One Knight in Product

Fighting Fires in B2B Product Management (with Rich Mironov, Product Consultant & author ”The Art of Product Management”)

An interview with Rich Mironov. Rich is a smoke jumper CPO who gets thrown behind the fire to help solve some of the hardest problems in product management - trying to fix organisations to help them make products properly. He's worked with 175 companies and has experienced it all, and also distilled this into his Product Bytes blog & book "The Art of Product Management".
We speak about a lot, including:
What a "smoke jumper" CPO is and the types of problems he solves when he goes into the mind boggling number of companies he has worked with
The difficulty that teams sometimes have landing a message with leadership & why they often need to hear the same message from a consultant
The mistakes some companies make by prioritising domain expertise over product management, and how this leads to bad product behaviour & biases
The importance of understanding other teams' motivations, and using your PM skills to work out what they actually need
How agile was written by software guys, doesn't mention customers at all, and why we don't need PMs who aren't embarrassed about not speaking to customers
The differences between B2B and B2C product thinking and some of the classic product advice doesn't translate to the world of B2B
The importance of taking your product thinking discussions to the right level & not trying to persuade front line people
The importance of building coalitions as a product leader to make sure you're not just seen as an outlier where good ideas go to die
And much more!
Buy The Art of Product Management
"The Art of Product Management takes us inside the head of a product management thought leader. With color and humor, Rich Mironov gives us a taste of Silicon Valley's tireless pursuit of great technology and its creation of new products. He provides strategic advice to product managers and tech professionals about start-ups, big organizations, how to think like a customer, and what things should cost. He also reminds us to love our products and our teams."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Rich
You can find Rich on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also check out Rich Mironov's Product Bytes here.

Servitising Product Management & Setting Up Product Teams For Success (with Jas Shah, Product Consultant & Founder @ Bitsul)

An interview with Jas Shah. Jas is a product consultant who works with fintech firms to help them out where their product teams are maybe lacking, or don't have the time to do the job. Jas predictably believes in outsourcing product management tasks to consultants, but not all of them, and only if it helps bring the team along and develop their skills.
We speak about a lot, including:
What problems he solves with his consultancy, the types of companies he consults for, and why he prefers startups to big banks
Whether fintech is all disruption and sea change or whether there's value in making incremental change
The difficulty of selling disruptive change to the mass market, why you have to take it in stages and meet people where they are not where you want them to be
The time he felt compelled to leave a product management job because of lack of support for his product, and how long he stuck it out
The concept of servitising product management, what that means in practice and what types of task can be servitised
The importance of taking the teams along for the journey so they can be self-sufficient after you leave
The product management cliché he dislikes the most, and advice for people trying to take their first steps into product management
And much more!
Contact Jas
You can find Jas on Twitter or LinkedIn. You can also check out his consultancy Bitsul.

Curing Product Diseases with a Radical Product Vision (with Radhika Dutt, author ”Radical Product Thinking”)

An interview with Radhika Dutt. Radhika is a product leader, consultant & author of "Radical Product Thinking" who has decided it is time to step away from building products incrementally & flying by the seat of your pants. Instead, she advocated creating a radical product vision, aligning the company around it and defining where you want to go and not how fast you get there.
We speak about a lot, including:
The story of the book, some of the early feedback she's received and how rewarding it is to see it landing with non-product people and product people alike
How she set out to create a book that mixed vision with practicality, and bringing a truly global perspective rather than just another Silicon Valley tech bro book
How seeing the same problems again & again led her to create a free framework to help solve them, and how this spurred the need for a book
The audience for her book, the vision she had in mind, and how she wants people not to just prioritise the speed of their car but also where they're driving to
Whether she has a problem with the Lean Startup (!), whether her book replaces it or is a compliment to it, and why you only really get a few pivots
The importance of going beyond the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, creating a detailed vision up front and aligning your team around it
The list of "product diseases", whether a radical product vision cures them all, and some examples of how they can afflict a business
How to make sure everyone, including leadership, is behind the vision; the tools you can use to drive this, and the concept of vision debt
The product hippocratic oath - how we as a product professionals need to ensure we do no harm and actively work to create better change in the world
And much more!
Buy Radical Product Thinking
"Iteration rules product development, but it isn't enough to produce dramatic results. This book champions Radical Product Thinking, a systematic methodology for building visionary, game-changing products."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Radhika
You can find Radhika on Twitter or LinkedIn

