Taylor Donner

Nils Davis, I appreciate you for a great conversation about the current state of product management! Nils put a spotlight on key factors impacting product managers in the B2B space. He also shares what he believes are the essential skills of product management success. It may a surprise to learn that Nils puts a premium on developing soft skills and the ability to communicate through storytelling. Key Take Aways from this episode include: •          Storytelling is Product Management a superpower •          How to avoid the feature factory •          Go-to-Market skills are a key differentiator Don’t miss this episode of GTM Disrupted! Click the link below to listen:  Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gN_jk-QN  #GTMdisrupted #gtmstrategy #prodmgmt #cpo #GTM

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Check yourself before you wreck a product manager’s career. Is a PM on your team struggling? Before writing them off, take a look at systemic issues. This isn’t just about fairness; it is essential to ensure you aren’t going to repeat the same problem with your next hire. Some organizational issues to watch out for include: * Is the PM role clearly defined and understood in your org? * Does the PM have the resources they need to execute effectively? * Has the PM received enough support as they ramped up? * Does your org communicate effectively across departments? * Do you have clear product-market fit, or are you still searching? And some tough questions to ask yourself: * Have you put in the time to establish a relationship with the PM? * Have you made it safe to come to you with problems and questions? * Were you clear about what it takes to succeed on your team? * Have you provided the air cover they need to make tough calls? If you answered 'no' to many of these questions, consider whether the issues you observe in a PM’s performance may actually be symptoms of more fundamental organizational problems. (Check back in the comments soon for a longer article on this topic.)

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"Don't hurry your PM career along too fast!" I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Lindsey Thrift to discuss something critical for anyone starting out in Product Management—mastering the fundamentals. It's tempting to skip straight to high-level strategy or focusing on the latest tools and frameworks. But Lindsey and I both agree: without a solid foundation in the core skills of product management, it’s tough to thrive in the long term. #Productmanagement #careeradvice #fractional

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How do you build a mission-led team after you find product-market fit? I had a great conversation with Dr. Christian Sprinkmeyer, Chief Product Officer for tonies®. “First it is about demonstrating product-market fit. But afterwards, it's really important to understand the ambition and the mission. And then it's crucial to build the organisation in a way that perfectly caters to this mission,” he says. Here’s here’s the key points from the case study: 1. You can find product-market fit with third party technology. But to keep innovating, you may need to own the technology. 2. Hire for the ambition, not the status quo. Bring in people to help you build the right culture. 3. The team structure needs to follow the strategy. For Tonies, this was enabling the growth in new markets, then improving the core product, then introducing new product innovations. 4. You need to find a balance between strategy and skills required when organising teams. For Tonies, their platforms nicely aligned with the customer journey. 5. Give teams missions, not feature sets. This enables you focus on user problems and create more customer impact more quickly. 6. Don’t try and introduce a new approach all at once. Use pilot teams to demonstrate the benefits of a new approach and find stepping stones like giving platform teams missions. 7. Use pilot teams as a way of helping the team learn new capabilities and skills. Share the approach to help the wider team learn. If you’re undergoing or thinking about a transformation to ‘a product operating model’, this is a great example to explore. So many great insights. Thanks Christian! You can check out the full article on Substack here: https://lnkd.in/gVjwN9AT #transformation #productoperatingmodel #missionledteams

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Free workshop alert: I'm doing a free 30-minute workshop tomorrow Friday, Sep 5th on how to think about AI and your product roadmap. I'll share a few of my favorite frameworks using an actual case study of a major bank implementing GenAI for their consumer services: • How to analyze and industry • How to unpack the product model for a given company • How to evaluate AI options to turbocharge a company's roadmap I'm obsessed with this topic because I know AI is a game-changing technology and all of us PM's are being asked to use it -- but can we do it to land impact versus launches? And it's especially timely: every company out there is in a race to AI-ify their products and many are already failing - not failing to launch, but failing to launch something that matters. If you're a PM responsible for contributing to or driving a roadmap, I hope to see you there. #productmanagement RSVP here via Maven: https://lnkd.in/gQ-daF-b

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🎙️ Have Burning Product Management Questions? Ask away! Ever found yourself struggling with product strategy, navigating user research, or juggling stakeholder demands? Maybe you're just curious about the ins and outs of product leadership? Well, you're in luck! Join me on the Dear Melissa podcast segment, where I dive deep into YOUR burning questions about Product Management. Here's the scoop: - You can keep your questions broad or specific, but give me enough context so I can answer as accurately as a I can. - Your privacy matters—rest assured, your name will stay anonymous. - Don't hold back! Feel free to submit as many questions as you like! From revamping company strategies to mastering the art of product leadership and even picking the perfect tools and frameworks, we're covering it all! Head over to DearMelissa.com and share your questions. Yours could be featured on an upcoming episode! (P.S. Need a quick response? Drop me a voicemail—I'll give your questions top priority!) 🚀 #DearMelissa #ProductManagement #ProductStrategy #UserResearch

