Episode 51: Building a Product Ecosystem with Lisa Schneider
Lisa Schneider is the Chief Product Officer at Framework Homeownership. Previously, she was the Chief Digital Officer at Merriam-Webster, where she led digital strategy and execution and redefined the dictionary for the digital age. Lisa joins Melissa on this episode of the Product Thinking Podcast to share her expertise on crafting great vision and mission statements, the role of the product leader, bridging the gap between sales and product, and why being an integrator is powerful.
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Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Lisa talk about:
How Lisa got started in product management. [1:55]
Asking yourself ‘Why?’ is part of the product mindset when developing a new vision and mission. Figure out why you want a new vision and mission, then develop a strategy to bridge them together. Lisa advises that you should not mix the strategy into the mission because it makes the mission become too specific instead of universal. She also cautions against aligning product teams and squads to strategy too much because strategy changes. [7:57]
The product vision is a reminder of the ultimate product goal so that teams remember what they're working towards. Product leaders need to create an environment of stability and empathy where their teams don't feel constant uncertainty when strategy changes. [11:36]
Product leaders need to propose solutions but also give their teams room to be creative. [13:35]
Lisa talks about how she became a Chief Product Officer. [15:44]
"The role of the product leader - the real opportunity for the product leader - is to be somebody that understands that entire ecosystem and understands how to integrate it," Lisa stresses. The product leader has to be the one to bridge the gap in organizations where sales and product operate in silos. They have to be the one to have conversations with both departments and gain insight on what they know about the product, and what they need. Asking those questions becomes part of your product research, and it also allows the teams in these departments to take ownership of the product and in turn, they become more invested in the product's outcome. [20:00]
Being an integrator within your organization is powerful and important. Asking questions about what people need and how you can help them get there will make you influential within the organization. [23:48]
The key to facilitating a problem solving mindset is less talking about what needs to be done and actually doing it. "Get everyone in a room and start modeling," Lisa suggests. "Lead the conversation and show people how this works." [24:34]
Lisa shares her advice for future product leaders. [29:36]
To foster a product mindset in organizations that never had it, focus on the outcomes. See yourself as the “product” and think about how you can create an excellent user experience. Be the bridge between leadership and the teams that work with you. [33:46]
Resources
Lisa Schneider | LinkedIn | Twitter
Transcript:
Melissa:
Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of the product thinking podcast. Today, I'm joined by Lisa Schneider, who is the chief product officer and the chief growth officer of framework. Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa:
Thanks. It's great to be here.
Melissa:
Yeah, I'm excited to have you. So Lisa's been a, uh, mentor at our CPO accelerator for a while. Um, also formally the chief product officer of Marion Webster, which is pretty cool. Lisa how'd you get into product management?
Lisa:
Um, so I got into product management accidentally. Um, I always go back and like to say that I was an English major in college, um, and that was, um, with no plan whatsoever for what I was gonna do about that sort of a geeky bookworm kid. And I was like, thinking, this is a scam that I should get in on because they're gonna give me a degree for reading books and writing what I think about it. So I, I got this English degree and like many English majors. I went into marketing and I was working in marketing at bridal guide, which is a, um, small family owned publication, obviously in the bridals base. And in 2000 they outsourced the building of a website and just sort of outsourced it in whole and all of a sudden we're like, oh wait, now we have this website, what are we gonna do with it?
Somebody probably has to manage this. And I looked over and said, oh, that looks really interesting. I think I'm gonna do that. And I asked to take on, um, which is one of the great advantages sometimes about working in smaller to medium size organizations that you can be a little bit of the fill the vacuum person. And so I started doing that and we didn't even call it product management then. Right. Like we were managing the products, but we were just sort of figuring it out and experimenting as we went. And that's how I got and I loved it and I stayed. I just like loved the ability to like experiment and to reach people in different ways. And I think, you know, one of the things I learned as an English major when you read books that were written across hundred of years, is that human psychology hasn't changed. And I think as a product person, this idea of like every year, there's something else. We have shiny tools. We have different platforms, but like underlying it all is like, we're trying to like connect with people, um, and do something with people. And so that like human connection has not changed.
