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Transcript13 lines
- [00:01]
A
LinkedIn news. Hey, it's Tomer. Last week we featured my interview with Alex Streed, Chief Product Officer at Cerebral. We focused on the benefits of directly engaging with your users, how focusing on people's first experiences with your product actually impacts retention and why building for your service providers might be more impactful for the retention of your customers. This week we bring you some fun rapid fire questions for that conversation. Let's jump in. You've really kind of focused on working on products that actually create impact for people's life in a fundamental way. And we haven't talked about Weight Watchers as much, but that was also a big part of your career. What moments of your work give you the most joy when you think about your day to day?
- [00:53]
B
So I am incredibly proud of the team that I have and the team that I have built. And so internally on a day to day basis, you know, whenever one of my team members is presenting something or presenting an idea or a project that they have worked so hard on, it gives me such joy when somebody else that's not in my department writes me and they're like, you know, your team is fantastic. This work is good. Like it makes me feel really good about the people that I have on my team and like thinking about the clients. The fact that like we come to work every day. I've always worked at mission driven companies. Weight Watchers, Ellevest, Cerebral, all mission driven, but in Cerebral's case, like we have helped over 500,000 people get mental health care and essentially help them feel better. And so that brings me joy that like, even if we're having a tough day or, you know, something didn't go right at a macro level like we are are doing so much.
- [01:55]
A
I love that for a mission driven company and I feel the same about LinkedIn. It's really the work itself as a whole that provides that sense of purpose and joy. Let's shift into more of a product. This could be not healthcare related. Whatever you want. A product that you wished existed. No constraints, no physical constraints, whatever you want.
- [02:18]
B
Is there an app out there that lets you know if you're being a good parent or not? Like every single day it's like I have a three year old and a five year old and I'm like, are they good? Is this normal? I wish there was like some kind of parent meter that you just knew if you're doing a good job because I feel like you find out like 20 years from now if it's working. So I wish I had more feedback sooner. I don't know. The other thing is, I wish I could clone myself. Yesterday, I had to be in three locations at once. A meeting with my cto, I had to pick my kid up at swim, and the other one was at dance teleportation.
- [02:56]
A
That works for me. Maybe that could also help with being a better parent. But the parenting one completely resonates.
- [03:02]
B
Exactly.
- [03:02]
A
Resonates. I was wondering if there's a source that you read on a regular basis or a book that influenced you a lot that others can learn from, that you found to be really meaningful in your career.
- [03:17]
B
Um, so very early on in my career, I was trained by Marty Kagan. Uh, so I. I follow a lot of his fundamentals. Um, you know, I think all of his books are good. My favorite is Empowered for sure, because it's teaching my directs, like how to be really good managers to their PMs. Um, I am also a fan of Sean Ellis. I think his book Hacking Growth is fantastic. It really sparks some creative ideas of how you can bring in organic growth. But then it also talks about retention growth and how you can keep people here longer. And that's one of the reasons why we do have a growth hacking team on getting folks to three therapy sessions.
- [04:02]
A
Love those. Alex. There's no linear path to going into product. You came from PR and marketing. Folks came in from business development and engineering. There's so many ways that you can get into product. If you were to go to school today or somebody asked you, hey, I want to have a career in product. What should I learn to be great at this job, to be great at this craft? What would you suggest to them?
- [04:28]
B
So you can't change your IQ. If you take an IQ test today and you take one, 10 years from now, it'll be about the same score. But your EQ is something that you can change. And I think you have to have amazing using emotional intelligence to be a good pm. It helps you with your customers and what they're going through and what you're feeling. It helps you understand where your stakeholders are coming from. It helps you understand how to lead your product ownership team. So I would definitely take a course in eq. Leadership is another one. I won't hire a product manager that I don't think will be a good leader. And actually, if I'm the one that's doing a reference call for folks, I will say, can you put these three words in order to describe the person? Analytical, creativity, and leadership. And every single time I have done that, leadership has always come up first. I feel like with the other two, we can help you, we can help you be creative, we can do brainstorms together, we can help you with analytics, like we have a data team. But with leadership like that, that really comes from inside and that's something that you have to want to work on and you're in meetings all day long. And product managers are supposed to be leaders. So I would definitely do a course in leadership. I would take a coding class, to be honest. I would try to learn to speak your engineer's language. I think that that's important to at least understand how they're spending their days. I don't think you need to learn how to code, but just to be able to do that, I would probably take a Business 101 class. Like, I think it's really important to understand how your product strategy fits into the overall business strategy of the company. Understanding how a P and L works I think is really important.
- [06:22]
A
There's like this well roundedness you're describing when it comes to this role that I really appreciate. You know, on the IQ side, I'm a big growth mindset believer and all of them are malleable and you can work on each. But I agree when it comes to eq, that tends to be an area that most people do not spend much time developing. Thank you so much, Alex. I really appreciate it. It was great to have you on the show.
- [06:45]
B
It was great. Thanks.
- [06:47]
A
Tune in next week for our interview with Dan Barber, the Michelin starred chef behind row seven Seeds.