Make Things That Matter

Zooming in on three common change management issues: forecasting, role transitions, and departmental power dynamics.

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Topics discussed

(00:03:01) Companies transforming into product organizations

(00:05:01) Revenue shift: smaller now, longer-term impact

(00:08:30) Practical topics: forecasting, transition, change management

(00:10:04) Identifying leading measures and assumptions in forecasts

(00:14:25) Seeking tech-enabled scale, revenue visibility, innovation

(00:20:29) Power shifts in organizations impact staffing and funding

(00:22:12) Evolving organizational model for product-centric strategy

(00:27:23) Key considerations for acquiring a company: purpose, integration, impact

(00:31:18) Leaders modeling simple mental health practices shift organizations. Organizational change requires supporting structures and models

(00:35:38) Quieting the mind to connect and trust

(00:37:33) Organizations need specific change management for success

(00:40:40) "Name fears, tame them; face personal insecurities."

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Links & resources mentioned

Full transcript at: https://podcast.makethingsthatmatter.com/eisha-armstrong-pragmatic-change-management-strategies/#transcript

* Send episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via email

* Guest: Eisha Tierney Armstrong - LinkedIn

* Book: Fearless: How to Transform a Services Culture and Successfully Productize

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Related episodes:

* #2 Barry O’Reilly: Unlearning and creating culture change

* #9 Amy Edmondson: Building teams where people feel safe

* #59 Kenny Borg: Identity transformation and embodying fulfillment

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Books:

* Fearless: How to Transform a Services Culture and Successfully Productize (Eisha’s book)

* "Leading Change" by John Kotter

* “Managing Transitions: Making the Most of the Change” by William Bridges

MJ Jastrebski is the CPO of Stylitics, a rapidly scaling retail technology company that helps retail websites automate styling and bundling for their consumers.

Click here to fill out the MTTM listener survey form by August 16, 2023: https://makethingsthatmatter.com/survey

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:07:20) Understanding product roles/levels, influence, and career growth.

(00:13:10) Product and process management at different levels.

(00:19:22) Leadership training emphasizes accountability among executive teams, prioritizing cross-functional exec peer relationships & alignment.

(00:28:27) The importance of buoyancy.

(00:36:17) How mindfulness and empathy are important for effective leadership.

(00:43:41) What Stylitics is doing and how it's scaling up

(00:47:12) Expanding internationally and into new verticals. Emphasis on shipping and team muscle building.

(00:55:38) Creating product families to address pain points, setting expectations, iterating with alpha, beta, and GA stages, building retailer relationships, understanding different market needs.

(01:02:08) Changing roles, building skills, and evolving identity.

(01:11:30) Creating psychological safety is crucial for innovation. It allows people to take risks without fear of judgment or failure. This enables organizations to gather more information and make better decisions.

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Links & resources mentioned

• You can end episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via email

• Guest: MJ Jastrebski & Stylitics

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Related episodes:

• Mike Saloio: Leadership, meditation, ego, and ubuntu

• Amy Edmondson: Building teams where people feel safe

• Kenny Borg: Identity transformation

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People & orgs:

• Stylitics

• Carlota Perez

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Books:

• Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

• Multipliers

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Other resources:

• Give away your legos

• How to craft your product team at every stage, from pre-PMF to hypergrowth

• The 3 lenses of innovation

It's been quiet around here because I'm in deep in the creative process of reimagining this show, and I need your help. Podcast analytics are terrible, and I want to know more about YOU.

Please fill out this short, 5-ish minute survey. Your help on this goes a LONG way, and I appreciate you taking the time!

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Donna Lichaw is an executive coach for unconventional leaders, and the author of the newly-released book The Leader’s Journey.

Donna brings a background in design and product to her executive coaching and helps unconventional leaders take control of the story to drive impact for themselves and within their teams. We go deep on:

* how to handle managing our own stories in healthy conflict

* creating psychological safety

* what it looks like to “give yourself an A” so you feel freed up to invent new possibilities

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, Google, Overcast, or Youtube.

Links & resources

* Send episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via email

* Donna Lichaw: website, LinkedIn, Twitter

* Donna’s new book: The Leader’s Journey

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Related episodes:

* Mike Saloio: Leadership, meditation, ego, and ubuntu

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People & orgs:

* Neuroleadership Institute

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Books:

* The Art of Possibility

* Rethinking Positive Thinking

* The Upside Of Your Dark Side

* Nonviolent Communication

* Radical Candor

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Other resources:

* Donna’s toolkit

* The SCARF model (psych safety)

* 3F model

Adam Thomas is a coach that helps product teams operationalize strategy so they spend more time focused on building the right products and less time fighting fires.

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Sign up here to get upcoming essays + episodes emailed to you.

Follow the MTTM journey on Twitter or LinkedIn!

If you haven't already would you do me a favor and take ~40 seconds to rate/review the show on Apple Podcasts ? It really helps. (Scroll to bottom of page for rate/review links.)

