The Secrets of Product Management Podcast by Nils Davis Nils Davis
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- Business
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Brought to you by Nils Davis, this podcast will help you become a better product manager, marketer, innovator, or entrepreneur. With thought provoking and action-oriented content - this podcast tackles problems ranging from finding and validating market problems, to creating innovative solutions, to taking those solutions to market. Simply put, it will help you move your skills - and your products - to the next level.
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161: Clifton Gilley on What The Data Shows About Product Leaders and Product Laggards
Clifton Gilley of Gartner’s Tech Product Management team
In this week’s episode my guest is Clifton Gilley, a long time product manager, and now a VP Analyst with Gartner’s Tech Product Manager team.
Cliff made the jump from product management practitioner to analyst because they had the data. As he says, “What really made me gravitate toward Gartner is I knew that they did research.”
In the interview we delve into what the data says sets successful companies apart. And the answer? Leading companies (we talk about what leaders and laggards mean in Gartner-speak in the interview), are involving product managers in strategy, and it’s an outward facing role, facing the market and customers. Laggards tend to see product as a delivery team, mostly internal facing.
It’s clear in Gartner’s data that the more strategic the product management role, the better the outcomes.
For more, check out the episode.
Links
* Cliff on LinkedIn
* His author page on Gartner’s site, and Gartner’s Tech PM practice site
* The Clever PM blog (in stasis since 2018, but all the articles are still there)
Clifton Gilley of Gartner’s Tech Product Management team
In this week’s episode my guest is Clifton Gilley, a long time product manager, and now a VP Analyst with Gartner’s Tech Product Manager team.
Cliff made the jump from product management practitioner to analyst because they had the data. As he says, “What really made me gravitate toward Gartner is I knew that they did research.”
In the interview we delve into what the data says sets successful companies apart. And the answer? Leading companies (we talk about what leaders and laggards mean in Gartner-speak in the interview), are involving product managers in strategy, and it’s an outward facing role, facing the market and customers. Laggards tend to see product as a delivery team, mostly internal facing.
It’s clear in Gartner’s data that the more strategic the product management role, the better the outcomes.
For more, check out the episode.
Links
* Cliff on LinkedIn
* His author page on Gartner’s site, and Gartner’s Tech PM practice site
* The Clever PM blog (in stasis since 2018, but all the articles are still there)
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160: Seize the Customer Conversation And Other Advice With Mike Smart
Embracing Change and Customer Engagement in Product Management
In this episode Mike Smart, an old friend and longtime product management leader, instructor, and consultant, says we can’t wait for the world to change (quoting an old John Mayer song). Product management needs to seize the day, and actively engage with customers even if it means breaking some glass and stepping on some toes, bending some rules.
Mike shares his history as a product leader, starting from a sales role to becoming a product management consultant.
Mike has an amazing historical perspective on product, and discuss the common challenges faced by product organizations, such as the influence of sales on product development and the importance of customer discovery.
The conversation also touches on the shift towards product marketing management and the vital role of go-to-market strategies in today’s competitive landscape.
Key takeaways include the imperative for product managers to initiate customer conversations and the pivot towards focusing on how products are marketed and understood by potential customers, and for product leaders in particular to have (or develop) business acumen focused on sales velocity rather than just release velocity.
Links and contact information
* Mike on LinkedIn
* Mike’s company, Egress Solutions
* Mike’s podcast is GTM Disrupted. You can listen on its home page, or find it wherever you get your podcasts (here’s the Apple link and the Spotify link).
Support this podcast
* The easiest and best way to support the podcast is to leave me a comment or question, drop a note or connection request to me on LinkedIn, or just send me an email at nils@nilsdavis.com.
* You can also rate and review the podcast on Apple iTunes – that really helps others find it.
* And you can just share the podcast directly with your product manager friends – they’ll probably really appreciate it!
Timings
00:00 Introduction: Waiting for the World to Change
00:34 Guest Introduction: Mike Smart of Egress Solutions
01:03 The Journey of a Product Manager
02:06 The Importance of Customer Conversations
03:22 The Evolution of Product Management
05:19 The Role of Product Marketing
10:22 The Challenges of Product Management
11:31 The Impact of Sales on Product Management
12:46 The Shift in Product Management Focus
14:56 The Importance of Business Acumen in Product Management
23:07 The Role of Go-To-Market in Product Management
33:06 Conclusion: The Future of Product Management
Embracing Change and Customer Engagement in Product Management
In this episode Mike Smart, an old friend and longtime product management leader, instructor, and consultant, says we can’t wait for the world to change (quoting an old John Mayer song). Product management needs to seize the day, and actively engage with customers even if it means breaking some glass and stepping on some toes, bending some rules. -
159: Ryan Gottfredson on The Transformative Power of Mindsets in Life and Leadership
The Transformative Power of Mindsets in Life and Leadership
In this episode, an engaging conversation about mindsets with Ryan Gottfredson, a renowned leadership and management professor, author, and mindset expert.
