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- [00:00]
A
One of the questions I frequently get is really around career advice. The product discipline is really a unique field, and most people didn't go to school or start off in a career as product people. Regardless of your background, there seem to be certain skills and experiences that set you up for success or help you achieve career goals. In this episode, I am joined again by my friend and SVPG partner, John Moore, to really discuss how to navigate a career in product management. We, we discuss practical takeaways to help you along your journey, whether you're just starting out, you've been in product for years, or you might even aspire to be a product leader. John, it's good to see you, my friend. Welcome back to product therapy.
- [00:45]
B
Thank you, Christian. Always my great pleasure.
- [00:47]
A
Yeah, you know, one of the most remarkable questions I get from people is, how did you get into this field? You know, how did you become a product leader? You know, one of the things I try to demystify for people is forget all the naming terminologies. I mean, I see product has existed forever. Founders, creators, innovators, inventors. You know, these were all in my mind, product people, you know, the entrepreneurs in some ways at heart. But in terms of the discipline of people being called a product manager, I want to guess that you don't have a degree in product management, so maybe share a brief history of your own journey into product.
- [01:22]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. And like you, I think one of the strong things about product is that most product managers come with a variety of experience. I was certainly one of those. I need to go way back. Okay, so I don't know whether you remember the ZX Spectrum. Did you ever encounter. Did you ever encounter the ZX Spectrum? So this was Clive Sinclair and this was kind of Europe's or the UK's version of Steve Jobs. And that was one of the first home computers that was released in the uk. And I was lucky enough to have some parents with the vision and the means, I guess, to buy it for their kids. So I used to program in basic. I mean, it was kind of if, then go to. I mean, it literally was basic, the language. And I used to play around with that. But I had, in truth, no concept that product management could be a career. None at all. Right. Same was true with software engineering. No one ever talked to me about software engineering. No one ever talked to me about product management. And some of the reasons were those disciplines did exist in Europe, but mainly, I would say in hardware companies, which I certainly wasn't exposed to as a child. Growing up in Wales and what I wanted to be was a journalist. I wanted to be a truth teller, I wanted to be a journalist. And I was lucky enough to end up working at the BBC, which was my first job, which is a big media organization in the uk. And then I got little lucky because I found myself in a role or in a room, I should say, where these Internet technologies were being utilized and brought into this big media company. And so I started to realize not just was I interested in the content, but I was also interested in how we were distributing this content. And I kind of made the small move at the time in terms of geographical move. It was like, you know, two meters over to another side of the table. But it was of course a leap in terms of career change because what I'd moved into, we didn't call it product manager, was probably called digital project manager or something like that. This is the mid-90s, right. But it was really a product role. So that was my first big move into product. That small 2 meter move represented a very significant shift in my career trajectory for sure.
- [03:19]
A
That's amazing. And you were curious not just about the content, but how people consume the content, to experience the content and how it got shared and just that shift in your career. You know, I started to share when I do workshops and training, I kind of how I got into products because first of all I'm trying to train people in a discipline where many people expect you to know and be an expert. And I have to tell people, well, I need you to know the person training. You did not get some formal training in product. You know, I was going to be a medical doctor. I was pre med in college and I decided to just take a year off from going to medical school to travel the world and started a career in sales a little bit just to before med. So I had a very interesting path, but I actually got into product by winning like an innovation competition at a company. You know, just saying like look, anybody can submit an idea and if you win it, we will make you who give you money to run the idea. And I was really just trying to win some of the cash prizes. I was, didn't even really care about winning the whole thing. I was just like, oh boy, they're like cash prizes for showing up and who am I to turn down an opportunity? But just working on the idea, I became passionate about it and I've told people there are only two paths I have seen to people becoming great at product. And I've said one, they have learned from Great product leaders or they've had the opportunity to work for great product companies in great product environments. So they have actually seen and practice good product work. The second is from massive failure. And I have seen my career as a little of both. I went through a streak, you know, when I won that competition. I'm like 23 years old to build a tech company, you know, and I felt I got lucky doing well with it, that the company was like, we like the way you did it. Go build as many as you like. Oh, boy, did I fail. I did the estimate of it. I think I had 17 bad product failures in a roll. I cost the company like $26 billion. You know, it was kind of like every day I should be fired. This is a ridiculous job. You know, I am going to try stuff that can be expensive, that can risk money and revenue. So, you know, I always tell people I want to encourage people along the journey that I have not met in today's world. Many product people that have an educational background in the product discipline or in some ways, some formalized training or certificate that actually has made them a good product person.