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I wanted to give a shout-out to David Pereira for his first book Untrapping Product Teams (I was a beta reader). The book is grounded in reality, and full of actionable insights that are based on David own experience. David covers a lot of ground in a concise and compelling manner, using his typical no-nonsense style and real-world examples. If you're a product person, I'm sure you'll find much value in the many insights, frameworks, and tools the book provides. https://a.co/d/01Sn4LFH

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Kevin Yien shared the best definition of the job of a product manager I've heard: To turn the potential energy of your team (e.g., your engineers, designers, etc.) into as much realized value as possible. When people complain to me about product managers, and wish PMs didn't exist, that tells me they've never worked with a great PM. Great PMs help you do the best work of your lives. They help you spend more of your time doing the work you enjoy—coding, designing, building—and take on work that makes sure what you're building actually ships, delivers impact, and avoids surprises.

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PM Stereotype #3: The Strategist This is the missing half of the Product-Owner —a mid-level PM solely responsible for thinking of the “big picture”, looking at the users, business and market, talking to managers and stakeholders and devising the perfect roadmap. However no PM, senior has she may be, can do a good job without having tactical understanding of the software and the team. Handing off features to someone else to figure out the “small details” has never worked. Product development requires many iterations and changes. Splitting the decisions across two people makes everything slower and less effective.

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10 Essential UXR insights every #productmanager and #founder should know from Sr Staff #UXR and Phd, Laura Vardoulakis. Insight 1: UX research elevates the user's experience with your product "I think where user research comes in for the company is being able to elevate the experience people have with your products...There's no one right way to create a solution for a problem. There's many, many ways you can design things to solve people's problems. And so it's all about creating a solution that's really good and meets people's needs." Insight 2: Focus UX research efforts on three key areas "I tend to categorize UX Research into three big buckets. The first is usually called foundational research. What problems exist? What do we solve? What are the user needs? The second big bucket, which is much more tightly connected to design, is how do we solve it? This is often iterative research, by nature. How do we build it? How do we make the thing?...And then the final bucket, which is very important, is evaluative research: did we do what we set out to do?" Insight 3: Get your engineers into the field to build empathy "And almost every engineer, I think it was around 100 engineers at the time, had never visited a business who used these products in real life...We visited a hundred businesses over the course of two months in the United States and India, because that's where our engineering teams were...The real impact there was simply exposure. People actually, you know, there's an intangible feeling of connection that people who are working on these solutions get when they see them in use in real life and see people other than themselves and who are very different from themselves." Insight 4: User exposure can unlock new opportunities "So from a business perspective, it put a lot of attention, as you can imagine, on these users that did not get much attention from engineering resources at that time...That kind of exposure of the users in these areas, not just the administrators in these areas, prompted a giant wave of recognition that this is an opportunity that we can explore." Insight 5: Look at the user journey across your entire product suite "It was like, if you assumed your only goal as a user is to send an email. And, you know, people receive files over email and calendar invites over email. And they go between these products all the time...So I was inspired by someone else within Google who took a similar approach to higher level critical user journey research, where we set out to understand, explore, and define the user journeys for cross-app experiences." See the full interview summary on the Fireside PM substack for insights 6-10: https://lnkd.in/gWgQk_He

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Once upon a time, one team found themselves in an extended debate over what to call a section on their platform. They conducted user research, using first-click testing to see which predefined names resonated with users. The team gathered data, but the results felt constrained, and they quickly realized they hadn’t gained any deep insights into how users actually thought about this section. By restricting the options early on, they bypassed the opportunity to understand users' natural perceptions. In the end, the team lost confidence in the research results. The limited, predefined options didn’t provide the clarity they were seeking, and they struggled to make a decision they felt confident about. There’s a rumor that they’re still arguing about the name. Key Learnings: 1. When the goal is to genuinely understand how users think and behave, starting with predefined options can limit valuable insights. 2. Early-stage research should allow for open-ended exploration, where users can offer stories of their own experience. Understand the problem before narrowing down to specific options. 3. The team jumped too quickly into validation mode without first exploring the full range of user insights. A more iterative approach to product discovery could have led to a better understanding and stronger results. #userresearch #productdevelopment #decisionmaking

