One Knight in Product

An interview with Hanne Ockert-Axelsson. Hanne is a Senior Product Manager at accuRx, a UK-based Healthtech company revolutionising the world of General Practioners (GPs) in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Hanne formerly worked at various NGOs and health-focused organisations before seeking out digital product management to make a measurable impact quickly. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind accuRx, how their solution got into the hands of 98% of GP practices in the UK, and how healthcare providers deserve great products like the rest of us How she got her first product job without any experience, and used her passion for healthcare to become the first product hire at accuRx The resources she used to level up her game once she'd got that first job, and the one key book she'd recommend to other people making the move Her passion for high performing teams, what that means to her and some of the ways she tries to help build a performant culture The difference between Big Tech product management & other companies and why it's important to get in the trenches with your team Why you shouldn't fix what ain't broke when moving into a new team, to avoid demoralising people and losing their buy in to fix the real problems How to be a good team leader, the importance of identifying your leadership style, being your authentic self but the being best version of yourself where required And much more! Contact Hanne You can find Hanne at Twitter, LinkedIn or check out her writing on Medium.

An interview with Jonathon Hensley. Jonathon is a digital transformation consultant who has seen the problems of misalignment up close and wanted to help companies avoid it. He's the recent author of "Alignment", a book that aims to show how companies need to drive for alignment through the business to avoid internal sabotage costly product failure. We speak about a lot, including: How misalignment within companies represents a billion dollar problem and how this spurred him to write the book to help avoid that His definition of alignment, why it's not as simple as people think it is, and how he structures it into four pillars Some of the early warning signs of misalignment in a company, and why it all starts from having a measurable product strategy What happens when companies are misaligned, how toxic it can be to innovation, and how it can impact team morale How some companies seem permanently misaligned and whether it's even possible for misaligned companies to succeed The importance of aligning incentives & breaking out of solos, avoiding cognitive dissonance & aligning on a common language Why leaders need to be honest, open to new input, self-reflective and humble and why the HIPPO can't be the loudest voice driving a decision And much more!   Buy "Alignment" " Alignment is the one thing you’ll find at the heart of every successful relationship, team, and organization in the world. When developed and leveraged, alignment can create the foundation for unparalleled product success."   Visit Amazon for more info. Contact Jonathon You can find Jonathon at Emerge or LinkedIn.

An interview with Wolfgang Bremer. Wolfgang is the Head of Design at Elli, an electric vehicle company that is part of the Volkswagen group. Wolfgang wants to help make people's lives simpler through design, build true cross-functional relationships and is passionate about getting designers a seat at the table and making them valued business partners. We speak about a lot, including: The mission behind Elli and some of the considerations & challenges of creating physical products where you actually have to make things Why he tends to bounce from big company to small company and vice versa, the pros & cons of each type of company and whether, given Volkswagen own Elli, he's in a small company or a big company right now Some key considerations you need to think about when hiring designers depending on the size of your company and what you might optimise for The problems that silo thinking can bring, where you have designers, product and engineering throwing grenades backwards and forwards over the fence Why it's so important for designers to be true business partners and some of the problems it can cause when they're not Whether it's important to have a CXO representing the design team at the top table, or whether it really matters who the team reports through Some of the hallmarks of bad managers, how even small things can make a difference, and some principles to live by when trying to build effective teams And much more! Contact Wolfgang You can join Wolfgang's 20K followers (and counting) on Twitter or visit bremer.co.

