Our next dumpling session is Tuesday September 8th. RSVP here.
What is this dumpling thing?
Back in the day when we could squeeze 10 people onto a small table, occasionally we’d gather to eat dumplings and talk.
Since March 2020, we’ve been running monthly dumpling sessions online. Bring your dinner, hang out, meet some folks and chat.
Warning: sometimes these turn into weird cooking shows. It started with the frothy Dalgona coffee thing then mug cake and there’s rumours of sticky date pudding one day.
With everything becoming remote and distributed, businesses are forced to adapt. Explore new opportunities, or find a silver lining. The alternative to wither and become a mere memory. And we’re no different.
Taking advantage of lockdown, we had Jock Busuttil make his long awaited return to Product Anonymous in July, all the way from London, to share some of his experiences of an all too familiar place – product management hell.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC-tCWinCer/
The Symptoms – What does Product Hell look like?
There are many common indicators that you may not be in the healthiest product environment, such as:
Not allowed to talk to customers. The complete opposite of continuous discovery, and not validating your ideas with customers. From concept, to build, to launch – talking to customers is always important.
Unable to plan, because you’re too busy dealing with emergencies. Although it is important to put out fires, it can also wear you down. It’s equally important, if not more, to know which direction you’re heading. Having enough foresight to know which areas you need to invest your time and resources in, and which areas or features should be retired.
Screw research, let’s build. The build trap. Do we really need to say anything else on this one?
But we have OKRs – hundreds of them! If you have too many Objectives and Key Results, which ones actually matter? And if different business units have different objectives, and lack of transparency across the rest of the organisation, how do you actually align with each other?
Flip-Flopping between Very Important Goals. Do the goal posts keep moving back and forth from quarter to quarter? Oh no, that’s not important anymore, let’s move on to something else instead. Maybe keep your research handy for the next time it becomes a priority again. Probably next quarter.
No buy-in for my product strategy. If you’ve done all the adequate research, and validated those assumptions, and know the balance points – who better to drive the strategy? Or should we go by the opinions of everybody else instead?
Each board member has their own interpretation of the strategy. Whether this is to minimise the effort for their teams or maximise the benefit for their team, neither is healthy, nor going to help to align everybody’s efforts.
The Causes – Why are you in Product Hell?
So you’ve discovered you’re in Product Hell. Population: one. But how did you get here? Here are some possible and likely causes:
No clear corporate strategy or goals. Is your company vision to be the market leader in something generic? A good corporate strategy should be rooted in customer outcome. A true north star to align all your efforts. But what does a clear corporate strategy even look like? Here’s a fantastic example from Tesla.
The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan – 2006
Lack of alignment. To ensure alignment, you may need to prioritise the things to focus on. But prioritising is also about calling out the things that you won’t be spending energy on, right now.
Wrong strategy (for now). You may have a strategy that has worked for you in the past. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still the right strategy now. Have the market conditions shifted? Has the competitor landscaped changed? Nobody, including Zoom, were planning for Covid to happen.
Wrong measures of success. NPS, Revenue and Market share are not tied to human outcomes. These metrics could change due to external factors, without you doing anything.
Scared of user research. Too many companies are scared to approach their customers to see how they are doing. How do you uncover unmet and underlying needs if you never talk to your customers?
Getting out – How to escape Product Hell?
Now that you’ve identified the problem, what can you do about it?
Start with real user research. Deepen your customer insights. Understand their needs. The problems they need solved And what they would be willing to pay for. Like all things product, it starts with the customer.
Make your product strategy before somebody does it for you.Gather the research. What does the data suggest, and what needs further validation? Ensure you use the right research for the right situation – different techniques will have different biases built in. Be aware of the biases, so that you can balance your view with other research techniques. Use the insights to form a compelling product vision and strategy.
Influence the corporate strategy with your product strategy. Talk to your leaders to understand each of their concerns and motivations. Create a shared and aligned vision, and get them to agree with your product strategy. It might be a long path, however, it can be done.
Call out your Board’s lack of alignment… tactfully. This could also apply to your executive leadership team, or any other management layer or structure in your organisation. Warning: Proceed with caution!
Brilliant discussion on the biggest problems that can plague product managers and how to try to overcome them by @jockbu tonight at @product_anon . Great to have him ‘visiting’ us in Melbourne again. #prodmgmt
Jock Busuttil, Founding Director at Product People
Jock is a freelance head of product, author and conference speaker, having spent nearly two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices. From startups to multinationals, his clients include the BBC, Brainmates, and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). In 2012, Jock founded Product People Limited – a product management services and training company. And his book, The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management was published in 2015. You can find more of Jock on LinkedIn and Twitter, or on his blog – I Manage Products.