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Lenny Rachitsky I listened to your amazing podcast with Todd Jackson about product market fit. The 4P framework ( persona, problem, is amazing. All the benchmarks, strategies, and tactics that Todd Jackson shared are spot on. Recently, Sequoia Capital put out a solid framework, the ARC Product Market Fit Framework for Hair On Fire, Hard Fact, and Future Vision. When I combine these two, 4P relates well with the Hair on Fire category of the products. I wonder how the 4P framework would work with the products' Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. Lenny Rachitsky Todd Jackson I wish I could hear more about PMF in the Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. For rest, These are amazing content about #productmanagement, #productmarket fit, #startups Here are links: 1. This is the link to the entire podcast: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 2. This is where the 4P description starts: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 3. This is the link to the ARC Product Market Fit podcast. https://lnkd.in/ezprPT-Q

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Ethics and product management - perhaps one of the tougher questions we face today. Christian Idiodi and I discuss the issues in the latest podcast…

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PM Stereotype #3: The Facilitator This person’s job is to run between managers, stakeholders, and team, collect everyone’s product ideas, then mediate some compromise. In practice good products are never “discovered” through consensus, so this is a massive waste of PM talent. The facilitator PM is powerless to make decisions, even if she understands the users, market, product and the business very well. Her ability to create a positive impact is very limited.

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Product Leaders: Visibility is your responsibility. Don't just say, "Oh, that's all politics." If you don't take 100% ownership of communicating your achievements to your organization, your career suffers. But even more so, the company suffers because wrong decisions get made on who gets promoted and put in charge of important things. Do the work, and then take responsibility for communicating it.

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👋 How can improv help product managers have effective conversations? Shardul Mehta is a rare combination of a seasoned product leader and an improv instructor! In just 6 min on Product BLAH, Shardul shares three improv techniques to level up. Shardul teaches product managers how to launch and scale products. He has been an entrepreneur and a senior product executive at growth-focused companies. He also performs and teaches improv. 🗣 We bring the BLAH, now its your turn to bring the BLAH BLAH :-) Love to hear your thoughts! Product BLAH 2 - Level Up with Improv | Shardul Mehta #productmanagement #productleadership Product Leader's Journey

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Strategic Storytelling for product leaders was a fab session yesterday with TopProds community led by Ross Webb, MBA I love the takeaways below. I’m always intrigued and impressed with what people learn from my talks… helps me refine the message also. An amazing feedback loop. Thanks again for inviting me 💪🏻 —— My focus is on bridging worlds within organisations and sectors with a focus on creating amazing customer & product experiences. I’m passionate about bringing an element of creativity back into to the product conversation. 📞 DM me if you want to know more. Available for consulting gigs (short term / long term / fractional engagements) #productstrategy #productmanagement #digitalproduct #storytelling #leadership

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There's this one thing that seems to keep happening and it's bringing down the tone of the product management discussion here on LinkedIn. It's the "debate" about how if you have this *one* mental model, it *denies* this other mental model. What do I mean? Jason Knight posted on Monday about "inchstones" versus milestones. "A lovely term representing a small movement towards a goal, rather than a 'milestone' which is a much larger movement towards that goal." And the response was kind of predictable, really. Jason suggests thinking about inchstones, or bringing that metaphor into your set of mental models. And someone says, "But you'll lose the big picture if all you think about is inchstones." Of course, Jason never said to abandon milestones. And of course, it pays to think about both. But this happens again and again. "This framework is bad because it doesn't have X!" "You can't use this method, because it ignores Y." I find this interesting, especially for product managers. We are supposed to be highly flexible in our thinking - we have to be, since we have so many different things to think about. And when you have to think about a lot of different things, you need a lot of different mental models. The metaphor I used yesterday in a comment on Jason's post was being able to see both the forest and the trees. 🌲 Sometimes you have to think of the forest as a forest. 🌲🌳🌴🌳🌲🌲🌳🌴🌳🌲🌲🌳🌴🌳🌲 🌴 Sometimes you have to think about the individual trees in the forest. 🌲 🌳 🌴 🌳 🌲 🌳 Sometimes you have to think about a particular species of tree in the forest. 🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳 🪵 Sometimes the main aspect of the forest that concerns you is its ability to create lumber. 🫁 Sometimes it's the forest's ability to create oxygen that’s important. All these things are true. Thinking about one of the things doesn't mean the other thing isn't important in its own right, or that I'm discounting it. Often this is just for helping me have clarity in thinking about a particular situation or problem I'm trying to solve, or get agreement on. What is my recommendation? 👉 Remember the Product Management Mantra: "It depends." In any situation there are dozens of ways to think about it, all limited in their own way, many useful. 👉 And this reminds us of the rule about models: "All models are wrong; some are useful." 👉 Variants of this rule apply to many things: templates, metaphors, PRDs, logical arguments, disagreements. Does this type of response bother you like it does me? And what are you doing to keep your mind flexible?

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