Product Leader's Journey

Ritu Bhargava is xPresident and Chief Product Officer of SAP Customer Experience (CX/CRM) & Consumer Industries. Prior to that she was SVP of Software Engineering at Salesforce for Sales Cloud (CRM) and held various engineering leadership roles at Oracle. Ritu is a sought-after advisor, investor and has also served as a Board Member at Qualtrics.   

In this conversation, Ritu is disarmingly honest and candid as she narrates stories about her experiences rising up in the organization, balancing getting visibility and being a team player, and learning from people six levels down in the org chart.

Key takeaways:

1. COMMUNICATING WITH STAKEHOLDERS

- A boss is also a human with a job, not just a title. 

- Surface real issues and what they need to move forward.

- Ask “What would help you?”

2. SAYING NO TO MANAGEMENT

- Earn the right to say No

- Avoid the temptation to please

- Cover No’s in Yes’s

3. BEING A TEAM PLAYER

- Play the long game instead of little wins

- Be selfless, its not about you

- Can you give up the limelight when you could have claimed victory?

4. RISING UP IN THE ORGANIZATION

- Raise your hand and put yourself out there

- If you want to grow, make yourself redundant

- Earn the trust of peers who may report to you

- Hire people smarter than yourself without feeling threatened

- Build “OrgIQ”

5. DEALING WITH STRESS

- Apply five Why’s 

- Have a growth mindset

Connect with Ritu Bhargava:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritubhargava/

Connect with Rahul Abhyankar, host of Product Leader's Journey:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar/

For previous episodes:

https://www.productleadersjourney.com

https://youtube.com/@ProductLeadersJourney 

In this engaging conversation,Michael Margolis, CEO of Storied and Author of Story 10X, shares his unique journey to storytelling expert, emphasizing the importance of narrative in leadership and product management. Michael is a thought provoking storyteller, who has tranied product, data and Go to Market teams at companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, NASA, SAP, Salesforce, Uber .. the list goes on. He is also the author two books, Story 10X Turning the Impossible into the Inevitable and Believe Me, a storytelling manifesto for innovators and change-makers. 

In this episode he discusses the distinction between storytelling and narrative, the significance of understanding the language of business, and the role of soft skills in effective leadership. Margolis introduces the SFB Narrative Method as a framework for influencing others and highlights the importance of listening and understanding assumptions in communication. The discussion culminates in the exploration of influence archetypes and the necessity of aligning expectations to foster better relationships in professional settings.

Key Takeaways:

• ​Chocolate fosters connection and community.
• ​Storytelling is about the narrative, not just anecdotes.
• ​Learning the language of business is crucial for success.
• ​Soft skills are essential for leadership progression.
• ​Influencing requires a future-first approach.
• ​Listening is key to understanding and influence.
• ​Crafting narratives is vital for executive buy-in.
• ​The SFB Narrative Method helps structure influence efforts.
• ​Understanding influence archetypes can enhance communication.
• ​Aligning expectations is critical for relationship success.

Connect with Michael Margolis on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmargolis/

Connect with host Rahul Abhyankar on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Fred Koopmans is Chief Product Officer at BigPanda, an AIOps company. He is someone who has managed to ride the tech waves being at the right place at the right time - mobile video optimization on wireless networks, cloud, data platforms, open source, and now AI. Prior to BigPanda, Fred was SVP of Product Management at Cloudera, and Sr. Director Product Management at Citrix, and in engineering roles at Bytemobile.

In this episode, Fred shares his approach of writing a reverse job description that tells recruiters exactly what he is looking for. Here are some key highlights and the topics we cover:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

My guest in this episode is Elizabeth Samara-Rubio, Chief Business Officer of SiMa.ai, which offers MLSOC and platform for Edge AI, and one of the ten hottest semiconductor startups of 2024.

04:42 Leading Customer Conversations on Generative AI

07:26 Working Backwards: Amazon's Approach

10:43 Generative AI: Use Cases and Business Models

13:36 Investment Cases for Generative AI

16:28 Clock Speed: Understanding Stakeholder Dynamics

19:46 Transitioning from HP to Accenture: Lessons Learned

22:39 Defining Market Attractiveness and Pockets of Possibility

25:32 Machine Learning at the Edge: Applications and Implications

28:21 Personal Insights: Influences and High Standards

In this episode, Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode, which provides user testing solutions to leading tech companies. Luke shares his journey from hardware engineering to founding a company that revolutionizes product testing. He discusses the importance of continuous user testing, the shift from waterfall to agile methodologies, and how Centercode has established itself in a new market category. Luke emphasizes the significance of community building, demonstrating value through metrics, and the evolution of pricing strategies. He also explores the impact of generative AI on product testing and shares valuable leadership lessons learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey.

