idea, overcome roadblocks, and love your job? I wrote the book for myself and people like me. It’s for doers—people who want to get started innovating within their organizations. [10:36] How can we take action internally? The more you fill your brain with new ideas and diverse thinking, the more value you’ll have later. Bringing naysayers into your conversation can help you think differently. If you’re feeling pessimistic, talking with optimistic, enthusiastic people can help you balance. If we don’t find edges where we allow uncomfortableness, we get stuck in a rut of the same way of doing and thinking. [15:03] What is getting in the way of doers not taking action? One reason is exclusivity around the terms we use to talk about innovation. Innovation can seem difficult to achieve. In reality, innovation is anytime we’re launching new ideas, whether revolutionary or incremental. Another roadblock is not knowing where to start. Innovation can take the form of many different processes, and it’s not linear. Start Within is a playbook—innovation is about knowing the different plays or processes and knowing when to get stakeholder alignment. [18:12] What are some skills that enable doers to be more effective? Being a doer does not require a charismatic, extroverted personality. Doers’ skills can be learned and practiced. Start with small ideas. Recognize small steps and experiments that can lead to your bigger goals. Embrace the beginner’s mindset. It’s difficult to approach the work that you’re an expert in with this mindset, but it’s important to listen and allow others to learn. Also, explore areas where you are a beginner—new industries, new roles. This is where you can really grow and find purpose. If you know you’re too close to an idea, ask someone else to lead so that you can listen and learn as an outsider. After you pitch an idea, be quiet and listen instead of continuing to explain. If nothing else, you’ll learn how to improve your pitching skills. Prototyping ourselves is part of prototyping innovation. Recognize that you will hear “no” at every step. That doesn’t mean you have to pause. Maybe there’s a different approach. A useful tool is mapping out your nos on post-it notes. On the first post-it note, write, “I’m hearing no because…” and fill in the reason. On the next post-it note, write, “Maybe if…” and fill in a way you could think about it differently. On the last post-it note, write, “Then…” and fill in what you could do differently. You could create the opportunity for people who normally say no, like the legal compliance team, to switch roles and imagine that they’re innovators. Try to bend your thinking and bring in different perspectives. Bonus Question: What are some tips for product managers to craft a job that they love? Start with self-reflection. Identify what you don’t love about your job. If it’s too mundane, find growth edges where you can go beyond. If it evolved into a new job you didn’t want it to become, consider how you can redirect it. Think about parts of the day you do love and parts you don’t love. We’re wired to be excited about challenges that are just hard enough to be solvable. Being a little uncomfortable stretches us and keeps it exciting. Each day, reflect on what felt good about your day and what didn’t. Consider how you can adjust your work. Action Guide: Put the information Karen shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Karen Holst and Douglas Ferguson’s book, Start Within: How to sell your idea, overcome roadblocks, and love your job Buy Start Within on Amazon Connect with Karen on LinkedIn   Karen’s LinkedIn Learning Course, Product Innovation for Product Managers Karen’s LinkedIn Learning Course, Product Management: Launching Your Product  TEI 269 with Douglas Ferguson Innovation Quote “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain  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 can do when you launch a product at the wrong time Times change, trends start, and trends die. Remember those friendship bracelets made of rubber brands? They were so popular with students that many schools prohibited them because they became a source of distraction. A few months later the trend was dead. Sometimes a smart product concept is created but the market is not ready for it — the timing is off. The trick is recognizing when market conditions change and the product concept should be dusted off and tried again. It is easy to miss the changes. Our guest, Jerry Abiog, had a new opportunity for an old product because of how COVID-19 has impacted restaurants, but he almost missed it until a chance encounter with a restaurant owner while walking his dogs. Jerry has led growth and strategy for various startups and co-founded Standard Insights where he also serves as CMO. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:31] How do you help companies improve their customer experience? We look at data first because data drives everything. Our winning formula combines these three principles: Improving customer experience Preventing customer indecision Telling the customer what to do next. Companies that can synthesize data and act on it are going to win. [7:55] Let’s dive into your product story. I’m the co-founder of Standard Insights. We help companies drive repeat buyers using AI. We’re a 2-year-old company, and our market was originally eCommerce, but we had the vision of expanding to other markets such as restaurants. Last year, we developed an AI-driven digital menu, because we saw the start of a trend as McDonald’s began to use digital menus that can make recommendations. I took the idea to my buddy who owns a restaurant, and he thought it was a great idea, but just not the right time because to use it he would have to lay off 60% of his wait staff. We put the digital menu idea on the shelf and moved on. When COVID came along, we tweaked the platform and launched it. Now we’re getting an average of a call a day from restaurants. It’s a lot more appealing in the current environment. A lot of companies are racing into the market with digital menus, but we’re taking it a step further by making it AI-driven. In addition to the contactless menu and contactless pay options, our menu can make AI-driven