Watch for Jock’s upcoming Product Management masterclasses in October. Keep an eye here for details: https://productpeo.pl/linktree/
We’re on a mission to teach the WORLD to cloud. A Cloud Guru is the largest online cloud school on the planet. Our training feels more like logging into Netflix or Spotify – it’s entertaining and playful. The people are the #1 reason employees say they stay at ACG. We’re a quirky, tight-knit crew that cares about our customers and each other. No egos here. Our leaders encourage thoughtfulness, compassion, being humble, and we have a bit of fun along the way.
Product Anonymous has 3 events this month! Call us crazy but maybe it’s because we’re suffering from no Product Camp (which is normally this month).
What Are The 7Ps of Product?
Up next is a special event with Leading the Product Thursday on August 13th. What are the 7Ps of Product is a preview of what’s to come at the September 2nd conference.
Brainmates CEO and Co-Founder, Adrienne Tan, will introduce the 7 Ps of Product and then be joined by three speakers from the Conference for a panel discussion on the 7 Ps and their relevance and importance to Product Management today. Adrienne will be joined by:
Each speaker will be tackling one of the Ps during the Conference and will give us a sneak peek at the key insights from their upcoming talk as well as their overall take on the 7 Ps.
Earlier this year, there was a request on the ProdAnon Slack to explore Marketing 101. This session will explore marketing, the relationship between our two groups and what this means for folk in Product.
Some of the things we hope you will learn from the session:
– How do marketing & product work well together? – What are the different skill sets/strengths that each bring to the team which help the outcomes? – If Product doesn’t have a great relationship with marketing now, how can that be improved? Actions to take? Conversations to have? – Even if the relationship is good, how can they work better together?
And the third event… that was last night! Back in the day, we occasionally had dumpling sessions where we’d get together to share a meal. During COVID, we’ve been doing this virtually. What has started as BYO dumplings and chat once a month has morphed to include making of mug cakes, coffee and a range of household consumable convos (yes.. never quite sure where it’s going!) Join the dumplings channel on Slack to keep up to date on next event.
After holding a variety of Senior Product roles across many different companies, building product teams from the ground up, rising to Chief Product Officer at the startup accelerator and incubator, BlueChilli, and even founding 2 startups herself – Claire Sawyers knows a thing or two about working in startups.
Why work in a Startup?
Are you sick of the daily corporate grind? There are plenty of up-sides to working in a startup.
Autonomy: the empowerment to go get stuff done.
Career progression: moving between roles can be easier in a smaller pool.
Mission driven: more than just a pay cheque, and working on something that really matters to you.
Less of a cog in the machine: in a smaller environment, it can be easier to see how your efforts directly contribute to the outcomes.
Learn and try new things: with a smaller team, and less formal structures, there’s the need to be more T-shaped, and getting in there yourself – a great way to experiment and learn.
The Challenges
But it’s not all roses.
Corporate life has its benefits too. From stability, (sometimes) better budgets, to be able to freely hire specialists, access to mentors and supporting functions. If you’re leaving these behind, be wary of the potential:
Stress;
Workloads; and
Job security.
If you’re not deterred by the above, and working in a startup sounds like something for you, then the next hurdle is what you’re up against:
Intense competition: Claire once received 250 candidates for just one role. Applicants from across the globe, including Silicon Valley.
Startups not knowing what they want: Sometimes, product roles can come about in strange ways in a startup. From the board telling the founder they need to step back and focus on investments, to copying and pasting product descriptions from LinkedIn.
How does your experience read: Don’t assume your experience is perceived the same way in the startup world compared to the corporate. What does 10 years experience at the same company say? Comfortable and unable to handle challenges? Or lots of internal opportunities to try new things?
Applying
What are startups looking for in candidates? Take the time to understand your customer (the hirer), so that you can position yourself effectively.
Curiosity / Lateral thinker
Passion
Energy
Autonomous / Self Starter
So with this in mind, how do you go about applying?
Highlight your experience – breadth and diversity. Use your initiative. Show your desire. Reach out to the company directly. Or find a referral.
Make sure your CV is a good user experience. Get your CV reviewed by someone in a similar seniority and/or style of company.
Looking to move into a product manager role at a startup but don't have startup experience – show how diverse & broad your experience is. Show volunteering, show side projects! Claire Sawyers #prodanon
What relevant experience do you have that will make you a star?
