One Knight in Product

How to Move Fast Without Breaking Things (with Dani Grant, Co-founder & CEO @ Jam)

Dani Grant is a former product manager turned VC who decided to go back to building products and setting up her own company, Jam. Jam aims to take the pain away from bug reporting, and to deliver Dani's dream of shipping awesome software fast. We spoke about the story behind her company, as well as some hints & tips from her time working with early-stage startups as a VC.
A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel
This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast!
Episode highlights:
Starting a company is a big adventure
Dani went from PM to VC but felt the call of entrepreneurship irresistible. She found a problem that she was passionate about solving and wanted to do something meaningful for herself, her users and her team.
Startups can be force multipliers for people making their own impact in the world
The impact of a startup is felt not only by your users but your users' users. If you can save people time, effort, or both, then you can contribute to changing the world one company at a time.
There's an approach to getting your first funding round
As a founder, you're in the business of delivering a great meeting & making it easy to shine. For early-stage companies, VCs care less about the detail than the team and the vision. They know the execution will change.
"Move fast and break things" is so 10 years ago
First impressions count. If you're building productivity tools, you can't make people's lives harder. You need to ship something that works - moving fast and breaking things was a valid strategy only before people knew better
Every PM & founder's job is to support their teams moving fast & shipping awesome stuff
Devs have a big role here, but the whole company needs to come together around quality, define enough detail up front, and keep the scope small to help deliver a quality product.
Contact Dani
You can catch up with Dani on LinkedIn or on Twitter
You can try out Jam on jam.dev
 
Here's the VC video that Dani recommended: How to Nail Your Startup Pitch Deck - Rebecca Kaden

From High-Frequency Trader to Investor in Good Ideas (with Pooja Parthasarathy, Head of Product @ AbstractOps)

Pooja Parthasarathy is a product leader who started out her career in the high-pressure, high-volume world of high-frequency trading. She took some time out with me to reflect on her unconventional career journey, what it taught her, and how to make an impact as a product leader.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
High-frequency trading is as stressful as you'd imagine, but it has lessons for early-stage product managers
Working with traders teaches you to think on your feet in volatile environments, think three steps ahead & build a thick skin. These are all valuable traits for PMs.
We should all be comfortable asking basic questions
Working in a variety of jobs has helped her get comfortable with first-principles thinking and asking even the most basic questions. It's important to model this behaviour for your team.
Be kind to yourself and the stories you tell yourself
Pooja was hard on herself after her first child and wondered if she could make a success of work after going back. She learned to appreciate the job she was doing and be her own champion.
The job of a product person is to be an investor in good ideas
A PM's job is not to have all the answers or all the best ideas, but to be the Socratic Police Officer and ask good questions to get those around you to bring their own insight to the table for you to tie together
The CEO & CPO relationship is the most important in the company
It's important to create leverage with the CEO, by having the right motivations, setting clear expectations about who owns what for what time horizon, and being comfortable delegating to other leaders.
Contact Pooja
You can catch up with Pooja on LinkedIn, although she's about to have a baby so maybe wait a bit!

Valentine’s Special! A Love Letter to Problems, not Solutions (with Uri Levine, Founder @ Waze & Author ”Fall in Love with the Problem, not the Solution”)

Uri Levine is a 2x 'Unicorn' Builder (Duocorn) who co-founded Waze and is a former investor and board member in Moovit. Uri recently published his book, "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution". We talk about some of the themes from the book as well as some stories from his own career.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
There are no right or wrong decisions, only the decision you make right now
Uri is often asked if selling Waze was the right decision, but you can only make decisions based on the information you have. It's more important to make a decision than wait for the perfect decision.
Find a problem you care about, but you are a sample of one
You should be passionate about the problem you're solving, but don't assume that anyone else cares as much as you do or wants to solve it the way you want to. You have to get out & speak to people who have the problem
If you're afraid to fail then, in reality, you already failed
When you're building something no one has built before, you never know if it'll work. You need to experiment, fail fast and have multiple shots on goal. The faster you fail, the sooner you can have another shot.
Product/Market Fit does exist & it is measurable
If you're not creating value, people won't come back. Retention is the most important way to measure P/MF & make sure that the solution to your users' problem is actually valuable. Getting people to value quickly is essential.
B2B & B2C product management share the same goals
You might have different customers who care about different features, but they all care about something. The metrics might differ, but the ultimate goal is to deliver value & solve a real pain for all these different people.
Buy "Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution"
"Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution offers mentorship in a book from one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and empowers you to build a successful business by identifying your consumers' biggest problems and disrupting the inefficient markets that currently serve them."
Check it out on Amazon.
Contact Uri
You can visit Uri at his website UriLevine.com or follow him on Twitter.

