Product Management Consultant & Author, Rich Mironov, shares insights on working with executives, negotiating with stakeholders, and tackling challenges in product management. Topics include prioritizing value delivery, managing stakeholders without product backgrounds, and tips for new product leaders.

In this episode, Alex and Christian discuss the new beta social media clubhouse and its future.   Table of content: 1:53 - The clubhouse trend coming to Germany 3:19 - FOMO 4:51 - MVP Mindset 7:50 - The roadmap & snowball effects 10:05 - Clubhouse the next big social network? 12:15 - The trend of broadcasting 13:50 - What’s the problem statement? 17:50 - Clubhouse downsides & future   Find clubhouse online: Website: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/  iOS App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clubhouse-drop-in-audio-chat/id1503133294    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Luca Criscuolo studied initially environmental science and holds a Ph.D. in climate science. Next to all his work and research, he decided at some point to be closer connected to the real world and people building products. From that point on he started working in Product Management and moved his way up to several product leadership roles. With more than 14 years of Product Management experience, he's currently working at eBay as Head of Regional Product Europe. In this episode, Luca and the Product Bakers discuss the different dimensions that are important to hire a great Product Team vs. the skills a Product Team needs to succeed based on modern best practices and the current times of uncertainty.    Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Luca Criscuolo 5:10 - Product Managers with different Backgrounds 7:44 - Dimensions of Product Management 11:05 - Growth Hacking and Marketing 14:30 - Hiring for the right mindset 20:00 - Leadership and Product Understanding 23:42 - Leadership mindset 32:46 - Coaching for the right mindset 35:33 - Biggest mistakes Product Managers make 39:14 - Corporate vs. Startup 44:04 - Career development 55:17 - The future of Product Management 57:40 - Closing thoughts from Alex and Christian    Luca on the internet: Linkedin: @lucacriscuolo Twitter: @loloabe Website: https://www.lucacriscuolo.com   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩ 👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery 📸 Instagram: @productbakery 🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20 🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Ryan Sousa leads data innovation for Research, Hospital, and Foundation at Seattle Children’s. He is a senior leader, entrepreneur, and practitioner and brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in some of the biggest companies such as Amazon, Starbucks, Expedia, and Nokia as well as several successful startups. Next to all the companies that Ryan has seen, he clearly noticed one key factor that drives success and innovation in companies which is empowering people! Many companies focus too much on deadlines, pressure from investors, and other things, and lose track of the main thing which is people. To be product and not project-driven, it's crucial to share a problem instead of solutions.  In this episode, Ryan talked about the key points a leader needs to understand to empower teams instead of micromanaging them to be successful.    Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Ryan Sousa 5:20 - Paradigm shift: User centricity 7:38 - Evolvement of the health care industry 9:20 - Processes vs. company maturity 17:15 - Restructuring organizations with the right mindset 22:35 - Organizational structure to empower (product) people 28:30 - Establishing open & direct communication as a Leader 30:00 - Enabling people to be innovative 42:50 - Planning frameworks on steroids 47:55 - The value of Hackathons 49:00 - 3 things that Ryan would have done differently 10 years ago Ryan's book recommendations: No Rules Rules The Art of Action Think Like a Rocket Scientist Connect with Ryan: Email: ryan.sousa@seattlechildrens.org   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

"You learn the most from your mistakes, not your success.", is a quote that Rory Madden would immediately sign! With more than 16 years of experience as a Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Business Analyst he has a lot of experiences to share.  Rory founded two start-ups that failed, and one of the biggest learnings he made was to talk to customers as early as possible. Based on that learning, he founded the UXDC (User Experience & Developer Experience) Conference. The mission of the conference is to help people to learn about customer and data-driven agile methodologies to not make the same mistakes as he did.  In this episode, we talked to Ryan about how he "developed" the conference and how the way they interact with his community is shifting in the current health crisis. Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Rory Madden 6:05 - Moving from a project to a product mindset 8:10 - Definition of ”developer experience” 10:50 - Birth of the UXDX idea & community 16:00 - Finding the right speakers & supporters 22:30 - Health crisis as a big challenge 29:15 - Online vs. offline events 41:26 - Building the UXDX platform product 48:00 - 3 key learnings Rory made   Rory on the internet: Linkedin: @Rorymadden Website: https://uxdx.com/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