- [05:39]
B
I think there is a middle ground between you have a great coach and you're lucky in enough to find an environment where they allow you to, you know, make those mistakes as you've experienced. And the middle ground for me just to continue my story was that someone had the foresight and the intelligence to say, hey, look, we don't really know what we're doing at the BBC, but we think there's this interesting individual called Marty Kagan who could maybe come and, you know, describe to us what good really looks like. And I remember I always embarrassed Marty by, you know, we could talk about him because it's not him on the show. Right? That's okay. I always embarrass him by saying, I put all of my independence, success down to assimilating the principles and lessons that he first started to teach me when I was in my early 20s in that room in the BBC somewhere in West London. And one of the key things that I want people to know from an SVPG partner is when I sat and listened to the way that Marty described product, my first reaction when I looked in the mirror afterwards was, I'm not doing any of that. I'm not doing anything that he's talking about. And that was okay. It was okay. Well, now if I'm going to get real about my career and truly become good at this discipline, because what he described to me for the first time was something that I understood to be a discipline. And then I felt, okay, I'm not inventing this myself. There are people that understand this. And that was incredibly helpful to me. So that that kind of leads me into, how do we do it? But self education is a part of it. I wish that it wasn't. I wish that I'd had a leader that could coach me in the same way that I wish, you know, when I speak to product managers, as you do, probably, but for sure, here in Europe, wow. The amount of product managers that are in role who have no clue what great looks like, and then the worst part of that is neither do the leaders or their bosses, right? So self education is still a real thing. And of course, the challenge with that is, well, where do you go, for your information, right? And because there is so much crappy information out there that a lot of people can't even define what a product manager is meant to be for and what the role is. So we have to be careful with our sources, right? So, you know, self education is important, but the actual answer to the question is, of course, what we really want is we want to have a coach, right? We want to have a coach who can coach us.
- [07:59]
A
Now, in today's world, unlike when you and I started in product, the discipline was not very formalized. There were not like many clear opportunities and job descriptions. But today, we see every significant company in the world that may operate with technology talk about product discipline. Whether it's a product manager, a product designer, an engineer. And it's become highly competitive. You know, the salary ranges are out there. Oh, my goodness. This job just tells people what to do, and you get paid a whole lot. And it's glamorized for people and also scary for others when they hear about all the hours and work that goes into it. So now there's some demand, there's some description around it. You've got some amazing boys. I've got kids too, as well. You know, I actually have a son that cares about product management for the first time. It's confusing to me. But for those starting off a career in product, you know, if you were talking to your boys, they are older now and they're like, dad, I want to work in product. What do you tell them? You know, what do you recommend to them? How do they get started? How. Where did they begin their journey?
- [09:03]
B
I love the idea that my boys would be interested in what I do maybe one day, but not yet. In one of our previous episodes, we talked about ethics and as a part of that conversation, we talked about the importance of diversity, right? The importance of diverse teams, not just on achieving great revenues, but achieving good ethical results. Well, I also think some of that is critical too for product. And what I mean is I'm a true believer that life experience is incredibly helpful. We don't want all our people through the same program from the same tutors, from the same university in the same role. I think Google talked about, you know, the fallacy of that when they realized it right early on in early Google and they were like, okay, this is not good. We have to diversify our team. So we've known this for a long time. And so my pitch here is I wish that it was as simple as, you know, go to an awesome university that runs a product management school, which by the way still, as far as I'm aware, doesn't exist in Europe. For sure there are design schools that I think are running some really interesting programs. But I think it's critical that we come with some element of life experience. You know, if you get into the associate PM program at Google, they expect that you are good at, you know, two key disciplines, right? And then they will say we can teach you properly product or whatever, right? So you've mastered engineering and finance or marketing and then it's okay, okay, we can teach you product. I still think that is true. So my pitch would be, look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't focus on product, but what I'm saying is the experience that you have outside of product, which can be associated or even orthogonal, that's fine, is going to be the thing that really allows you to fly when you find yourself or when you target yourself in that role. So go and learn a discipline, whether that's engineering or finance or marketing or sales, whatever it might be, and have that as one of your kind of key assets before you move into product. Now this may be an old fashioned view, I don't know, but that would be my view.