Adam & Jason Talk All About Product Strategy (with Adam Thomas & Me, Two Product Management Talking Heads)

And now... for something completely different. The other day, I did an experimental webinar with my former podcast guest Adam Thomas where we talked about some audience-submitted questions about product strategy. I think it went pretty well and wanted to share the audio with a larger crowd. So here we are! Please do let me know if you like the format.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring, and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
The questions we answered:
 
What are the pillars of an effective product strategy?
How do you know a strategy is working or not?
What do you do when there is no product strategy?
Check out Adam's previous interview
I interviewed Adam back in 2021 about Survival Metrics. Check the episode out here.
Contact Adam
You can find Adam on Twitter. He's also got a Substack mailing list and his website is theadamthomas.com

The Power of Storytelling for Cross-Functional Alignment (with Ronke Majekodunmi, Director of Product Management @ Promevo)

About the Episode
Ronke Majekodunmi is a product leader and featured Product School speaker who is passionate about using the power of storytelling to help drive cross-functional alignment. We spoke about storytelling, as well as some stories from her own career.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring, and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
 
You can't just walk into a new leadership job & trash the old team's work
It doesn't matter where you worked before - there's always context and a reason for old decisions. Take time to understand them. Oh, and make sure you leave a clean audit trail when you move on!
When looking at a new job, work out your non-negotiable questions
Ronke has moved jobs for the wrong reason before and this has inspired her to make a list of questions she must have satisfactory answers to before moving. Create your own list and don't get buyer's regret.
Product leaders should be Chief Storytelling Officers
Storytelling is one of the best ways to drive cross-functional alignment and get everyone in the company on the same page. You should craft an inspirational story and ensure that everyone from top to bottom knows it.
Creating stories collaboratively drives alignment
Don't just go off into your ivory tower and write something yourself. Build shared ownership by getting the team to collaborate. This means you can start to let go, not need to be in every meeting, and empower the teams.
It's important to be in control of your own story
Ronke has had some bad work experiences in the past and this has inspired her to "run her race her own way", be her authentic self and give back to the community. We can all make a positive difference to other people's lives.
Contact Ronke
You can catch up with Ronke at her website. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter .

OKRs: The Gateway Drug to Agility & Good Product Management (with Jeff Gothelf, Product Management Consultant & Co-author ”Lean UX” )

About the Episode
Jeff Gothelf is a product coach, author, speaker and trainer who is currently trying to get companies to work with outcomes, not outputs. He's written two classic books: Sense & Respond, and Lean UX, as well as a variety of other books covering various aspects of product management and design thinking.
A message from this episode's sponsor - My Mentor Path
This episode is sponsored by My Mentor Path. I'm a passionate advocate for mentoring, and believe it to be one of the highest-leverage activities you can undertake to get ahead in your career. I try to do my part, but am but one man, so I helped set up this FREE mentoring community to try to help out at scale. Sign up now as a mentor, a mentee, or both!
Episode highlights:
 
Lean, Agile & Design Thinking can get along
These came from different places, but the philosophies that underlie all of these ideas are the same: understanding our customers, working in shorter cycles, making decisions based on evidence, and continuously improving.
Managing for outcomes is the hinge that everything else pivots from
There are many principles of good product management, but moving away from output enables focus on the change in behaviour you want to see & have the humility to accept you don't have all the answers upfront
OKRs are the gateway drug to agility and good product management
OKRs are easy to explain, but difficult to implement. Used right, they can empower teams to make measurable impact towards an aspirational goal, without micromanagement or deciding on a fixed plan upfront.
OKRs are for teams, not individuals
OKRs enable teams to focus on impact, changing customer behaviour in a way that matters to their business & knowing whether they've succeeded. Cramming individual task lists into the OKR format doesn't achieve anything.
Change is scary & might not work the first time
Some people start with OKRs by mistake or give it a quarter & then give up. Using OKRs well takes work. If it's not working, make sure you have open & honest retros to understand whether it's fixable & whether you can try again.
Buy "Lean UX"
"Lean UX is synonymous with modern product design and development. By combining human-centric design, agile ways of working, and a strong business sense, designers, product managers, developers, and scrum masters around the world are making Lean UX the leading approach for digital product teams today In the third edition of this award-winning book, authors Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden help you focus on the product experience rather than deliverables."
Check it out on Amazon.
Buy "Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking"
"As companies evolve to adopt, integrate, and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams -- product management, design, and software engineering -- learns a different model. This short, tactical book reconciles the perceived differences in Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Agile software development by focusing not on rituals and practices but on the values that underpin all three methods."
Check it out on Amazon.
Check out Jeff's courses
Jeff is running some self-paced courses on OKRs, including in Spanish! Check them out here.
Contact Jeff
You can catch up with Jeff on his website. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.

