Product Momentum Podcast

In this episode of Product Momentum, we share our conversation with Matt LeMay, who had just delivered a keynote at INDUSTRY Global, entitled The Business is Your Business.

About Matt LeMay

Matt LeMay is an internationally recognized product leader, consultant, and author. His titles include Agile for Everybody, Product Management in Practice, and the soon-to-be-released Impact-First Product Teams. Today’s episode marks Matt’s second visit with Product Momentum; his first was in episode 113, Embracing Human Complexity in Product Management (June 2023).

High-Impact Work Is Hard…

For product managers and their teams, Matt explains, doing the high-impact work is super-hard. When dealing with the things that lie at the core of the product, he adds, “you have to coordinate; you have to have the tough conversations. Sometimes, you need to redo, or completely undo, work that’s been done by another team. That often draws lots of attention from people in the organization that product teams rarely hear from.”

…But Low-Impact Work Can Be Dangerous

It’s almost always easier to do the low-impact work, Matt says. Add a feature here, a new button there. It’s the sort of work that helps us feel good about ourselves, like we’re making progress. But the buzz is usually short-lived. Eventually, the absence of high-impact output catches up with product teams – usually, Matt adds, after the CFO takes a closer look at a spreadsheet.

Danger lurks when there’s a disconnect between company goals and product team goals, Matt explains. “When teams don’t know how their work is affecting the commercial realities of the business, they tend to reprioritize efforts to low-impact work.”

Product Teams Can Control Their Situation

Regardless of who’s responsible for the disconnect, product managers and teams can take control of the situation to give themselves a fighting chance.

“Even if no one’s asking us to, we can take ownership by saying, ‘here’s why and how the work we’re doing is going to help the business achieve those goals,’” Matt advises. “If we can proactively take control of that conversation, we put ourselves in a much stronger position with company leadership. On the other hand, if all we do is walk in and say, ‘tell us what success looks like,’ we might not get the answer we’re looking for.”

During our conversation with Matt, he mentions two important books on product management, respectively authored by earlier guests of Product Momentum: Evidence Guided, by Itamar Gilad, and Radical Focus, by Christina Wodtke. Be sure to catch our conversations with Itamar and Christina:

Episode 143, ‘Useful Models’ That Boost Product Launch Success, with Itamar Gilad.

Episode 18, Simple Steps To Achieve High Performance, with Christina Wodtke.

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If you’re a product manager who’s making the transition from individual contributor (IC) to people manager, you not only need to be nailing your job, Melika Hope advises. “You have to be showing up as a leader.” Opportunities for practicing leadership aren’t confined to managerial roles, she adds. ICs can exhibit leader-like traits every day by taking on a challenging strategic task, coming up with a creative solution, and solving complex problems that impact the business.

Melika Hope is Director of Product Management at Spotify; after delivering her keynote and INDUSTRY Global, she sat down with Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray for a lively discussion about what it takes to make the transition from individual contributor to people manager. Turns out there’s plenty to consider.

Showcasing Leadership Abilities

Melika advised ICs not to wait for formal opportunities to present themselves before showcasing their leadership abilities. Instead, she adds, “ICs should look for ways to contribute meaningfully to their teams and organizations. Solve problems proactively to demonstrate your value and potential for higher roles.”

Melika uses impactful anecdotes to encourage organizations to consider new career paths for individual contributors who excel in their roles but may not wish to manage people. “I find more folks actually aren’t as interested in becoming [people] managers anymore,” she says.

Taking Control of Your Future

What’s more, with widespread layoffs making it difficult for ICs to find new opportunities, “there’s a sense that if I am an IC, I have control over the work that I’m doing and the results I’m delivering. People are feeling more comfortable with that.”

Are we witnessing a culture shift beginning to take hold? The notion that leadership is better defined by actions and impact rather than titles. Be sure to catch the entire episode with Melika Hope, recorded live at INDUSTRY Global.

