Product Management Confabulation
What Product Managers are talking about.
In this Fireside Chat for Prioritised members, product author and coach, Joe Leech and our Managing Director, Emily Tate explore how the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) toolkit can be used to make better product decisions. Watch the entire session in full or read on for the key points and tips including: JTBD for start-ups [...] Read more »
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One of the key things to do in any product lifecycle is to review if it’s meeting your user’s needs. The last time we sat down to do this for the podcast, we decided to use the Jobs To Be Done approach, which led to a key question: how might we power up our JTBD [...]
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Customer centricity is a core value at Indian social startup Hike, its senior product manager Aditya Mukherjee relates in this talk to ProductTank Delhi, which looks to examine why customer centricity is difficult to crack. The main driver at Hike, he says, is as follows: in a world that has evolved tremendously in the last [...]
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Performance reviews, evaluations, or appraisals are awful, and we need more of them. it’s time to recognize the need for Product teams to evaluate themselves based on the performance reviews of their products. This is meant to establish the mindset that in order to evaluate a Product Manager’s and Product Team’s performance it’s not about [...]
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In this MTP Engage Manchester talk, using a simple example, Joe Leech demonstrates how we can employ the “Jobs to be done” framework, deconstructing company outputs and examining the importance of user stories.
Key Points:
Joe explains how he had a Job to be Done – he needed to hang a picture, therefore, he needed a drill. He started by looking up drills, reading specifications he didn’t understand; asking questions like “how many torque settings” and “what’s a torque setting?”. It didn’t take him long to realise that he didn’t want a drill at all.
While choosing a drill he recounted the popular adage: “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole” and then dismissed it. “Nobody needs a hole” he explains, but what he wanted was a picture on the wall – “the hole is not the goal,” he tells us.
Joe explains how, as a former “UX guy, now a product guy” he coaches teams to think in this way, helping them make decisions, interrogating what the user thinks they want (or what the company thinks the user thinks they want), to uncover the true needs. He helps companies “do the right things, in the right order, for the right reasons” and in order to do that you need to know your users and your competition.
Joe describes a time when the Jobs to be Done framework was employed to the benefit of MoMA (Museum of modern art). They had a requirement to attract New Yorkers to the New York museum. Joe’s first question was: “who are your competitors?”.
To which they starting listing similar attractions:
It was clear, as with many businesses, that we don’t always know exactly who the competition is. And even when we do one day, we can be wrong the next, and our users may have something totally different in mind. So Joe went out and asked real users about the Job to be Done – who’s competing for your time? What else would you be doing on a Friday night? The answer – Netflix.
That’s right, every Friday MoMA and Netflix go head to head. Sometimes it’s a different competitor, sometimes they win, but importantly, they are always in competition. It’s true for your business too, regardless of how secure you feel in your industry, you are always competing.
You can start employing the Jobs to be Done framework today and uncover your competition, but first, you need to tailor your user stories.
Joe explains how the average power drill is used between six and 20 minutes in its lifetime…that’s a failure of the product. A consumer is presented with an opportunity for self-betterment – a chance to evolve and grow – and what they buy doesn’t meet that requirement, meaning they’re consuming but not satisfied.
This case is what Joe calls “the little hire”. Apps have the same problem, he explains, with 25% of downloaded apps being only used once, while most are built to satisfy more than a one-off Job to be Done. It’s a prevalent characteristic of startups which will offer a one-time purchase, providing only a short term fix. And while that’s fine for cashflow, it shows a lack of foresight and may leave customers only temporarily satisfied. You’ve presented your user with a hole.
Joe identifies the different kinds of jobs we can use to create a rich user story, allowing us to better sell, market, design and build our products:
This is simply the goal your user wishes to achieve. In Joe’s case, he wanted to put up a picture, straight not crooked, and he wanted the room to look nice. In product, we often take functional jobs as our full user stories, because they’re the essence of the requirement, and we may prioritise speed and efficiency of function over all else.
These are based on how the user wants to feel/be perceived while completing their job.
Joe wanted to feel capable and confident in his abilities (even with no formal skills) and feel safe knowing his picture wasn’t going to fall down in a week. An emotional or social job can inform how complex you make something. It’s the part of the story that makes you consider, is this user-friendly? Will my user come back to use this again?
Joe highlights the importance of being user-focussed, describing how you shouldn’t just look at competitors and features, obsessing over what everyone else is doing and copying it, instead, focus on your users and their needs.
In the end, he bought Unibond (plastic adhesive strips), to put up his picture. It wasn’t trying to be a drill, it didn’t come with 230 screws, it just put up pictures.
Once you understand what your product does and how it can help your users you can start to analyze your competitive space, approaching it with intention.
Joe describes that you need to look at several factors when evaluating your product’s position. Ask your users and yourself:
Map your product as well as your competitors, consider whether you’re the new way and need to break attachments and reduce perceived risk, or to strengthen your position with loyal users and combat new competitors. What’s important is that you know how to compete and more importantly, that you uncover the hidden needs of your users.