An interview with Phyllis Njoroge. Phyllis is a product manager, cognitive scientist and now author of "From Fraud to Freedom". Phyllis wants us all to know that imposter syndrome is something that can be tackled, and wrote a book to help us examine how to tackle an issue that affects many product managers due to the ambiguity of our roles. We speak about a lot, including: Her book, from Fraud to Freedom, and how it digs into what Imposter Syndrome actually is and whether everyone has it Her journey into product management, and whether going into an industry she had no experience in made her imposter syndrome worse The problems of getting into self-reinforcing negative feedback loops and the ways you might intervene to stop you sabotaging yourself How imposter syndrome isn't just in your head but can be imposed on marginalised groups by a society that gives every impression that you don't belong there How imposter syndrome isn't something that goes away with seniority or perceived success, and how these might even make it worse Whether her background in cognitive sciences informed the book, and how she used that background to examine the cognitive biases that reinforce imposter syndrome Whether product managers are more prone to imposter syndrome due to the vague, ambiguous nature of many product management roles And much more! Buy From Fraud to Freedom "From Fraud to Freedom is a book about how we all play a part in contributing to or calming impostor syndrome. It’s a solution-oriented book that discusses methods for individuals, mentors, managers, and friends to manage their own impostor syndrome and helps others in the process too. Even though an estimated 70% of people experience impostor syndrome, the guidance in this book is not one-size-fits-all but filled with a range of intrapersonal and interpersonal methods to achieve your best self."   Visit The Book Website for more info. Contact Phyllis You can find Phyllis on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Ebenezer Ikonne. Eb is an experienced product leader and social scientist who wanted to contribute to the product leadership community. To support this goal, he's recently published a book, "Becoming a Leader in Product Development" which aims to help us all take a long, hard look at our leadership practices and make us the best leaders we can be. We speak about a lot, including: How most leaders are winging it, with teams that are successful in spite of the leader in question, and how effective teams can hide ineffective managers The chain of leadership mediocrity; how people are left to work out leadership on their own, with their only role models being people that were left to work it out on their own Why the world needed another leadership book and how he sees it as the healthy alternative to "microwave thought leadership" & meaningless leadership memes Whether we need "assigned leaders" these days in this lean & agile world and whether it's really true that "everyone's a leader" What good leadership looks like, and why it should be more than whether the job got done but how the job got done The often discussed, poorly understood concept of servant leadership, what it really means, why it's important and whether it can be taken too far Why it's so important to take care of yourself as a product leader, how leadership is hard and how you can't be a good leader if you don't take care of yourself And much more!   Buy Becoming A Leader in Product Development "It is becoming increasingly challenging for product development leaders to effectively lead as workplace demands continue to increase. The rate of change in technology, society, and business places immense pressure on leaders to ensure their groups move in the direction of their goals. What might have worked in the past no longer works."   Visit Amazon or Goodreads for more info. Check out "Joy at Work" Eb has a YouTube channel! Check it out Joy at Work. Contact Eb You can find Eb on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Irene Yu. Irene is a former software developer for up-and-coming everything store Amazon, where she found herself mentoring non-technical product managers to help them get better at tech. Inspired by her success, she left to found Skiplevel, a technical training startup aimed at teach actually useful tech skills to product managers & non tech founders. We talk about a lot, including: The mission behind Skiplevel and how she's trying to provide a good and easy place to learn useful technical knowledge for non-engineering tech workers What being technical means, why being technical is helpful, and the importance of giving PMs and founders confidence to have constructive conversations with engineering The target audience for Skiplevel and whether it's suitable for the wider business or focused relentlessly on PMs and founders Why learning to code is not the best way to learn technical skills and how learning a broad set of technical concepts is superior The four pillars of technical knowledge that Skiplevel teaches and how they contribute to helping people go wide not deep Whether product managers even need to be technical, whether coding interviews are appropriate, and why companies use them The potential risks of people knowing enough to contribute but not enough to make decisions, but then trying to make them anyway And much more! Check out Skiplevel If you want to get better at tech & go beyond learning how to code toy apps for the sake of it, why not check out Skiplevel.co? Contact Irene You can reach out to Irene on Twitter.

An interview with Brian Shen. Brian is Product Director and head of Product Ops at ClickUp, an all-in-one productivity platform that you've definitely seen an advertisement for recently. ClickUp are taking aim at JIRA and other productivity platforms and aim to "save you one day a week". The company is on a hypergrowth path and Brian is trying to ensure the team remains effective along the way. We talk about a lot, including: What ClickUp does, how it's different from other productivity tools, and how they can "save you one day a week" How they can avoid becoming the next JIRA, and how they aim to keep UX at the centre & develop a fully integrated solution How they use Product Ops at ClickUp and whether it's fair to label Product Ops as merely "process people" or whether they're strategic enabler for the business How using ClickUp within the product team helps them to build a tool that helps product people build products using ClickUp Some of the challenges of running a product team during hypergrowth & some of the things they've had to change along the way The problems with "unintentional communication", why you have to vary your message for your audience and the importance of telling a coherent story How to prepare for a live talk to thousands of people at your company conferences and how stretch experiences like this help you become a better leader And much more! Check out ClickUp If ClickUp sounds good to you, and you want to see if you can save one day a week, why not check out ClickUp.com? Contact Brian You can reach out to Brian on LinkedIn.