Looking for related content? Check out Product Momentum’s episode 90 with Liz Li: Amid the Great Resignation, It’s Time to Productize Your Career

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We didn’t realize it when we started recording this episode with Bob Moesta. But the moment our conversation ended, we knew his would serve as Product Momentum’s milestone 150th podcast! And what better topic to explore – and who better to explore it with – than a product manager’s job to be done with the champion of JTBD theory. As Bob explains, people don’t buy products at random; we hire them to solve specific problems or fulfill specific needs. Understanding the user’s struggling moments is our primary job to be done.

Product Momentum co-hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray caught up with Bob live and in person at INDUSTRY: The Product Conference. In their lively conversation, Bob touched on three main themes, each embracing our users’ struggling moments as the key to a product manager’s  success.

Understanding User Context – The Path to Better Products

As product managers, we have to grow to appreciate the context surrounding our end users’ struggling moments. When users realize “the anxieties or habits that prevent them from making changes easily,” product managers are enabled to actually see better ways to develop the products that fulfill users’ needs.”

Focus on Cause, Not Probability

Sales and Marketing often rely on probability-based approaches, Bob adds, “because they don’t fully understand customer behavior.” As product managers, though, we are better positioned to identify the causes behind a customer’s need for a product; when we do that, our teams can focus on helping them make real progress, rather than just pushing unnecessary features that fail to address their specific challenges.

Customer Choice Is Based on Elimination, Not Selection

Customers won’t even notice a product unless they are already frustrated, Bob explains. So we should be targeting these precise moments of frustration to effectively capture their attention. Then, as they evaluate the range of possible product solutions, customers eliminate the ones they know won’t meet their needs. The process is reminiscent of the standardized tests of our school-age years; oftentimes, we didn’t choose the best answer as much as we eliminated the ones we knew to be wrong.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with Bob Moesta; as you do, be on the lookout for his list of 5 skills that every successful product team should possess.

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Shikha Kapoor’s journey to Silicon Valley began in a small town in India, where she had only limited access to technology. She didn’t have access to the internet – or even to a computer. Now she’s a trailblazer in AI product management at Meta. Shikha credits a passion for learning, staying hungry, and maintaining a healthy curiosity as pillars in “a student mindset” that has served as her North star. Shikha currently serves as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations. Before then, she was a Product Leader AI for Consumer Productivity, at Google Assistant.

In this episode of Product Momentum, she joins hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray to discuss how she became a leading light in the rapidly evolving field of AI – specifically, embracing firsthand the connection between business needs and technology solutions and using that mindset to break from convention to foster creativity and innovation.

“Early in my career, I always looked for a role that connected the dots from business problems to technology solutions,” Shikha says. “And when I came across product management, it was clear to me that PMs are at the intersection of engineering, business, and design. They get to participate from end to end in solving user needs, anticipating market trends, and building the solutions we must deploy to get there.”

Now, as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations, Shikha Kapoor applies this product management mindset to balance long-term vision with agile execution. Her team often works in six-month planning cycles to develop big-picture AI-driven tools and then works backward from that distant horizon to maintain nimble and adaptable to emerging technologies and market shifts.

Shikha highlights emerging trends in AI across various industries, such as legal and healthcare. She points out the potential for automation to drive dramatic increases in productivity and business value. As AI continues to disrupt traditional workflows, she says, product managers must remain open-minded and proactive in adapting to these changes.

Catch the entire conversation with Shikha Kapoor to gain insights into the strategies she employs to stay ahead of the AI curve, including the importance of grounding your assumptions and embracing a culture of experimentation. Shikha also shares valuable advice for new and seasoned product managers alike on how to leverage AI to enhance user experiences and drive innovation.

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The success rate of new software products varies, depending on the criteria we used to define success. But a common statistic is unflattering: about 70% of new software releases fails to meet their initial expectations or goals. In this episode of Product Momentum – and in his new book, LAUNCH Code – James Whitman explains this phenomenon, describes the factors that contribute to such high failure rates, and presents research-based remedies we can deploy to reverse the trend.

Too often in product development, we become so focused on heads-down requirements building that the act of launching the product feels like an afterthought. And to many, it’s become a lost art. James says that success requires a companywide, comprehensive plan for managing internal handoffs and bringing clients deeply into product development and launch.