- [11:03]
A
I really love that. It's not old fashioned to me. It's, it's actually, you actually are pointing out some of the other things you could learn and bring to the table through it. You know, people ask me about university programs all the time and, and you've started. They exist now in the States there are many universities. Bachelor's of Product management, Masters of Product Management, different product management certificates and degrees. I have had a chance to audit several of those. I have taught a product innovation class at a local university. I will say this, I have not found a singular program that puts out great product managers. I just haven't, you know, and truly I don't even know if you think about the discipline. With all the techniques that change evolved, it is absolutely obsolete by the time you come out of school. Whatever you learned in school in terms of applying in the real world, you know, I audited a class once for product market. It was taught to by retired tobacco company executives. You know, teaching the techniques they use in the being world class leaders in tobacco from the 70s or the 60s or the 50s. And I'm just like how, you know, most people are teaching you what they've learned or how they did it than in a rapid world of we're trying to figure out the best way to.
- [12:16]
B
Do it and it's ridiculous. We see it all the time. It's this desire to create a framework or a process or some cookie cutter, you know, and it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because it's about culture. Obviously. You know, these great products that we all use every day, that we've been using for years were created not by individuals who went to the Kellogg School of Product Management, right? They weren't. They were created because they worked in companies that had an incredible culture that was based around a willingness to fail, but to do it quickly and incredible visions of the future. That's what makes products special. It's the real collabor between engineers and designers and product managers within a culture where there is a psychological safety where you get to fail. We don't like failure, of course, but we know that it's a part of our world. And so we have to find this rapid way of finding the right solution. And that's what good product management is. And it comes from a culture. Now you can coach it. I'm not saying that no one should be coached. I remember there was a moment a few months ago where I was lucky enough to have two guests in my house and they had both been senior executives. One had been a senior executive at Apple and the other had been a senior executive at Microsoft. But more interestingly, more interestingly than that, they had both started as engineers at Hewlett Packard, which is obviously the same is true of Marty. And when I sat and listened to them, and Marty actually tells the same story, they were describing the role of coaching and how they would have one or two coaches assigned to them from Get Go. One assigned to make them a better engineer, another assigned if they wanted to move into product. And they were coached every single day. And this was the future of business being redefined in the late 60s and how we've forgotten all that is frustrating. Right? Because that was such an extraordinary thing to listen to. And I certainly didn't have formal coaching in the way they described, but I did have some form of good coaching from folks like Rick Osterlo at Skype. Rick's been running the Google hardware teams for the best part of 15 years and he was an amazing product coach for sure. And I had some others. But you know, my point being that it, it wasn't as formal as that. A return to that would be quite something, right? Oh boy.
- [14:29]
A
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's a return to it. I think it has to be our future in this ever changing dynamic. You talk about self education, people think that means you're self taught in some ways. Someone was sharing some stats, like maybe close to 80% of all the product people are self taught in some ways. And I'm like, I don't want people to feel like that's really a good thing. That's scary. I mean imagine going to like a self taught dentist, you know, it's like, yeah, you know, I taught myself how to do this. Open up your mouth. There is some technical aspects to the put up work that require a little more. Have you seen good work? Have you walked? Have you been coached about it? Did somebody tell you that this is good versus this is okay or what better looks like in some ways. And so I will push the envelope to say, boy, I think we need to formalize more formal ways of people to get coached at this discipline outside of frameworks and techniques and reading book. But people need to see good work. People need to practice good work work in order to do good work. Now John, you've been a product leader, you've probably made some hires in your careers of hiring product people. And I want to get down to the elementary. Maybe not a senior product leader or stuff. You're hiring an entry level product manager or first time product manager on your team. What do you look for? What do you see and say like this person is going to be a great product manager and a great product manager here.
