Martin Eriksson is the co-founder of Mind the Product, and co-author of the "Product Leadership" book. Martin has worked with a multitude of companies and has been heavily involved in the VC side of product management. These days, he's advising and coaching companies as well as trying to help us all make good decisions by writing a new book, "The Decision Stack", alongside its supporting website.

It's important for everyone in the company to be aligned on what's important, where the company's going and how they're going to get there. It's crucial for product and business leaders to do the work; both to create a vision and strategy and to share it with everyone who is needed to execute it.

Strategy is about making a coherent set of choices about how we're going to achieve our goals or make our company vision real. But, too many companies have fluffy, vague vision statements that could mean anything, and leaders who want to do everything all at once and don't want to make choices. This limits their ability to actually achieve anything.

A product strategy should support the company strategy and vision but, if there's no company strategy or vision, it's hard to create or defend such a strategy. On the other hand, you should still do the work to create one; either you'll get to go and execute the strategy or you'll have a straw man proposal to provoke further discussion around what the strategy should be.

Back in the day, a lot of product managers were expected to write specifications and get stuff done. They weren't even expected to be strategic, and many still aren't to this day. These skills are learnable; product people need to do their best to up their game, and company leaders need to get more comfortable both delegating responsibility and coaching their employees to have these skills.

"Founder mode" can be used to justify just about any behaviour, invites "hero syndrome" and can lead to micromanagement and single points of failure. Good leaders absolutely need to be deeply involved in their business, but this should not be at the expense of creating strong, aligned teams that can take many day-to-day decisions without them.

Martijn Versteeg is the founder of Group Effort, an organisation that fosters connections & facilitates the growth of scale-up leaders through peer groups, offsites and workshops.

His hot take? That product people should stop looking for the "golden nugget" of knowledge. Martijn argues that instead of seeking a single breakthrough insight, product managers should focus on consistent iteration and learning through small, incremental steps.

Find Martijn on LinkedIn or check out Group Effort.

Also, remember to check out the conference that he's organising, and we'll both be speaking at: Product Mastery Conference

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Martijn Moret is the founder of DataSquirrel.ai, a company focused on leveraging AI to humanise and simplify data analysis for product managers and non-tech managers.

His hot take? Most product managers neglect data—not because they dislike it, but due to a lack of time and skills, which can lead to wrong priorities and poor decision-making. He also highlights the current limitations of AI in data analysis, emphasising that while AI accelerates workflows, it still requires human oversight for reliable outcomes.

Find Martijn on LinkedIn or check out DataSquirrel.ai.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

🎄 Deck the Halls with Go-To-Market! 🎄

2024 Retrospectives and 2025 Predictions

Product Management and Go-To-Market Strategies

AI in Workflows and Whether Product Management is Dead 💀

LinkedIn Growth Strategies

Balancing Opportunities and When To Say No

Networking and Community Building

This is the audio of that conversation, but you can see us both (complete with Christmas hats!) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/XdjiVO-gXOg?si=XM1wQs-QwP6lx_rr

Check out my appearance on Maja's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kip2mtuyE

... and Maja's previous appearance on my podcast: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/maja-voje

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you all!

Adam Dille is the SVP of Product Engineering at Quantum Metric, a company specialising in experience analytics for some of the world's biggest brands. Despite his engineering roots, Adam's relentless curiosity about the WHY behind building products led him to embrace product thinking and how to build products better.

His hot take? The traditional product trio - PM, design, and engineering - isn't enough anymore. He advocates for transforming the trio into a square by adding a customer-facing, "operational" team member. This person, deeply connected to customer needs and speaking to customers every day, can help to bridge the gap between the product team and the customer and enable stronger customer focus and faster iteration cycles.

Find Adam on LinkedIn or check out Quantum Metric.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Grace Yusuff is a London-based "reluctant product manager" and introvert who thought she could never do the job. She has since fallen in love with the role and now works as a product manager and early-career mentor, helping others get into tech.

Her hot take? That introversion is a superpower for product managers and something to be embraced rather than overcome. She is a strong advocate for people to find their own way in product management, and not having to live up to clichés or stereotypes.

Find Grace on LinkedIn.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Assaph Mehr is an Australia-based product & people leader as well as a published fantasy author, who also uses his writing chops to produce a newsletter, "Rise of the Product Leader".