The development-to-sale process offers “many rakes to step on,” James says. And even the most well-intended teams make mistakes, often manifested in these critical areas:

Client Listening. We tend to sample only our most favored clients; we limit discovery efforts to a specific segment of our market; and too often we wrongly assume that internal team members possess the domain knowledge to speak on behalf of the client.

James underscores the critical role of continuous client listening and says that that every sales interaction is an opportunity for market research. “Maintaining a dialogue with clients both before and after the market launch is crucial for refining the product and addressing client needs effectively.”

The Product-to-Sales Handoff. Software launches start with innovation and product design, followed by value-added activities within the product function, James says. But then there’s this completely separate activity that happens over here in Sales. The gap between those functions is where many products fail to launch.

The best organizations integrate these activities into a holistic approach where sales and product teams work closely together rather than operating in silos.

The Sales Cabinet. There’s a solid collective understanding that we should listen to our clients and that we should work collaboratively with our colleagues. But why don’t these things happen in the real world?

James introduces the concept of a “sales cabinet,” a group of trusted senior sales representatives who provide early feedback on product ideas and help profile new offerings.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with James Whitman to deepen your understanding of the LAUNCH process: Listen, Assess, Unify, Navigate, Control, and Hone.

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What percentage of your software product launches have been successful? If you answered, “about 50%,” you’re ahead of the curve, says Itamar Gilad. Itamar is a product leadership coach and author who also held senior product management and engineering roles at Microsoft and Google, where he worked at YouTube and led parts of Gmail.

In today’s conversation, Itamar looks back on his early career that – he readily admits – includes ‘not that many big wins.’ As he explains, “The engineer in me kept whispering, ‘you don’t really know. You’re just faking it.’ And the results spoke for themselves.”

It was then, while still at Google, that Itamar realized the power of discovery and user research. What he called, “all these good things that we now take for granted.” Once he embedded these techniques into his work, his perspective changed, and he started to consider a new product leadership playbook. What he came up with has replaced the traditional Plan and Execute model “that may have worked in the 20th century,” with an outcome- and evidence-based intuitive approach.

“We used to believe that if we spend enough time creating the perfect top-level plan, and build a set of cascading plans, and then execute well on these plans, we will achieve greatness,” Itamar says. “It simply doesn’t work that way.” Even ideas from the most visionary leaders were informed by research and evidence, hypothesis and testing, he adds.

In his book, Evidence Guided, Itamar presents an actionable model for bringing evidence-guided development into our organizations. Nested within Itamar’s larger framework are the GIST model, which leads to the ICE model, which then leads to the Confidence Meter. In this conversation, Itamar explains the role each model plays in specific detail and provides easy access to them.

Be sure to catch our entire episode with Itamar Gilad and consider this famous quote from the late British statistician George E. P. Box: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

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Can Product Operations transform your role as a product manager? Denise Tilles, who quite literally wrote the book on the subject (Product Operations, with Melissa Perri), thinks so. Especially if you’re interested in making better decisions faster – and who of us isn’t?

In her return visit to Product Momentum (having joined us from NY Product Conference, back in April), Denise reveals to hosts Sean Flaherty, Paul Gebel, and a standing-room-only audience of Product + Design Conference attendees how Product Operations unlocks the value of our organizations’ collective work.

What Is Product Ops?

Product ops provides the essential systems and supports that capture, review, and analyze data.

“It’s really about surrounding product managers with the tools they need to make faster and better-quality decisions,” Denise offers. It’s based on three key pillars:

“Product ops fine-tunes existing ways of working – not by being prescriptive, but by helping people understand how we work so we can work faster, smarter, and hopefully in a more pleasurable way,” Denise adds.

What Product Ops Is Not?

Product ops isn’t designed to take jobs away from product managers; nor does it seek to undermine their efforts. Product ops isn’t about building systems and processes for their own stake. And it isn’t necessarily a formalized role as much as it is an approach to efficient product building. In fact, as Paul suggests, “Even if we don’t have the title, even if we don’t have a product ops team, we can always bring a little bit of it to our daily work to make things a little bit better.”

