Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles, experts in product operations, discuss the role and benefits of product ops in organizations, including offloading certain tasks from product managers. They also highlight successful examples and provide insights on hiring for the role.

Every company wants to develop a winning strategy—but what are signs your strategy isn’t working, and how do you change course? Melissa Perri has worked trained PMs and product leaders at nearly all the Fortune 100 companies, and in this conversation shares how to reset a struggling strategy, align your team, and build winning strategy. Join us.—Find the full transcript here: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/how-to-create-a-winning-product-strategy-melissa-perri/#transcript—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/• RevenueCat: https://www.revenuecat.com/• Makelog: https://www.makelog.com/lenny—Where to find Melissa:• Website: https://melissaperri.com/• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lissijean• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissajeanperri/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Referenced:• Melissa’s Book: https://melissaperri.com/book—In this episode, we cover:[00:00] What to expect with guest Melissa Perri[02:57] Melissa’s incredibly vast experience working with product manager’s [04:20] Melissa’s current focus: training and education of PM’s[05:59] The most common problems that product teams face[09:48] When to hire your first CPO[14:27] What to do before hiring a CPO[16:16] When to bring an interim CPO consultant like Melissa[21:26] Signs your team doesn’t have a strategy[22:59] Identifying your vision, strategy and intentions as a company[27:48] Signs you’re doing a bad job as a PM[30:30] The process of defining strategic visions[33:28] How to hone your craft as a PM[43:55] Melissa’s Book — Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value [48:43] How to avoid burnout [52:19] Where to find Melissa Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

As the year comes to a close, leaders are looking to the future and figuring out how to build out their roadmaps for 2022. On this week’s Product Thinking Podcast, Melissa Perri shares clips of some of the best insights on roadmap creation and strategic planning at different levels of an organization so that leaders can start off the new year right.  Here are some of the key points that were talked about: When building a roadmap, don't assume you can predict the future. Focus on the products that are being built now, so you can have near-term certainty with planning. Executive teams have to do discovery work if they want better estimates. [1:30] Product management needs to be tied to strategic decisions within the business. They have to be involved in the conversation around revenue growth, product growth and expansion because they need to understand the vision of the business. [6:50] Companies need Vision Led Product Management. This means being definitive about what the value of your product is, who it's being provided for and where the differentiation is going to lie. It's essentially having all the components of a product vision. [10:52] Before building a product strategy at a small scale, first figure out if one already exists at your organization. If there is, and it's being executed poorly, figure out what the essential goals are. If there’s no product strategy, do whatever you can to find out and understand the goals of the executives. Once you understand those goals, you can start to build your own product strategy. [13:46] To set strategy, leaders have to be the ones to make the choices about what to invest in for the growth of the business. They have to think about what skillsets they wish to grow in the company, what technologies they want to implement and what they can do to differentiate themselves from their competitors in 2-3 years' time. [20:30] If your sales team is going outside your company's product definition by a great deal, then you most likely don't truly understand the market your product is for. Product leaders need to communicate product-market fit to their sales teams and understand that they as product leaders don't make all the decisions. There has to be an alignment between strategy and communication in the organization. [27:09] Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.comIf you enjoyed this episode, please visit:Angel SquadProductinstitute.comPrevious guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web ServicesCheck out our Top 3 episodes:Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interviewing UsersTackling Product Research with C. Todd LombardoEpisode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and UberProduct Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.soProduct Thinking Guest and Audience Podcast Feedback Form

In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa Perri answers subscribers’ questions about product ROI techniques, how we relate our product metrics to our financial metrics, buying versus building a product, and how you can get realistic market size estimates for your team.Have a product question for Melissa? Submit one here, and Melissa may answer it in a future episode.Q&A:Q: Dear Melissa, what are some decision points in a buy or integrate vs. build situation? I'm working on a product that wants to incorporate asset management features. There are many good solutions out there already ready to go. So what are the steps to assess this?A: Building versus buying is a critical decision for product managers, so I'm thrilled you asked this. Now, when you're thinking about building versus buying, the first and most important question that you want to think about is, will this new feature set or the thing that you're buying be delivering on the core value proposition for your product?Dear Melissa, I want to help my organization make product tradeoff decisions on financial analysis rather than what the founder feels is the right thing to invest in. What are typical ROI analysis frameworks that are appropriate for a SaaS product?A: So, as we're deciding how to make product tradeoffs, you may have seen some of the different frameworks for prioritization that come back to the effort, including time and cost, all these different things. I don't love those. I think you should look at cost because you want to know how much it will cost to build things. You should also look at timing, but you need to do it through a lens that combines it back to the financial metrics, just like this person is talking about.Q: Dear Melissa, how do we get market size estimates to convince executive leadership about the market worth in the modern product management world? Research reports from various sources seem unauthentic and unrealistic because of inflated growth projections.A: Well, that's true. Some market research reports are definitely like pie in the sky. We recommend using these reports as general guidelines, not decision-making criteria. When we do market research estimates, especially market sizing estimates, I start to calculate things out a little bit more in detail, and when I had analysts on my team, this is what they would do as well.Resources:Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | TwitterMelissaPerri.com | CPO AcceleratorIf you enjoyed this episode, please visit:Angel SquadProductinstitute.comPrevious guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web ServicesCheck out our Top 3 episodes:Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interviewing UsersTackling Product Research with C. Todd LombardoEpisode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and UberProduct Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.soProduct Thinking Guest and Audience Podcast Feedback Form