A long and exhausting year is over! Alex and Christian sat down together one last time in 2020 to wrap up a year of remote work and sharing some morning routine tips in times of home office to not only be productive but also to take care of your physical and mental health. The Product Bakers wish you all a happy new year's eve. Stay healthy, stay conscious. Happy new year! 🎉🥳🎊   PS: The next interview will be published on the 7th of January.    Check out our website update: https://www.product-bakery.com/episodes Want to learn to meditate? The Headspace app: https://www.headspace.com/ ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Could it be a better time to launch the 20th episode on Christmas?! 🎄 We want to thank all our listeners for the amazing support we've got, and wish everyone MERRY CHRISTMAS and happy holidays! In this episode, we're doing a little recap on what has happened this year as well as sharing the first outlook for 2021.  Since the year is coming to an end we also talk about how we prioritize & set goals for the next year. This includes a deep-dive into self-organization, tooling, and a couple of book recommendations. #planning Tools we love to use for self-organization: Pen & Paper Google Calendar Evernote Workflowy Our book recommendations: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Lean UX The Bullet Journal Method Hooked The Future of Capitalism High Output Management Pitch Anything The Prosperous Coach Atomic Habits Live hack: Listen to podcasts & educational videos at 1.5x/2x speed 🤶🎄 Follow The Product Bakery Podcast 🎄🎅    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Shruti is a design researcher and interaction designer. She leads the talented team of The Studio at Zalando in Berlin. At the time of recording this episode, she led the product design & user research team at N26. She has also worked in strategic design consulting with IDEO, user experience at Nokia, and with a few other places. Shruti’s goal has been to nurture effective collaboration between design, research, product management and engineering to deliver customer-focussed solutions – building the capabilities and processes that enable all disciplines to do their best work. In this episode, she talks with Christian and Alex about the role of Design & Research Ops, amongst other things, that help build an effective integrated design team.   Table of content: 0:28 - Intro Shruti Ramiah 1:45 - How Product Design functions @N26 5:05 - Design collectives & Design Ops 7:05 - Collecting customer & stakeholder feedback 10:10 - The role & mission of Design Ops 21:40 - Solving symptoms or problems with Design Ops? 24:00 - How to hire the right people for a Research Team 28:00 - Collaboration between Product Managers, Designers, & Researchers 39:40 - Integrating Design in cross-functional teams 43:20 - Things Shruti would love to have known at the beginning of her career 47:31 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Find Shruti on the internet:  Website: https://shrutiramiah.com/  Linkedin: @shrutiramiah  Twitter: @itursh   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩        👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery     📸 Instagram: @productbakery     🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20     🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Branding plays a key role in every kind of business. Laura Busche's passion for marketing and brand strategy started in 2008. Since then she focused a lot on working and learning everything about brands until 2013 when she published her amazing book "Lean Branding" as part of the Lean Series from O'Reilly.  Laura consulted Alex and Christian for almost one hour about building up the Product Bakery brand and community. She shared how to use a storyboard to define the brand values and target audience.   Table of content: 0:28 - Episode summary 0:59 - Intro Laura Busche & her book launch 6:35 - How to brand a product podcast (live coaching by Laura) 8:55 - Lean branding strategies 10:30- The brand storyboard 17:15 - How to identify organic growth channels & strategies 23:25 - Driving branding & storytelling in organizations 28:25 - Value proposition vs. brand recognition (brand messaging) 35:25 - Laura’s brand strategy for her own book 39:25 - Thoughts on Google’s rebranding (icon redesign) 44:35 - 3 Tips from Laura if you launch a new brand/brand heavy product 48:50 - Debrief Christan & Alex   Follow & Connect with Laura:  Website: https://laurabusche.com/  Linkedin: @laurabusche  Twitter: @laurabusche  Her book: Lean Branding    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Monica Lent is a passionate Software Engineer & Entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience. Next to her first startup affilimate.com, she regularly launches new products, services, and communities such as blogginfordevs.com.  Monica shares in this episode many practical tips and examples on how to build up your own community and the need for companies to move beyond acquiring customers and connecting closer to their audiences.   Table of content: 0:30 - Intro Monica Lent 3:50 - 12 Startups in 12 months 6:25 - How she got started with her first paid community 8:50 - Community vs. customer base 13:30 - Importance of communities for businesses 18:35 - Launching fast vs. researching too long 20:10 - Learnings on starting with SaaS product 33:30 - Mistakes to avoid when starting with a SaaS product 39:30 - Bootstrapping vs. funding 42:50 - Monica’s top 5 tips to successfully build a community   Wanna connect with Monica? https://monicalent.com/ https://twitter.com/monicalent https://bloggingfordevs.com/   Monica's reads & recommendations:  https://rosie.land/ https://nathanbarry.com/wealth-creation/ https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/ https://stackingthebricks.com/why-you-should-do-a-tiny-product-first/   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/