The Product Experience

Just call him Mr Joe. A UK-based consultant, Joe Leech has built a reputation for managing change (for both users and stakeholders) and as the guy to call when a product launch has gone wrong.  Joe gave one of the most entertaining and engaging talks at Mind the Product in London 2018, so we followed [...] Read more » The post Managing Change – Joe Leech on The Product Experience [Rebroadcast] app...

One of our favourite pub discussions after a ProductTank is to try and define the difference between a product and a service. (We’re fun like that.) These days, we’re doing all of our meetups and events remotely, so Andy Budd joined us on the podcast to talk about the difference between product managers and service [...] Read more » The post Service Design and Product – Andy Budd on The Product Ex...

Teaching something is hard – to do it well, you need both an incredible command of the subject and great communication skills. Teaching in the form of a narrative story? That’s another level of difficulty and in her new book, The Team That Managed Itself: A Story Of Leadership, Christina Wodtke does just that. Drawing [...] Read more » The post Leading Teams to Success – Christina Wodtke on The Pr...

All the sexy stories around product management come from startups, or revolve around working like a startup. Working in an enterprise gets much less respect – but being successful in a large firm is no picnic. It takes a very particular set of skills to be able to communicate, influence, prioritise and execute at scale [...] Read more » The post Product In The Enterprise – Alicia Dixon on The Prod...

Nandini Jammi started out in product marketing and growth, but after the US elections in 2016, her career took an unexpected turn when she joined Sleeping Giants, an organisation that aims to make bigotry and sexism less profitable. In this episode of The Product Experience, sponsored by Amplitude, learn how to apply this ethos to [...] Read more » The post Sleeping Giants – Nandini Jammi on The P...

Product people have a lot of things in common: we’re curious, we like connecting the dots, we try to solve more problems than we create, we get bored easily, we’re pretty social (even if we also identify as introverts), and we enjoy looking at things at both a tactical and strategic level. Unfortunately, we’re also [...] Read more » The post You Are the Product – Kristina Walcker-Mayer on The Prod...

Working in product is a dream job for lots of people but sustaining a dream career certainly isn’t without challenges. There are problems around burnout, advancement, the challenges of specialisation, and in being a generalist. Jeff Gothelf has been there. He woke up one day and realised that his path forward as a design leader [...] Read more » The post Forever Employable – Jeff Gothelf on The Pr...

Over the course of lockdown, how we maintain relationships with our nearest and dearest has been tested. But Fabrice des Mazery, CPO at Thiga, suggests the skills we’ve honed during this time can actually be useful in building relationships with our customers. In this episode, sponsored by Amplitude, he draws on his experience at Deezer, [...] Read more » The post Build Relationships With Your Cus...

Berlin-based Product Coach Shaun Russell was always destined to work in Product. He co-founded Audiobubble while still in school and gave himself all the responsibilities of a Product Manager years before ever hearing of the title. In the years since he’s put a lot of thought into the development of his practice and has spoken [...] Read more » The post Breaking Into Product – Shaun Russell on The...

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that predicting the future is hard and in this episode, sponsored by Amplitude, we turn to Margaret Heffernan to learn how to do it better. She’s a captivating speaker with more than 12 million views of her TED talks and a prolific writer who recently published Uncharted: How To [...] Read more » The post Making Better Predictions – Margaret Heffernan on The Pr...

One of the critical skills never mentioned in the job description is being a great meeting facilitator. We’ve all been thrust into the situation of trying to wrangle a room full of people into working together to create a strategy, generate a plan, or get past a roadblock. Elena Astilleros has been there, too – [...] Read more » The post The Invisible Leader: Facilitation Secrets – Elena Astillero...

The story of the first ProductTank – held in the back room of a London pub, arranged by Martin Eriksson, attended by a handful of people – has been told many times. And so, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, we wanted to hear from someone else who was there, in the room, when it all [...] Read more » The post World Product Day Special – 10 Years of ProductTank, Arne Kittler & Selena Hadzibabic...

In previous roles, Julia Whitney led teams at WGBH and the BBC, so she’s familiar with rooms full of people in meetings where decisions not only don’t get made, they’re sometimes actively avoided. Now an executive and leadership coach, she’s devoted a lot of time over the last few years to working with teams on [...] Read more » The post Making Decisions That Scale – Julia Whitney on The Product E...

