Product Momentum Podcast

As consumers of everything from soap to software, all we’re looking for is better, easier, simpler. Most of the time we can’t explain why a thing is better; we just know delight when we experience it. “That’s the height of product management done well,” says Martina Lauchengco. “And it’s also when product marketing takes over to help the world understand why your product is truly different.” Martina Lauchengco is a Partner at Costanoa Ventures and author of LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, she joins Sean and Paul to explore the role product marketing plays in a go-to-market strategy. Too often, Martina explains, we emphasize the marketing piece and fail to recognize the connection between our product and the humans who are using it. And that’s the big thing that gets missed. “Product marketing is the act of connecting the market to the product, not just promoting the product in the market.” There’s actually a strategic framework for all the activities that bring your product successfully to market, she adds. “And it represents a very big difference in terms of the actions that are taken. First is the when and why. Then comes the what, followed by the how. In that order.” Martina’s framework examines not only the activities we product managers need to navigate. We’re also responsible for encouraging our teams to share product market-facing activities – each of which is assigned a specific role. Listen to the entire pod to learn more about Martina’s product marketing framework, including the fundamental roles responsible for its execution: the Ambassador, the Strategist, the Storyteller, and the Evangelist. Other insights from Martina Lauchengco: Owning the market is about owning the conversations in your category – and you can do that pre-launch. Product marketing is more a framework than a checklist of activities. Building software is not about the features you add; it’s about making someone more successful at the job they’re trying to do. The post 95 / The Product Marketing Framework: Connecting the Market to the Product appeared first on ITX Corp..

Data we collect about our products are really just a summary of the thousands of stories our users would tell us if they could. Part of our job as product managers is gathering and processing these stories, and then converting them into the products and tools that enhance the human experience. Taylor Murphy provides some insight into how product managers can approach data science in this episode. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean and Paul are joined by Taylor Murphy, Head of Product and Data at Meltano, an open-source data platform whose mission it is to make data integration available to all by turning proprietary ELT solutions into true open-source alternatives. Part of the PM’s role is to be the conduit through which data are shared, what Taylor refers to as being “the glue and message broker between everyone to make sure folks are aligned.” But data are only one part of the message. And not all data are created equal. “We’re gathering insights from the market. We’re listening to consultants. And we’re digesting what others are saying about our space,” he adds. “The challenge for PMs is integrating all those data points into “Okay, now we’re going to build this feature; now we’re going to fix this bug.” Catch the entire pod to hear Taylor’s straightforward approach to data management and data science for product managers – Importance of working with anonymized data When, in the product life cycle, to use qualitative vs. quantitative data (see below) Applying the golden rule to data sharing Risks associated with over-indexing your data Role of the scientific method in our decision-making process Knowledge of SQL in the PM skill set As Taylor explains, reliance on qualitative data works well when your company is pre-Product-Market Fit. “But it can take you only so far,” he adds. “As time passes and you grow and mature, you can lean more on quantitative because you have more data to work with.” The post 94 / A Pragmatic Approach to Data Science for Product Managers appeared first on ITX Corp..

When we trust others – including organizations – we do business with them whenever it makes sense. When we don’t, we look for alternatives. Trust is the foundation of every positive relationship, and its absence is the reason so many relationships struggle. In the product space especially, where we’re building complicated things that don’t yet exist, the risk of failure is everywhere. Teams that trust overcome these challenges to find innovation and success, says Charles Feltman. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean is joined by Charles Feltman, author of The Thin Book of Trust and a nationally recognized expert in organizational trust. Charles offers a unique perspective: “I talk about trust, or more specifically, trusting, as making what I value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” The essence of Charles’ definition is the reliance on another individual to honor and protect what we hold dear. Even more important is the notion that our act of mutual trust “will further our work together.” So whether it’s a relationship between two friends or the complex interactions among an entire software team, when we make what’s important to each member vulnerable to others, we create an environment in which we can work more effectively together. This is precisely the kind of psychologically safe environment in which innovation abounds and product teams thrive. Trusting behaviors manifest in team compacts – explicit, agreed-upon ways of working that members buy into and are set to live by – foundational activities for newer teams searching for a foothold. And for established teams focused on next-level performance. Catch the entire episode to hear Charles describe trust as a compilation of four assessment domains, including Care, Sincerity, Reliability, and Competence. The post 93 / Teams That Trust Find Innovation and Success appeared first on ITX Corp..

