Craig Rees

📢 Product Aotearoa Conference 2024's Workshop Announcement We are proud to bring you GSD Alliance for a workshop on Metrics for PMs and teams. Discover how to effectively use metrics to monitor product health, guide product strategy and direction, and share your product’s value offerings with your stakeholders in their own language. 🎯 Tasneem Gould will share useful frameworks and do exercises so you can understand how to apply metrics in your own day to day work, earn executive approval, improve your decision making, and make prioritisation easy. You can secure your ticket here: https://lnkd.in/gNDfcPzz #ProductManagement #ProductLeadership #PAConf

25

1 Comment

The fab folks at Product Aotearoa put on an awesome Unconference last Friday, with attendees proposing and covering a whole lot of chunky topics including: Making a Product Strategy when there's no Business Strategy (surprisingly common), Pricing & Packaging, What is the Whole Fractional Thing Anyway?, Product for Startup Founders, The Future of the PO role, and more. On confusion about what Fractional is and does there was a lightbulb moment when 👋 Ross Stanley and I talked about our expectation that fractional leaders are right for a moment in time when a step-change is needed but the P&L can't cover a full time senior leader. Perhaps product capability needs lifting, a new product needs a strategy, a new HoP needs coaching, [insert inflection point here] but ultimately the goal is to either replace yourself with a full-time hire longer term or make the decision to go perm yourself if the fit is right and growth enables that down the track. On Pricing & Packaging - my lightbulb moment was that Product folks are often not brought into these discussions and decisions - and yet so much facilitation skill resides in Product, when it comes to coordinating cross-functional programmes of work, not to mention strategic understanding of the customer through Discovery. Connecting value creation with value capture is fundamental, in my view, to product development so watch this space - another post coming on this topic soon... 👯 📈 If, in the meantime, you're about to kick off a Pricing & Packaging programme of work and your team could do with commercialisation coaching, or methods to build cross-functional collaboration, please get in touch. Thanks David Jeames, Mel Collings, Jeremy Lawson, Sabeena Tsan and Isaac Chen for a fun and enriching day. 💚

46

10 Comments

🎙 The Product Ops Chronicles - Episode 7 🎙 💪 Thriving as a Team of 1 🧠 The latest episode of the Product Ops Chronicles Podcast is live, and this was something quite different. Antonia and Graham spoke to Beks Yelland - veteran VP Product, mentor and Chief Community Officer at the Product Mind Community. The topic: The unique challenges product professionals, particularly those in single-serving roles like product operations, face when it comes to their mental health and well-being. Product professionals often find themselves isolated, facing a mountain of responsibilities solo. They share some personal stories, practical advice and underscore the importance of building a robust support network, both within your organisation and through external communities. This network is your lifeline, helping you navigate the loneliness and isolation that can sometimes accompany these roles. 🧠 The importance of mental health support and community for product professionals, especially those in single-serving roles like product operations 🧠 The pressure for product teams to constantly prove their value to the organisation  🧠 Balancing ambition and agency as a product person 🧠 Unique challenges of product ops roles 🧠 The value of product communities, both online and in-person, in providing a supportive environment for product professionals to learn, share, and build relationships. Listen Now: https://lnkd.in/eZJxxCyp Thanks as always to our partners and producers Product-Led Alliance --- This episode is supported by the Product Mind Community - the worlds only safe-space online community specifically for product professionals to discuss and be supported for their own mental health and wellbeing. It is totally free-forever. In this episode we touch on the challenges the role of product management has, and how these impact on ones own mental health - if you do feel like you need someone to talk to in this area, the Community is available right now.

3

Understanding and assessing capability is key to driving product success. In this video, Brainmates co-founder Nick Coster dives into why building team capability isn't just about skills—it's about empowering your team to think strategically, adapt to change, and lead with confidence. Learn how capability assessments can elevate your product management practices and set your team up for long-term success. Watch now to discover how you can transform your team's potential into real-world results. #ProductManagement #CapabilityAssessment #ProductLeadership #TeamDevelopment #Brainmates #StrategicGrowth