Driving Organisational Alignment with Survival Metrics (with Adam Thomas, founder @ Approaching One)

An interview with Adam Thomas. Adam is a passionate product leader & product coach who wants to help you drive organisational alignment. By day he's Lead Product Manager for a recruiting platform, and by night he's the hero that Gotham needs with product consultancy Approaching One.
We speak about a lot, including:
His work with Approaching One and how he's trying to help product managers & product leaders get better
How he started out as a mainframe programmer, and ended up falling into product management when a mentor realised how unhappy he was
The story of his two startups, whether they succeeded or failed, and some of the lessons he learned from the experience
His journey from individual contributor to leadership, the resources he used and how he mixed mentorship with repeated mistakes to get good
The importance of driving organisational alignment, the types of negative & positive feedback you can get due to misalignment
Why alignment is the product manager's job, how you should never assume anything, and have to do the work
Some of the warning signs of misalignment, techniques you can use to get back on track and why you should trust but verify
The importance of having a compelling story around your product that you can align your team around
Survival Metrics - what they are & how you can use them to decide whether to pivot, double down or give up on an initiative
And much more!
More on Survival Metrics
Why not visit the website to find out more about Survival Metrics?
Contact Adam
You can find Adam on Twitter. He's also got a Substack mailing list and his website is theadamthomas.com

Product Leadership Principles for Tumultuous Times (with Giff Constable, former CPO @ Meetup & author ”Talking to Humans”)

An interview with Giff Constable. Giff is an entrepreneur and product leader who was most recently CPO at Meetup during the WeWork acquisition & divestment. He's also the author of "Talking to Humans" & "Testing with Humans" - books that aim to help teams make good product decisions.
We speak about a lot, including:
The origin story for "Talking to Humans", why he wrote it back in 2014, whether he'd change anything now, and whether other books on discovery are riding his coattails
Why he felt compelled to write a follow up, "Testing with Humans" and why good experimentation is essential to solution validation
How his books made it into the worldwide education system and whether it was just as simple as him putting cartoons in them
What life was like during his time at Meetup, a company going through a tumultuous period being acquired (and later divested) by WeWork
Some of the challenges when two business cultures collide, and the mistakes he made taking over a dysfunctional team
Why you shouldn't go in all guns blazing on day one, no matter what dysfunction you see, and why you need to validate the team first
The importance of being transparent, open & honest during testing times, without being so open that you drag everyone down with you
The tricky path to product leadership and how prospective leaders need mentoring, coaching and guidance to succeed
And much more!
Buy Talking to Humans
"Talking to Humans is a practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development, an indispensable skill for vetting and improving any new startup or innovation. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action."
 
Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Buy Testing with Humans
"Testing with Humans, the sequel to bestseller Talking to Humans, teaches entrepreneurs, innovation teams, and product teams how to run effective experiments. An experiment is a test designed to help you answer the questions "Should we do this?" or "Am I right about this?" If you are open to learning, the insights from your experiments will help you refine your creation and improve your odds of success."
 
Check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Giff
You can contact Giff on Twitter or LinkedIn. He also has a blog at GiffConstable.com.

