Aligning Product and Business Strategy Through Customer Discovery

In this episode of Build What's Next: Digital Product Perspectives, host Ben Nichols, a director on the Digital Solutions team at Method, is joined by Kalpesh Nanji, former global chief product officer at Honeywell. They delve into the critical role of customer-centric discovery in product management and its impact on shaping business strategy.

Join them as they discuss:

• The importance of strategic alignment between product and business strategies
• Tactics for effective customer discovery and insights gathering
• Overcoming organizational challenges in implementing customer-centric approaches
• The role of data and storytelling in influencing executive decisions
• Balancing inherited strategies with new customer insights
• The importance of cross-functional collaboration in customer discovery
• Strategies for upskilling product teams in customer-centric methodologies

Kalpesh Nanji brings his extensive experience as a global chief product officer, sharing insights on how to create a customer-centric culture within organizations of various sizes. Ben Nichols contributes his perspective from working with multiple organizations, identifying common pain points and gaps between product and business strategies.

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Episode Resources:

• Ben Nichols on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennichols5
• Kalpesh Nanji on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalpeshnanji
• Method Website: https://www.method.com

Episode Highlights:

• [00:02:00] The Importance of Strategic Alignment
• [00:05:47] Enabling Product Managers to Spend Time with Customers
• [00:08:18] Cross-Functional Collaboration in Customer Discovery
• [00:11:13] Co-Innovation and Strategic Partnerships with Customers
• [00:13:27] Using Data to Influence and Pivot Inherited Strategies
• [00:15:44] Creating a Narrative for Executive Buy-In
• [00:17:15] Prioritizing Customer Insights Using Horizon Planning
• [00:21:23] Upskilling Product Teams for Effective Customer Discovery
• [00:25:16] Top Three Takeaways for Successful Customer-Centric Discovery

Quotes:

• "As a product manager, I think using the tools that you have data is critical, right, ensuring that hey, if you're going to shift or make it pivot, for example, you have an inherited strategy, you identify that may or may not work for the customer or the organization. You get back to the executive team and you provide the data right." - Kalpesh Nanji
• "One of the things that we always want to try to do when you visit customers is not just focus on their challenges of today, but also determine and help them focus on their challenges of tomorrow." - Kalpesh Nanji
• "Data is critical synthesizing that data, creating a narrative around that data storytelling is critical as well. When you try to get some buy-in from an executive team tying in that story to where the business is going as an organization right." - Kalpesh Nanji