5

The Dawn of the Capability Metric It’s been some time that the Product industry has focussed on efficiency and productivity metrics to frame what we think are the desired behavioural outcomes from well designed tech. I’m talking about statements such as ‘user can find their target email within 3 clicks' (productivity) or ‘be able to complete a 3d render in less than 30 seconds' (efficiency)’. But in this AI-ge, the metrics that apply are evolving. Case in point, let’s say that Very Enlightened Company has had reports of a lack of inclusivity, with execs feeling underwhelmed by ‘underperformance’ of their remote workforce. Last year they had to wait for the annual performance review, something that is seen to be a bit broken and evokes pain across the org.  Brilliant HR Leader has the idea to use AI to analyze meetings against a ‘Meeting Health' capability metric to address what’s going on at ground level. At the end of employee meetings, a real-time analysis means that empowered teams become capable of gaining almost real-time insight as to how effectively they are communicating at work. And what happens? Hours and money spent on untailored trainings, middle management dramas and inclusivity complaints all disappear while performance and employee satisfaction goes up.  This is why capability metrics are key to designing for today’s audiences and contexts. While intelligent metrics make sense, one of the challenges with product operations is that it is a team sport. We work in cross-functional teams, and there is a need for consensual progress to be made. The work has a speculative nature to it. And no matter how many product-market fit frameworks or Senior Distinguished Vice Presidents of Product you have, it is still a risk, a gamble. Given the need to be thinking and doing differently, it’s no surprise that it looks like companies far from Silicon Valley are becoming better at capability-enhancing experiences. One example I have recently been enjoying has been the Readiness Score that my Oura ring gives me at the start of each day. My ability to better tune into and believe my body (because now I’ve got the data) has helped me to address health issues that had previously gotten the better of me. I'm enhanced by the insights of PhD experts each morning when I assess my physical state. Hopefully new capability metrics will facilitate a shift to address real problems (e.g.’I can’t leave an abusive situation’ or ‘I can’t work out if the water I’m drinking is making my family sick’ rather than the low value ones that are typically lauded in Silicon Valley bro-fests (has it really empowered our lives to be more certain about the exact minute my Uber will arrive?). There is no question though that the companies that are able to address these questions will be ones grounded in a respect for intellectually considered work, a sense of humanity and bereft of adages like low-hanging fruit, velocity sprints,  MVPs and [insert latest buzzword here]. 

4

So sitting in the front row for this talk at the inaugural Product Aotearoa conference in 2023 was one of our newer members of parliament. After that talk I caught up with her, wondering what she made of this relatively craft-specific talk. Her answer surprised me - she said 'I wish government would think this way'. It's easy for us to forget that there are vast sectors who haven't even begun to think the way we do as product people. Something that has always frustrated me about the way we think about government is that every time a govt representative makes a mistake, there is an immediate cry for them to resign (or worse...). Why is this - do we really assume that nobody ever learns from their mistakes? And as a result govt (and consequently the public service) is incredibly risk averse and slow, terrified of making a mistake and thus completely ill-equipped to deal with our ever accelerating world. How can we break this cycle? Do we as product managers have something to offer to help with this?

17

2 Comments

🎙 The Product Ops Chronicles - Episode 7 🎙 💪 Thriving as a Team of 1 🧠 The latest episode of the Product Ops Chronicles Podcast is live, and this was something quite different. Antonia and I spoke to my long-time friend Beks Yelland - veteran VP Product, mentor and Chief Community Officer at my Product Mind Community. Our topic: The unique challenges product professionals, particularly those in single-serving roles like product operations, face when it comes to their mental health and well-being. Product professionals often find themselves isolated, facing a mountain of responsibilities solo. We share some personal stories, practical advice and underscore the importance of building a robust support network, both within your organisation and through external communities. This network is your lifeline, helping you navigate the loneliness and isolation that can sometimes accompany these roles. 🧠 The importance of mental health support and community for product professionals, especially those in single-serving roles like product operations 🧠 The pressure for product teams to constantly prove their value to the organisation  🧠 Balancing ambition and agency as a product person 🧠 Unique challenges of product ops roles 🧠 The value of product communities, both online and in-person, in providing a supportive environment for product professionals to learn, share, and build relationships. Listen Now: https://lnkd.in/ePCXFfxc Thanks as always to our partners and producers Product-Led Alliance --- This episode of the Product Ops Chronicles Podcast is supported by the Product Mind Community - the worlds only safe-space online community specifically for product professionals to discuss and be supported for their own mental health and wellbeing. It is totally free-forever. In this episode we touch on the challenges the role of product management has, and how these impact on ones own mental health - if you do feel like you need someone to talk to in this area, the Community is available right now.