Turns out there is an ‘I’ in ‘team.’ Effective product leaders know the importance of giving credit to their teams for a job well done. But too often, we forget to accept some of the praise for ourselves. The risk we run in overlooking our own contributions can actually be detrimental to the team in the long run, says Jocelyn Miller. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean and Paul catch up with Jocelyn Miller, who converted her product management experience at Google and Amazon to help professionals in product, tech, and UX create their dream careers. “If you leave the ‘I’ out of ‘we,’” she says, “that’s when product managers are more likely to get burned out…when even the most effective leaders can become resentful. One of the things so many of us forget is that the more we are recognized and rewarded, the more we can bestow that recognition upon our teams, and the more we can elevate others,” Jocelyn adds. As we learn what it is to be a product manager, she adds, we’re learning that it’s okay to think about ourselves in the team and to accept that it’s okay to think about ourselves outside the team, in our own lives. Catch the entire episode to learn more from Jocelyn Miller, especially – How to balance team advocacy with self-advocacy Why leading a team requires confidence in both the vision and the path Modeling the behaviors you want to see in your team If the culture you’re in isn’t fun, it isn’t sustainable The post 92 / Product Leaders: Don’t Overlook Your Own Contributions appeared first on ITX Corp..

“It depends.” A two-word answer that might seem overly safe. But is the only honest response to the question: “What does it take to be one of the top product managers?” Among dozens of dependencies, the PM role depends on whether you’re at a startup vs. a large, well-established company, says Karthik Suresh, co-founder of Ignition and a product leader with extensive experience as an early start-up hire and a key player in defining product strategy at Facebook. “It’s like two completely different roles,” he adds. When at a startup, Karthik realized that product managers worked with limited resources, so much of the role was based on how well you hustle just to get things done. At Facebook, his role focused more on stakeholder management and collaboration than product strategy. One skill that all top product managers possess – regardless of specific role or circumstance – is the capacity to learn. Particularly helpful when things don’t go according to plan. As Henry Ford once said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” This holds true even when that mistake cost a company $400 million in just 30 minutes! Be sure to listen in as Karthik Suresh shares a story about an algorithm gone wrong – and the important takeaways not only for a company, but also for an entire industry. The post 91 / Capacity to Learn: A Skill All Top Product Managers Possess appeared first on ITX Corp..

Not everyone experiences that polarizing, “fork in the road” moment in their career. That catalyzing realization when a choice needs to be made about which path to take. Before we get there, how do we recognize the signals telling us to step back, take stock, and unpack where we are in our personal and professional life? Liz Li provides some answers in this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast. Liz Li, a Senior Director of Product at LinkedIn, introduces us to the notion of “career principles” to help us navigate that decision. “Think about your career in the same way you think about the products and solutions you build,” she says. Like getting clarity of vision for our next software product, Liz wants us to ‘productize our careers’ by crafting a vision for our future and a plan to achieve it. “Especially for folks in product management, think of your career principles like it was a product strategy or spec – personal rules that you align your career to,” she says. “Write down your career principles in the same way you’d prepare to guide the building of your next product.” Liz believes that for every phase of our careers, we should have a set of rules – unique to ourselves – that we set down to guide our next play. These rules help answer fundamental questions, like what job to take, what role to assume, and what project to take on. Catch the entire pod with Liz and hear her comments about – Women in tech, especially women of color, in people management roles The signals to look for that tell us to reevaluate our circumstance, and think through what’s important Why innovation is more than “a big idea;” there’s actually addressing the challenge and doing the work The post 90 / Amid The Great Resignation, It’s Time To ‘Productize Your Career’ appeared first on ITX Corp..