- [15:52]
B
So firstly, what I always loved to do in my PM interviews was to take a real world problem that we were dealing with with right one, because obviously that is a super interesting technique to see how a candidate can solve it and also who knows, maybe the candidate can solve it better than us and then that's a double win. So. So that I always found one of the best frameworks for conducting an interview. And I think it showcases a number of capabilities. One, that you can assimilate information quickly. Two, that you can kind of deconstruct a problem. And three, a little bit in the same way that we teach customer interview techniques and testing, that you are listening to how they think. And I think listening someone think is one of the world's most amazing things in terms of truly helping you understand, because it allows you to understand, One, whether they, you know, they understand how to deal with problems, not the details, they don't know the details, we don't care about details. But how they approach the problem is critical. Two, I think it gives you an understanding of their communication skills and, you know, whether they are capable or how much work there might be with individuals in terms of helping them to learn good communication skills. Three, I think it shows some other key things, like a level of confidence or some kind of bias to action, which are other key things that if you don't have, you better make sure that you get coached on them because they are going to be critical for product roles. Those are some of the key elements that I always look for. At a very base level. We're also looking for individuals that are coachable. And this is a big one for me. I was kind of constantly on the lookout for individuals that could show a level of humility. And the reason is not just because I find those individuals, you know, nice to be around. It's much more pointed than that from a pure product perspective. It's because a level of humility allows us to adopt some pretty fundamental principles. Right? Like, hey, we may have great ideas, but we have to accept now that most of them aren't going to work. So we'd better have that as a kind of core part of our characteristic within the product function. So I was always looking for that too.
- [17:52]
A
Oh, I love that. You know, I. I've always made the argument that there are technical skills that you need in this work, and I can coach that. But the harder parts for me, the soft skills, I actually have moved calling it soft skills to calling it human skills. Kate Lido, who's a coach, was talking to me about it, and I love that. Framing the idea of actually soft and hard skills. She actually came from the US Military, came from an officer, Manuel. We said you need to have some hard skills like knowing how to work with hard things like equipment and weapons and machinery, but you also had to learn how to work with humans. And that was kind of where it came from. And then people have made soft skills feel like it's soft in that way versus what it really means. These are human skills. And I have found the most significant human skills and traits in the best product people are emotional intelligence, collaborative problem solving, critical thinking. Like you talked about, people that know how to build and maintain trust in an environment with a great sense of agency, you know, and they are great with time and they can stick through some fights like perseverance or grit. And I have always had this very strong. I always call it like collaborative problems solving because you've always met those people that are very good problem solvers, but they walk alone. You know, like, I will change the light bulb, I will fix everything around the house. I've got my toolkit, it's all about me. And they are terrible. Working with people or leveraging people and collaborative problem solvers that are people that know what they need to get something done, know what they don't have, know when they have this sense of like, I need this skill and this skill, I need help here. These are the opportunities in here. They know how to bring people together to get things done. And so I look for that. You called out thinking. You know, we always talk at svpg there are lots of smart people that don't think. So it's not just about being smart, but deeply thinking about how. Because this is part of the work, you've got to solve a hard problem and think critically about it. In some ways there are some of those other things, like we coach with time management, but you know, this agency, the name has changed. For what? Problem solvers are entrepreneurs and inventors. These people have some sense of courage, man. Like, I mean, you see a problem and you're like, I'm going to try to solve it. Just imagine people on your team that are like, whoa, this is bigger than us. Or we don't have permission or we feel like victims in that way. So I look a lot for that. But I've always thought EQ emotional intelligence for me has probably the hardest to evaluate in its own right, but probably the most critical because you called out several things. Empathy, humility, social awareness, self awareness, knowing that your work, your decisions impact people. The ability to manage people around yourself and manage yourself. I mean, my goodness, it feels often ignored. But if I were coaching my kids today on not just how do you get a career in product, but how do you succeed? And you're calling out some of those things. I'm like, you, man it. There's no place for ego.
- [20:50]
B
All those things. I couldn't agree more. But there is one other thing and it's the ability to create strong relationships with others, right? Maybe that's a different way of saying empathy. If I find someone that has lots of great relationships and can make good relationships with new people, that is going to be incredibly helpful in a product. Create. You could have everything that we've talked about, but if you can't do that, you are going to struggle. You know what, you're really going to struggle for all the reasons, all those statements that you've just made. This is what makes hiring product, I think, such a tricky one. One of the questions I used to ask myself is, hey, how long did the interview last? Right? And there was an occasion where my head of data science, I remember he was scheduled to, I don't know, to be interviewed by me at five o' clock and he actually said, hey, hey John, you know, it's half past seven and I have to go because I have to get the last trade. I didn't even know but two and a half hours. We were still drawing on walls. And I knew that moment that he was just such an amazing individual that I was going to offer him the job. But I'm not saying I took two and a half hours. What I mean is, it's interesting, right, that sometimes when you meet the right individual, you know, these things can last a little longer than they should, perhaps.