The core discussion revolves around the foundational role mindsets play in shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and overall success in life, work, and leadership.
Gottfredson emphasizes the potential for profound personal and professional transformation through the understanding and shifting of our mindsets.
The mindsets
He introduces four primary sets of mindsets identified through academic research and discusses the process of ‘vertical development’ as a means of enhancing one’s internal operating system for better outcomes.
The four mindset dimensions are:
* Fixed Growth
* Open Closed
* Prevention Promotion
* Inward Outward
If you take Ryan’s assessment, you’ll find where you stand on each of those dimensions.
How to improve your mindset – vertical development
The conversation also touches upon the impact of trauma on mindsets, the benefits of mindset-oriented personal development, and practical steps anyone can take to work on their mindsets.
Additionally, Gottfredson shares personal anecdotes and insights on overcoming self-protective mindsets for greater productivity and fulfillment, highlighting resources like his mindset assessment and the ‘Success Mindsets’ book.
Links
* Ryan Gottfredson’s site.
* Ryan on LinkedIn.
* Ryan’s mindset-related assessments.
* Ryan’s book, Success Mindsets: Your Keys to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership.
* Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, where many of first learned about the growth and fixed mindsets.
Time codes for the episode
00:00 Introduction to Mindsets
00:19 The Power of Shifting Mindsets
00:51 Meet the Guest: Ryan Gottfredson
01:14 The Role of Mindsets in Leadership and Management
02:26 Understanding the Concept of Fixed and Growth Mindsets
02:58 The Journey to Shifting Mindsets
03:45 The Neuroscience Behind Mindsets
06:36 The Impact of Mindsets on Success
07:41 The Process of Vertical Development
24:44 The Role of Trauma in Shaping Mindsets
30:21 Practical Steps to Improve Mindsets
32:11 Conclusion and Contact Information
The Transformative Power of Mindsets in Life and Leadership
In this episode, an engaging conversation about mindsets with Ryan Gottfredson, a renowned leadership and management professor, author, and mindset expert.
The core discussion revolves around the foundational role mindsets play in shaping our thoughts, behaviors, and overall success in life, work, and leadership.
Gottfredson emphasizes the potential for profound personal and professional transformation through the understanding and shifting of our mindsets.
The mindsets
He introduces four primary sets of mindsets identified through academic research and discusses the process of ‘vertical development’ as a means of enhanci... -
158: Steve Johnson Shares His Wisdom
Steve Johnson, OG product management thinker
Steve Johnson is my guest on this week’s episode.
I’m sure you know of him already. And if not, you will after this episode. He’s one of the OG product management thought leaders, especially in the software world.
Many people got to know Steve during his long stint as a trainer for Pragmatic Marketing, which followed a career as a product manager, product marketing manager and product leader.
He’s now running Product Growth Leaders, a community for product managers, and a training company. In his courses, including The Fundamentals of Managing Products, intensives such as The Product Launch Intensive, and assessments, he uses the Quartz Open Framework, a process framework for systematically managing and marketing products. Quartz is a non-proprietary model for product planning created by industry thought leaders, including the founders of Product Growth Leaders.
In this episode
Steve is renowned as a storyteller, and in this episode you’ll hear a lot of them, starting with how he learned what product management is and how it interfaces with other roles in the organization, especially sales and marketing.
He’ll share the origins of his statement that agile has to some degree broken product management. And what he means by that.
And we’ll talk about the different challenge that is leading product managers. And why so many companies struggle with that?
I started by asking Steve about his origin story in product management, because, you see, he started his PM career in sales.
Contacting Steve
* Product Growth Leaders
* Steve on LinkedIn
* The Quartz Open Framework
Support this podcast
* The easiest and best way to support the podcast is to leave me a comment or question, drop a note or connection request to me on LinkedIn, or just send me an email at nils@nilsdavis.com.
* You can also rate and review the podcast on Apple iTunes – that really helps others find it.
* And you can just share the podcast directly with your product manager friends – they’ll probably really appreciate it!
Steve Johnson, OG product management thinker
Steve Johnson is my guest on this week’s episode.