Melissa:
I, so I feel like I, I have to ask this question cuz I'm sure there's other people wondering too. Um, what does a chief product officer of a dictionary companies too, like Mary Webster? Right. When I, when I found out you were the CPO there, I was like, it's funny cuz I tell a lot of people, everybody needs a CPO, but um, I guess everybody wouldn't imagine that. So doess a dictionary company, uh, a dictionary.
Lisa:
Well, the first of all, the dictionaries online, the dictionary had been put online in 1996. And so that was very forward. The, but I think as a CPO, it was a very broad range of things, right? So one is, is that sort of strategic, first of all, they weren't doing agile. And so development was a black box. There was one product manager. So he just literally sat in a room in New York by himself and just bringing in agile was like a thing, right? Like we're gonna work differently. And it was like, oh, you know, I don't want the engineers talking to the, you know, product management that will be a distraction. And I'm like, well it actually speeds things up because they can just ping when they have a question you're making assumptions and then you finish something and then we say, oops, that wasn't it.
And you have to go back and redo it. And that feels really frustrating to everybody involved. So, you know, let's try this and see if this removes the frustration. Um, there were, there were so many sort of, I think fundamental changes that we wanted to make, including, um, creating a dictionary database. So we were working, um, even online sort of off of files that were prepared for print. They weren't, it wasn't really a database in the way that we think about it. And so that was a huge project. And if you think about, you know, English is kind of a hot mess and so creating a, a reasonable database was a mess. But again, I didn't go in and say like let's database. I actually went in and said, let's do social media. So you might not think of social media as a product. Um, but really thinking about it as a product, thinking about the fact that we had, um, an analysis of trends of things that get looked up and this really interesting, pretty common place occurrence where, when something happened in the public sphere, the lookups for a certain word associated with that would spike.
And this was something that was known in the company. We had an editor, Peter Valesky who used to talk about it. He would write something about it, but it would like get posted to the website, you know, a week, a half after it happened. We didn't have a CMS. We actually had like a sort of like web producer. And so it would take a day and a half to get something online. Um, and I said, you know, what, if this was real time and we did it on social media, right. So thinking about that as a product. So then it was like, okay, now let's build a CMS. Let's be able to publish content really quickly. Um, you know, let's think about social media as a product. And I still had people going, like, why, why do you wanna do that? Like why, why, why?
Like we write dictionary, right? We rewrite dictionaries. So why do we wanna do that? And so I thought about my experience there and I thought about why I wanted to go on social media and it's because people were so smart and so funny. And so I realized like internally our mission was we write dictionaries, but that's like an output. That's not really a mission. And so again, thinking about like what's product positioning what's product, go to market, let me do this internally. So I literally wrote a new mission for the dictionary, which was, um, to propagate our irrational love of the English language and to help people understand and use language better so they can better, um, understand and communicate with the world around them. And all of a sudden, when you say that, first of all, everybody nod their head. And second of all, if you're saying part of our goal is to propagate our rational love of the English language. Now it makes total sense to be on social media. And now we have this success and all of a sudden people are like, oh, that was fun. What else do you wanna do?
Melissa:
One of the hardest things I've found for product managers is learning how to craft a good vision and mission. And honestly, I think there's tons of confusion out there every day I get like, should there be a mission or you have a vision, what's the difference between a product vision? What's a company vision, like what are all these levels? And I see just really bad mission and vision statements out there all the time. Like anytime I go into a company, I will read it. And I'm like, how'd you come up with this? What does this mean? So what's your advice for CPOs or even product leads who are taking, uh, that job on to create a new mission, a new vision? What should they do to make sure that they actually craft this? Well?
Lisa:
Well, I think the first thing you have to do is understand what the purpose is. And so for things like this, like, Hey, we're gonna have a mission. So it goes back to that, right? listen, I got interviewed all the time. You know, when I was at Marion Webster. And so people would always ask what's your favorite word? And they always seem fairly surprised to learn that my favorite word is why. And so I would, I would say like, right, like why solves problems? And, and don't underestimate the small words, but like, why is it that you want a mission? Why is it that you wanna vision? So just again, it's that product mindset, understanding what is the purpose of creating this will be really helpful. And then I think, you know, listen words matter, definitions matter. And so the mission is, is really the why. The mission is why you are doing this.