Getting the GIST of Evidence-Guided Product Development (with Itamar Gilad, Product Management coach, speaker and author)

About the Episode
Itamar Gilad is a product coach, consultant and regular content author who's worked at IBM, Microsoft and Google. Nowadays, he's trying to help companies get away from the feature factory and into the world of evidence-based product development with the GIST framework.
A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel
This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast!
Episode highlights:
 
Big Tech firms aren't exemplars of how to "do product"
We look to these firms for guidance, but they all build products differently & have created processes that work for them. What they do have are principles. We should copy the principles but work the way that works for us.
Prioritisation frameworks have a place but aren't going to create your roadmap
The numbers are guesses but are useful to start conversations & make sure you're asking the right questions. It's important to revisit scores over time to see what's changing as you learn new things.
Confidence is a logarithmic scale
Itamar uses the Confidence Meter to describe the different levels of confidence. This brings to life what you are describing when talking about confidence & shows it's not linear; the best evidence is substantially better than the weakest.
Refocusing on goals gets you away from rigid roadmaps
Itamar uses the GIST framework (Goals/Ideas/Steps/Tasks) to break down opportunities, prioritise for impact & get away from the feature factory. It's important not to kill ideas too quickly, and continuously revisit them.
Product management is about principles
The principles are customer focus, evidence-guided decision-making, adaptive planning & empowering teams. These are the cornerstones of product management. Customer focus is still the most important & everything else can flow from there.
Contact Itamar
You can catch up with Itamar on his website, where you can sign up to his mailing list and get access to his tools. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Practice Makes Perfect: Embracing the Messy Reality of Product Management (with Matt LeMay, Product Management Consultant & Author ”Product Management in Practice”)

Matt LeMay is a product management consultant, coach and author of "Product Management in Practice", a book that aims to demystify product management and give you a practical, tactical guide for every day of your career. The book's recently had a 2nd edition released, and we spoke about some of the themes from the book.
A message from this episode's sponsor - Skiplevel
This episode is sponsored by Skiplevel. Do you struggle with communicating with dev teams and understanding technical terminology and concepts? On episode 98, I hosted Irene Yu, founder of Skiplevel, an on-demand training program that helps professionals and teams become more technical in just 5 weeks... All without learning to code. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to better communicate with devs and become more confident in your day-to-day role with the Skiplevel program. You can use referral code OKIP to support this podcast!
Episode highlights:
 
1. You should read all the PM books, but question them
Books have to take a position, and they're always going to be simplified versions of reality. It's positive to disagree with what you find in these books, but you can learn something useful from just about any book.
2. It doesn't matter how Agile you are, or what framework you use
Getting into holy wars about frameworks is not constructive. Not everything works in all contexts, and if it doesn't work you're not a "bad" product manager. Concentrate on delivering value the best way you can.
3. Product managers have a CORE set of skills
There's no one standard job description for a product management role, but Matt likes to boil it down to CORE: Communication, Organisation, Research and Execution. Depending on the company, there might be additional important skills.
4. PMs need to make peace with not always being the decision-makers
PMs need to concentrate on enabling good decisions. PMs are not "CEOs of Product" & may not be able to influence senior stakeholders all the time. There may be reasons for decisions outside of their control
5. PMs need to stop being defensive
If you find yourself in a defensive posture, you're already behind. Often, the harder you try, the worse you can make things. Do what you can to affect change, but try to avoid fighting with your leadership & concentrate on helping your users.
Buy "Product Management in Practice"
"Updated for the era of remote and hybrid work, this book provides actionable answers to product management's most persistent and confounding questions, starting with: What exactly am I supposed to do all day?"
Check it out on Amazon.
Contact Matt
You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn or visit his website.