Product Voices

Product managers often spend time on things that don't add the most value to their products. They're pulled in to put out fires or do other things that, while important at the time, may not necessarily be the things that will "move the needle" for their products.

This episode features guest David Pereira, Head of Product at Virtual Identity. David shares insights on:

• Reasons PMs sometimes don't prioritize time spent on the most important things
• What are the right things to prioritize and what should be deprioritized
• How orgs can set up an environment to foster prioritizing the right things
• What PMs can do even if their environment isn't too conducive for this 

Learn more from David on his website and his Medium page.

Subscribe to Product Voices on your favorite platform or learn more at ProductVoices.com.

Product management is hot. Many people want to get into a career in product. And while there are lots of product manager job openings, companies and hiring managers most often expect product management experience and rarely take a chance on hiring someone without previous product experience.

In this episode, Jen Yang-Wong, Director of Product at Contrary Capital, joins to discuss:

• why hiring managers are reluctant to hire someone without previous product management experience, 
• what they can do to get comfortable with taking a chance on someone,
• and what candidates can do to set themselves up for an opportunity.

We hear a lot about imposter syndrome in product  and tech. Even the most confident of us can sometimes feel like we don't belong or deserve the place we're in.

On this episode, we look at imposter syndrome from a different perspective... how we can harness it for strength.

Sophie Lalonde, Group Product Manager at Productboard, talks about how you can leverage imposter syndrome to:

• Bring a fresh perspective to product discovery
• Let curiosity guide interactions with your community
• Help the product team form the right processes
• Enlist the help of your peers, and
• Trust yourself

Learn more at ProductVoices.com or read more about Sophie's insight on this topic in her article on BuiltIn. 

We talk a lot about the hard skills needed in product management - technical knowledge, processes and frameworks, methodologies, financial acumen, etc., but truth be told, soft skills are every bit as important as the hard skills in successfully navigating the PM role. 

On this episode, Manosai Eerabathini, product manager at Figma, shares his thoughts on:

• his own journey in product management 
• the most important soft skills
• how those skills have evolved throughout his career
• how PMs can find their own style and superpower

Links to resources mentioned, transcript of the episode, and more at ProductVoices.com.

Find more of Manosai's insights on his website TheProductLens.com

In this episode, we are sharing an episode of the Women in Product Podcast - part of their Great PM Books Series. JJ Rorie interviews Radhika Dutt, author of Radical Product Thinking.

Learn more at https://www.womenpm.org/wip-podcast or productvoices.com.

The product manager role can be fun, exhilarating, highly rewarding…. and difficult! There are so many cross-functional partners involved, so many moving parts, so many decisions to make. It can be quite difficult at times on our emotions and well-being.

This episode is all about the emotional side of PM, something we don’t talk about enough.

Nicole Daines, product leader at Rosie, joins the podcast to share her insights on:

• navigating the day-to-day of the product manager role.
• dealing with ambiguity and not always having a clear direction
• managing stakeholder engagement without getting burned out
• handling the 'meh' days
• avoiding assigning our self-worth to our work (good or bad)

Roadmaps are always a hot topic in product management. How to best use roadmaps? What should they represent? How to best connect them to strategy? Who should be involved with creating them? With whom should we share them? There aren’t that many teams and organizations that have really mastered the creation and use of roadmaps. 

On this episode, Navya Rehani Gupta, Chief Product Officer at Peek, shares her unique approach to roadmap planning and communication.

There are few things more important in product management than communication. Product is an inherently cross-functional discipline that requires product teams to constantly communicate about all aspects of the product, the customer, the workstreams ongoing within the org. Effective communication is bedrock to success. One aspect of communication - and connecting with audiences - is storytelling. Storytelling is a powerful tool in a product manager’s toolbox.

Colleen Graneto, Product Manager at Airbnb and product coach and instructor, joins to podcast to share insights on how to improve our storytelling skills and use stories to engage internal partners and communicate the customer narrative.

Colleen shares wonderful examples and resources including Airbnb's ‘Snow White’ Storyboards - video 1 - article 1 - article 2.

Learn more at ProductVoices.com.

Organizations and product teams are always striving to improve. To optimize their operations, their structure, their workflows, and the ways in which the teams work. There are myriad “best practices” that can be deployed, and it’s sometimes quite difficult to know what is the best next change to make. What is the thing that if we improve upon, it will make the biggest impact. That is not always easy to pinpoint.

On this episode, Holly Hester-Reilly, the Founder and CEO of H2R Product Science, discusses how to know what the right next step is when applying best practices, using the the Product Science Principles: evidence-based product strategy, continuous discovery and delivery, and empowered teams. 

A lot of people have been moving jobs over the past couple of years. The average tenure of a product manager seems to be shortening. Moving companies and even industries can be a good thing for someone’s career. New employees can bring new viewpoints, experiences, and an invigorating energy to the organization. But companies also must ensure that new product managers get onboarded and integrated into the team and culture as soon as possible.

This episode is all about how to successfully onboard product managers. Mirela Mus, founder of Product People, a product management consultancy with 42 full-time PMs who help serve interims in Europe's top product companies, brings her unique perspective on this topic.

Learn tips on how to onboard product managers effectively and how to measure successful onboarding. Plus hear examples of great and not-so-great onboarding.

Find the episode transcript and more at ProductVoices.com. Learn more about Product People at GetProductPeople.com.