Melissa Perri welcomes Jeff Gothelf to this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. An experienced consultant in the Agile and Lean UX space, Jeff just released the third edition of his popular book, Lean UX. Jeff talks with Melissa about how he’s shifted focus to teaching about OKRs, and why he encourages the companies he consults with to adopt this goal-setting framework to measure success. He breaks down what OKRs are, why they can’t be the only product-led change a company adopts, how many OKRs there should be within an organization, what a good OKR looks like at the executive level, and why OKRs make a “great gateway drug” to organizational agility.  Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Jeff talk about: HR leadership, especially the performance, retention, and promotion factions, is taking an interest in new ways to measure success, Jeff shares. They want to learn how to deploy this new metric across their organizations so they can improve their overall internal and external performances. [5:03] Jeff shares how he educates clients about integrating their corporate strategy with their OKRs. “These things don’t exist in a vacuum and can’t be manufactured out of thin air,” he says. “They have to be derived from some kind of corporate strategy, product strategy, business unit strategy.” [9:19] Objectives are the qualitative goals that we would like to achieve; they are aspirational and inspirational, and the value of doing them should be clear. [11:02] When your teams are too independent, you run the risk of hyperlocal optimization, Jeff advises. “One of the better tactics that I've seen over the years is to take a set of teams and give them the same OKR set to hit,” he adds. “With those teams, we’ve defined what success is.” [19:09] Jeff describes an exercise he runs with most of his executive clients. They visualize the relationship between impact metrics and leading and lagging indicators in order to identify the outcomes they’re going to work toward. What this exercise ends up becoming is a top-to-bottom customer journey map. [25:44] Typically, teams get told what to build; they make a roadmap and get it approved. In Jeff’s OKR conversations with clients, he removes the output part of the process. They now have to discover what to build by practicing Lean UX, product discovery, and design thinking. Many organizations either don’t know how to do that, or they do and they make it difficult or impossible to execute the work. [33:09] Quarterly check-ins allow you to reflect on whether it makes sense to go towards the goals you’ve set for yourself. [38:06] Being a good storyteller is a key component of being a good product manager. A vast majority of product managers have to rely on bringing people together on a vision they’ve either built themselves or along with a team through storytelling, as they lead without authority. If you can tell a concise and compelling story that ties in the necessary information, that will be a valuable asset. [41:45] Resources Jeff Gothelf on LinkedIn | TwitterIf you enjoyed this episode, please visit:Angel SquadProductinstitute.comPrevious guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web ServicesCheck out our Top 3 episodes:Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interviewing UsersTackling Product Research with C. Todd LombardoEpisode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and UberProduct Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.soProduct Thinking Guest and Audience Podcast Feedback Form

In this episode of Product Thinking, Melissa Perri talks with Wes Bush, CEO of ProductLed. They explore the art of product-led growth and share effective strategies for building a product that sells itself. Wes Bush is the renowned author of "Product-Led Growth: How To Build a Product That Sells Itself." He asserts that, over the past several years, the way we buy software has undergone a transformative shift. Businesses must lead with their product and allow potential customers to experience its value firsthand.Product-Led Growth provides the framework for businesses to adapt to this new era of customer-driven decision-making. It's not just a trend or buzzword but an actionable business strategy that enables companies to succeed in this new business landscape. With Wes Bush's guidance and expertise, businesses can learn to build products that sell themselves and position themselves for long-term success.You’ll hear Melissa and Wes talk about:Product-led growth as a strategy where the product serves as the primary means of acquiring, engaging, retaining, and monetizing users. In this approach, every part of the business leverages the product to achieve its objectives.When it comes to monetization, the key precursor is building a product that can sell itself. This can be achieved by providing users with a super valuable experience that enables them to derive value on their own. In many cases, this leads to users wanting more of the product and being willing to upgrade. In fact, in self-serve apps, this product-led monetization is quite common. To facilitate this process, it's important to minimize any friction in the user's experience, ensuring a smooth and seamless transition toward the monetization stage.There is a common misconception that a product-led approach requires a fully self-serve experience from the very beginning. However, this belief is not entirely accurate. The key idea behind a product-led strategy is to make it easy for potential customers to recognize the value of your product with minimal hurdles.There is a common misunderstanding about the complexity involved in product-led growth. Some people assume that it's simply a matter of offering free trials and giving newcomers access to everything on your platform. However, this oversimplification overlooks the nuances of the approach. Rather than focusing solely on these tactics, the key is to emphasize the rapid demonstration of your product's value to users. By encouraging users to engage with your product as quickly and effectively as possible, you can facilitate its adoption and promote sustainable growth.If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Instructions on how to do this are here.Resources:Wes Bush on LinkedIn | TwitterProductLed | Product-Led Growth BookIf you enjoyed this episode, please visit:Angel SquadProductinstitute.comPrevious guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web ServicesCheck out our Top 3 episodes:Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interviewing UsersTackling Product Research with C. Todd LombardoEpisode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and UberProduct Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.soProduct Thinking Guest and Audience Podcast Feedback Form

Melissa Perri has a background as both a product manager and a UX-er. We learn more about the overlap between the two disciplines and discuss some of the issues surrounding their convergence. Melissa also shared some advice about applying lean methodologies to your organisation including working with hypotheses and building to learn.