Key takeaways:

- Establishing a Common Vocabulary for Early Customers

- Demonstrating the Value Proposition with Key Metrics

- Adapting Pricing Strategies in a New Category

- The Importance of Value-Based Pricing

- The Impact of AI on Product Testing

- Treating the Company Like a Product

- Building a Great Culture by Designing the Company

Jyotika Athavale is the 2024 President of the IEEE Computer Society. In this role she oversees the global roadmap for the organization and plays a leading role in international safety standardization. She was honored with the IEEE Women in Technology and Leadership Award for her contributions towards diversity in engineering and STEM.

Jyotika is one of the leading experts in the area of automotive functional safety. In her day job, she is Director of Enterprise Architecture at Synopsys, and has had a successful career as Principal Engineer at Intel, and Lead Technologist at Nvidia. It is quite remarkable having these very strong parallel career tracks. 

In this episode, Jyotika talks about how the standards bodies ensure standards are relevant in the future, especially considering the pace of innovation we are seeing in many areas such as AI, autonomous vehicles, and so on. Jyotika also shares her advice on becoming a thought leader, and not holding ourselves back from roles we are fully capable of performing.

Connect with Jyotika Athavale:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotika-athavale-460b383/

Connect with Rahul Abhyankar:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Purvi Shah is Vice President of Product Development for Enterprise Data Platforms at American Express. Prior to that she led a team of consultants at Deloitte in the public sector working with many state governments to build solutions for citizens to avail services for food stamps, child care and other interventions. Purvi was recently recognized on the 2024 Global Data Power Women List by CDO Magazine. 

In this episode Purvi talks about:

(1:05) Product development in the public sector

(2:23) Looking at the end-to-end journey beyond the user's problem

(4:36) Three important things about empathy in understanding users

(6:21) Data challenges of a 170 year old company like American Express

(7:43) Three success criteria for Customer-360 programs that strive to build a singular view of a customer

(11:27) Applying Newton's first law of motion to data platforms

(13:30) Applying Newton's second law of motion to data platforms

(14:23) Example of customer delight that comes from having a good data ecosystem

(16:43) Key lessons learnt from decommissioning legacy data platforms

(22:05) Applying Newton's third law of motion to data platforms

(25:26) Metrics to track for enterprise data platforms

Connect with Purvi Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purvi-shah-8298451/

Connect with Rahul Abhyankar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Product Leader's Journey: https://www.productleadersjourney.com

Jeff Lash is SVP of Global Product Management at Forrester. Jeff has been a long time thought leader on all things product. He led the product management practice at SiriusDecisions (acquired by Forrester) where he worked with many companies on assessing and benchmarking their product function competency and maturity. Jeff started his career as an information architect and usability at Elsevier and Mastercard, and then pivoted into product management, so he has some good insights to share from both sides.

At Forrester, Jeff leads the core portfolio that generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, with responsibility for product discovery, new product innovation, portfolio management, and pricing/packaging.

In this episode we talk about:

* How UX and PM work best with each other

* Good PMs create opportunities for other team members

* PM tools cannot address fundamental problems

* Assessing PM function and competency in a company

* Organizing and orienting what PMs are responsible for

* Measuring success in the PM role* Applying PM principles to pickleball!

Connect with Jeff Lash at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefflash/

Connect with Rahul Abhyankar at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulabhyankar

Lara Shackelford is a veteran Chief Marketing Officer many times over, and has led marketing teams to create impact at companies such as Oracle, Intel, Datastax, Looker (both before and after the acquisition by Google), and has also led global demand generation at Microsoft. She is currently senior vice president of marketing at iCapital.

In this episode, Lara talks about how the B2B buying experience has changed, what is a good blueprint for sales training, coming up with a good ROI analysis, how to assess the ROI of AI, and what does a good partnership between product marketing, product and sales teams looks like, and much more.

David Packard, the cofounder of HP, is believed to have said, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department,” so I wanted to see what Lara had to say about that. Enjoy listening!

Nathan Gold is highly sought after as a coach for presentations at the TED conference, keynote speeches, entrepreneurs pitching on Shark Tank and startups raising funding from investors. He has delivered thousands of hours of professional coaching while working with companies such as Netflix, SanDisk, Kaiser Permanente and IBM.

In this episode Nathan shares some very useful tips on how to do a persuasive and memorable product demo, combined with stories. He shares a simple template for communicating your product’s value proposition. He also talks about the secrets of designing, scripting and delivering high stakes presentations, including how to harness your speaking anxiety.

Nathan has graciously offered his book "Harnessing Your Speaking Anxiety" as a free download at: https://www.democoach.com/freebook. You don't need to enter your name or email. He only asks that if you like it, that you share it with two more people.