Be sure to check out the full conversation with Denise Tilles; if you prefer the video experience, you can find our episode with Denise on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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In this episode of Product Momentum, Patricia Reiners chats with Paul Gebel and Brian Loughner (a Lead UX Designer at ITX); during the conversation, she tackles three critical topics that UX designers should consider when thinking about how best to interact with AI in their daily work, in their careers, and in their role as ethical humans.

About Patricia. In addition to hosting the Future of UX podcast, Patricia Reiners is a distinguished UX innovator and a prominent voice in the field of user experience. Based in Zurich, she works to develop advanced UX methodologies in emerging technologies like AI, focusing on future UX design industry trends.

How do human skills compare with AI capabilities?

AI can analyze content, generate ideas, and present options far faster that humans can, Patricia says. But it lacks the creative spark, personal judgment, and sense of empathy that only humans possess. Creativity involves emotional intelligence through lived experiences that AI cannot replicate – even with the best training. “Those are uniquely human traits that are critical in tech, particularly in leadership roles where you’re working with people.”

AI tools also lack the ability to perform critical thinking and demonstrate sound judgment, which Patricia says is “a super-important skill – especially for designers.” Unlike humans, she continues, AI struggles with making complex decisions that involve ethical considerations and subjective judgments. Designers often draw on research to make informed decisions based on values, principles, and context.

As a UX designer, how can I prepare for my future with AI?

Remember that AI is a tool, Patricia advises. “So, designers should get their hands dirty with AI and learn to collaborate with these tools so that we can better understand how they can make our work easier. When we understand their limitations and leverage them to improve our work, we become better designers.”

Dive into AI, she continues. “It’s so new, and things are changing all the time. AI works best when it augments our human abilities,” Patricia advises. “So, look for ways to integrate AI into your workflows to enhance your productivity.” Patricia also recommends that fellow designers join a UX meetup [like Upstate UX Meetup] to learn from others about the latest trends and technologies, and be willing to share your challenges and your knowledge with others.

How can I make sure the AI tools I use are ethical, protect PII, and are free of bias?

As John Maeda explained during his podcast episode, “We often forget that accepting the bad with the good is a theme of every new technology story.” That is, we understand that AI – like every new technology – is no panacea for all that ails the world. But we cannot discard them because they are flawed.

With respect to ethical considerations in AI, Patricia says that designers should do their best to find and use AI models that are trained with unbiased data. In the interim, she adds, “advocate for ethical practices; develop strategies for using AI before building products that might have been trained using questionable data.” And perhaps most importantly, Patricia says, “designers need to speak up to ask the tough questions about the quality of data AI tools have been trained on and where personal data (used by AI systems) are stored.”

Special thanks to Patricia Reiners for sharing her expert insights in this podcast episode, and especially for delivering an amazing workshop at ITX’s 2024 Product + Design Conference. Unable to attend this year? Check out what you missed!

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In this episode, Paul and Sean catch up with Ryan Rumsey just moments after his poignant keynote at the 2024 ITX Product + Design Conference. During his keynote and follow-up conversation, Ryan explained that the biggest challenges product builders face are people challenges, “deeply rooted in our own personal experiences and feelings.”

Ryan Rumsey is the CEO of Second Wave Dive, an on-demand strategic consultancy, and the founder of Chief Design Officer School, a learning platform for design leaders.  He is also the author of two books and – as conference attendees can attest – a captivating speaker.

Assess Workplace Power & Influence

Ryan also highlighted the significance of power and influence in the workplace, especially within the design and creative domains where his expertise lies. He pointed out that people in design roles sometimes lack influence within corporate structures, leaving them with a sense that their ability to contribute value is somehow diminished.

“We can’t really talk about any of this without talking about power. In this sense, we’re talking working inside of corporations, where power typically doesn’t reside with people who are more on the creative thinking, artistic, exploratory, empathy side of the spectrum,” Ryan says.

Reframe the Meaning of Value Metrics

Designers and creatives can escape this perception by reframing what it means to deliver value and be successful, Ryan adds. We need to shift the focus from traditional metrics like lifetime value (LTV) and return on investment (ROI) to the emotional and personal aspects of work, he explains, stressing that personal fulfillment and how we make ourselves and others feel are crucial in our professional journeys.

