Episode 203: Christmas Special Greatest Hits 2024: Mastering Product Leadership Through Research, Goals, and Growth
As we wrap up 2024, I wanted to bring together some of the most impactful conversations from the Product Thinking podcast this year. From Steve Portigal's insights on modern user research, to Quincy Hunte's practical approach to decision-making at AWS, each guest brought unique perspectives that resonated deeply with our audience.
This special episode features highlights from conversations with product leaders who have shaped our understanding of effective product management. Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden's discussion on OKRs, Kate Leto's wisdom on leadership coaching, and Leah Tharin's approach to product-led growth – each conversation offers valuable lessons for product professionals at all levels.
Join me for this year-end reflection on the insights that have helped shape product thinking in 2024, and get inspired for the opportunities that lie ahead in 2025.
You’ll hear us talk about:
01:25 - The Evolution of User Research with Steve Portigal
Steve Portigal shares his perspective on how research is about discovering what we don't know we don't know. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining an open mindset in research, particularly when dealing with complex product development challenges. The discussion highlights how traditional research methods have evolved to meet modern product development needs while maintaining their fundamental purpose of uncovering deep user insights.
02:27 - Decision-Making in Complex Organizations with Quincy Hunte
Quincy Hunte delves into the challenges of making decisions in large, complex organizations like AWS. He addresses the common pattern of decision paralysis, where teams get caught in loops between executive expectations and product management responsibilities. His insights reveal how fear of making mistakes can create environments where decisions stall, and he offers practical solutions for breaking through these organizational barriers.
04:00 - OKRs and Team Alignment with Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden provide valuable insights into setting effective OKRs that align with organizational structure and influence. They explain how different levels of the organization should approach goal-setting, from enterprise-wide objectives to team-specific metrics. The discussion emphasizes the importance of creating clear, focused goals that enable teams to contribute meaningfully to larger organizational objectives.
06:11 - The Power of Coaching in Product Leadership with Kate Leto
Kate Leto explores how coaching can transform product leadership by empowering team members to find solutions within themselves. She emphasizes that effective coaching reduces the pressure on leaders to have all the answers, instead creating an environment where team members can develop their problem-solving capabilities. This approach not only builds stronger teams but also creates more sustainable leadership practices.
07:08 - Navigating Product Growth Across Business Functions with Leah Tharin
Leah Tharin shares insights on creating comprehensive business cases that span across all business functions. She discusses the importance of balancing acquisition, retention, and monetization while focusing on activation as a key metric. Her approach demonstrates how growth teams can identify opportunities across different business areas while maintaining focus on long-term customer retention rather than just sales.
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Intro - 00:00:01: Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day-to-day interactions with developers. It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. The systems, the processes, and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. With the help of some boundary-pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions, we'll dive into this system from every angle and help you think like a great product leader. This is the Product Thinking Podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perri.
Melissa - 00:00:37: Hello, and welcome to this Christmas special episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Just like last year, with 2024 coming to a close, I've been reflecting over some of our most downloaded episodes and the key insights which our amazing guests had to share. From product and user research to overcoming decision-making challenges at large companies and setting business goals, this episode has you covered with this year's highlights. Let's dive in. We'll start by hearing from Steve Portigal, who says that research is about finding answers to what you don't know that you don't know. Our conversation turned out to be one of the most popular episodes ever on the show. Over to Steve.
Steve - 00:01:15: Research is about what you don't know that you don't know. And how big is that aperture? Like how much appetite does anyone have for that question? I'm always going to be interested in that and sort of try to get to what I don't know that I don't know. And that, for better or worse, I think there are so many closed-ended things. We need to understand this thing. We're at this point in the development. We don't need to go to people. We've gone to people in the past. We understand this larger context. It's all taking place on the screen.
Melissa - 00:01:43: Next, Steve walks us through how he has witnessed user research evolving over the years.
Steve - 00:01:48: For this environment, we're trying to tease apart a bunch of interconnected things. I've long wondered about user research, the need for user research, and the need for user researchers. One is an activity, and one is a job title or a role. And that's definitely something that has changed over the years, like who does research. I think maybe people have always been talking to customers, whether they had a label for it, or we have a term, or we have books and conferences and courses you can take.
Melissa - 00:02:16: Thanks again to Steve for his invaluable insights. Quincy Hunt taught us about the challenges in making decisions at large and complex organizations and what tools are available to overcome them.