Have some questions prepared.
Final checklist
Before you accept any role, a few things to consider:
Do you believe in the mission? Through the ups and downs that are inevitable with any role, belief in the mission is what will get you through the tough times.
Are you aligned to the founder? The founder is likely to be heavily invested in the mission, and may have strong opinions of what should be done. And how. They may be your toughest stakeholder.
Is there enough support? As mentioned above, with limited budgets, workload and stress can also be part of startup life. Do you have the right support to be able to succeed?
Are there enough challenges? Nobody wants to be in auto-pilot. Are there enough challenges to keep you engaged?
Thanks again to Claire for all the startup advice, much of which can also be applied to larger companies, and best of luck with your next job search.
Thank you to A Cloud Guru for hosting us online again this month. A Cloud Guru’s mission is to teach the world to cloud. The largest online cloud school on the planet, with training that feels more like logging into Netflix or Spotify – it’s entertaining and playful.
Steven Bladeni moved from strategy to product leadership within a large corporate, to leading internal incubators, before transitioning into Head of Product and Chief Operating Officer roles in the startup world. Steven chatted with us, and shared some thoughts on product leadership in corporate and startup environments.
Building the Team
Regardless of the size of your organisation, as you move into product leadership, there are some universal truths – your success now depends on your team. More about team achievements and performance. Less about your personal accolades.
Your first step is to build your team.
Unless you are starting your team from scratch, in both startups and corporates, you will inherit team members. So you will need to get to know them, and assess their fit.
Then the differences between corporate and startups start to become more apparent.
Corporates
Larger budgets, and ability to hire specialists.
More mentoring.
Access to support functions, like HR, Legal, etc.
Startups
Limited budgets, and more T-shaped generalists that can span across functions.
More hands on training.
A lot more do-it-yourself – want to hire? Go write that job ad.
Advice
Get to know your team, their strengths, weaknesses and aspirations. Where are the gaps? Will you fill them with another hire, training or mentoring? If you can, get a specialist for the things that really matter to you.
Create the Right Culture
Now that you’ve put your team together, how will they operate? It’s time to set the culture. Collaboration is almost a given. But how do you create a healthy tension, and ensure it is effective? And does that look different in different organisations?
Collaboration is encouraged, but sometimes too much. Seeking consensus will get you there, but sometimes it will just take a lot longer to get there.
Corporates
Leaders prefer to control, rather than empower. Whether due to governance or legacy, the control and accountability can be hard shackles to break.
Challenging the status quo is accepted, within limits. You can design a safe place within your team, but as you move wider, more politics come into play.
Startups
The founder cannot do it all themselves, so it is essential to empower staff. Set the team in the right direction, and let them go.
Amongst a small team, people are less likely to question the authority of the founder.
Advice
Trust the person with the most domain knowledge.
Empower your team! They'll feel valued. You'll have time to think about horizon 2/3 instead of being in the details. This crosses both corporate & startups. – Steve Bladeni #prodanon
No matter where you work, there will always be stakeholders to work with. And there will always be some decisions that are made, that you don’t agree with. Whether that be from an executive leadership team, or a founder. Either way, you need to know when to suck it up, and move on. But also get your team to move on.
Corporates
There will usually be more stakeholders in corporate. From brand, legal, support, sales, and maybe even the cleaner.
With all these additional stakeholders, there is much more rigor to the decisions.
Slower decisions
Startups
Although there may be fewer stakeholders in a startup, it could be just one key stakeholder – the CEO or Founder, who is passionate about the product, and with strong opinions of what and how things should be done.
Less process and rigour, which can make for faster decisions.
Which path is better?
There’s no right or wrong answer here. Both corporate and startups have their benefits and drawbacks.
Corporate environments can give you the opportunity to learn from more experienced leaders, expand your toolkit and build good habits. Startups allow you to utilise your toolkit, and embed product thinking at an early stage of a company, and take it to the next level.
It’s more a question of which is a better fit for you, the stage in your career and what you are looking for to be fulfilled.
We’re on a mission to teach the WORLD to cloud. A Cloud Guru is the largest online cloud school on the planet. Our training feels more like logging into Netflix or Spotify – it’s entertaining and playful. The people are the #1 reason employees say they stay at ACG. We’re a quirky, tight-knit crew that cares about our customers and each other. No egos here. Our leaders encourage thoughtfulness, compassion, being humble, and we have a bit of fun along the way.
