One Knight in Product

Martin Eriksson - Most PMs Aren't Good At Strategy - Enter The Decision Stack! (with Martin Eriksson, Co-founder of Mind the Product & Creator of The Decision Stack)

Martin Eriksson is the co-founder of Mind the Product, and co-author of the "Product Leadership" book. Martin has worked with a multitude of companies and has been heavily involved in the VC side of product management. These days, he's advising and coaching companies as well as trying to help us all make good decisions by writing a new book, "The Decision Stack", alongside its supporting website.
Episode highlights:
1. The vast majority of company employees don't know what their company strategy is...
It's important for everyone in the company to be aligned on what's important, where the company's going and how they're going to get there. It's crucial for product and business leaders to do the work; both to create a vision and strategy and to share it with everyone who is needed to execute it.
2. ... but, worse still, the vast majority of companies don't even have a strategy to speak of
Strategy is about making a coherent set of choices about how we're going to achieve our goals or make our company vision real. But, too many companies have fluffy, vague vision statements that could mean anything, and leaders who want to do everything all at once and don't want to make choices. This limits their ability to actually achieve anything.
3. It's hard to create a product strategy if you don't have a company strategy, but you should do it anyway
A product strategy should support the company strategy and vision but, if there's no company strategy or vision, it's hard to create or defend such a strategy. On the other hand, you should still do the work to create one; either you'll get to go and execute the strategy or you'll have a straw man proposal to provoke further discussion around what the strategy should be.
4. A lot of product people are pretty bad at strategy, and we need to get better
Back in the day, a lot of product managers were expected to write specifications and get stuff done. They weren't even expected to be strategic, and many still aren't to this day. These skills are learnable; product people need to do their best to up their game, and company leaders need to get more comfortable both delegating responsibility and coaching their employees to have these skills.
5. The answer is not "Founder mode"
"Founder mode" can be used to justify just about any behaviour, invites "hero syndrome" and can lead to micromanagement and single points of failure. Good leaders absolutely need to be deeply involved in their business, but this should not be at the expense of creating strong, aligned teams that can take many day-to-day decisions without them.
Contact Martin
You can catch up with Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martineriksson
You can also check his website: https://martineriksson.com
Keep up-to-date with The Decision Stack: https://www.thedecisionstack.com/

Martijn Versteeg's Hot Take - PMs Need to Spend Less Time Learning and More Time Doing (with Martijn Versteeg, Founder @ Group Effort & Organiser @ Product Mastery Conference)

Martijn Versteeg is the founder of Group Effort, an organisation that fosters connections & facilitates the growth of scale-up leaders through peer groups, offsites and workshops.
His hot take? That product people should stop looking for the "golden nugget" of knowledge. Martijn argues that instead of seeking a single breakthrough insight, product managers should focus on consistent iteration and learning through small, incremental steps.
Find Martijn on LinkedIn or check out Group Effort.
Also, remember to check out the conference that he's organising, and we'll both be speaking at: Product Mastery Conference
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Martijn Moret's Hot Take - Most PMs Neglect Data Due To a Lack of Time and Skills (with Martijn Moret, CEO @ DataSquirrel.ai)

Martijn Moret is the founder of DataSquirrel.ai, a company focused on leveraging AI to humanise and simplify data analysis for product managers and non-tech managers.
His hot take? Most product managers neglect data—not because they dislike it, but due to a lack of time and skills, which can lead to wrong priorities and poor decision-making. He also highlights the current limitations of AI in data analysis, emphasising that while AI accelerates workflows, it still requires human oversight for reliable outcomes.
Find Martijn on LinkedIn or check out DataSquirrel.ai.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

OKIP LIVE: Jason and Maja's Christmas Fireside Chat (with Maja Voje, Founder @ Growth Lab and author "Go-To-Market Strategist")

🎄 Deck the Halls with Go-To-Market! 🎄I spoke with Maja Voje for a convivial Christmas chat about all things product and growth. We discussed:
2024 Retrospectives and 2025 Predictions
Product Management and Go-To-Market Strategies
AI in Workflows and Whether Product Management is Dead 💀
LinkedIn Growth Strategies
Balancing Opportunities and When To Say No
Networking and Community Building
This is the audio of that conversation, but you can see us both (complete with Christmas hats!) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/XdjiVO-gXOg?si=XM1wQs-QwP6lx_rr
 
Check out my appearance on Maja's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kip2mtuyE
... and Maja's previous appearance on my podcast: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/maja-voje
 
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you all!

