Catalyst

How can you make meetings better? This week Chris and Gina break down what causes a meeting to drag and how a good meeting can unfold. They explore how to get at a meeting’s true agenda — finding the solution to a problem. They also delve into how to ensure everyone feels their time is valued.

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How do you build a great company that a lot of people want to buy? Paul and Rich join Chris and Gina to discuss their Postlight journey, the process behind NTT Data’s acquisition of the company, and how to date interested buyers when looking to sell your agency.

Links 
An Exciting Next Chapter: Postlight Joins NTT DATA!

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What was the last show you watched? Why did you choose it? And how would you describe it? As Director of Product at Peacock TV, Kate Radway wants to know. This week Kate joins Chris and Gina to discuss what it’s like shipping product for a major streaming platform. She breaks down some of the biggest pain points she sees — like when the platform brings you back to the credits of an episode you’ve already watched — and why solving them isn’t always as easy as it seems. 

Links: 

Kate Radway Twitter 

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Consumer experience should always be the number one priority when developing a product. This week, Chris and Gina are joined by Michael Shane, Postlight’s Head of Digital Strategy, to discuss how to balance pragmatism and panache at every stage of the journey. 

Links: 

Chris’s article about why health insurance websites are bad
Previous Postlight episode about Speed

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A good product thinker looks ahead, not behind. This week Chris and Gina break down the importance of promoting product management over project management. They explain how you can differentiate between project thinking and product thinking and how a product-led approach can drive teams toward alignment. Instead of being driven by tickets and backlogs, product thinking asks: Where’s the problem, how does it fit into our roadmap, and how can we solve it? 

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As a hybrid and remote-friendly workplace, it’s rare that the whole Postlight team gets together, but recently the entire team congregated in New York City for a week of in-person events. In this episode, Chris and Gina chat about the importance of Remotes Week in building trust and relationships and share tips on how to make everyone feel at home during in-person events. IRL cheers to IRL meet-ups! 

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Keeping huge software projects on track is hard but not impossible. This week Chris and Gina walk us through how they come up with deadlines that work both for the client and the team. They explain what questions you should be asking to make sure nothing is overlooked in the beginning planning stages and explain what to do in that dreaded scenario when you realize you’re not going to hit your target. A good tip: Challenge anyone who says, “This should be easy.” 

Links: 

The New MVP: The Minimum Valuable Product 

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Does leadership start when you’re made a “Head of” or as a bossy child? Postlight’s senior leadership team takes over the podcast for a roundtable discussion on leading and learning. Nathan (Product Management), Michael (Digital Strategy), Natalie (Product Design), and Aaron (Engineering) share the mistakes that have made them better leaders, how being vulnerable builds trust, and how they can spot the spark of a potential leader within their teams. 

Links:

Nathan Henry on Twitter

Michael Shane on Twitter

Natalie Kurz on LinkedIn

Aaron Ortbals on Twitter

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There’s nothing worse than waiting for a page to load. This week, Chris LoSacco and Gina Trapani go deep on a crucial yet underappreciated feature of digital platforms — speed. They break down how things can get so slow and share tips on how you can build for speed, from database indexing to managing how much processing is happening on the service side versus the client side. We’ve got the need for speed!

Links:

Why Are Health Insurance Websites So Bad? 

Lighthouse 

Honeycomb

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Software is never done — but that doesn’t mean you need to be stressed about constantly reworking it. The codebase architecture choices you make at the outset can set you up better for the future. This week, Chris and Gina share their tips on building for the future, from reusing code wherever possible to deciding what kind of technical debt you’re willing to take on to addressing accessibility concerns first instead of last.

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