Lastly, Joe describes the front room of a whitegoods store as a place that is designed with an awareness of job stories. The room layout is made up of fridges at the front, surrounded by space, with washing machines piled high at the back, barely in sight.
Joe explains how the fridge is often the centrepiece of the kitchen taking on many jobs:
What’s clear is a fridge has emotional and social jobs to perform, while a washing machine is function; you buy one when it’s broken down, you need to know the size and you want to know it works, you don’t care how it looks.
Looking at the John Lewis website, Joe identifies how all whitegoods are sold in the same way – a front-on picture. It’s plain and most of the screen is given to the specs. Joe scrolls past the fridge, straight to the reviews and sees one user describes how the product “looks beautiful”. The user is selling; they’re highlighting the product’s ability to meet their Job to be Done, even if the website isn’t marketing effectively.
What this illustrates, is how we should all look closer at the products we’re selling because however similar they appear, even if functionally different, they might be performing incredibly different emotional and social jobs. With that knowledge, we can consider how to promote, sell, ship and design those products. Jobs to be Done is getting businesses on board with user-centred focus, moving from output to outcome, identifying competitors through their users and then evaluating and targeting their competitive space.
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This week (6-7 February), MTP Engage Manchester 2020 saw over 500 product people descend upon the iconic Manchester Central to immerse themselves in two days of product learning.
On Thursday, things kicked off with a range of deep-dive workshops and leadership discussions, followed by the conference on Friday. Let’s take a look at some of the many things we learned throughout the conference day.
In the morning, organiser Adam Warburton welcomed the audience to the auditorium with a quick retro of last year, satisfying the requirement of more amazing speakers, bananas with the tops attached (don’t ask!), no rain (total fluke) and a promise that this year’s event was not a Minimal Viable Conference. He then introduced the first of many incredible speakers.
Janna Bastow led the day’s keynotes by addressing the elephant in the room; debt. She identified how in tech, debt is both inevitable and necessary, whether related to development, design, process, admin, or culture. Drawing on her experience as a product innovator, she highlighted how trust is essential when accruing debt, and how, in order to build trust, we must work together to define new vocabulary. Talking, sharing and unpicking debt, she explained, will allow us to optimise it.
Next to the stage was John Cutler who reassured us that “product is difficult everywhere” and that, in product, there is simply is no magic way to do things. As a Product Evangelist, John is often asked to pathologize product and find the secret of success. He highlighted how in order to succeed, we must embrace the beautiful mess and navigate change – it’s discontinuous and never a straight line, he explained. Instead, and in order to adopt change, you must take an idea (a possible magical solution), customise it to your context, progress it and adapt it before practising it. Then you need to get good at practising practice.
Joe Leech demonstrated how we can employ the “Jobs to be done” framework, deconstructing company outputs and examining the importance of user stories. He illustrated how seemingly similar products can have incredibly disparate requirements, and how, with a focus on functional jobs, we so often ignore the nuance of emotional and social job stories. These considerations, he emphasised, allow us to uncover “hidden user needs”.
After missing her 6.16 am train from London to Manchester by just one minute, Mind the Product’s Chief of Staff, Emily Tate’s day got off to a slightly stressful start. Arriving in Manchester a fraction behind schedule, the surprises kept coming as she discovered she’d be hitting the stage a few hours later to take up the slot of Lauren Currie who had sadly lost her voice and was unable to speak (literally, not a whisper left!).
In her talk, Emily described how having a strong knowledge of stakeholder management can be the difference between being a good product manager and a great one. She explained how her biggest promoter once became her biggest detractor and discussed how transparency – a tool at times discouraged – is key to building stakeholder trust. While you may choose to use it tactfully, delaying a hard truth, you should always be mindful that product is a team sport. As such, encourage communication early and often, while letting data inform decisions and never shy away from taking full ownership of your work. Product people are best when they work with an awareness that one of their products is their process.
Shaun Russell identified how from an early age we learn to avoid conflict at all costs. But whether your stakeholder is “the worst customer you have ever had”, or just an interested party, product people need to defy nature and lean into conflict. He explained that if you willingly adopt “Conflict Anti-Patterns”, taking roles such as the mediator, the intellectual, and the deviant, you will start to heighten risk and build unusable, infeasible and unviable products. Using reasoning, communication, and self-reflection to better our processes, we can now divide our interests. Because, how you divide the world is how you see the world.
Melissa Perri ended the day by offering a masterclass in career growth, defining the journey from product manager to product leader. The criteria, she explained, relies not just on navigating a transition from tactical and strategic roles to a more operational one, but also owning a deep understanding of the details and dynamics – skills you can start developing today.
It’s time to consider your journey, she told us – it’s unique, and now you can choose the best path based on your skillset. The right role for you will make you happy, confident, and kick-ass, whether it’s the role of the Enterprise CPO, the Startup VP, or the Scaleup CPO.
