

The Product Experience
Mind the Product
The Product Experience features conversations with the product people of the world, focusing on real insights of how to improve your product practice. Part of the Mind the Product network, hosts Lily Smith (ProductTank organiser and Product Consultant) & Randy Silver (Head of Product and product management trainer) “go deep” with the best speakers from ProductTank meetups all over the globe, Mind the Product conferences, and the wider product community.
Episodes
Mentioned books

9 snips
May 31, 2023 • 35min
How to turn factories into gardens - Assaph Mehr on The Product Experience
Assaph Mehr, product leader and coach, discusses transitioning from feature factories to gardens in product management. He emphasizes adopting a gardener's mindset, creating new attractions, and ensuring consistent quality for customers. The podcast explores empowering customer-centric product development, cultivating user-centric products, and using metaphors like gardens and zombies in product development.

May 24, 2023 • 33min
Open source and dev tooling for enterprise - Dinushi Pieries on The Product Experience
Dinushi Pieries, VP of Product Management at J.P. Morgan, has years of experience in the product space, having worked for prominent tech organizations for several years. Her expertise ranges from managing services to spearheading the development of innovative portals. In this week's podcast, we spoke with her on the topics of platform product management, open source, and her approach to measuring success when working on new tools.Featured Links: Follow Dinushi on LinkedIn and Tik Tok | The Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan | GitHub Copilot | Amazon CodeWhisperer | IBM Project CodeNetOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

May 17, 2023 • 42min
Moving from services to products - Kirsten Mann on The Product Experience
Tune into our conversation with Kirsten Mann, CPO at Prospection to hear her key lessons learned from moving the organisation from services-led to product-led.Featured Links: Follow Kirsten on LinkedIn and Instagram | Kirsten's feature 'A case study: The journey to becoming a product-led company' at Mind The Product | ProspectionOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

May 10, 2023 • 41min
Designing conversations - Daniel Stillman on The Product Experience
How can product managers design the right conversations with stakeholders, teams, and customers alike? Tune into our conversation with Daniel Stillman, Author of Good Talk - How To Design Conversations That Matter' to find out. Featured Links: Follow Daniel on LinkedIn and Twitter | Daniel's website | The Conversation Factory | Daniel's book 'Good Talk - How To Design Conversations That Matter' | 'The Rose, Bud, Thorn Retrospective' technique | 'Six Guidelines For Getting To Yes' piece at Harvard Law School BlogOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

4 snips
May 3, 2023 • 40min
Launching new products and breaking things - Tanguy Crusson on The Product Experience
Tanguy Crusson, Product leader at Atlassian joins us on The Product Experience podcast this week to talk all about product launches. Tune in to find out his thoughts on why most products fail, and learn how he successfully launched a new product at Atlassian. Featured Links: Follow Tanguy on LinkedIn and Twitter | Atlassian Presents: Unleash - 'How we created Jira Product Discovery' video | Sean Ellis Test: 'A successful method to figure out product/market fit' pieceOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Apr 26, 2023 • 38min
Passionate Product People - Manon Dave on The Product Experience
We all have passions and desires in life by how can we use our individual passions and channel this into creating products that customers love? In this week's podcast we speak with Manon Dave, Chief Product Officer to get our creative juices flowing in product management. Featured Links: Follow Manon on LinkedIn and Twitter | Manon's website | Manon's 'Keeping product creative, innovative... and fun!' talk at #mtpcon London 2022We’d love to hear your feedback on how we can improve The Product Experience podcast. Let us know your thoughts by filling out this quick form!Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

23 snips
Apr 19, 2023 • 33min
Data as a product - Omar Sallam on The Product Experience
Data has been the talk of the town for product managers over the past few years. To provide some insights on data as a product, how to manage data products, and conclude whether it's pronounced 'Dayta' or 'Daata', we spoke to data expert, Omar Sallam, Senior Product Manager at Booking.com.Featured Links: Follow Omar on LinkedIn and Twitter | Omar's Product School 'How to manage data-as-a-product' webinar | ProductTank CairoWe’d love to hear your feedback on how we can improve The Product Experience podcast. Let us know your thoughts by filling out this quick form!Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Apr 12, 2023 • 42min
Rerun: How to influence without power – Tim Herbig on The Product Experience
Tim Herbig has made many mistakes (who hasn’t?). Fortunately for us, Tim not only owns up to his mistakes, he’s written a book to help the rest of us avoid making the same ones. We’ve all had issues with how to work best – not only within our individual teams, but with the rest of the organisation as well. In our conversation, he shares some simple and practical methods to diagnose when you have a problem and how to solve it.Featured Links: Follow Tim on LinkedIn and Twitter | Tim's official website | Buy Tim's book 'Lateral Leadership: A Practical Guide for Product Managers' | The Auftragsklärung Framework | Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

27 snips
Apr 5, 2023 • 35min
Your first 90 days in product - Leah Tharin on The Product Experience
If you're starting a new role in product at whatever level, it can sometimes be difficult to get started, especially if you're chucked in the deep end. In this week's podcast episode, we speak with Leah Tharin. She provides some insights on your first 90 days in a new product role and the best ways to gain trust from your new team. Featured Links: Follow Leah on LinkedIn and Twitter | Leah's website | Leah's 'Productea with Leah' podcast | 'The Shit Sandwich and Other Terrible Ways to Give Feedback' piece at I Done This Blog Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

11 snips
Mar 29, 2023 • 27min
War and Peace: Part 2 - Ben Foster on The Product Experience
This week on the podcast, we jump straight back into our conversation with Ben Foster. Tune in to hear what he had to say about war, peace, vision, strategy, and how to tie it all together in a perfect bun. Featured Links: Follow Ben on LinkedIn and Twitter | Prodify | Ben's book 'Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management' | Ben's 'Product Vision and Strategy in the Real World' talk at INDUSTRY Global '22 | Product Vision and Strategy: Part 1 - Ben Foster on The Product ExperienceOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.