Like ultimately, like why does this, you know, deeply matter? What is the thing that we care about that we're solutioning for? So you, in the example of the Merriam Webster mission, right? Like we are here to propagate our rational love of the English language. It, this does not tell me what we're building, right. It, it does not tell me what product we're ending up with, but it does tell me sort of like why we care about this, why other people would care to engage with us. So the mission is really more about the why and the vision is more about the what, right? So the product vision is ultimately we are going to end up with this thing. It might not be, it's not feature by feature, but it's ultimately we are going to end up with this thing. So ultimately, you know, what does our product vision look like?
And it may take us many steps to get there. So that's more sort of about the, what do we envision this being, if in its ultimate state, like when we're done, I mean, you're never done, but when we're done. And the thing that I think is the gap when people have these conversations is they think that that is the end of the conversation. And really that there's a missing piece, which is like the strategy. So how are we going to get to that vision that we're at? And, and so, you know, maybe it's like, you know, the, why are we like climbing the mountain? And then what mountain are we gonna climb? And then how are we going to get up there, right. Would be those examples. And I think when you break it out like that, and you understand the purpose of each of the pieces, it's a lot easier to do it, right?
Otherwise I think people do tend to either sort of garble them and try to mix like the strategy into the mission, which, which makes it too specific and not universal. You know, we just had a conversation of about engineering structure. Um, so what some folks do in agile is they'll have squads and the squads generally have different focuses of work. And so people can just like focus on the work that their squad is doing and stay focused on that. And we were talking about, you don't want your squads to be too aligned with your strategy because strategy changes. And so thinking that way, right? Your mission should not be changing all of the time because your mission is your why. And so it shouldn't be to align to the strategy, right? Because your strategy might change. Business needs might change. You get new data. We talk about this all the time, but you're still doing it for the same reasons. And so that's a really good way to identify kind of like the different buckets that you would address really differently.
Melissa:
I can't agree with you more on that. And there I've seen an issue where people don't understand why the product team should remain stable. It's interesting because it's like this careful balance when you're doing org design, right. Of trying not to change up the teams so fast or what they're working on so fast that they just get whiplash and nothing gets done. And then also giving them room to not work on such a specific component that, uh, they're over optimizing something that can't be optimized. So I hear a lot of people ask, like, why not organize by strategy, if that's, we want people working towards? What's been your philosophy for organizing teams and squads, how do you get that right. Balance of like making sure they're working on something broad enough where they don't feel really like pigeonholed into a small single component API type thing, but not where they're changing direct like every day and can't finish something.
Lisa:
Yeah. I think that's where that product vision, that middle line can be really helpful because this, you know, the strategy does change. And so the other, the other risk with that is, oh, I feel very aligned to this strategy because you know, my team or my role was really attached to this. And if the strategy changes all of a sudden, you're like, like, wait, what is my job? Right? And so that can be really disconcerting. So, you know, another part of our responsibility as leaders, right, is to create a good environment for people. And we can't always guarantee stability. But what you want is to sort of like lead with the empathy that you understand, people don't want that feeling of whiplash or of uncertainty. And so where is this vision of, again, you know, as a, as a, for example, at Maram Webster, we had two product directors and one was focused on essentially like games and apps.
And one was focused on like the definition and thesaurus pages and engagement content. And so that was a way of splitting up like strategically, these were different areas that we were building out, the tactics might change, right? Like the vision was, you know, we're gonna be the best dictionary. We're gonna be the best, thesaurus. We were gonna be the go to resource, right. We're gonna be used in these different ways. And so I am focused on these particular areas and they weren't necessarily like completely separate products. Maybe the dictionary platform was a product. Those were features, you know, there's a lot of like different ways of parsing those definitions, but it's an area that is clear enough that somebody has some, a, you know, room that if the strategy changes, it's probably not a totally different thing. And the other is that they have room to say, okay, within this, I have some leeway to be creative and think, right.