Saleema Vellani first visited the Product Momentum Podcast two years ago, shortly before the release of her now best-selling book, Innovation Starts with I, and just as a global pandemic tightened its grip on our world. Now two years later, we’re delighted have her back on the pod, this time with Paul and ITX product strategist Roberta Oare. Saleema shares her experiences during what she coined “the reinvention revolution.” Product leaders tend to emphasize a market- or user-focused awareness, and rightly so. Empathy for others is a critical ingredient in improving their experience. But is that truly where innovation begins? Or might the source of that “lightbulb moment” be found elsewhere? Saleema believes that until you truly know yourself – and know what motivates you to be your best self – it’s difficult to bring your best effort to your team, to your users, to your product community. “It’s important to understand who we are as individuals,” she adds. “Whether you’re a business owner or a product manager, if you’re trying to design or innovate and ignite some kind of change, it’s important to start with knowing who you are and what makes you unique. It’s not about just having new ideas.” Tune in to hear more from Saleema Vellani about how you can start your own transformative journey, including: How important it is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable for reinvention and innovation to occur Why failure is the key to success What she means by “optimizing the constants and customizing the variables” The post 89 / Innovation Starts With Self-Awareness appeared first on ITX Corp..

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. The post 88 / Effective Product Managers Embrace a ‘Back to Basics’ Mindset appeared first on ITX Corp..

Service design is not new; in fact, today’s guests Adam Lawrence and Marc Stickdorn have been writing and teaching service design for more than a decade. But even in that time, the question of its precise definition remains, as Adam points out, “very active.” It “is really the design process around any service that is the route or the basis for any experience,” Marc offers. It looks at both the customer experience and what an organization needs to do to actually achieve the customer’s desired outcomes. Adam’s definition is more succinct, but no less thoughtful: “Service design is what service designers do,” he says. That sounds trite on its face, Adam admits, but there’s a good deal of thought behind it. Citing friend and colleague in the field Mauricio Manhaes, Adam adds, “We should spend less time defining service design and more time exposing people to it. Because often you don’t get it until you’ve actually tried it.” So in their work – including delivering a pair of workshops and keynote addresses at ITX’s Product + Design Conference 2022 – Adam Lawrence and Marc Stickdorn are exposing audiences to service design thinking, methods, and tools “so they understand it in their gut before they understand it in their heads,” Adam says. Tune in to catch Paul’s entire conversation with Marc and Adam, as they – Explain how service design tools and methods help reduce the risks associated with product development Describe trends in service design, from the early days spent convincing people that services are useful to the shift from a hands-on, tactical approach to a more strategic mindset Provide examples for how you can use service design tools as part of your refined approach to organizational management The ITX Product + Design Conference 2022 is coming to Rochester, NY on June 23-24; get your tickets here. The post 87 / Service Design: Methods & Tools that Improve the User Experience appeared first on ITX Corp..

A staggering 70-90% of digital products fail or underperform, says Jonathon Hensley, Co-Founder and CEO of Emerge. That translates to trillions of dollars in unrealized investment. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Jonathon points to misalignment as the most common source of product or project failure. “Most products underperform not because the team didn’t care,” Jonathon explains. “I think what’s really happening is that there are barriers to success that are not that well understood.” Those barriers manifest in a number of ways, he adds, such as sacrificing essential design components to save money in the short term, or a lack of objective evaluation of strategy. Jonathon brings a healthy dose of realism to this conversation that is refreshing. He claims that a disconnect between Alignment’s four components – Individual, Team, Organization, and Market – can have cascading effects throughout the product lifecycle. Each builds off the others, but when there is alignment, these collaborate to instill a high-performance mindset. Catch the full episode to hear more from Jonathon Hensley, including – The 5 core elements of strategy The difference between product ownership and product management What investors look for in terms of alignment and value creation What strategy is – and isn’t – Jonathon’s insights may surprise you The post 86 / Optimize Alignment For High Performance appeared first on ITX Corp..