88 / Effective Product Managers Embrace a ‘Back to Basics’ Mindset

Imagine you have over 300,000 customers who love your product. Then, in the span of one weekend in March 2020, you suddenly find yourself with no product to deliver them. Where do you go from there? You go back to the basics, says James Mayes, who joined Sean and Paul in this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast.

As co-founder and CEO of Mind The Product, the global flagship product management conference, James Mayes went from having a business model he thought was the product, to the brutal reminder that the market is in control.

“The pandemic, and the lockdown that followed, made our core product unviable,” he adds. “When your environment changes at that magnitude, you can’t prepare for that. So this was a reminder of something we already knew: You cannot be prepared for every eventuality and every change that will occur.”

In a world full of uncertainty, James contends, you go back to what you know. “So we said, ‘we’re product managers, right? We’re designed to live in uncertainty. It’s part of our DNA.’ So we did just that; we went back to the basic fundamentals of product management.”

Turns out, the same lessons MTP applied to navigate the pandemic will help your team in times of ambiguity. Catch the entire fast-paced conversation with James, and learn how the steps MTP applied can work for your team too –

• Stop the bleeding. When you find yourself deep in a hole, stop digging.
• Take inventory. What do we have that still works in this world.
• Tweak existing assets where we can. Create new ones as opportunities arise.
• Stay close to customers. Be available, accessible.
• Discover, create, test, refine, release, learn, and repeat.

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