- [21:59]
A
You're spot on. I mean, and relationship management is EQ too as well. That's part of the whole emotional intelligence quadrant, you know. And for people that haven't studied emotional intelligence, the four dimens mentioned self awareness in some ways, self management, social awareness and relationship management, I think those are the right form. That's a big aspect of it. You could see yourself going to war with this person. You could see yourself working with this person to solve problems and going back and forth. And I really believe that these are the things we do not learn in school and we should. These are the key aspects when I talk about self management. Your ability to regulate stress, to calm yourself, to manage frustration, to make decisions in stressful circumstances. My goodness, do you need that in put up work? Self awareness is kind of your judgment calls that you make. You bring your biases, opinions and fears into decision making. I wish there were schools to get people better at this because these for me are more the secret of a great career in product than the technical skills of product discovery, optimization, delivery, you know, writing stories and frameworks and tools. And can you write the PRD or an OKR or we like all of those acronyms that we love in product and all of those fancy things that people talk about. But you can imagine that if you are a learner, you're good relationships, you're good with working with people, you're self aware that you will learn those things if they are needed in your work, you will participate with those things. Competence is like not just being able to say, I'm good at this, but knowing where you need help.
- [23:32]
B
I'm not saying that learning those things is easy, you know, it is not easy. But I would say the harder part is when you are approaching those leadership roles. Now, those are scenarios, especially here in Europe. You know, I'm probably going to make no friends, but it is true, and it pains me to say it, that I think the standard of product in Europe, it's not increasing, it is kind of dropping back a little. You know, there are some good reasons for that, is that more and more companies are moving into product. Unfortunately, you know, they're getting the definitions wrong and they're wasting a whole bunch of time and money for all those reasons that we talked about in Transform. But my point being that when you are approaching these more leadership roles, if you're in these companies in Europe, there is no one to speak to. You do not have anyone in the company who you can look up to and say, hey, explain to me how this works now. And that is where, if you don't have a coach, you know, that is where the mentoring aspect was fundamentally critical for me. So if we're thinking about leadership roles and when I'm Speaking and coaching PMs who are approaching leadership roles and want to move into those roles, the first thing I say is, look, you should have a plan, right? You should have a strategic plan for your career. You should map it out. One of those leaders I mentioned earlier who is in my house, she had a very strategic plan written and for what she wanted to achieve at the age of like 24, she was like, if I get everything right, then, you know, that is what my plan is going to look. Now, of course her plan didn't work out that way, but the point was it was a little like a product vision, right? She was absolutely set on the end result. She could figure out the details as she went, but she knew where she was going. And yeah, she was an amazing product leader. So we have to kind of know what our destination is. And sometimes if we don't have coaches, we can definitely find people. And sometimes people ask me, hey, how did you meet Marty? And I'd say, well, when I was at the BBC came and talked. But then I was cheeky. I went back to my desk and I wrote a little email. And it said something like, hey, Marty, you know, I just thought that was amazing. You probably don't know who I am, but I was at the back of the room, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember I didn't send the email. I actually went off to the toilet and I thought, I can't send that email to Marty Kagan. And. And so I didn't send it. But then when I came back, I just kind of closed my eyes and hit send. And sure enough, three hours later, I get a response, because it's money, saying, well, that was great. Thanks for all your contributions. Next time I'm in London, let's go for a coffee. Which we did, and of course, the rest is history. But there are moments in my care where that mentorship with Marty and others, in fact, one of them unknown to me, I was made CPO at a business. And it came out of the blue. I didn't know that they were going to make me cpo, and I didn't feel that I was ready, you know, And I remember Skyping Marty saying, look, you know, this has happened. It's got 200 million in funding. It's USV, it's Atomico. You know, this is a big deal, and I don't think I'm ready. I can tell you that was a tough call, because what he gave me was genuinely tough love. I mean, he was like, john, if you don't believe in yourself, no one else is going to. You know, it was that kind of a Marty Kagan call. Right? And that is, of course, there was immense trust, of course, in that relationship. So he felt that he could do that. But I needed to hear that. And that was exactly what I needed at that moment. Sometimes you can't get that from someone that's in your company, of course. And so that role of your mentorship was fundamental. And of course, I accepted the role and went on to have a great time in that company. But I needed someone to tell me that, hey, if you don't believe in yourself, don't expect anyone else to.
