Product Bakery – The Product Management, UX & Design Podcast

Daniel & Robert working at ready2order as Director of Product and Talent Acquisition Lead. They both have the mission to build an amazing product with great people. Daniel is on board for more than 5 years and Robert joined 7 months ago to streamline hiring processes for all departments and especially Product Management & Design. In this episode, they share how they defined and implemented a new hiring strategy to find the right people at the right time. Table of content:  00:30 - Episode summary 01:40 - Intro Daniel Ibrahim & Robert O'Donoghue 03:35 - How hiring has changed @ready2order 08:05 - Product vision & strategy as a blueprint for hiring 10:55 - Setting up the hiring process 14:30 - Case studies to identify the core strengths of candidates 17:50 - How to measure case studies 21:00 - Filtering out candidates 25:50 - Pros and cons of case studies 30:10 - Hiring decisions made as a team 35:30 - Salaries & benefits 40:00 - How to hire and collaborate remotely Daniel & Robert online: Linkedin Daniel: @daniel-ibrahim Linkedin Robert: @rodonoghue1 Jobs @ready2order:  https://ready2order.com/en/career/ ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In the second part of the coaching vs. managing series, Alex interview Christian about coaching practices as an external and unbiased coach. Christian talks about how to identify and define goals together with his coachees as well as deep-diving into asking good and the right questions. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Alex 01:20 - Unbiased coaching 03:45 - Why product people call a coach 04:40 - Defining and working towards goals 07:15 - Asking the W's (who, what, by when) 08:55 - What are good questions? 11:40 - Therapy vs. coaching    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

In this episode, Christian and Alex dive deep into the world of product market fit and the pivotal role that product marketing plays in its success. Joined by special guest Martina, an experienced product marketer, they explore the complexities of finding the right market for a product, the importance of trust and customer feedback, and the distinct roles of product management and product marketing. With insights from Silicon Valley Product Group and Martina's expertise, they discuss strategies for effective product marketing, the challenges of high-velocity product cycles, and the future of this crucial function in the tech industry. So grab your headphones and get ready to uncover the secrets behind the power of great product marketing in this enlightening episode.   What We've Covered: (00:00:30) Episode summary  (00:02:05) Intro Martina Lauchengco (00:05:00) How product marketing changed over the past 25 years (00:10:10) Product Manager vs. Product Marketing Manager (00:17:10) Finding product-market fit (00:21:30) Everyone does product marketing differently (00:24:45) The 4 elements of product marketing (00:27:50) Communication as a Product Marketing Manager (00:34:10) Hiring the first Product Marketing Manager (00:40:00) Marketing = planting seeds (00:44:50) Martina's upcoming book, LOVED!   Martina on the internet: Linkedin: @martinalauchengco Twitter: @mavinmartina   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Following up on the previous episode, Christian and Alex share what podcasting tools they use and how the process of creating an episode works. Next to that they followed up on their product review format and took a deeper look into the tool Descript.com.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro podcast tooling 01:55 - Anchor.fm for podcast distribution 02:00 - Zencastr.com for recording 03:35 - Adobe Audition for the raw cut 04:45 - Descript to finalize the episode 06:20 - Squarespace for our website 08:00 - Deep-dive into Descript functionality 16:45 - Rating Descript from 1 to 5 Descript   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

A while ago the Product Bakers have promised to talk about how they started the Product Bakery. In this episode, Alex and Christian share how they started this project and the processes they set up to manage themselves.  Next to that, they talk about how they interate on the podcast format based on the feedback they get from their community. Table of content: 00:30 - Small talk 02:25 - Podcast Alex & Christian are listening to 05:50 - Product Bakery's problem statement  06:50 - From the idea to execution 09:20 - 2 team members with different skills 10:30 - Bias to action 11:55 - New formats & validating ideas 14:00 - Community feedback to improve the show ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

The product bakers decided to talk about coaching product managers & designers as a leader over two episodes. In this episode, Christian interviews Alex to talk about his experience of being a manager and coach at the same time. Alex shares his point of view of the thin line between managing people and working toward business goals vs. coaching, leading, and empowering people. Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Christian 01:15 - Coaching & managing people 04:00 - Different types of employees (designers) 05:35 - Coaching vs. managing  08:30 - Radical candor to help people improving 11:45 - Asking the right (non-leading) questions ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This is the first case study where the Product Bakers made a deep-dive into a real-world project with Product Lead Mathias Kluge. Mathias shared how he and his team identified churn reasons and the process of finding solutions.  Besides reducing churn by over 40%, Mathias faced also many challenges and made a lot of learnings which are shares in this episode.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Mathias Kluge (Matze) 03:05 - From Product Design to Product Management 03:55 - When to start looking at churn 06:35 - Defining, gathering, and analyzing data 11:25 - Creating hypothesis with your team 15:15 - Best practices to analyze churn 17:50 - Defining success metrics & KPIs 23:30 - Preparing the backlog & the solution 24:45 - Prioritizing & negotiating 30:05 - Collaborating with Designers 37:35 - Explaining problems not solutions 38:55 - Mathias’ key learnings 41:30 - Debrief Alex & Christian   Mathias online: Linkedin: @matkluge    ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Christian was curious and asked Alex what the key things are he takes care of in his first days as a fresh leader joining a new company. They touched upon the topic of strategy, tooling, and getting to know the leadership team and staff.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro Christian 01:40 - What to look at when you apply for a new leadership role 04:30 - Getting to know the leadership team & your staff 07:00 - Reviewing the strategy & understanding decisions 10:05 - Alining on tools   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

Josh Seiden is a designer, strategy consultant, coach, and author. He started his career in the early 90s. Since then a lot of things have changed. That's why Josh decided to write and share his experience, and latest observations in amazing books such as "Lean UX" or "Outcomes over Output." In this episode, Josh discusses with the Product Bakers everything about Lean UX and how to work with hypotheses and problem statements. They've also touched upon the topic of lean experimentation to validate ideas as quickly as possible.   Table of content:  00:30 - Intro Josh Seiden 03:30 - The change of Lean UX 04:30 - Making product & design teams work 06:25 - The notion of design thinking 08:25 - Defining good problem statements 11:40 - Defining good hypotheses 16:05 - Finding problems & defining success criteria 19:10 - Josh's definition of an MVP 25:20 - Perfectionism kills success 28:35 - Experimenting instead of solutionizing 30:35 - Josh's biggest learning with Lean UX 33:30 - Debrief Christian & Alex   Follow Josh: Josh's Masterclass: Online masterclass outcomes for product teams Josh's books: Lean UX, Outcomes over Output Medium: @jseiden  Linkedin: @jseiden Twitter: @jseiden   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/

This week Alex picked up the topic of prioritizing and saying no to stakeholders and customers. Christian explains in this episode where to start before you make a decision (saying no) and how to say no in the right way.   Table of content: 00:30 - Intro by Alex 03:10 - Self-awareness and doing your homework first 05:20 - Prioritizing against OKRs & company goals 07:15 - Balancing operational and research work 12:00 - Explain why you say no to people   ✩ Follow The Product Bakery Podcast ✩    👨‍💻 Linkedin: Product Bakery    📸 Instagram: @productbakery    🐦 Twitter: @productbakery20    🌍 Website: https://www.product-bakery.com/