122 / The Human Connection: The Tie that Binds Product Teams + Users, with Christine Itwaru
Oct 31, 2023
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Christine Itwaru, Principal Strategist at Pendo, shares insights on the importance of the human connection in product management, transitioning to business strategy, the role of product ops in keeping teams healthy, and defining innovation.
Product management starts with the human connection both internally and externally, emphasizing collaboration and understanding.
Product ops plays a crucial role in supporting and empowering product teams to do their best work, ensuring the health of the business.
Deep dives
Coaching and Human Connection in Product Management
In this podcast episode, Christine Atwaru discusses the importance of coaching in product management roles and the significance of creating strong human connections. She emphasizes the need for product managers to deeply understand and connect with customers, as well as collaborate with internal teams and stakeholders. Christine believes that coaching naturally emerges as product managers build their careers and become a trusted resource for others. She also highlights the value of spending time with customers and the positive impact it has on product development. By focusing on the human aspect of product management, Christine suggests that product managers can better serve their customers and create successful products.
Product Ops: Building Healthy Product Teams
Another key point discussed in the episode is product operations (product ops) and its role in ensuring healthy product teams. Christine explains that product ops is responsible for creating systems and processes that enable product teams to function optimally. By providing operational support and removing obstacles, product ops helps product managers, designers, and engineers to focus on their core responsibilities and deliver valuable outcomes. She emphasizes the importance of alignment between product teams and business goals, as well as transparency and open dialogue within the organization. Christine highlights the need for product ops to understand the value of the product team and empower them to do their best work.
Embracing AI Responsibly in Product Management
The episode also addresses the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on product management. Christine stresses the significance of embracing AI in service of customers while ensuring responsible implementation. She mentions the need for governance, standards, and transparency around the application of AI. Christine acknowledges the challenges and ethical considerations associated with AI adoption and advocates for aligning AI strategies with the company's overall messaging and business goals. She suggests forming committees and leveraging expertise from security, legal, and operations teams to mitigate risks. By approaching AI with a customer-centric mindset and responsible practices, product managers can leverage its potential while considering potential long-term impacts.
Measuring Team Health and Success
The episode concludes with a discussion on measuring team health and success in product management. Christine highlights the importance of avoiding surprises and fostering open communication within teams. Healthy teams are characterized by strong relationships with customers, alignment with business goals, and a culture of learning and adaptation. She emphasizes the need for transparency and clear messaging within the organization to ensure alignment and eliminate misinterpretations. Christine also suggests using metrics such as growth, adoption, retention, and percentage of outcomes achieved against strategic roadmaps to assess team success. Additionally, she underscores the value of team members continuously learning and developing their skills.
In this episode, Christine Itwaru, Principal Strategist at Pendo, describes her journey from a product management role to product ops to strategy, tackling big-picture issues and leaves kernels of wisdom for us to use in our own product roles. Among them, how to strengthen the human connection between product teams and their users.
Key takeaways from our conversation with Christine Itwaru:
Product management starts with the human connection. “The human connection extends beyond the market you serve,” Christine says. “It’s internally at your company – the people who help you understand problems not just from a product perspective, but also that something they need you to solve so they can do their jobs well to help the business continue to grow.”
Product ops works to keep product teams healthy. The mission of a product ops team is to “help the product team in service of the health of the rest of the business,” Christine adds. “Product managers and product teams need to feel empowered to do their best work; product ops helps them achieve that.”
Strategy merges a macro understanding of the business with being in service to customers. Christine’s new-ish role as Pendo’s Principal Strategist allows her to remain close to the product team and Head of Product, which helps her understand their goals and how they align to product vision and company strategy. “My role combines business strategist and advisor to our customers and prospects – generally, to the entire product community.
The right way to approach AI is the same way we approach all things as product people. “Embrace AI in service of our customers,” Christine says, “and try to set ourselves up to do this thing really responsibly. We have so much to learn before we can make any definitive calls. And I love when companies are not pivoting 100%” because of some new thing that’s come up with AI.
Stay tuned for upcoming releases of Product Momentum episodes recorded live at Pendomonium 2023!