- [26:42]
A
John, that is such a great story and super insightful. And by the way, John, I want invites to your house for dinner because you've got people from Microsoft and Apple and stuff in your house. But you point out something that I don't want to underscore in this conversation. In career advice, I say, you've got to approach your career like you're building a product, you have to have a career vision, some sense of whether it's five years from now, three years from now, seven years from now, what world you want to be in, who you want to be. And then we can talk about a career strategy for how we plan to get there and what we need to focus on now and what we need to focus on next. And you know, in our product world, whether you're a product manager, there's a senior, a product management job, there's a group product manager job, there's a principal product manager job, a director of product, or a VP or CPO in some ways. But you need to have some sense of a vision, and you call that out. I think that's critical. A strategy which is a clear plan, as well as the competencies you need. What would you need in each role to do that? Part of what I tell people strategically in their plan is that we don't want to promote people to lend a job. We promote people to do the job. So if you want to be a director of product, you need to start doing director of product things now. You need to practice those things. Staffing, interviewing, hiring, the decision making, working on a plan or a strategy. You need to start practicing those things now. And you need to have, you know, some people have okrs for their career in some way, some clear objectives that they want. And it sounds crazy, but some of the tools we use for creating a value in the world you need to create for your career, you need to be intentional and deliberate. My parents used to say to me, if. If you don't plan for anything, then anything will happen. And that's okay. That is actually part of your plan. You didn't plan for anything. So why are you upset about the layoff? Are you upset about losing a job or upset about not getting promoted? It's like, did you plan to get promoted? Were you ready to get promoted? And so I always advise you have to be deliberate. And one of the things you look for in a coach is somebody that has been where you want to be and can give you that tough love about what you need to succeed, succeed in it. Because unfortunately, once you become a leader, it's hard to say things like, I don't know, I'm not sure I need help. You can say those things publicly.
- [28:58]
B
I agree. In fact, I would maybe take that one stage further. One of the things, I don't know whether you've felt this too. One of the things that I talk to people is about don't rush exiting A team level job, because team level jobs are where it's at and you will be drawing on your experience for years to come. So, you know, the more time you spend solving problems with great folks in great teams, the better you will be as a leader, as a director, as a vp, as a cpo, whatever it is. Because, you know, sometimes people get a little impatient. They're like, okay, I've done my one year as a PM and you know, I've had one year in a startup and one year at one of the big technology companies. I'm ready for my CPO role. And you're like, really? Do you really think you are? Because let me explain why you may not be. And, and it's not because they're not able, it's just we need the experience. I mean, that is, you know, fundamentally what it's all about. You mentioned one of the things that your father said. You know, this sense of humility that I talk about. I remember my parents were teachers. I always remember my father saying to me, look, the worst teacher stands in front of a class and assumes they are the smartest person in the room. The best teacher stands in front of a class of kids and knows they aren't the smartest person in the room, knows that there is a wide variety of kids, some of whom are way smarter than them. You know, and that's, you know, that's a lot of life lesson which you can use in all kinds of different ways. And I've drawn upon those things. And of course, as we get older, as I almost certainly am, I do that more and more. So I always say don't rush the team level jobs because there's real gold dust there.
- [30:28]
A
Oh my, I mean, John, you're hitting me with some magical nuggets here in this one. I love this. I want to state this again explicitly because I absolutely agree with this. Many people are super impatient in this, your career, about the next thing and some for good reason, you know, there's more money, the higher you go, I feel more control or more deserving in some ways. But the great product leaders we've seen come with this wealth and depth of experience. They have been, they done that. They can help you navigate a complex scenario because they've gone through that exact thing 20 times before. They've worked at startups, at scale ups, at growth stage, at enterprises. They've seen the dynamics. You know, in most of my coaching, I'm just sharing, sharing stories and I tell people, look, it doesn't mean that I have the right Answer. But by no means don't start with where I failed. Like, let me tell you all the ways I failed. Maybe start with where I succeeded and maybe we will iterate from there and find something better. It's kind of these. Please understand the best thing you can probably do for your career is the depth and wealth of what you do in a team. The products you build, the experiences you have, those are the things that will help you as a product leader that will give you a different type of competency because you're bringing not just expertise, but experience when you're coaching and helping people get better at their job. I love that magical nugget in there. All right. There are many people in the product role today trying to stay relevant. I kind of want to hear your tips or advice for. I'm in a product role. How do I keep up? How do I stay relevant in this field? How do I ensure that I look attractive in my current role to. For promotion? How am I up to date in the discipline? What are some of the guidance you provide on that?