recommendations about customers’ favorite foods, seasonal foods, or drink pairings. We also provide AI-driven customer outreach through texts, social media, or email to encourage customers to order again. [19:35] What was the customer validation process like? When we originally developed the AI-driven platform two years ago, we allowed our sales and marketing outreach and our current customers to dictate product development. Our current customers and others who didn’t become customers gave us insights on how to pitch. When we expanded to include restaurants, we didn’t do a validation because it all happened so quickly and we already had the main engine, but now we are tweaking our digital menu based on feedback from customers. Life doesn’t go in a straight line. It’s all these turns and ups and downs. When the opportunity presents itself, you just have to go after it. Otherwise, someone else will. Action Guide: Put the information Jerry shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide.   Useful links: Jerry’s company, Standard Insights The digital menu Connect with Jerry on LinkedIn Innovation Quote “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” – attributed to Winston 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 boost innovation in companies large and small In 2012 I read a book titled, Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. It’s a book that spoke to me. It tied together many of my experiences and I helped me put them into a framework. It shared the need to get out of the office and learn from actual customers – something I had found vital but that I did not always practice on projects. Finding this book also made me aware of Steve Blank, its author. Later, like many of us, I learned about Lean Startup thinking from Eric Ries and found threads to adjacent thinking that was in the Startup Owner’s Manual. It made sense to me later when I read Steve Blank saying that Eric Ries is his best student. Consequently, I think of Eric Ries as the create of Lean Startup and Steve Blank as its father. Steve is someone I have wanted to discuss innovation with for a long time and this interview fulfills that dream. I hope you enjoy it! Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:13] What is the purpose of your book The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company? As I reflected on my life as an entrepreneur, I recognized a pattern in my experiences with eight startups that I had been a part of over 21 years. Investors told startups to act like smaller versions of large companies—coming up with a business plan on paper without talking to customers or testing prototypes. Successful startups ignored that advice. I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany, which kicked off the Lean Startup movement. I articulated Customer Development methodology, which says: There are no facts inside your building, so you need to get outside. While large companies execute business models, startups search for business model, so startups need their own tools. My student Eric Ries became the first adopter of Customer Development and recognized that in the 21st century, people were starting to adopt Agile Engineering, where you build products incrementally and iteratively. Alex Osterwalder then popularized the Business Model Canvas, which describes on a single piece of paper the key things a founder needs to know. Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and the Business Model Canvas became the Lean Startup. After the startup world rapidly adopted the Lean methodologies, I wrote The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company as a handbook for how to use those methodologies. [19:48] How have you seen the startup environment change since you published The Startup Owner’s Manual in 2012? The Lean Startup and Customer Development came out of the rubble of the crash of the dot com bubble at the turn of the century. After the crash, investors became risk adverse and were looking for product market fit. It was a mass extinction of startups and investors. The Lean methodology emerged as a way to build startups iteratively and incrementally without wasting a lot of resources. With Lean, you can pivot quickly; incremental changes are much cheaper and faster than failures later. I think we’ll see a similar effect in 2020 as Lean is used and we develop new methodologies to take advantage of a changed environment. [23:51] Why do larger, established organizations need to apply ideas from The Startup Owner’s Manual? The last decade has been pretty tough on established organizations. They’ve seen a lot of disruption because everything is changing around them. Large companies started looking at startup tools to deal with high-speed changes and disruptions in their business models. In 2013, Harvard Business Review published my article “Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything.” Corporate CEOs realized that they could use the toolset that startups were using. In the 21st century, being an ambidextrous organization, able to execute and innovate simultaneously, is not optional. [28:04] How are these large organizations doing? A lot of corporations adopted innovation theater, not innovation. They copied the patterns of successful startups, but didn’t get the outcomes they desired. These companies were focused on demos, not delivery. They never really solved the hard problems like integrating the innovation pipeline into the organization and accepting failure as learning and discovery. [30:20] How can established companies integrate innovation? All companies have great passionate innovators, but in large corporations, they’re frustrated. Large organizations celebrate the stories of innovation heroics, entrepreneurs who fight the internal company system and get a product out against all odds. But this means the company doesn’t have a system for innovation. What they really need is an innovation doctrine, which is the heuristics and rules that allow innovation to thrive. This can’t be implemented by individual heroics; it must start at the board level. Large organizations need to have core processes that are risk-averse, but also have parallel procedures that allow innovation. [34:06] What are