In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa Perri answers subscribers’ questions about digital transformation, including how to set up a successful digital strategy for a Fortune 500 company, how to keep your digital transformation under control without pushing it too far, and how to transition product owners into product managers.Q&A:Q: Hey, Melissa, I've worked for a new team that has managed to resist adopting the heavier parts of Scrum and Agile as we mature and grow. We've been pushing the boundaries and simplifying our approach based on modern product design and development practices. That said though, I'd love to move away from having dedicated product owners because I firmly believe, and I think you do too, that the PO is more of a role that should be shared versus an assigned title. My goal is to shift our POs into PM roles, assuming it's a good match to their interests and skill sets. So, looking ahead, what are a few things that we should be thinking about as POs start transitioning to PMs? What risks should I anticipate? I don't know that this won't be an overnight transition. So what are some good ways to evaluate the performance of our POs until the transition can finally happen? Thanks for everything you do!A: So this is a great question and one that I think is relevant as we're talking about what a product manager is out there in the world today. So if you haven't heard, it's been all over Twitter and LinkedIn, and if you are a product manager, this could be concerning. But Airbnb did a big conference a couple of weeks ago, and Brian Chesky said, "Hey, we're getting rid of product managers," to which everybody said, "Oh my God, we don't need product managers anymore." And all the designers, of course, were like, "Yay!" But product managers started to panic. What he actually said was, "We are trying to go more towards a product marketing role with the product managers," and I think this ties into what we're talking about here with product owners versus product managers.Q: Hello! First off, I just want to say your podcast has been really helpful in honing my product management skills. I've gone from a product manager to a lead product manager role. And now, I am a digital product strategist. My question is about building  a digital strategy for a Fortune 50 company. And what I mean by that is we seem to lack a digital product strategy right underneath the corporate strategy, the enterprise-level strategy that can tell our business units and leaders how to build and engage members digitally. You have marketing folks creating their own digital experiences. You have other organizations going off and partnering with different vendors to create digital experiences for our members but never working with their internal digital teams and product teams to see if we should build it within our existing digital platforms or even innovate something new and keep it within our brand. Thank you so much! Looking forward to hearing your answer.A: Now, this is a common thing for companies that are going through digital transformations. A lot of times, we leave strategy to the last thing. I see this happen a lot. I've been involved in a lot of them, especially with Fortune 500 companies. I worked with a tonne of Fortune 500 companies. So do not be discouraged. This is the next learning step on your journey. Typically, what happens is we go out, and we train all the product managers. And then we realize that we don't know which way the product manager is actually running. So there's nothing to tie that corporate strategy back into what the teams are doing. And then we get into arguments with leadership about whether are we building the right thing? So you are at this point. This is what I would do in those companies.Q: A year ago, I joined an older enterprise business undergoing digital transformation. While many product leaders have elements of the right vision, the whole product, org read, inspired just before I got here. They're trying. There's still a lot of need to change the way we work. I get plenty of positive feedback and excitement about the changes I'm bringing from my prior roles at digital native companies. But I'm also experiencing some tense pushback from certain groups. I know transformation will ruffle some feathers. But how do I know if I'm pushing too hard? Should I give up and go back somewhere where I fit in?A: I can really empathize with this question because, before I started consulting, I was a ruffer, and I ran into a lot of problems. But then, as a consultant, I ruffle all the time. I ruffle feathers. That's what I'm hired to do. But you gotta do it carefully. And I have learned my lesson because I have ruffled too many feathers before, and I've made people angry. So from multiple years of doing this since I've been consulting since 2014, these are my tips when you get in, and you start to evaluate a new company going through a transformation, and you see people not doing things they're supposed to do.Resources:Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | TwitterMelissaPerri.com | CPO AcceleratorIf you enjoyed this episode, please visit:Angel SquadProductinstitute.comPrevious guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web ServicesCheck out our Top 3 episodes:Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interviewing UsersTackling Product Research with C. Todd LombardoEpisode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and UberProduct Thinking is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.soProduct Thinking Guest and Audience Podcast Feedback Form

Renowned author Melissa Perri and seasoned product leader Denise Tilles discuss Product Operations, focusing on better decision-making for product managers. They highlight the barriers faced by product managers and the three pillars of product operations. The podcast explores the significance of teamwork, communication, and collaboration in addressing challenges within scaled organizations.

Exploring the unique aspects of TechPeaks startup accelerator, focusing on international entrepreneurs and collaboration. Paolo Lombardi shares insights on planning and deploying funds to early stage startups. Melissa describes her transformative experience in the program as a 'People accelerator.' The episode delves into the challenges and successes of building an international startup accelerator and nurturing successful startups through tailored programs.