You don't want somebody to have to be, you know, whether it's literally an engineer or a product person, but like the equivalent of a code monkey, right. Is my instruction. I'm just head down to the thing I'm told you wanna give people room to like, be creative and think to like, you know, propose new solutions upward as well. And so you have to give them something that is, you know, I love this idea of creative constraints and something where like, okay, your constraints are, you're focused on, you know, these types of these types of products and features, but not exactly this feature. And that's the distinction.
Melissa:
Yeah. I like that too. I love the term creative constraints. I call some things like guardrails. I have a really hard time defining guardrails to people. Like if you give me an like something, I'll be able to say what the guardrails are, but I'm still working on like, how do I tell people what good guardrails look like? What good constraints look like for teams when you're thinking about like setting strategy and, and having those constraints around the teams, like, this is your purview, this is what we're focused on. Like, what do you give them besides just the strategy of like, Hey, here's the mountain that we wanna climb. Here's how we're thinking about climbing it. You know, this is your purview. How do you make sure those bounds are set appropriately?
Lisa:
I, I think that you have to have, I would say there's like, there's one more layer here. Right? Which is this, what is often represented? Um, I think very popularly now as OKRs. And I wanna be careful because I really don't think OKRs are actually the, be all in end all. But if they're done really well, OKRs give people those guardrails, those creative constraints, right. OKRs when done well should have, like, here's the objective, right? This is the company objective. And it could be, you know, financial, it could be something else. It could be market penetration, right? It could be number of users. It can be revenue, but usually there are goals, like objectives that are measurable. And there are sort of like key results that you're gonna get to. And the key results should not be so specific. Right. And that's where you have room to play. So that to me is like a good definition of a guardrail, right. I have room to play in here as long as what I'm doing, gets me to this result in service of this ultimate objective.
Melissa:
Awesome. So you got into product management a lot, like the rest of us, I feel like where you fell into it and really found this love of managing the products. How'd you end up being a chief product officer, too. What, what was your path like to go from, you know, managing the websites there to becoming a product executive?
Lisa:
I think it was really having the opportunity, not just to learn about product management, but to learn about how that intersected with like leadership and strategic growth plans and really, um, bringing that together. And I think that was something that I, it to, and sort of felt very organic for me. So after I was at bridal guide and, you know, that sort of whole ecosystem had grown over several years, I went to reader's digest, um, where, you know, there was some pretty straightforward product management, but also, um, a lot of working with sales and doing sponsored product development. And so really having the opportunity to think about the very close intersection between sort of like products and actual bottom line profitability and being involved in that and thinking about things from the partnership perspective and really thinking about the partner as a user. So what can we create that will help them reach this audience?
And also we'll sit nicely with the audience. And so I think each sort of element of, oh, okay. I had marketing, oh, okay. Now I'm working on sales. All of a sudden these things start pulling together. And as you move into other organizations, you take all of skills with you and all of a sudden, like your skillset is broader. The number of people that you can impact is broader sort of the ways that you can position yourself as being useful to the company is broader. And so you take on more and more responsibilities that are not just upward leaning in product, but also outward leaning in terms of looping in other departments, whether that's sort of officially they report to you or you're so able to, um, effect change by influence that, that you have that purview in that way.
Melissa:
Yeah. And I think that's so such an important skill for people to learn, to move into, uh, the executive role, especially as product managers. It's something I've heard you talk about to our CPO accelerator group all the time about like how important it's to really understand all those areas of sales and, you know, um, stakeholder engagement across the organization, really, you know, focusing on the financials and all that stuff. Um, and now too, like as the CPO and the chief growth officer at framework, you oversee like four different divisions, right?
Lisa:
Yeah. So it's technically, well, it's technically three. So it's, um, partnerships and business development is one team marketing, and product, and it's, it's sort of exactly that. And we set it up that way for exactly at reason. And I think before I got there, there was sort of a much more siloed structure between those departments and made it really frustrating for, you know, example, partnerships and product to try to collaborate. They weren't speaking the same language. They didn't understand how necessarily to speak the same language. So you might have great people across the board. You might have people with like really good intentions across the board and really committed to the company and the mission, but because they don't speak the same language, they, you know, were a little bit at odds. And so it's, you know, really a, a block to productivity. And by bringing in somebody that had experience across all of those areas, experience like driving cross-functional collaboration experience, sitting in the middle, going, wait, tell me why.