Quincy - 00:02:27: In organization, you have these teams and, you know, you want everybody to be involved in helping make the right decision sometimes and in most cases on behalf of the customer. But that mindset of having everybody involved in the decision sometimes adds a level of lag and slows down the complexity or slows it down when there's a very complex decision that has to be made. So I've seen that as, you know, as a very common pattern. You don't know when to agree on issues or challenges that are very contentious. Or, you know, different from what you traditionally do. So there's a lot of consensus that goes around. It goes up and down the executive team. The executive team is expecting the teams or the product management teams to make the decision. The product management teams are saying, well, no, this is, you know, above our pay grade. We want the executives to make a decision. And it's that constant loop. So I think that's been a challenge. I think the other thing, too, that I see quite a bit in terms of a pattern is that, you know, people are afraid of making mistakes. People are afraid of making the wrong decisions. So. You know, it creates an environment where no decision is made because nobody wants to make a mistake. Nobody wants to be penalized by it.
Melissa - 00:03:34: Quincy's experience at AWS gives a unique perspective on how to leave product in such companies, providing insights for aspiring decision makers. And it's no surprise as to why he was among the most popular guests from 2024. In 2024, I also had my friends Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden back on the show. We discussed how objectives and key results should be aligned with business verticals and how functional goals need to feed into enterprise goals.
Jeff - 00:04:00: So the way that we talk about it is that you should be setting objectives and key results, goals for the organization that you have influence over. If you're an executive and you're in charge of an organization, then you're setting corporate goals, enterprise-wide goals. If you're an executive in charge of a business unit, your OKR is going to be focused on that business unit. You're the authentication team. Your OKR should be focused on making the easiest, smoothest, most efficient, most successful authentication process right in the world, that type of thing, because that's the world that you can influence. When we make this authentication process the best it can be, that actually leads to more folks interacting with the system more quickly, and it reduces our operational costs because we're not getting calls to the call center to reset passwords. So that's how we're contributing to the organization, by making the best authentication process possible.
Melissa - 00:04:51: Josh shares his perspective on OKRs, focus, and alignment, providing valuable insights from our listeners.
Josh - 00:04:57: I think one of the ideas that I like a lot about OKRs is an idea from Christina Wodtke. We use OKRs to talk about what is the focus of our work and how to align focuses across large groups of people. First of all, there's going to be stuff that falls outside of OKRs. You hear some people call them KPIs. If we think about focus and alignment, we're trying to get everybody pulling in the same direction. And so the more complicated that your incentive system is, the more directions people have to pull in. But when you start multiplying the incentives by the number of employees you've got, everybody's got their own incentives in addition to team incentives. Now you can measure individual performance, but you've just messed up your ability to align all of these people by giving them contradictory incentives. The reason you don't use OKRs for individual incentives is exactly that. You want to simplify the alignment process by introducing as little noise into the process as you possibly can.
Melissa - 00:05:57: This was a great duo to have on the show, allowing for a rewarding discussion on OKRs for focus and alignment. As a fellow coach and educator in the product sector, I loved having Kate Leto on the show this year. She had a lot to say on the importance of coaching and developing leadership skills.
Kate - 00:06:11: Where I think coaching is super powerful as a leadership skill is that it really does help people realize they've got the answers to a lot of these challenges already within themselves. They just need a little space and perhaps some nudging and some questioning to help them figure it out for themselves. And by teaching people, helping people figure out how to do that, that takes a lot of pressure off the leader or manager because you don't have to answer all the questions. You don't have to come up with all the solutions to all the problems because you've got a team of people who can do it for themselves.
Melissa - 00:06:46: Kate's knowledge on leadership and coaching provides a lot of value for those looking to excel in their product career, but also enables our current leaders to effectively nurture existing talent. We wrap up this episode with Leah Tharin's thoughts on the role of growth in identifying business opportunities across acquisition, retention, and monetization, while focusing on activation to drive long-term success.
Leah - 00:07:08: My first touchpoint in growth was to create business cases outside of a product function that go over all functions of the business. And nobody's doing this. Product doesn't care. Sales definitely does not care what happens in the product as long as they can sell better. And selling is not the ultimate goal. Retaining is the ultimate goal. And marketing also doesn't care. So what growth usually does is they try to find the best opportunity, whether it is in acquisition without doing the entirety of marketing's job, whether it is in retention or whether it is in monetization. And this is why we talk about usually activation, where we say that growth is responsible for activation.
Melissa - 00:07:48: My conversation with Leah on product functions and how to stimulate product growth was amazing. These areas are so important and applicable for almost any business. And this is why her sharp insights made it into one of our most memorable episodes of 2024. Thank you to all my incredible guests this year and a shout out to all of those who weren't mentioned today for coming on and sharing their stories. I hope you enjoyed this Christmas special of the Product Thinking Podcast. I'll be back next week to discuss predictions for 2025. My final thank you goes to all of our wonderful listeners for tuning in each week as we reached over 100,000 downloads a month and helped us get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. And we crossed 200 episodes. Thanks for making this podcast a success. I couldn't have done it without you. And I hope in 2025, you continue to write me to dearmelissa.com asking me all of your burning product management questions. Season's greetings and all the best to you and your families for the new year. We'll see you in 2025.