One Knight in Product

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

An interview with Ian Peterman. Ian is the CEO at Peterman Design Firm, where he aims to help design more sustainable & ethical products. He's also trying to bring this thinking to the world with his podcast and new book, both called Conscious Design. He's also created the Peterman Method, aiming to put a process around the principles and ensure we leave legacies we can be proud of. We speak about a lot, including: The goals behind Peterman Design Firm, the problems they solve & why they lean towards physical products How being a very ethically focused company impacts the types of clients they attract and whether they have to turn anyone down The importance of enabling companies to take baby steps rather than limiting your impact by only focusing on companies that want to go all in Why he & his wife decided to write the Conscious Design book, and how their different professional backgrounds contributed to the thinking inside it What Conscious Design is, and how the four pillars of Conscious Design enable us to assess the environmental & social impact of our products The Peterman Method that he created and how it enables Conscious Design by putting a process on top of the pillars Why it's important for companies to be conscious of the legacy the they create for their product, their brand and the impact they have on the world And much more!   Buy Conscious Design "If you are building products and brands with regeneration and sustainability in mind, we appreciate you! We hope this book will give you some ideas on how to implement Conscious Design by using the Peterman Method with your own project."   Visit the book website for more info. Listen to the Conscious Design podcast If you have any time after listening to all of my episodes, why not try out Conscious Design Podcast and find out more about Ian's work? Contact Ian You can find Ian on Peterman Design Firm or LinkedIn

An interview with Radhika Dutt. Radhika is a product leader, consultant & author of "Radical Product Thinking". I spoke to Radhika a couple of months ago about some of the core themes of her book but we wanted to deep dive into some of her themes around digital pollution, product ethics, and how to take responsibility for the changes our products bring to the world. We speak about a lot, including: The reception for Radical Product Thinking, what people are taking from the book, and how it's resonated with people around the world How polarising it was to include a section on digital ethics in the book, and how a Silicon Valley heavyweight refused to write a foreward because of it The types of digital pollution, how they manifest themselves, what to look for in your own products and how it's not just about Big Tech How the free market "prisoners' dilemma" means that companies prioritise profit over all else and some of the ways we might persuade people to move to more ethical jobs Whether it's ok for tech companies to paint themselves as dumb pipes with no responsibility for the effects of their platforms Whether there's any hope to get companies to do the right thing, or whether the only answer is aggressive regulation to get companies to take this seriously The importance of the Product Hippocratic Oath and how we as product people need to take responsibility for the effects of our products And much more! Buy Radical Product Thinking   "Iteration rules product development, but it isn't enough to produce dramatic results. This book champions Radical Product Thinking, a systematic methodology for building visionary, game-changing products."   Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads. Listen to Radhika's last episode We covered some of the broader themes from Radhika's book in our first episode Episode 82 - Curing Product Diseases with a Radical Product Vision. Contact Radhika You can find Radhika on Twitter or LinkedIn

An interview with Gabriele Musella. Gabriele is the CEO of Coinrule, a YCombinator backed startup that aims to democratise crypto trading and enable people to set up their own automations to manage their investments for them. He's also created the DDDT framework to drive product decision-making and bring design thinking to the crypto space. We speak about a lot, including: The idea behind Coinrule, the rise of automated crypto trading and whether automated trading is as high pressure as it looks in the movies Why being unregulated was a great way to build a trading startup and what the future might look like for crypto regulation Whether Coinrule is actually using blockchain technology itself, and whether this would have any benefit for them as a company How much of a crypto-fundamentalist he is, how he sees the space developing, and how blockchain energy usage chimes with his eco awareness His experience with YCombinator, what he got out of the process apart from money, and how he learned to "prioritise like hell" How Coinrule build products, the DDDT process he created and how it allows the company to Discover, Define, Design and Test products How they talk to at least 100 users a month and built a culture of user research, and what it's like doing user research with such a passionate community His mentorship work with Google Launchpad and how he's aiming to help early stage startups understand how to do UX better And much more! Contact Gabriele You can contact Gabriele on Twitter or coinrule.com.

An interview with Daniel Cooper. Daniel is an automation nerd and founder of Lolly Co, a company that aims to help founders of growing companies unlock growth through automation and enabling them to focus human effort on things that humans are best at. He's also the author of the upcoming book "Upgrade" that aims to bring these techniques to the world. We speak about a lot, including: The story behind Lolly Co, the problems they solve, and why process optimisation & automation is crucial for a scaling business The similarities between their consultative work and good product discovery. The importance of focusing on the goal, not the technology The importance of getting in early, working with founders, and enabling them to break through their growth ceiling to scale Why it's important to have processes, but not too much process, to make sure you can operate effectively The reason that he's doing this via consultancy rather than building a self-serve SaaS platform How the No Code craze has affected his work, whether his clients still need him or are actually prepared to build everything themselves His new book "Upgrade", coming out imminently, which aims to take some of the principles from his work to the masses And much more! Check out Upgrade "Like me, if you run a business then one thing is for sure - you're spinning a lot of plates. But, what if I could show you how to automate them and scale the number you can spin? Together let's put your business under the microscope and explore the strategies and techniques traditionally reserved for Silicon Valley and apply them to your business."   Visit the book website. Contact Daniel You can contact Daniel on Twitter or check out his company at Lolly Co.

An interview with Anthony Marter. Anthony is a product & delivery consultant who is passionate about helping New Zealand companies build products more effectively by intercepting them at the right time to deliver change. He's taken his passion for the local product community into Product Aotearoa, a community aiming to support product practices across New Zealand. We speak about a lot, including: How he aims to use his consulting to "help influence companies on how they do product management at the right moment" and make sure the New Zealand product community are supported How Product Aotearoa got started, the mission behind it, and why it's important for the organisation to make some noise globally to attract speakers The current state of Māori and Pasifika inclusion within the New Zealand tech scene, the lack of product role models in these communities, and how he's trying to help bridge the gap The lack of product management leadership at the exec table in New Zealand, and how this has driven the trend for CPOs without product management backgrounds The problem with management-led feature definition, and how many New Zealand companies are just have product owners managing backlogs in feature factories, with no say on strategy Some of the ways he uses his consulting to try to sell the benefits of being product-led to sceptical company leaders to drive change The importance of product discovery and ensuring that companies stay ahead of the curve by taking HIPPOs along for the ride The problems with sales-led product development & services mindset, and how to drive change by using data to connect outcomes with non-product execs And much more! Contact Anthony You can contact Anthony on Twitter or LinkedIn.