Right. You need that. Tell me exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish. And so teaching them rather than like, this is my position and I'm sticking to it really understanding like what is the end result, right. Cause if I need some air in a room, I can open a door, I can open a window. I can put in a fan, right. There are all, always a lot of solutions to a problem. And bringing in that, that mindset and the ability to work together has really changed the dynamics and really accelerated our growth and our ability to go out and drive actual bottom line results for the company.
Melissa:
So process can be one way to change the mindset, but it's not everything. How do you start to bridge the gap in an organization where sales and product think of themselves as two completely separate functions with absolutely no overlap?
Lisa:
Yeah. I think that's really common, particularly in organizations that have been around for a while, this idea that like in one place, we are going to build a product and then we're gonna hand it over the wall. We're gonna hand it to somebody else and they're going to go sell it. And that really, that that really is a super siloed mindset. And it really, um, I think doesn't account for the idea that like this whole process is an ecosystem. And to me, the role of the product leader, like the real opportunity for the product leader is to be somebody that understands that entire ecosystem and understands how to integrate it. So being a product leader, isn't literally only like the physical function of like, I built this thing. Um, but it is about what am I building and why, and like, how would we sell it and how would we position it in the marketplace the same way that you, you know, do research, um, in product, around, you know, who's my customer and what else are they using?
You know, does my product already exist and how are they using it now? And what is the feedback, right? Those questions should be the same around the sales and marketing process so that you are building for those things. And you're really building for the entire ecosystem. So the product leader who is able to have that conversation and to say like, Hey, you know, here's the thing that we're hearing from customers, you know, how could you go out and sell this? What is it that you think that you need in order for this to be properly positioned? That is just another one of like all of the research that you're doing and all of the inputs that you collect and remember that you might be a particular department, but you are working for an organization. And so what are the organizational goals? If the organizational goals right, most likely are around sales and revenue.
And so if you're building product that does not take into account how we're going to get sales and revenue from that product, right. You're really not sort of part of the team and you're really not supporting the organizational goals. And so asking those questions, I think can, can be just part of the same process that you do as a product manager or as a product leader, um, for the rest of your product research. But the other thing that happens when you do that is you become sort of the owner of not just product, but of the ecosystem. And you can become the bridge where people are like, oh, if I tell Lisa that I need this right, something's going to happen, right. Something good is gonna, you know, I'm gonna get an outcome, I'm gonna get an answer and people's feel involved. And one thing we know is that people are much more passionate, right?
About doing work for things that they feel involved and invested in because their opinion was sought. And this is true, not just in terms of go to market and talking to the sales and product departments, which is like the classic example, but it's true across sort of all departments. And so whether you're doing that up and down, right, Hey CFO, what do you need? Hey, you know, chief operating officer, what is it that you need? What problems are you having? What do I need to account for, to make you happy and successful when I'm building this product, right? You become the linchpin and you also become somebody who's really trusted and influential across the organization. One of the stories that I love is from a, a book called getting to yes, which ostensibly is about negotiation. Um, but really to me is almost like a product mindset manifesto, because it is exactly about this idea that you don't dig into your position of the thing that you want, but you find out why you're sort of opposing negotiating party, like what is important to them and why are they digging into their position and what do they want?
And there's a great story in there, which is really illustrative, which is that two kids are in a kitchen and they're arguing over an orange and they both want the whole orange. And the mom walks into the kitchen. And so of course is, okay, well split the orange and the kids are like, no, no, you know, I need, I have to have the whole orange. I have to have the entire orange. So the mother says, why, why do you need the whole orange? And Julian says, well, I'm going to Rai's birthday party. And I promise to bake a cake. So I'm gonna, you know, I need to great the zest of the whole orange, the recipe calls for the zest of the whole orange. It'll be ruined if I don't have it. And Sydney says, well, I'm going to Leo's picnic. And I promise to take a fruit salad and I need the fruit of the whole orange, or I won't have enough fruit salad.