His hot take? That LLMs and other generative AI tools are the equivalent of an angle grinder. For those who don't know, angle grinders have big, spinning metal discs that make them ideal tools for certain use cases (like cutting up concrete) but are terrible for anything else. Assaph believes that LLMs have a large number of use cases where we should use them, but that there's still an inevitable need for human decision-making and a sense of taste that AI will never have.

Find Assaph on LinkedIn or subscribe to his newsletter. If you're interested in fantasy novels, check those out too.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Matt Maier is a product marketer and AI enthusiast from Irvine, California, with a background spanning the Air Force, aerospace, healthcare, and startup consulting.

His hot take? Within 5 years, employment as we know it will sharply decline. Matt predicts that advancements in AI will render traditional employee-employer relationships obsolete, because why would companies hire people to do easily automatable tasks? On the other hand, Matt believes this is a good thing and will enable an entirely new way of working.

Find Matt on LinkedIn or drop him an email at Solo Scale AI.

If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Yael Mark is a behavioural scientist turned product manager, who is passionate about helping others unlock the power of user-centred product design by embracing behavioural science. She believes that understanding human behaviour and cognitive biases can drive better product decisions and stakeholder alignment, as well as make sure we do it ethically.

Behavioural science is the study of how people think, act, and interact with their environments. By understanding human "bugs" and irrational behaviours, product managers can create products that align with user needs, addressing pain points inside and outside the app.

It's important to align behavioural tactics with user goals. Ethical applications, like encouraging language learning with Duolingo streaks, contrast with manipulative design patterns that exploit users for profit without delivering real value.

Cognitive biases are the shortcuts our brains take to help us make decisions. Common biases like anchoring, cognitive dissonance, and the sunk cost fallacy have an impact in product decisions. For example, Amazon Prime uses cognitive dissonance to encourage consolidated deliveries, appealing to users' environmental consciousness while reducing costs.

AI can accelerate behavioural research by simulating user responses, though it is not yet capable of replicating cognitive biases fully, even when told to exhibit them. However, biases in AI training data may introduce new challenges, requiring vigilance in its application.

Some people will be sceptical, so it's important to tie behavioural science theory to measurable KPIs and you can use A/B testing to demonstrate value. Not everything has to be a big development effort. Even reworking copy to focus on gains instead of losses can drive changes in user behaviour.

You can find Yael and learn more on YouTube at ProductBS or connect with her on LinkedIn

Returning guest Eisha Armstrong is the co-founder of Vecteris and author of books like "Productize" and "Fearless", which talk about that tricky journey from a professional services to product organisation. She's back to talk about her latest book, "Commercialize", which gives us the skinny on how to monetise, sell, and market productised offerings in transforming B2B professional services firms.

A successful product commercialisation strategy needs five key elements: Clear market understanding, monetisation approach, marketing strategy, sales process and plan for renewability. More than anything, company leaders need to think about this stuff upfront and not just wing it.

The data shows that selling products to existing service customers, especially as bundles, is typically more successful than trying to enter new markets. It's tempting to try to go downmarket with cheaper, standardised offerings, but this is challenging due to lack of brand recognition and relationships.

Many leaders focus on pricing, but packaging is often the bigger challenge. Packages should be designed around market segment needs rather than defaulting to simple "good, better, best" tiers without clear rationale. There must be a clear story for why customers would upgrade from one package to another.

A common mistake is trying to commercialise products using existing service-oriented sales and marketing teams. Organisations need to plan and budget for different kinds of capabilities and talent, rather than expecting current staff to develop new skills while maintaining their existing responsibilities.

Shifting from one-time service engagements to recurring product revenue requires changes in how companies measure success, moving from annual revenue targets to customer lifetime value. This transition typically takes several years and requires sustained leadership commitment to stay the course.

"More and more professional services firms are “productizing” their services to grow and scale. But successfully marketing and selling standardized services or products is very different from marketing and selling traditional professional services. Commercialize, a follow-on book to Productize, explores why commercializing new ideas is the most significant stall point when B2B services organizations productize. The book then outlines how the most successful firms commercialize packaged services and new products and get to revenue impact fast and efficiently."

Check it out on Amazon or the book's website.

You can find Eisha and learn more on the Vecteris website or connect with her on LinkedIn (mention you heard her on the podcast when connecting!)

• Survive the Feature Factory by Applying Product Thinking to Product Thinking (John Cutler, Product Evangelist & Coach @ Amplitude)