Up Next:
Our next session is this Thursday June 25th when we team up with Leading the Product for their lightning talk pitch fest! It’s too late to put your hand up to pitch your idea though it’s a great evening to support your fellow product people and get an idea about what it’s like to speak at LTP. RSVP now!
While Leading the Product is going online this year, they are still continuing the tradition of short lightning talks and once again, ProdAnon is involved with the LTP Pitchfest.
What’s pitchfest? Pitchfest gives you the opportunity to pitch for one of the conference lightning talks. Pitches are voted on by both the audience & conference judges.
I’d like to pitch! Well then… get onto this NOW! 😉
LTP is requesting video submissions so pick your favourite Product Management topic (loves and hates) and create a 90-second video of your idea and submit it. The Brainmates team will pick our top videos and then present these to the audience on the night for their vote. No slides… just you sharing with the crowd & judges.
You do not need to give the talk via video or on the 25th… this is a short pitch.
I’d like to vote & support folks!RSVP and you’ll receive a Zoom link prior to the event. You’ll be able to watch the pitches & vote for who you’d like to hear at LTP!
The judging panel in addition to you! – Liz Blink and Jen Leibhart – Co-Founders, Product Anonymous – Adrienne Tan – CEO, Brainmates – Christopher Rolik – Director of Digital Product Experience, IAG
This Thursday June 18th, we have 2 fantastic speakers who have experienced product in companies at different stages. RSVP now
What does product leadership entail at various sizes of organisations? How do you transition to 1st product person at a startup? What’s the same and what’s different at various sized companies in different stages?
We’ll kick off at 6:30pm with the Zoom open at 6:20pm. After the talks, we’ll utalise breakout rooms so you can say hello to folks! We hope you can stay & meet (or catchup with people you haven’t seen in a while).
Our Speakers:
Claire Sawyers Claire has an amazing background with product management in startups – having been the 1st product manager at a startup through to chief product officer building a team PLUS she has founded 2 startups.
Claire will talk about what it’s like to work at a startup – especially how to get the job – and how to survive it!
Steve Bladeni After years of product & strategy at large corporates (including in an innovation space), Steve went to a startup as the head of product/COO.
Steve will share how different – yet how things are the same – when you’re working in and scaling these various types of business.
Our Sponsor: A Cloud Guru We’re on a mission to teach the WORLD to cloud. A Cloud Guru is the largest online cloud school on the planet. Our training feels more like logging into Netflix or Spotify – it’s entertaining and playful. The people are the #1 reason employees say they stay at ACG. We’re a quirky, tight-knit crew that cares about our customers and each other. No egos here. Our leaders encourage thoughtfulness, compassion, being humble, and we have a bit of fun along the way.
In recent years, the harm caused by technology has come under greater scrutiny. Whether at an individual product level, or the ecosystem created by a combination of products.
How can we anticipate and mitigate against harm?
Bring an ethical lens into the product design process?
And map the potential bias in the systems we create.
If you’re struggling to find an answer, you’re probably not alone.
After numerous years working in tech companies and startups, Laura Summers identified a lack of tools to facilitate ethics conversations. This led Laura to found Debias.AI, and create Ethical Litmus Tests – a deck of cards with prompts and questions to help reframe a scenario, and apply different lenses during the design process.
We were fortunate to have Laura join our May session, and using the Litmus Tests, take us through an interactive exploration of ethics in product design.
Making trade-offs is part of designing and building products. But have you ever deeply considered what the impact of those options could be? Do you justify the decisions with yourselves, for the net (or greater) good?
But would you feel comfortable explaining your choices to a close younger relative?
Or what if the user was your elderly grandparent?
By applying these types of lenses, would you change the way you approach these decisions?
How does the Ethics Litmus Test work?
Define the motivator or driver
Describe the problem or scenario. The motivating concern can be either broad (eg, I’ve got a niggling feeling about this outcome), or very specific (eg, what if data was misused).
Pick a litmus card at randOM
Select a card to help you reframe your view.
Write down your responses individually
With the litmus card in mind, spend a couple of minutes to consider:
Opinion: your position to the scenario
Questions: if you need to know more information
Next steps: action items
Share your responses
Compare and contrast your responses.
Are you surprised?
Explain your thinking.
Some alternative activities to share your thoughts and responses:
The Blind Advocate – pass your response to another participant, and take turns to argue for another person’s opinion. A true exercise in empathy!
The Brainstorm – good for bigger groups, share your thoughts on post-its, or a digital retro board (like FunRetro), and then you can sort the responses into themes.