And so obviously they can, in fact both get what they want and they don't need the whole orange. And so there are always, you know, many solutions to what is the end result that people want and being that integrator and understanding that, you know, people have their silos because they're because they're used to it. And because I think people think that that's power, right? Like they think that like I'm in charge, whatever that means to them. But they think like I'm in charge of this area and I'm powerful if I like hold my ground and advocate for this area, but you're actually powerful if you're an integrator. Um, and so that is that like product mindset of like, what is it that you need? Why do you need it? How can we account for things? It will make you successful. It'll make everybody more successful. It'll make you really valuable within the organization as that bridge.
Melissa:
What types of processes did you put in place to help facilitate that problem, solving mindset into bring the teams together and get more aligned?
Lisa:
I think often people really focus on sort of the concept of process. And sometimes the answer is actually just in the doing. And so that might be initially someone on one conversations so that you can build that trust with people where you go and you ask them those questions. Uh, but ultimately what you want is like, just have the meeting, right? So, you know, at Mary Webster, if we were having a concept meeting about something, there was no concept meeting that did not include stakeholders from every department that would eventually be a part of that conversation. Right? So even in, you know, SEO is a big one. So for, you know, consumer facing brands that, you know, tend to be found by search SEO is really important. It's the same problem. It's, you know, as like, wait, you just handed me something to sell, like, wait, you just handed me something to optimize that should've been baked in from the get go.
So SEOs get really upset when something is finished and then handed over to them. And it's like, here, you know, now optimize this for SEO. They should be in that conversation. So you've got UX, you've got design, you've got editorial, you've got SEO, you've got engineering, you've got marketing, right. Like all of those people, it doesn't have to be the whole department, but all of those people are in the room and you just, you know, you can model, right. So rather than sort of spending all of your time about like, talking about how you're going to talk about it, get everybody in a room and say like, Hey, what do you think? And start modeling, right? Lead the conversation and show people how this works. People love it.
When I first joined Merriam Webster, for example, one of the first things that happened is there was a project that was practically finished when I joined. So I didn't have anything to do with it. But now I come in as the head of product and I was told, go show this to the editors, go show this to the senior editors that are in charge of the editorial department. So these so like a really big deal, right? It's Mary and Webster. They're like writing dictionary definitions. And so they're very, very well respected. And I, I was like, wait a minute, they haven't seen this. Like it's done, right. It's not pushed live, but it's done. They haven't seen it.
And you're asking me to present this to them for their comments. What, what are they gonna do with this? And why, why, like, why didn't they see it before? What is it exactly that they're gonna say, like tank the whole thing. I don't like it, like it's ready to go. Um, and so that was a really easy place to start saying, you know what, next time we do this, I'm gonna ask them, , I'm gonna ask them their opinions when we start, you know, and I'm gonna go to them and say, Hey, I'm really curious, what's on your right. What's on your list of things that you'd like to accomplish. Um, and what's on my list of things that I'd like to accomplish and why, right? What are the business challenges that are the reasons for those things being on the list and do we have overlap anywhere?
I literally, I was based in New York. Those folks were based in Springfield. I literally went to Springfield, sat down in a room and, and did exactly that. Like, can we make a Venn diagram? And can we start with the overlap? And so it's that mindset of like small experiments, small tests, what's the MVP, the MVP isn't, I'm convincing you to do everything I wanna do the MVP is can we align on something and can we start there? And in doing that right, you build trust. People feel that they were listened to. They felt the, it, they had a stake in the thing that you're creating. Cause it was also on their list. Right. And then they see that it works. And then the next time you wanna suggest something that is else you have a little bit of that trust and you have a little bit of that alignment so that you can build upon that in order to start coming in with new and different ideas, you know, especially in a place you where people have been doing things and it's worked really well for the brand for a really long time. And if you wanna come in as a change agent, you still have to be respectful of the expertise that's there and the way that things had worked. And you have to get your own understanding as well.
Melissa:
Your, your career you've overseen like a lot of the stuff, you know, so much about sales, you know, so much about partnership and business development and marketing, which I think makes you a fantastic product leader. What's your advice for somebody getting started with that? Like where you go to learn these things, like how did you get plugged into all these areas and, and start to see how to, how to bring 'em all together?
