Lessons In Product Management

As we celebrate International Women's Day today, I'm super excited to have a woman on the podcast who is making waves in the world of Customer Success. On this episode of Lessons in Product Management, I have Bhavika Kochhar, a Customer Success Manager at Algonomy and she has been in similar roles for the last 5 years. She also a founder at IncustomerSuccess, CSLadies, the Bhavika&Lotte CS Cha...

Don't forget to join the MentorMesh community for free and if you're looking to get into Product Management, sign up for the MentorMesh PM Career Accelerator ! On today's episode, I sat down with Phyllis Njoroge, Product Manager at Redfin and imposter syndrome connoisseur. Phyllis drops some great wisdom on what imposter syndrome is, where it comes from, the #1 way to combat it and how important i...

Be sure to join the free community at MentorMesh.io and check out the PM Career Accelerator from MentorMesh.  On this episode, I dive into the topic of stakeholder empathy. Assuming stakeholder priorities is the antithesis to empathy. Fortunately, there are some easy ways to start building trust with stakeholders and creating alignment for your organization as a PM.  In this conversation...

Don't forget to check out mentormesh.io and check out the PM Career Accelerator if you're looking to break into Product! Here's what we discussed: How Jae started in Tech without a degree or connections and transitioned from engineering manager to Sr. PM at Microsoft to launch his PM career Why Jae started the MentorMesh.io platform and the goal of the community What an entrepreneurial mindset is...

Accelerate your path to product by joining us at Path2Product to get the hands-on experience you need to land your first Product job.  On this episode, I break down why you should never assume development effort. Save yourself some headache and heartache. Save your developers some stress. And save your cross-functional partners the disappointment. 

On today's episode, Zach Daley joins us again to share insights on the opportunities he sees for Product and UX to collaborate more effectively.  Here's what we discussed: Zach's role as a design lead and how it's structured like a "player-coach" type of role The overlap and collaborative nature of the UX and PM relationship And the differences between UX and PM and who "owns" which pieces Wh...

MentorMesh PM Career Accelerator - Join Today! Okay, I know this might sound controversial, but hey... our jobs as PMs are not to be order-takers. Our jobs are to prioritize customer problems that align to driving business outcomes. If our executives press us to prioritize things that would limit our ability to do those two things, then we should push back. Enjoy the episode as I relate this topic...

Identifying gaps in the market and building solutions to fill those gaps to solve customer problems is a key part of product management. On today's episode, Heather James, Founder of the Product-Led Alliance, dropped by the pod to share how and why she Founded the Product-Led Alliance, the gap she saw in the market, and how she and the PLA team are filling those gaps. Here's what we discussed: The...

On part 1 of "Never Assume Competitors Are Correct", I'll discuss the pitfalls of copying competitors and why it's never a good idea.  If you're looking to get into Product Management, be sure to check us out at path2product.io where you'll have the opportunity to gain the hands-on experience you need to break into your first role as a Product Manager

Sign up today for the INDUSTRY conference and get 20% off using promo code: path2product20 The Industry Conference - Sign Up Here On today's episode, I got to sit down with Mike Belsito, Co-Founder of Product Collective and Co-Organizer of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference, and co-host of the Rocketship.fm podcast! Here's what we discussed: Mike has been involved with early-stage startups since 200...

As we continue the "Never Assume" bonus series, we're going to focus this week's episode on feature requests and why we should never assume the solutions customers propose are the right ones. 

You've heard it said that Product Managers and Companies as a whole should be data-driven, but did you know that too much data isn't a good thing? It's like a good wine. The right amount leads to a good time, but having too much can leave you drunk and hungover. On today's episode, Emily Reid, Product Manager at AgeRate comes on the pod to share the difference between being data-driven and data-dr...

On the first episode of the Never Assume series, I break down why you should never assume you're correct. It's not our job to come up with ideas. It's our job to prioritize what we work on based on how it's going to reach our business objectives, and we'll never know we're on the right track unless we validate our assumptions and hypotheses! 

You always hear that Product Management requires leadership through influence, but have you ever considered being asked to influence the processes of other departments or the tools each department might use to get their jobs done? Well, on today's episode we get to hear from Tunde Oke, Product Manager of Developer Enablement & DevOps Experience @ Dell. Before working on Developer Enablement, T...

Huge shout out to this episode's sponsor, Jacobs Creative Services. Check them out at: Jacobs Creative Services On today's episode, I sat down with Abby Hehemann, Sr. Product Marketing Manager @ GetResponse where we explored what the ideal partnership looks like between Product Marketing and Product Management.  Here's what we discussed: How Abby got into Product Marketing, pivoting from Cust...

Here's what we discussed: What Difrent does as an organization Randal's role as Head of Growth Where Randal started his career and how he transitioned into Product Management How Difrent helped to quell the COVID storm in the UK The massive challenge that Randal was given to solve and the 7-day window he had to do it How the team approached the challenge and the massive team it took to tackle this...

Whether you're thinking about your target market or your target persona and their problem(s), coming to a precise definition of what problem you're trying to solve and who has that problem is absolutely key for developing concrete, valuable solutions.  That's what Aazar and I talk about on this episode, but here's some of the other things we discussed: How Aazar got started in his career and...

Here's what we discussed: The big problems in the employee experience that Anthony found first-hand How Anthony validated the scale of the problem across businesses The behavioral driver creating this problem and how that was the key challenge to overcome Why cultural issues are driven by old-school mindsets of HR and how those sands are shifting The data driving the value behind the E1B2 Collecti...

Here's what we discussed: Randy shared what he does as an Agile coach, and how he's different from others The problem with falling in love with solutions rather than the problem Some of the forces that work against organizational agility How to shift from a silo'd organization to a collaborative product-led company Why the whole organization needs to be involved in product development to stay agil...

On today's episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Kayla Lee. Kayla is currently a Growth PM at IBM working in IBM's Quantum group and we had a great discussion on how IBM approaches go to market with cutting edge technologies like quantum computing and how reducing the barriers to entry is one of the most critical aspects of scaling adoption.  Here's what we discussed: Kayla's role...

On today's episode, I spoke with Thane Ringler, speaker, author, podcast host, and development coach. Thane is a good friend, but this conversation isn't going to be your typical product management discussion. Thane doesn't have a PM background, but what he's about to share absolutely applies to you as a product manager. If product launches fail, it's on us and we MUST take ownership of the succes...

On today's episode, I got to speak with Peter Knudson, Manager of Product Management at Unity. Before Unity, Peter was a PM at both Zynga and Activision, pretty much spending his entire career as a Product Manager. Peter shares his product career journey and some great lessons he's learned along the way.  Here's what we discussed: Peter's background and how he pretty much started his career i...

On today's episode, I sat down with Preethi Sekar, Product Manager at L&T Technology Servies. On this episode Preethi shares the dangers of taking product requirements from internal stakeholders and not including users in the research and feedback to determine what those product requirements should be. Preethi's story highlights how industry experience does not guarantee you understand your cu...

On today's episode, I sat down with Liyana Sulaiman, serial entrepreneur and Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder at Pollen. Pollen helps amplify brands by helping them convert social followers into a seller community. I love Liyana's story of how micro-failures can lead you through the necessary iterations to validate the market opportunity, your business model, and product market-fit. Liyana is su...

On today's episode, I sat down with Evan Groom, Product Manager at Audio Technica. Throughout this series on why products fail, we've looked through the lens of startup founders and their experiences. Today, Evan shares lessons he's learned in a global company and industry leader. We talk about what pitfalls you might run into in well-established organizations that could inhibit the success of you...