An interview with Sigurd Seteklev. Sigurd is the co-founder of Y Combinator backed Kitemaker, a startup that is trying to enable true cross-team collaboration and empowered product development teams. He is keen to ensure that people have the ability to step beyond JIRA, and boldy claims to be the tool that "people who want to work like Marty Cagan says" should use. The story behind Kitemaker, the problems they're trying to solve, and why you need to step beyond bug trackers Why it's critical to empower cross-team collaboration and getting everyone into the same tool so they don't have to log in everywhere How they're hoping to use Kitemaker to help drive home "proper" product practices but how it's not possible to solve it with software alone Whether he's trying to force people to work in a very specific way or whether they believe in flexibility in the process The problem with dogmatically following product processes & going through the motions & the importance of cultural change How good product development teams all look different, whilst not good teams look similar, and some of the hallmarks of good teams How you might try to change a company that isn't working the way you want to work, and the importance of matching type of company to your interests And much more! Check out Kitemaker If Kitemaker sounds good to you, why not check out Kitemaker.co and see what the fuss is about? Contact Sigurd You can reach out to Sigurd on LinkedIn or Twitter.

An interview with Brendan McAdams. Brendan is a long time Enterprise SaaS salesman and author of "Sales Craft", a book he hopes will help salespeople and even tech founders get better at selling their products. Brendan is keen to stand up for the sales team, the value they add to customer relationships, and work out how we can make sure sales & product teams can work together more effectively. We speak about a lot, including: His book Sales Craft and how he wanted to write a very practical book to help to take the mystery out of sales The tension between sales & product management, some of the ways the sales team can bridge the gap, and why sales is a team sport Why it's important for salespeople to avoid Columbo "One More Thing" features and how they have to be prepared to walk away from a deal The problems with salespeople being prepared to go out, promise anything the client asks for and dumping a bag of manure on the product team's desk Why sales is like poker, having to play the hand you've been dealt, and how empowering it can be to say to no to a request you can't serve How sales discovery intersects with product discovery, the importance of getting product people into the field, and whether salespeople have a wide enough view of the market What Product-Led Growth means to him as a salesperson, and whether he thinks it's applicable to all stages of a product And much more! Buy Sales Craft "Sales Craft isn't like most sales books. It isn't proposing a new sales process or a system to 10X your income. Instead, it offers up a series of simple but thought-provoking tips and ideas about how to enhance your sales effectiveness."   Visit Amazon or Goodreads for more info. Contact Brendan You can find Brendan on BrendanMcAdams.com or Twitter

Trigger warning: Please be aware that this episode contains references to domestic abuse An interview with Eva PenzeyMoog. Eva is a designer and former volunteer rape crisis counselor, who wants to encourage us all to consider the harm that we may be inadvertently causing through our product design decisions. She's the author of new book "Design for Safety" as well as the founder of the Inclusive Safety Project. We speak about a lot, including: The core message of her new book, Design for Safety, and some of the surprising feedback she has gotten so far Whether there has been any negative feedback for the book from people who don't want to admit that there is any problem at all How difficult it was to research the book, the importance of validating survivors of abuse and ensuring they can share on their terms Some of the most common low-hanging fruit that people should look at in their products to start making them safer for users Whether responsibility for the harm caused by products belongs to the teams building them or the company leaders reaping the rewards How product teams can do a safety audit and start to bake safety into their ongoing product design processes How to help product design teams get into the habit of sensitively interviewing the right people to understand the safety implications of their products Whether there's any hope for big tech firms to self-regulate or whether governmental regulation is the only way And much more! Buy Design for Safety "'How will our product hurt people?' As web workers, we don’t often ask this question—but we should. Too often, we design for idealized circumstances, even though our users bring a range of complicated personal dynamics to every interaction. When we fail to explicitly design for vulnerable users, we unintentionally prioritize their abusers. Eva PenzeyMoog explains how even the most well-intentioned design can be weaponized for interpersonal harm. Through poignant, all-too-common examples, Eva demonstrates how to identify a design’s potential for abuse, how to avoid and mitigate the damage, and how to bake safety into every step of the design process. We can’t build good digital products unless we recognize that our users’ safety, and lives, are at stake."   Visit the book website for more info. If you need further resources on safety If you want to learn more about some of the issues raised in this episode or in the book, Eva has curated a list of resources for designing for safety & related topics. Contact Eva You can find Eva at The Inclusive Safety Project or Twitter