Lisa:
I think, I really think that, um, sort of like broadly reading, good fiction over time as an English major and like the right, like I didn't stop by the way. I did not stop reading when I graduated school. Um, there, there are actually a lot of studies about reading, improving EQ. And so I think that idea of like really understanding human psychology and, and looking at that is one thing I think there is a business book that I always recommend, which is called getting to yes. And that is the book that I think just, I lucked into reading it very young, very early in my career, um, and getting to yes, is exactly that it is about asking why is this important to you and what is the outcome that you need? And that idea of not taking into your position, but really focusing on your outcome is, is really explained very explicitly in this book.
And so it's not sort of a new book. It's not the hot new book, but it is something that I think is super foundational for me and has been very, very effective for me. Um, and then the last one is really like just treating people like people, I think, especially now as we're remote so much remote. And I think, you know, many people in technology have worked on distributed teams, but maybe not like in this, I'm sitting at home, you're sitting at home and nobody is together at all. And it can be really easy to get upset with people that you don't have a connection with. Right. In theory, I mean, this is like even within an organization, this is like the low level of what you see. I'm so social media, right. I'm behind the screen. I'll just say anything. I would never say to a human being's face and maybe it's not that extreme, but it's still easy to be upset. Oh, they just want this. They're just like this, you know, and you can fall into that griping. And so just really, um, taking those few minutes in a conversation to connect with a person, you know, and really look at them and remember that they're a person and, and talk about like the whys and talk about the outcome. So even if you're not somebody who has had exposure to all of these departments and has done those things, functionally, you can still understand where somebody's coming from.
Melissa:
Yeah. This really seeing these people, you know, as human beings really empathizing with people. I honestly see that as like a make or break for product executives. Right. Because then it becomes so important when you do that cross functionally with your teams, you also have to go work with your board. You have to work with other executives at this higher level, having that, um, you know, those, those skills to really be able to synthesize what people are feeling, how they're gonna react to stuff. I think that helps so much as a product leader, um, for you, when you are working with your board, when you're working with your executives in product management, um, how do you, how do you kind of bring this new way of working in a product mind and said to an organization that didn't really have it before? Right. Like how do you, how do you think about your leadership position in product and how it interacts with those people?
Lisa:
I think again, right. It depend, it depends on where they're at and how explicit you're able to be, to say, Hey, you know, either this is the way I wanna work, or maybe you, you know, is it storytelling? I think storytelling is so powerful. Right. Can you use a case study? Um, or do you just almost like sometimes it's explaining it. Um, sometimes it's explaining it in the minute. So there was one example in which we had planned the timing of a release, like really carefully for an important date. And, and that is not always true, right. For releases, but occasionally it can be true. And I had told my boss, the CEO, like all the reasons that we are releasing on this date, then we got new information and I went back and I said, actually, we wanna release on this other date two weeks earlier.
And he nearly lost his temper because he, that I had made such a point of why we were launching on this date. Why would I move the date? And why would I ask people to work a little bit harder to meet that date? Um, and what got lost is the data's changed, right? We have new information. And so just being really patient with that and understanding, you know, and in the minute and say, Hey, here's the new information that we've gotten. And so in that instant, that was like, it's a little mini case study of, you know, it'd be really good to, to be agile with that lower case, a and to pivot based on the new information that we have, because it's gonna make a significant difference to the outcome. And so this is again, right? This is, is outcome driven. So it's not a whim.
It's really all about the outcomes. And so focusing sort of on the outcomes, focusing on the reasons why, and not focusing on how did that interpersonal interaction go. I think also sort of, it's almost like you are the product, right. And they're your users. And so how do you give them an excellent user experience? How do give them the information that they need and understanding what information they need. And also, you know, again, I talked about being the bridge between departments, but it's also being that bridge between, you know, leadership and the board and other folks that work with you. So another example of like pivoting on new information happened and the head of engineering said, well, I don't wanna do that. Right. We got new information. So I said, oh, we might have to tweak that. He said, I don't wanna do that because it will muck up the burn down chart.