“For a lot of us, we don’t tend to see value through our own eyes,” Ryan comments. “Instead, we tend to see value in ourselves as others see value in us. So if the culture is of LTV and that’s not your domain, it’s really hard to feel validated in value if that’s not your love language.”

Prioritize the Human Element

When we prioritize the human element, Ryan offers, we begin to focus on the well-being, motivation, and development of individuals within the team, and we create an environment where people feel supported, trusted, and empowered to contribute their best work. But even then, individuals working alone have limits to what they can achieve.

Invite Others To Be Right with You

“That’s why I embrace the advice I received from a friend and mentor some years ago,” Ryan shares. He said, ‘Look, you know what you’re doing. You’re doing all these things that, you know, are right. But you can’t reach your potential on your own; you’ve reached the limits of your aloneness here. You need others to be right with you.’  And I absolutely felt that double entendre aspect of other people are right, too, just from different angles.”

You can also catch the episode with Ryan Rumsey in video on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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In this episode, John Maeda explains that software products are tools that help us achieve our broader goals – like caring for loved ones and strengthening our relationships – rather than the ultimate objective. So it’s no surprise that John frames artificial intelligence as a power tool that levels up our human potential to create an even better future.

John Maeda, VP of Engineering and the Head of Computational Design and AI Platforms at Microsoft, joined the Product Momentum team to record a live podcast episode on the heels of his conference-opening keynote at ITX’s Product + Design Conference, in late-June.

Humans Are ‘Wired for Creativity’

“I think creativity is the foundation of creating capital,” John says. “That capital is emotional capital or sometimes financial capital. But it is a thing that maybe we humans are wired to do.”

Risk-versed vs. Risk-averse

Creating does not come without risk, however. Because the act of creation is a choice, it requires a competitor’s mindset. Deep down, true competitors don’t play to win; they play to maybe win. Like product managers, designers, and engineers who devote their expertise to create things that do not yet exist, they understand the risks that come with innovation. And they approach their work from a risk-versed mindset — an approach that drives our pursuit of innovation while recognizing the inherent risks.

Within the context of AI, we enjoy a vast ocean of opportunity to tap into, John adds. But to take advantage of AI tools in this way, we need to understand the difference between risk-versed and risk-averse. “To pursue that blue zone of possibility, you need to be risk-versed,” John explains. “AI is understandable; It just takes your attention to go there.”

Understanding AI Requires “The Player’s Mindset’

“Going there” is to embrace the player’s mindset – not the victim’s. While some see AI and grumble, “It’s going to take my job” or “It’s going to be a competitive force against me,” others see the blue ocean of opportunity.

“Anyone who’s afraid of AI is afraid of it because they don’t understand it,” John says. “Positives and negatives are a part of every new technology; we tend to focus on the negatives so much that we forget that everything technological is not always bad. If we are to truly understand [AI], it’s important for us to continue to ask these questions.

Be sure to catch the entire episode with John Maeda to hear him discuss the following topics:

(04:02)    Life is lived in 4 quarters: 0 to 25 years, 25 to 50, 50 to 75 years, and 75 to 100. Make the most of the 2nd quarter.

(06:43)    I like to pursue things that I don’t know; when you have no reference for how things are done, you’re kind of free to make your own way.

(9:22)      What mindset do you choose: will you be a victim of AI? Or invite AI to be your co-pilot?

(10:39)    The potential of AI to augment human capabilities: what humans can do by themselves, what AI can do for humans, and the new possibilities that arise when humans leverage AI.

(11:42)    To understand and embrace AI, we need to be risk-versed, not risk-averse.

(14:04)    How powerful art is! Creativity is the foundation of creating capital – both emotional capital and financial capital.

(17:57)    Powerful tools in the hands of the wrong people is a theme of every technology story.

(19:17)    Everyone seems to be talking about AI. But why isn’t AI everywhere already?

(24:07)    We’re in the Unknown / Unknown quadrant for how to manage AI.

You can also watch our episode with John Maeda on the Product Momentum YouTube channel!

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