- [32:18]
B
Create value and create a lot of it. Right. There's kind of a debate in Europe, or more specifically, the London product Community. Some people have called it, you know, the reckoning, where your product teams have really not been focused on creating sufficient amounts of value and have been more focused on things like process and, you know, design and delivery, that kind of thing, which is all absolutely true, you know, by the way. And at the heart of it is frankly, a misdefinition of the role. Right. We. We exist to create, you know, fundamentally to create great outcomes for our customers, our business. A lot of the time that value is going to be revenue. Right. So there's been this kind of kickback against, well, you know, product is not a commercial role. And of course it is a commercial role. It's absolutely intrinsic to the role, you know, because in most cases, that role exists in a company, one of whose key outcomes is revenue. So you better be sure, sure that you are a commercial individual or willing to work in a highly commercial environment. And, you know, back to coaching, that is another area where I think a lot of product managers need to be coached. We actually love revenue as a metric. It's pretty black and white. It will tell you whether you're succeeding or failing, right? It will, absolutely. Now, you could, of course, you could say, well, maybe we have a great sales team and a crappy product team or something like that. So that's going to hide some things. But on the whole, it's going to tell you whether you're succeeding. So honestly, my shortcut answer to that question is if you have a question career where you get really good at creating value fast, then you aren't going to have a problem. You are going to be just fine. That sits at the heart of it. There are many other ways of answering that question, but that is so fundamental and I see such a gap in the discussions around product sometimes that that is what we are there to do and which is what makes it such a difficult role. We have conversations with many people in companies in Europe where they will just say, well, I'm not even sure it sounds like a role for me. And I well, you know, that is a legitimate answer. That is okay if you think that now we've redefined this role. It is not a role. And by the way, I'm not suggesting that we are laissez faire about firing people or anything like that. I'm just saying that we can go find them a different role that is befitting of their characteristics. So for me, value sits at the heart of answering that.
- [34:27]
A
I could not agree more. I don't think I've ever promoted somebody because they wrote the best story or had the best roadmap or had the best, best standup meetings or use the best framework. At the end of the day, this job is about solving problems in a way that works for our business in a way that brings customer delight. Outcomes are really what it's about and I love that you're calling it out. I will say it again. It's a commercial role. It is an outcome driven role. If you as a product person cannot tie your work into a dent or impact you're having in the lives of customers or on your business, you're probably not in the right role. It's not common. Claire, about go to your leaders and say, look, give me a sales goal too. I want to own revenue with you. I want to own our ability to win deals. I want to own our customer satisfaction. These are real outcomes in your business and I think you've kind of called it out very clearly. I, I want to make sure people understand that dynamic in product work, that at the end of the day, this is what the job is about. It's about creating value. And if you want to stay relevant to your field, you can read all the books you want about roadmaps and frameworks and techniques or stuff like that. But if it doesn't amount to creating value, you're not going to grow in this discipline as, as well as you should. And we've seen several startup CEO, a founder that has no experience in any of this thing create some amazing companies in the world because they were focused on customers.
- [35:53]
B
Just to add a funny story which I was reflecting on, so my midlife crisis at the moment is learning to surf, right? So I've been reading all these surfaces surf books. My surf instructor said, so okay, you're reading all these books, John, how much are you surfing? And I was like, oh, an hour a week. And he was like, john, you can't learn to surf unless you surf.
- [36:12]
A
I love that. There's no substitute for practice. There's no substitute for doing. And if people ask me they want to be a product manager, I say go be a product manager. You don't need to wait for even a job or a career. Go work with people to solve a problem. Go volunteer, volunteer. Go participate in discussions around it. Just like Sophie, you do not gain mastery at anything by avoiding it. What a great story John. This was another fantastic discussion. I look forward to some more discussion on several topics in the coming weeks. Always a pleasure to have you. Thanks for being on the show again.
- [36:44]
B
Thank you Christian.
- [36:46]
A
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