And I said, well, I get that. But also I don't care about the burn down chart. like, because the burn down chart itself, it's just like a piece of information, a piece of data that like over time, you have a sense of things that are happening, but you still need that like human analysis of like, what does this mean for us? The burn down chart is actually not the end result. And the board does not care about the burn down chart. And so really understanding like this is what the board is interested in. And so this is the outcome that we have to drive. And the other things are like byproducts.
Melissa:
Yeah. I, I think we get so caught up into, you know, this is like you were talking about before too. Like, this is my management theory. This is the processes that we do in product management. This is the way that it works, but we forget about like, why we're actually doing it. Um, and I get a lot of questions from product managers and a lot of people reaching out saying like, oh, my CEO is really upset about that. Or I don't know how to work with these difficult stakeholders. And I think a lot of what you're talking about that I'm hearing like throughout this whole conversation is like, if you start to think, um, through how you are explaining things to people, right? Like it's not a personal thing. It's a whole, like the data changed. You have to justify why, um, really empathizing with where those reactions are coming from and not getting so stuck in like, this is the way that we do it.
But knowing that other people really have that mindset, um, that's how we start to build bridges and start to change mindsets, to move people over into kind of this product thinking mindset, right, where we can run, uh, companies and have our leadership, uh, really look at all of our stuff from this product mindset being like, you know, your company is your product when you start to build it. Um, your board is a user that's on your other end of you receiving information. How do we really tailor our, our approach as an organization to treat a lot of things like product to really get into that. So you, we were talking about this a little bit before, but, um, you were talking about like the product ecosystem of an organization. What is your for, for the people listening to like maybe some closing thoughts about this, how do you kind of get these other areas to start adopting this product mindset? How do you kind of bring this to an organization? Let's say you're a first time CPO, like walking in, um, trying to build this ecosystem of really thinking through product changing people's perceptions of it. What, what would you advise people to start with? Especially if they have like difficult stakeholders we were talking about like where people are getting angry with this.
Lisa:
Yeah. I think, I think that really ex that transparency is so key and that, and that why is so key. And so it sounds a little reductive, but I think it is exactly applying what you would do as a product manager for a product, the way that you would, you know, we talk about listening to our users, right. I don't assume that I know how a user really feels when they're using this. Right. I go out and I record people using my product and I ask them questions and I do surveys. And I look at the data cuz maybe they said one thing, but they did another. And like I collect so much information about the user. Really that same approach is what works. So collect information about the user, right? What are their goals? Like? How can you show that you're helping them reach their goals?
How can you show that you're transparent. One of the big frustrations that I mentioned at mirroring was that engineering was a black box. Well guess what if product is the black box, right? If we have all these cool things that we do, but we don't explain them to anybody. And we just think that they should follow our, our lead. That's really hard for people, you know, they wanna understand what we're doing and why. And so I think that transparency getting to know people, understanding what it is that they want and how can you help them get to where they want, why is this a good outcome for them? What's in it for them, right? Like they're a stakeholder, they're a user, right. They need a delightful user experience. So when we say we want a light, our users think about those colleagues or those leaders as people that we have to delight, think about what the outcome is that they need and how you can position this to them.
And it might not be, you know, in one conversation, it probably won't be in one conversation and it won't be overnight. You know, how do you have a conversation where you show like I'll get people from different depart in a room and I would just model leading that conversation and saying, right. Like why do you like let other people hear those whys? Like why do you need this? Let them see that integration happen as you're talking. And so I just think that that modeling and the transparency and treating people as users that are worthy of like you delighting them, it will really help loop people in and start to build those bridges.
Melissa:
Fantastic. I think that is great advice. Um, for everybody listening here and I know a lot of people are struggling a lot with, uh, changing their organizations or changing the mindset. So definitely a wealth of knowledge from you, Lisa. Uh, thank you so much for being on the podcast. If people were to find you or learn more about you, how should with you,
Lisa:
Um, it's best to get me at Twitter or LinkedIn. Both of those are at Lisa Schneider.
Melissa:
Fantastic. Uh, thank you all for listening to another episode of the product thinking podcast, we will be out with a new episode every Wednesday. So make sure that you subscribe, uh, and like our posts. So thanks very much and we will see you next time.