One of the tropes we’ve heard again and again is that product people don’t actually build anything. We’re not designers (except when we are) or engineers (unless we can code) or anything actually, y’know, useful. What that viewpoint misses is that we build understanding, alignment, and purpose – and that our best tool is conversations. [...] Read more » The post Troubleshooting Agile – Jeffrey Fre...

At ProductCamp Southwest UK earlier this year, Adrian Howard ran a session that focused on something he termed ‘Sturgeon’s biases‘ – where he talked about how the experience of being in a community was not evenly distributed, about the fact that like-minded people tend to group together, and that 90% of everything is crap. We [...] Read more » The post 90% of Everything is Crap – Adrian Howard on...

It can be tough, even at the best of times, to remain engaged at work – to find a community of people to share with and learn from. Emily Webber’s seen this in action and has started (and nurtured) successful communities both at work and at home. She joined us to continue where her 2018 [...] Read more » The post Building Communities That Work – Emily Webber on The Product Experience appeared firs...

We’ve heard it again and again – these are odd times; we’re not working remotely, we’re working during a crisis; this is not the new normal. You’re not working the same way, and your customers have different needs than they did a month ago. We turned to Teresa Torres – our first repeat guest! – [...] Read more » The post Remote Discovery – Teresa Torres on The Product Experience appeared first on...

For obvious reasons, most of us are currently working from home, along with teams that are also all remote. Even if you’ve worked from home before, even if you’ve done it under tough conditions, this is different. Amir Salihefendić should know. As the founder and CEO of Doist (makers of Todoist and Twist), his company [...] Read more » The post Remote Working For Product Organisations – Amir Salih...

Throughout their careers, whatever question either Lily or Randy has had, Roman Pichler’s probably had some great advice on the topic! A longtime consultant, author and teacher, we grabbed him for a chat focusing on some of the lessons contained in his fourth book, How to Lead in Product Management. Quote of the Episode A [...] Read more » The post Conversations, Conflict and Leadership – Roman Pi...

When you want to learn about the state of product management across Asia, there are two people who come to mind: Adrienne Tan (CEO and co-founder of Brianmates in Sydney) and Colin Pal (Chief Product Officer, Caterspot in Kuala Lumpur). With more than 25 years of experience between them, they’ve been there since the beginning, [...] Read more » The post Building Products in AsiaPac – Colin Pal and...

A couple of things we’re hearing people talk about a lot this week are how they’re adjusting to working in a different way, and how they are adjusting their strategies to deal with the current situation. These are situations that are fraught with the possibility for unintended consequences – something Roisi Proven covered in her [...] Read more » The post The Black Mirror Test – Roisi Proven on Th...

Nobody rants quite like Laura Klein. Others have tried, but we’ve yet to find anyone else with her depth of experience (spanning stints as a developer, designer, researcher and product manager), her empathy for both users and stakeholders, her experience as a teacher, and her sense of humour. She’s author of Build Better Products: a [...] Read more » The post Build Better Products – Laura Klein on...

One of the things we’ve learned from doing this podcast is that it’s important to schedule in time to reflect and to revisit some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way.  It’s been a recurring theme, actually – something that’s been mentioned by Barry O’Reilly, Rian van der Merwe, and John Cutler – and [...] Read more » The post Outcomes Over Outputs – Josh Seiden on The Product Experience [R...

The best product people are the ones that are insatiably curious, who want to learn more, who want to get better at all aspects of the job.  In many businesses this can be hard – there’s not always an established culture, or people around who have done the job before and can help upskill the [...] Read more » The post Building Better Product People – Sebastian Sabouné on The Product Experience app...

At MTP Engage Manchester (February 2020), Rakhi Rajani (Associate Partner at QuantumBlack) joined us for our first-ever live podcast recording. Talking to Rakhi we learned why Engage organiser Adam Warburton called her the smartest person he’s ever worked with as we discussed building teams, hiring at scale, when you need troublemakers, and why she had [...] Read more » The post Cognitively Divers...