In this session, we all had some practice and fun, as Laura ran through several interactive scenarios with the Litmus Tests. Using the breakout rooms, we were able to discuss each scenario in small & bigger groups.
Product managers are under pressure to drive results, but cannot wield direct power or authority to achieve their objectives. If you don’t know how to influence people at all levels of the organization, how will you create the best possible product?
In this talk, Ken Sandy shared ten techniques from The Influential Product Manager that product managers can immediately apply at each stage of the product life cycle to achieve the best outcome for the customer and their organization.
Key Takeaways:
1. Influence goes well beyond aligning stakeholder and team behaviours behind a common purpose – it is winning their hearts and minds through context setting, establishing a shared set of beliefs, and a passion to solve customer problems.
2. As a PM, being influential starts with how you view and approach your role – such as embracing and stress testing ideas, establishing collaborative relationships with stakeholders and decisively making prioritization and trade-off decisions.
3. Powerfully, product managers are at their most influential when they focus on owning and communicating the problem to be solved (enabling solutions to emerge collaboratively) and driving towards meaningful customer and business outcomes (over simply delivering projects).
Our presenter:
Ken Sandy is a 20+ years veteran in technology Product Management. Ken pioneered and teaches the first Product Management course offered in the Engineering school at UC Berkeley, which has over 400 PM alumni. Throughout his career, Ken consistently defined, launched and managed award-winning, innovative Web and mobile products loved by customers and used by millions of users across 60+ countries.
Previously, Ken served as VP of Product Management at leading online education companies, MasterClass and lynda.com (Linkedin Learning), and is currently an executive consultant and advisor for startup and scale-up companies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. He’s recently released “The Influential Product Manager – How to Lead and Launch Successful Technology Products” a highly practical and approachable guide to becoming more effective and navigating the challenging collaborative aspects of the product manager’s role.
We had such a great time running our first talk online – we had folks pop in from other cities In Oz and countries as far as Brazil & New Zealand. It was really nice to welcome our friends from other cities.
Just like the f2f sessions, there’s always those folks who don’t know when to go home. 😉 Chatting after the session.
Thanks again to A Cloud Guru for hosting us online this month! We’re on a mission to teach the WORLD to cloud. A Cloud Guru is the largest online cloud school on the planet. Our training feels more like logging into Netflix or Spotify – it’s entertaining and playful. The people are the #1 reason employees say they stay at ACG. We’re a quirky, tight-knit crew that cares about our customers and each other. No egos here. Our leaders encourage thoughtfulness, compassion, being humble, and we have a bit of fun along the way.
We were super excited about our March event so it broke our hearts to reschedule Becoming (more) Brilliant with Impro. With things changing so quickly re: Covid-19 and new advice, it was most definitely the right answer. We will reschedule this session in the future.
So… we quickly decided to change the session into a roundtable discussion about our new reality of full-on remote working. A quick summary…
What were people enjoying about WFH?
no commuting
flexibility of the time as in being able to adjust hours
home cooked meals
ability to do chores at home during breaks
pets!
What is challenging?
Lack of whiteboard solutions
Overhearing conversations in the office (bc often it’s very valuable customer feedback or something related to what you work on)
Less time to focus because there are more meetings/catch-ups to make up for not being f2f
Being paranoid about being seen as ‘online’ and thus available all the time aka PEN syndrome (please everyone now)
Hard to see micro-expressions and the body language
The distraction of text chat happening in the meeting room at the same time as the meeting (yes, this happens F2F also but easier to get distracted when virtual)
If you didn’t have a remote team or WFH folks with a standard set of tools already, people have been receiving multiple invitations. This might feel like overload and could result in documents all over the place.
While many of us thought we’d have MORE time to focus, we find there’s even LESS focused time now because you need to increase your communication and there’s so many channels to reach you that you get interrupted more. They can’t see you’re busy or focused so you need to better manage this. Which leads to maybe needing better expectations around work hours & response times.
What we are missing
Spontaneous idea sharing
Having an expert within earshot
Water cooler conversations
Random social interactions
For those with kids at home… missing adult conversation
Reduction in drinking water
The commute – gives you time to think! To walk! To see people!
How to keep that social thing happening
Virtual lunch with your team
Friday pub drinks over Zoom
Host a trivia quiz
3 minutes of squats every day virtually!
Plant competition
Leave a Zoom room running all day (ie water cooler chat)
Acknowledge pets & kids joining calls
Contests of best virtual background
Making a conscious effort to reach out to individuals
Tools mentioned
Krisp for filtering out background noise during your calls
Mural & Jamboard (part of GSuite) for collaboration