the four pieces of the innovation doctrine? Context: What’s going on around the organization? You need to find the state of the world and figure out whether everyone agrees on the state of the world. Role of Leadership: The VP of Sales most often kills innovation. Innovation is fought continually by existing divisions and P&Ls, because it will eat into your most profitable products, but if you don’t put yourself out of business, your competitors will. Comp plans and existing processes sometimes get in the way of success. To build an innovation process, compensation and HR rules have to change. An innovation doctrine means that leadership has a checklist of all the things they need to do to take ownership. Process: You need an internal innovation process that’s more than theater. You need an innovation pipeline that gets products and services delivered. Resources: What are the resources you need to support innovation? People in the innovation pipeline should have the freedom to act like a startup inside their company. These levels of formalizing innovation in large corporations will do what the Lean Startup did for early-stage companies. Large companies aren’t just bigger versions of startups, so they need their own processes. They need an innovation doctrine. Useful links: Steve’s website, SteveBlank.com TEI 286 with Pete Newell Innovation Quote “There are no facts inside the building, so get the heck outside.” – Steve Blank 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

Learn the qualities of a successful product manager and leader. Part of the path to becoming a product master is developing as a leader. Leaders of product management need agility, influence, trust, empathy, and motivating vision. And, those are the topics our guest, Roman Pichler, explores with us in this episode. Roman is a product management expert specializing in digital products. He is the author of several books, including his latest, titled, How to Lead in Product Management. His popular blog is also available as a podcast and both are simply named Roman Pichler. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:00] What is agile product management? Agile product management is product management infused or enriched by agile practices and principles. It’s interactive, iterative, incremental, and collaborative. [6:15] You recently published How to Lead in Product Management: Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together. Why did you write this book to help product leaders? Over the last 15 years, the product community has changed for the better, benefiting from tools like scrum and agile, but the soft skills have received less attention. Hard skills like market research or roadmapping are important, but they’re not enough. Product leaders can’t succeed if they neglect people skills and leadership skills. I wanted to offer practical help for product people and draw attention to the importance of soft skills in product management. As a product manager told me recently, product management is 80% people and 20% technology. [10:18] As product managers, how do we approach having responsibility but no authority? We don’t have any positional authority or transactional power. We can’t make people do things, but we rely on people’s work. To encourage stakeholders and development team members to move in the same direction, we have to influence them and get them to listen to us and follow our guidance. That’s only possible if people trust us. [12:09] What are ways to facilitate trust? Empathize—develop a kind and warm-hearted attitude; take a genuine, respectful interest in them; and be concerned for their well-being. Empathy is not about approval or agreement; it’s about accepting. By empathizing, we can discover their underlying needs, interests, and goals, and build trust. Listen deeply and actively. Don’t be overly critical or judgmental; be present for them. Speak and act with integrity. Saying what we believe and acting accordingly is easier said than done. Get to know people personally. This could be as simple as having coffee together, or it could be sharing failure stories, which shows vulnerability and builds trust. Strengthen product management expertise. [17:30] Tell us about product vision. Product vision is an inspirational goal that describes the positive change that the product will bring about. The vision is the foundation, and it’s important that stakeholders and the development team buy into it. A collaborative workshop with key stakeholders is a great way to kick off a new product development effort and create the initial vision. When you make a major change to an existing product, revisit the vision and adjust if necessary. The collaborative workshop gets people’s buy-in, leverages collective wisdom, and ensures there is a shared understanding. To avoid a few people dominating the workshop, it’s valuable to prepare the workshop and have a skilled facilitator. [28:22] What are other important qualities that are key to being an effective product leader? Again, empathy is important to train ourselves in. Also, mindfulness is very helpful. Bring awareness to what is going on and increase your ability to stay present and be aware of yourself. This gives you more choices and makes you less likely to do something you’ll regret later. [35:28] Bonus Question: What are your tips for better time management? Focus on your core responsibilities. Instead of helping meet a need outside your job, investigate the real cause of that need. Don’t neglect less urgent but important work. Invest in building relationships. Take proper breaks to let your body and mind recover. Empower and coach others and delegate work. Avoid task-switching and timebox your activities. Action Guide: Put the information Roman shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: Roman’s website, RomanPichler.com Innovation Quote “A person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable) … it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.” – Carol Dweck—Growth Mindsets 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 recipe for rapid product design for product managers A Design Sprint is how you can solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. That is also the subtitle of the groundbreaking book called Sprint. The Design Sprint became popular at Google a few years ago, which is also when Sprint was published. More recently, I am seeing product managers using Design Sprints in organizations to create new product concepts, resulting in realistic prototypes in five days. One of the original contributors to the Design Sprint methodology is my guest, John Zeratksy, who co-authored the Sprint book. He was also a guest two years ago, sharing how product managers can make better use of their time, in episode 210. Not just as a practitioner, but as an original creator of the Design Sprint, John takes us through the 5 phases of a sprint: Map, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, and Test. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [6:28] How did the Design Sprint come about? While working as a designer at Google Ventures, I was looking for a systematic, structured process to help companies achieve their goals. Around this time I met Jake Knapp, who had been experimenting with a new process for team collaboration called a Design Sprint. We soon decided that the Design Sprint was the repeatable process we needed to bring a team together and help them focus on their problems and opportunities. Jake joined the team at Google Ventures in 2012, and we started running Design Sprints. After a year of tweaking, we arrived at a repeatable recipe based around the five-day structure that is still used today. Like a startup incubator, we wanted to help startups prove the validity of their business model quickly. Like everyone else, startups struggle to focus their time. Design Sprints help them focus on the core work that makes the product valuable. The Design Sprint is a recipe that gives teams very clear, specific, proven steps to follow when they’re getting started. [14:01] What is the result of a Design Sprint? The Design Sprint is all about creating a realistic prototype and testing it with real customers at the end of the week. The prototype is not actually functional, but it looks real. If the prototype is realistic, reactions from customers are very high quality. [15:42] Can you run a Design Sprint in less than five days? You can run a great Sprint in four days, but don’t go shorter than that. You can run a similar collaborative working session in less than four days, but it’s not really a Design Sprint. If you’ve never done a Design Sprint before, start with the five-day process because it’s outlined in the book and includes a bit of buffer time. Many companies who are experienced with Design Sprints use the four-day option. If you do the four-day process, you can allow an extra day before the Sprint to allow people to clear their schedules so they can focus for the next four days. [22:46] How do we prepare for the Design Sprint? Most important, you must have a big problem or opportunity. Sprints work best when they’re focused on something really important. Gather a team that reflects the real team that’s responsible for solving the problem. Set aside time; in the five-day process, this is a five-day workweek with one big goal per day. Let’s walk through the Design Sprint recipe: [24:13] Monday: Map This is all about problem framing. You create a shared map to get the team on the same page. We start at the end by considering our longterm goal for the project. We also write down questions, unknowns, assumptions, and things that could trip us up. We interview members of the sprint team or extended team to bring as many perspectives as possible. We use the pattern Note and Vote throughout the Sprint. On Monday, everyone individually writes down their mental map of how the customer interaction with the product looks. Each person highlights the parts they think are most important and share those parts with the group. We vote on the most important parts. Everyone feels involved in a meaningful way even if their ideas aren’t selected. [24:48] Tuesday: Sketch The goal is to generate ideas for what you might build or do to solve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity. Individuals work alone to think through ideas. This process tends to generate higher quality ideas than brainstorming. [25:33] Wednesday: Decide We decide which sketches are most likely to work. We use a structured critique to make decisions. This is done in a group because while individuals are great at coming up with ideas, groups are great at making decisions. [26:23] Thursday: Prototype We usually build multiple prototypes of different approaches to solving the problem. The key to getting the prototype done in one day is focusing only on the facade. The prototype that the customer sees looks real, but it’s not functional. Exactly what to prototype depends on the questions you’re trying to answer. Physical prototypes are often modifications of existing experiences or products. An app or website may be a series of screens with no function. If you’re not sure what to prototype, prototype the marketing. [27:23] Friday: Test We test the prototypes through one-on-one customer interviews and structured note-taking. We get answers to the unknowns we wrote down on Monday. [44:33] Bonus Question: How do you compare Design Thinking and Design Sprints? Design Thinking is like the whole world of cooking. The Design Sprint is like a specific recipe that takes elements from the word of Design Thinking and packages them in a proven, repeatable, step-by-step guide. Design Thinking can be overwhelming. You can trust the process of the Design Sprint and focus on the work you’re doing. A Design Sprint has a narrower range of possible outcomes than Design Thinking. Design Thinking may produce a life-changing, spectacular outcome with the right facilitator, but may also not go well. A Design Sprint is reliably a good process. Action Guide: Put the information John shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links: The Design Sprint website John’s and Jake Knapp’s Make Time Website John’s Previous The Everyday Innovator Episode, TEI 210 Innovation Quote “The pursuit of innovation starts with an idea about how to solve a problem and what that success might look like.” – Chuck Swoboda 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