3

Meet Basil - LeavePlus' own Product Designer and Dad Joke extraordinaire.   Check out this video to hear how... → ...LeavePlus' improvements are guided by user insights. → ...larger organisations can still act like startups. → ...we rapidly transition from ideas to market. ...as a bonus, you'll also get one awful joke about Adele. #productdesign #transformation #startup

57

9 Comments

Today is the last opportunity to sign up for Assumption Busting for Product Managers - in this short and fun session, we will discuss how you can break the assumptions you might even know you had using rapid experimentation. Come and join us! https://lnkd.in/gBd2uhx7

2

In this ProductTank Brisbane talk, Marty Cagan explains how his book Transformed tries to help you understand how to change your organisation and move to the product model. https://bit.ly/3LKOTbI #productleader #transformed #prodmgmt

4

Why do so many companies make it so hard for product teams? This is the simplest practice which the top tech companies follow, most others don’t. It’s simply giving product teams a clear problem to solve. What does this do? It empowers them to come up with the best solution. It enables them to be creative. It gives them the permission to do whatever it takes to be successful. MOST IMPORTANTLY: It focuses them on the outcome, rather than try to recreate someone’s idea. These are the teams which make an impact. These are the teams which innovate. One team have a problem to solve, can use practices like OKR. This creates focus on solving the problem. At each step, they can validate how their work is moving the needle. They can adapt as they go. Most companies who struggle with OKR tend not to empower their teams to solve the problem. OKR a pointless and frustrating experience for these teams. I’ll be talking about this and OKR at LAST Conference in Melbourne. I would love your feedback on my submission! If you think it’s a good topic and you have a Confengine account, please give it a ❤️

26

8 Comments

I’ve been at lots of events recently and I’ve noticed speakers etc fueling a trope: “product management didn’t exist 15 years ago”. As someone who became a product manager in the nineties, I’d discourage this thinking as it under-values what our job is actually about. I was fortunate to spend eight years learning from leaders who were part of an MBO from Lotus. We built award winning, highly profitable enterprise software, but mostly on CD-ROMs. Consequently we didn't have AB testing, fake door tests, CI/CD or HotJar. But we did have sales-led pressures, prioritisation conflicts, remote teams, pricing complexity and disruptive new market entrants. What we also had was a passion to understand the customer’s pains and to then design and deliver something that was commercially valuable that addressed it. My wife works in FMCG, where for decades brand managers have been uncovering insights, then working with manufacturing, supply chain and sales & marketing to delight customers and create business value. That’s product management. Our tools, frameworks, product books and our understanding are ever evolving. And the enormous benefits of online deployment all mean that for many the job is done very differently now than it was in the nineties. But the business basics remain as they always have done. Especially for the very many product managers who aren’t solely working just with digital solutions. I bring this up not to defend those of us with grey hair (or little hair, in my case). My concern is that AI will be a paradigm shift to rival the upgrade from CD-ROM to Internet, and that may frighten some. Your future self will have Copilot instantly whip up a prototype, test it on synthetic personas leveraging mountains of sentiment data, and a Monte Carlo simulation will present you with your best options, in a compelling doc/ppt created by an LLM. But it's just another tool change, and another set of ways to better understand the opportunity, leverage the art of the possible and de-risk getting to a good commercial outcome at even faster rates. A peer has chosen to re-train as a carpenter because they've realised they're at heart a problem solver, and the context isn’t relevant. So please don’t think your super-power comes solely from being current on the tools and techniques of how you do your trade today. Product management has always been necessary and always will be, even if AI creates another shift in the technology, techniques and the pace of the work. #productmanagement