Away from the auditorium, 15 awesome sessions speakers on two tracks delivered engaging and thought-provoking talks to packed session rooms.
Huge congratulations must go out Oluwatobi Otokiti, Sally Brogan and Stewart Livingstone who took to the MTP stage for the very first time with great success, and, to all of our other session speakers who brought us not just a little, but a lot of everything.
Rakhi Rajani discussed how to create cognitively diverse teams while Itamar Gilad talked us through the GIST (Goals, Ideas, Steps, Tasks) Framework and how to use it to improve team morale and deliver better products.
Thor Mitchell painted us a picture of a great product manager, explaining that it starts with says that humility, while Rachael Shah drew from her experience at the Co-op to illustrate just how critical it is to think carefully about scaling the product team as well as the product.
Between talks, people took heed of Adam’s advice from the start of the day – to connect with each other, be it over coffee, during a Speed Networking session or simply while sat in the audience waiting for talks to begin.
“I would urge you to talk to as many people as you can today because, in this room, there is someone we can all learn from, perhaps even someone who could change your life,” said Adam. ” It might be your next manager, a coworker or someone you can connect with outside of work.”
It’s fair to say that everyone had a lot to take away from MTP Engage this year, and after all that learning, sharing and connecting it was vital that attendees, sponsors, speakers, volunteers and our awesome local organisers deserved a well-earned after party!
We’d like to thank everyone who made this conference possible including our sponsors, Yellowfin, Amplitude, ProdPad, Balsamiq, Code and Pendo, without whom, it would simply not have been possible.
Write-ups of the keynote and session speaker talks will become available on the site in the coming weeks. We also look forward to hearing what you thought of MTP Engage (you can send your own write-ups to editor@mindtheproduct.com) and hope you’ll agree that it feels as though our product community has never been stronger.
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Product people descended upon central London this morning for a series of Mind the Product training workshops, kicking off #mtpcon ahead of tomorrow’s conference.
More than 400 conference attendees were up bright and early to join one of 14 workshops covering a range of topics from user research and stakeholder management to product roadmapping and OKRs for product teams.
From the 14 workshops there was plenty to take away. Here’s a very quick snapshot of three of them, led by Julia Whitney, Joe Leech, and Frank Qiu.
Leadership coach Julia Whitney offered practical advice and tools to help with a challenge faced by most, if not all, product managers – stakeholder management.
Engaging the group from the outset, Julia asked attendees to think about who, in their organisations, they’d consider to be stakeholders. She then asked how, on a scale of 1-10, they would rate stakeholder management within their organisation.
The majority of the group scored their organisations between 5 and 6. They identified recurring challenges to be such things as top-down micro management, communication with stakeholders from different countries and cultures, and lack of control.
This last challenge struck a chord with a number of people. Julia explained: “Not having control is an issue shared by most product managers. It’s an issue because we’re so interdependent on our teams and stakeholders. It can be very frustrating.”
The workshop also involved group work and self reflection to equip attendees with the practical tools needed to address their challenges, and to turn their relationships with stakeholders into productive and rewarding parts of their role.
Drawing on his experience at organisations like MoneySuperMarket, eBay, Disney, Marriott, and many startups, Joe Leech’s workshop offered a practical, hands-on way to understand how to make the right product choices based on user needs.
He did this using Jobs to be Done – a framework, as Joe describes it, “containing the processes and tools to understand user needs and plan innovative products and product features to meet those user needs”.
In order to help them to go on to design the right things in the right order, and for the right reasons, Joe asked workshop attendees to think about the emotional, social, and functional elements of their products and why they should care about them.
Using examples, including MoMA, No More Nails and even smoking, Joe quickly helped the group to answer this question and explained how and why they should be running user research to uncover the Jobs to be Done for their products.
Each attendee left the workshop able to:
One door down, Frank Qiu, explained how to implement and use OKRs in a product team effectively, as it’s done in the very best-performing product cultures.
He began by explaining how to define effective OKRs, set them annually and how to break them down quarterly.
With those foundations set, the group was split into six and challenged to set three objectives for a specific example. Each team’s objectives were then presented, discussed, and challenged.
This quickly demonstrated that objective setting is purely the start of the process. With discussion, objectives can be refined and strengthened.
“Setting objectives is not something you can do in five minutes,” Frank explained. “You will need to make adjustments, to redefine and recalibrate, and you want your objectives the objectives you set to be aggressive but realistic.”
The work led to questions such as:
By creating and developing OKRs throughout a simulated year-in-the-life of a product team, attendees learned how to handle things that go wrong, how to adjust course, and how to manage expectations.
If you missed today’s #mtpcon workshops, fear not! Through Mind the Product Training you can access the insight of expert product managers (our trainers) through in-depth, interactive training workshops. We offer worldwide training, with public workshops for out-of-the-box topics, and our in-house training provides the opportunity to develop a curriculum to meet your specific needs.
For more updates, follow all of the conference action on Twitter using #mtpcon.
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