The Product Experience

Margaret Heffernan, a prolific writer and captivating speaker, discusses the challenges of predicting the future and the difference between complicated and complex systems. She also explores the challenges faced by product managers and the importance of accuracy and transparency in product forecasting.

If you're the kind of person that listens to the Product Experience and reads articles on MTP, then you're already familiar with any number of frameworks, methodologies and principles to make you a better product manager.  But knowing them isn't enough to do the job — or, at least, not to do it well.  Figuring out what works for you is way more important.  That's something we discussed with Esha Shukla, Product Manager at WhatsApp, for this week's podcast - she's spent the last few years refining her approach to 5 solid principles that really work.Featured Links: Follow Esha on LinkedIn and Twitter | Meta | WhatsAppOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

 Ashley Smith has a long career of helping early-stage startups scale into successful organisations. In this episode, Ashley talks to our hosts about product-led growth, and how everyone can and should do it.Featured Links: Follow Ashley on LinkedIn and Twitter | OpenView Partners Product-Led Growth Index Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

One great product person can do some amazing things.  An entire team of great product people is a force multiplier, creating an environment that is far more than the sum of its parts.  We talked with Petra Wille - Coach, Author & co-creator of MTP Engage/Hamburg - about what it takes to 10x your team.Featured Links: Follow Petra on LinkedIn and Twitter | Petra's website: Strong Product People | The PM wheel Framework | Buy Petra's book 'Strong Product People' |'A Better Shipyard' - Joff Redfern on The Product ExperienceOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Product people have a tendency to solutions—we're enlightened enough to know better, but we always need to resist the urge to try and fix every problem we come across. That's an especially hard challenge when the problems are internal. Keeping on top of your mental wellbeing is critical, so we talked with Nicholas Jemetta about how to take of yourself (as well as the rest of your team).Featured Links: Follow Nick on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram | 'Fancy Dress Dad' - Nick's lockdown story on the BBC | Donate to Nick's 'Fancy Dress Dad' Mental Health UK JustGiving page | Joe Wicks' The Body CoachOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Guido Lonetti’s career started out at age 14 in his bedroom – he built an MP3 search engine website that immediately started making money until his parents quashed that idea! In this episode, he shines a light on the diverse product culture in South and Latin America, where he’s spent time as a Head of Product and the co-organiser of ProductTank Buenos Aires.Featured Links: Follow Guido on LinkedIn and Medium | Biggest Product Management cultures in South and Latin America: Marketplace and Travel | Startups: Mural and Tiendanube | New companies: Nubank and RappiOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

At some point, virtually every product person has had a run in with their CEO and thought to themselves, "Hey, I could do a better job than they do.  Maybe I should start my own thing."  Most of us then think about all the things we'd have to take on (or about the lack of a steady paycheck) and decide to keep working for others.  But some of us don't - we hand in our notice and follow the dream of starting something new.  This week, we talked to Alexander Hipp - co-founder of Beyond, formerly of Xing and N26 - about why he made the decision, what it's been like so far, and what he'd advise anyone making a similar decision.Featured Links: Follow Alexander on LinkedIn and Twitter | Beyond - a community platform for Creators | The PM Library - be part of the first social book library for the Tech and Startup industry | Eco-friendly products at RiptideOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

One of the biggest challenges of working in product is figuring out what story we're trying to tell, and bringing everyone on board with that story.  On this week's podcast, we talked with Janice Fraser about ensuring that the story you're telling is rooted in truth—and all of the things that can get in the way.Featured Links: Follow Janice on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram | Janice's Website | Janice's piece and talk on 'Uncovering the Truth' at Mind The Product Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

OKRs are a simple concept — but deceptively hard to get right.   There's an awful lot of horror stories about implementations gone wrong, along with any number of gurus and guides on how to get it right. Storm Fagan — now the Chief Product Officer at the BBC, formerly at JustEat — joined us on the podcast to break down how she made OKRs scale at a big company by keeping them simple. (Hint: that wasn't her first approach.)Featured Links: Follow Storm on LinkedIn and Twitter | Just Eat | Work with Storm at the BBC | 'How to Write OKRs That Don't Suck'  MTP piece by Adrian Howard Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Just when you've finally convinced everyone to work mobile-first, the world goes multimodal. If you're not already working on how you might need to plan for voice interaction and conversation design, physical interaction, and even augmented reality, don't worry - you'renot alone.  We sat down with Cheryl Platz  (author, and now Director of UX, Player Platform for Riot Games) to learn how to adapt our products.Featured Links: Follow Cheryl on LinkedIn and Twitter | Cheryl's Website | Cheryl's book 'Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences' | Capturing Customer Context - free downloadable worksheets | 'How Calm Technology Can Help Us Be More Human' talk by Amber CaseOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.