Solve Customer Problems Quickly by Joining the No-Code Revolution (with Natalie Furness, founder @ Minimum Viable Stack)

An interview with Natalie Furness. Natalie is a marketing consultant and company founder. Initially frustrated by not being a coder, she embraced the thriving No-Code community and realised that she could solve customer problems and build solutions anyway. Now she's started Minimum Viable Stack as an umbrella firm for a growing number of No-Code products.
We speak about a lot, including:
How she got started in marketing, where her entrepreneurial streak came from, and whether it's easier to market your own products or products by other people
Her constant need to invent new things & how she balances this with focusing on what can truly make an impact
The origin story behind Minimum Viable Stack and how she met her co-founder on Twitter (and who has the most followers)
How her time marketing blockchain products gave her experience with disruptive tech and ensuring the message was focused on the users not the tech
How she thought you needed to be able to code to build a tech business, and how a chance introduction to the No-Code community on Twitter made her realise this was not true
The passion for automating repetitive tasks that led her to create two No-Code SaaS solutions, UXFramed and ScopeDone
Whether you need to explore the entire universe of No-Code tools & whether she has settled on her own minimum viable stack
Any barriers with No-Code solutions, and how working in No-Code has actually helped her learn to code
Advice on how to get into building No-Code solutions yourself, and the importance of validating that you're solving real user problems
And much more!
Contact Natalie
You can contact Natalie on Twitter or LinkedIn (although for the latter, please say that you've come from OKIP podcast otherwise she might not accept you!). You can check out her work at Minimum Viable Stack.

How to Deploy Empathy to Truly Understand User Needs (with Michele Hansen, author ”Deploy Empathy”)

An interview with Michele Hansen. Michele is the founder of Geocodio, a startup she founded without taking external funding. She is also the author of "Deploy Empathy", a book that aims to help product teams & founders to get better at user research & get the insights they need.
We speak about a lot, including:
Why now was the time for a new book on customer interviewing skills, how it's different to other books on discovery
How the book has gone down, some of the feedback that she's gotten so far, and how she knew it had done the job she wanted it to
How to introduce customer research into companies which aren't currently up for it & sell the idea to leadership
Whether the techniques in the book constitute manipulation and whether she's worried they could be used for evil
Whether the book teaches you to be truly empathetic or is a guide to fake it till you make it, and whether this matters
How you don't need users to have empathy with you, and have to channel your inner rubber duck to make sure they open up to you
The importance of validating not just hypotheses but also validating your users by resisting the urge to correct their mistakes
Why you shouldn't use customer discovery interviews to try to sneak in sales or directly try to stop people churning
And much more!
Buy Deploy Empathy
"Deploy Empathy will help you learn the skill of talking to your customers—learning to truly listen to them—so that you can pull out their hidden needs, desires, and processes. Empathy is a skill that anyone can learn. Armed with the tactics you’ll learn in this book and the toolbox of scripts and phrases, you'll be able to sell more of your existing product, build the right features that will delight your customers, and stop churn in its tracks."
 
Visit the book website or check it out on Amazon or Goodreads.
Contact Michele
You can contact Michele on Twitter or check out deployempathy.com.

Chinese Startup Culture & Putting the Minimum into MVP (with Carlos Lastres, Creative & Marketing Director @ Kaiyan Medical)

An interview with Carlos Lastres. Carlos is the Creative & Marketing Director at Kaiyan Medical, a Chinese company creating light therapy products. Carlos is obviously an advocate for light therapy but also an engineer turned designer who is loving life in China.
We talk about a lot, including:
Light therapy - what the heck is it? Does it really work?
How he became a convert to light therapy by chance when working on a design brief for Kaiyan Medical and why he decided to stay
Some of the differences and similarities between creating digital products & hardware products
How 3D printing makes all the difference when trying to get an MVP out of a hardware product
How his frustration with badly designed software applications as a developer led him to pursue a career in product design
How he went from an MBA and software development background to developing the design hard skills he needed
How Chinese startups build products and how is it so different from how Western countries do it
Whether Chinese users appreciate the constant flow of limited MVPs or whether it limits the ability to truly learn
How he got involved with TEDx, how it went, and why you shouldn't follow your dreams
And much more!
Contact Carlos
You can reach out to Carlos on LinkedIn or LastresCarlos.com.
You can check out Kaiyan Medical on KaiyanMedical.com.