55

16 Comments

The talented Joe Tarragano makes some excellent points in his post about #productmanagement: Inexperienced product managers (PMs) often get caught up in "truth-telling" rather than seeking effectiveness. They believe their data and research-backed insights trump all, sometimes leading to counterproductive conflicts. More seasoned PMs are skilled at being selective with battles. They practice a more nuanced approach, sometimes refraining from arguing even when they are right. There are legitimate reasons to hold your tongue as a PM: Stakeholders might have information you lack. Don't assume you possess all the relevant knowledge. Prioritization is key. Focus on the truly critical fights, not every minor disagreement. You need social capital to be effective Pressing your opinions when you don't have leverage can damage your ability to influence in the long run. A few thoughts in favour of Joe's assertion: Diplomacy is a skill. Knowing when to be assertive and when to choose a more subtle influence strategy is a sign of maturity in a PM. True influence is about the long game. Sometimes compromising on a less critical point can build goodwill, making it easier to advocate strongly for important matters. Understanding organizational dynamics is essential. Company culture and specific stakeholders' power influence how best to communicate your insights. On the other hand... Excessive pragmatism can stifle innovation. If no one ever challenges the status quo, companies stagnate. A lack of "truth-telling" breeds groupthink. A team needs diverse perspectives and the willingness to challenge assumptions to truly excel. The burden shouldn't only be on the PM. Good leaders cultivate a culture where constructive criticism and well-supported arguments are valued, regardless of seniority. The Bottom Line? Joe's point isn't that PMs should never speak their minds, but rather about strategic communication and a balanced approach. Both the zeal to advocate for the best possible product and a willingness to compromise strategically are critical skills for a successful product manager.

17

3 Comments

Hey Product fans! 👋 This week’s 🌮 Product Tapas is served. As flagged last week, subscribers now get the newsletter on Friday (whoop) so they can read it at their leisure over the weekend. Check out the link at the end to subscribe so you can stay ahead of the crowd. What’s cooking? 🧑‍🍳 📰 Not Boring - As usual it’s been a crazy week in Tech. Meta pulls back on releasing its multimodal Llama AI in the EU, while Proton Mail adds an AI writing assistant. Dyson surprises us with new headphones, and Microsoft introduces both a Canva competitor and “SpreadsheetLLM” for unlocking insights from spreadsheets. Tinder's AI Photo Selector, Uber's pre-booking for tourists, and Amazon's “Rufus” shopping assistant are just a few other highlights from the week. Plus, find out how Apple Notes is transforming Gen Z’s wardrobe planning and more! ⌚ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs - Streamline your workflow with competitor app screen mapping, creating QR Codes with ChatGPT, and another tool to help get AI-driven user behaviour insights. Also, check out a neat peer recognition add-on in Slack, and a tool to help with live data imports into Google Sheets. 🍔 Blog Bites - Dive into the Harvard Business Review's exploration of how retailers are becoming ad platforms, boosting enterprise values by billions. Also, get insights from Built for Mars on UX design trends and a valuable slide deck by Anshu Sharma on starting a company. Paweł Huryn 🇺🇦's repository offers a treasure trove of PM learning resources and we finish up with a piece on how to get insanely connected. 🎙️ Pod Shots - This week we cover a bumper Pod from Lenny )over 2.5 hours to listen in) where he speaks with Jeff Weinstein. As ever there’s stacks of practical insight from the importance of craft, the power of metrics, and a culture of customer obsession. Plenty to get stuck into If you want to dig in check out the newsletter in full (and subscribe) here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eQkJGdqG 🚀

18

Rachel New is technically a 'Product Designer' at REA Group, but UX/UI was better for the episode title 😉 What is a product designer though, are they different from UX/UI designers? What do any of them actually do? 🤔 Listen to episode 2 of WTH is Tech to find out... Click the link in the comments below 🎧 #techcareers #tech #UXdesign #UIdesign #productdesign

24

1 Comment

"Amazing sessions run by super talented product leaders, covering a plethora of topics." - Senior Product Manager, Microsoft. If you want to discover new and innovative ways to unlock transformational growth through strategic product adoption and expansion, then you’ll love Product-Led Summit Sydney on November 6 & 7. Learn from senior product experts all about: ⭐ Data-driven decision making: Leveraging product analytics to skyrocket growth - CPTO at Love To Dream™ ⭐ Building a product culture: Empowering your team to be product-obsessed - Director, Digital Product, Technology and Data at NOVA Entertainment. ⭐ The trust factor: Gauging product success through trustworthiness - CPTO, Cashrewards. Time's running out to secure your spot. 👇 https://lnkd.in/gtqmw3Ee #pledsydney #sydney #productled 

1