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Links & resources mentioned:

* Send episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via email

* Adam Thomas: website, LinkedIn, Twitter

* Adam’s Maven workshop: Survival Metrics

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Related episodes:

* Melissa Perri: Product strategy and the missing middle

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Books and media:

* Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

* The Crux

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Other resources:

* Warhammer 40K

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Timestamps:

[00:01:48] War gaming shaped product strategy

[00:03:22] Warhammer 40K

[00:07:11] Michael Jordan's Winning Shot

[00:11:22] The whole person equation

[00:14:15] Emotions in the workplace

[00:17:54] Survival metrics

[00:23:08] Implementing survival metrics

[00:27:26] Trust issues in product development

[00:30:05] Internal value exchange

[00:34:33] Being "Product Led" is Misleading

[00:36:26] Using survival metrics consistently

[00:39:23] Focusing on important outcomes

[00:45:12] Complying with regulations in finance

[00:50:13] Questions to ask yourself

Mike Saloio is the CEO and cofounder of Huddle, a startup that brings together fractional swat teams of expert builders to help startups generate real momentum on their most important projects within a week.

This is a candid conversation about leadership and how our egos, sense of identity, and personal practices shape our company cultures. In particular, I think you’ll find practical benefit from our discussion about decoupling the concepts of morality and integrity to have healthier team dynamics.

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* Mike Saloio - Twitter, LinkedIn

* Huddle

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Related episodes:

* Barry Brown: Work as a pathway of transformation

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People & orgs:

* Steph Golik (cofounder)

* TechStars

* EXPA

* Rick Rubin

* Alfred Adler

* Ray Dalio

* Russell Simmons (+ meditation book)

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Books and media:

* The Courage To Be Disliked

* Article - Polarities

* Polarity Management (book)

* Success Through Stillness

* Rick Rubin book

* Huddle launch article

* The Playbook

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Other resources:

* Ikigai

* “You must become somebody before you become nobody”

* Ubuntu

* Transcendental Meditation

* Four minute mile effect - Bannister effect

The SaaS Playbook will shave years off your learning curve if you want to build a SaaS. Rob Walling is a serial entrepreneur and the internet godfather of indie SaaS businesses who has built six companies and has been a long-standing voice in creative, independent paths into product building and entrepreneurship since 2010.

Links & resources mentioned

* Book: The SaaS Playbook

* Back the Kickstarter

* Startups for the Rest of Us podcast & MicroConf YouTube

* TinySeed

* MicroConf

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Related episodes:

* Rob Walling (ep28): Build a great business and let that be enough

* DJ DiDonna: Navigating sabbaticals and career breaks

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People & orgs:

* TinySeed

* MicroConf

* Dr Shelly Walling

* Justin Jackson - choosing a market

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Books:

* The SaaS Playbook

* The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together

* Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup

* The Zen Founder Guide to Founder Retreats

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Other resources:

* MicroConf

* IndieHackers

* The 5PM idea validation framework

* Survivorship bias

* Stair step method of bootstrapping

What do you do when one of your top three KPIs is stagnant, and the product isn't growing? A micro case study in debugging retention and unlocking growth.

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You can read the original article here: https://tinyurl.com/2hdmy2zp

LINK: STARTING CONDITION CHART: https://tinyurl.com/2fnemasz

LINK: DEEPER DIVE PIE CHART: https://tinyurl.com/2lyjalyp

Petra Wille is a product leadership coach and the author of Strong Product People, my go-to book for the people development side of being a product leader. In this conversation, we dive deep into why and how a community of practice can level up your team and save training budget.

You can also read this episode here.

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Sign up here to get upcoming essays + episodes emailed to you.

Follow the MTTM journey on Twitter or LinkedIn!

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Links & resources mentioned:

Petra Wille:

• Website

• Twitter @loomista

• LinkedIn

• Book: Strong Product People

• Conference: Product at Heart

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Related episodes:

• Amy Edmondson: Building teams where people feel safe

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People & orgs:

• Robert Kegan

• Tolingo (translation company)

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Books:

• Strong Product People

• An Everyone Culture

• The Culture Map

• Selling the Dream

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Other resources:

• Product Communities of Practice: Everything You Need to Know

• Dan Pink - Autonomy, mastery, purpose

• The (product) cultural iceberg

Bob Moesta is one of the pioneers of Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) theory, which has fundamentally changed the way we think about building products and discovering what progress people actually need and want from the products they hire.

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Sign up here to get upcoming essays + episodes emailed to you.

Follow the MTTM journey on Twitter or LinkedIn!

If you haven't already would you do me a favor and take ~40 seconds to rate/review the show on Apple Podcasts ? It really helps. (Scroll to bottom of page for rate/review links.)

—

LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED

Send episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via email

Bob Moesta: The Rewired Group, LinkedIn, Twitter

Bob’s books and podcast Learning to Build Demand-Side Sales 101 Jobs to be Done Handbook The Circuit Breaker podcast

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RELATED EPISODES:

April Dunford: Find your power in the market through positioning

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PEOPLE & ORGS:

W. Edwards Deming

Clayton Christensen

Genichi Taguchi

Willie Hobbs Moore

Tim Davis

Claire Sullentrope

April Dunford

Ryan Singer

Basecamp

Intercom

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BOOKS:

Learning to Build

Competing Against Luck

Grit

Introduction to Quality Engineering

Orthogonal Arrays and Linear Graphs

Shape Up

How Will You Measure Your Life?

Never Split the Difference

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OTHER RESOURCES:

Orthogonal arrays

Magic squares

L9 prototype