Adam Dille's Hot Take - The Product Trio is Outdated - Enter the Product Square! (with Adam Dille, SVP Product Engineering at Quantum Metric)

Adam Dille is the SVP of Product Engineering at Quantum Metric, a company specialising in experience analytics for some of the world's biggest brands. Despite his engineering roots, Adam's relentless curiosity about the WHY behind building products led him to embrace product thinking and how to build products better.
His hot take? The traditional product trio - PM, design, and engineering - isn't enough anymore. He advocates for transforming the trio into a square by adding a customer-facing, "operational" team member. This person, deeply connected to customer needs and speaking to customers every day, can help to bridge the gap between the product team and the customer and enable stronger customer focus and faster iteration cycles.
Find Adam on LinkedIn or check out Quantum Metric.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Grace Yusuff's Hot Take - Introversion is a PM Superpower (with Grace Yusuff, Product Manager & Early Careers Mentor)

Grace Yusuff is a London-based "reluctant product manager" and introvert who thought she could never do the job. She has since fallen in love with the role and now works as a product manager and early-career mentor, helping others get into tech.
Her hot take? That introversion is a superpower for product managers and something to be embraced rather than overcome. She is a strong advocate for people to find their own way in product management, and not having to live up to clichés or stereotypes.
Find Grace on LinkedIn.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Assaph Mehr's Hot Take - AI Is Just A Tool - What Matters Is How We Use It (with Assaph Mehr, Product Leader and Fantasy Author)

Assaph Mehr is an Australia-based product & people leader as well as a published fantasy author, who also uses his writing chops to produce a newsletter, "Rise of the Product Leader".
His hot take? That LLMs and other generative AI tools are the equivalent of an angle grinder. For those who don't know, angle grinders have big, spinning metal discs that make them ideal tools for certain use cases (like cutting up concrete) but are terrible for anything else. Assaph believes that LLMs have a large number of use cases where we should use them, but that there's still an inevitable need for human decision-making and a sense of taste that AI will never have.
Find Assaph on LinkedIn or subscribe to his newsletter. If you're interested in fantasy novels, check those out too.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!

Matt Maier's Hot Take - AI Will Lead to a Post-Employment World (...and That's Good!) (with Matt Maier, Product Marketer & AI Enthusiast)

Matt Maier is a product marketer and AI enthusiast from Irvine, California, with a background spanning the Air Force, aerospace, healthcare, and startup consulting.
His hot take? Within 5 years, employment as we know it will sharply decline. Matt predicts that advancements in AI will render traditional employee-employer relationships obsolete, because why would companies hire people to do easily automatable tasks? On the other hand, Matt believes this is a good thing and will enable an entirely new way of working.
Find Matt on LinkedIn or drop him an email at Solo Scale AI.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!
Related episodes you should like:
Is Product-Led Growth Really For You? (Leah Tharin, Product-Led Growth Guru & Head of Product @ Jua)
Embracing Change to Innovate in Product Management (Greg Coticchia, CEO @ Sopheon)
The Big Pivot to Reinvent Product Management (Yana Welinder, Founder & CEO @ Kraftful)
Debbie Levitt's Hot Take - Democratising our Work means AI is Going to Steal all our Jobs Sooner (Debbie Levitt, CXO @ DeltaCX and Author "Customers Know You Suck")
Greg Prickril's Hot Take - AI is going to change everything for Product Managers (Greg Prickril, B2B Product Management Coach, Consultant & Trainer)
Andy Walters' Hot Take - We’re Soon Going to be Living in an AI-Assistant-First World (Andy Walters, CEO @ Emerge Haus & Generative AI Expert)
Bjarte Rettedal's Hot Take - AI Models Should Be Under Public Ownership or Completely Transparent (Bjarte Rettedal, UX Designer)
Reinventing the Future of Customer Success with Human-First AI (Nick Mehta, CEO @ Gainsight)