I’m sure you know of him already. And if not, you will after this episode. He’s one of the OG product management thought leaders, especially in the software world.
Many people got to know Steve during his long stint as a trainer for Pragmatic Marketing, which followed a career as a product manager, product marketing manager and product leader.
He’s now running Product Growth Leaders, a community for product managers, and a training company. In his courses, including a href="https://www.productgrowthleaders.com/offerings/fundamentals-of-managing-products" target="_blank"... -
157: Looking Back, Leaping Forward: 2023 Retrospective
Looking Back, Leaping Forward: 2023 Retrospective
In the last episode of 2024, I go through a retrospective of the show for 2023, and share some of my plans for 2024.
A few stats, lessons learned, things that went well and went badly, and then a sneak peek into what I’m planning for 2024.
2023 recap
I released a total of 34 episodes, including seven reruns. Five of the episodes were interviews.
I introduced some interesting new topics like anti-fragility and the PRD as the product bible. Both of those need more coverage in 2024!
As well, of course, the show continued (and will continue) to hit on all the old favorites like storytelling, go to market, psychological safety and basic product management skills.
Stats & achievements
* My monthly downloads almost doubled since mid-2022.
* The best month hit 2,481 downloads.
* My most popular episode reached 320 downloads in the first 30 days.
Challenges
* Some of the usual suspects – consistency, content ideas, all that stuff. (It’s a creative endeavor, and so creative blocks are gonna happen, I don’t care who you are!)
* And then there were indeed a few technical challenges, including one interview I recorded where half the recording disappeared at one point. Luckily, I was recording it with another tool as well, so I think I’ll be able to save it.
* ChatGPT was not the helper I thought it would be (although it did contribute a lot to these show notes, based on the transcript of the episode).
Looking ahead to 2024
Expect a higher ratio of interviews in 2024. As I mentioned, I only did five interviews in 2023. I expect that to go way up. This is both to widen the content because (haha!) I don’t know everything. And also to widen the audience because a lot of folks have audiences that would be interested in what we do here on the podcast. And I want to get that out to them.
I plan to explore the Descript tool further and ramp up the marketing side of the podcast.
My goal for the year is 52 episodes, although not all new. I don’t know why this wouldn’t be possible.
Content goals
I will continue exploring go-to-market strategies, getting jobs, being mentally successful in product management. And some newer topics like AI (as I explore it for myself and report on what others are doing), the product bible concept, and anti-fragility, among other topics.
I’ll be working on “filling the well” in 2024, to help me have more ideas and insights to share. I’ve set a personal goal to read 24 books in 2024, 1/2 fiction, 1/2 business/non-fiction. Currently I’m reading User Stories Applied, by Mike Cohn. I rag on user stories a lot, so I thought it would be a good idea to read one of the original guides on how to write and use them.
Coaching episodes!
In 2024 I will be introducing coaching episodes where you, my listeners, can participate for guidance and learning.
Let me know if you’d like to get some coaching from me on some issue that you wouldn’t mind being shared to the world. It’ll be fun!
(I love the way Dallas Travers uses coaching in her podcast “Coaches On A Mission.” Adam Scheuble is another master of this on his podcast “Podcasting Business School.”)
Episodes I mentioned
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Dan Balcauski on pricing in episodes 134 and 135.
* Evading “product management gatekeepers” in episo... -
156: Chris Butler on Why Meetings Are Great And Other Projects
Welcome back Chris Butler!
My guest on this episode is Chris Butler, whom we first heard from in episode 107! It’s great to have him back, sharing some of his new projects since we last talked 18 months ago.
Chris is a self-described “chaotic good” product manager, as well as a prolific writer and speaker. His work focuses on helping product managers operate more effectively – helping teams make better, less biased decisions, and build new and innovative products. He has been a product leader at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cognizant, KAYAK, and Waze. He created techniques like Empathy Mapping for the Machine, Animistic Design Mapping, and Confusion Mapping to create cross-team alignment while building AI products.
I first met Chris in a product manager meetup, and then I happened to watch his amazing video on Adversarial Product Management, the topic of his previous appearance on this podcast.
Some of what we cover in this episode:
* Why meetings are actually good and other insights from the Uncertainty Project.
* A new way to think about strategy
* Concrete ways that AI might change our lives, and his futurist work with the Near Future Laboratory
Links
* Connect with Chris on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbu/
* Check out the Uncertainty Project, which Chris co-founded.
* The Near Future Laboratory, the inventor of “design fiction” and host of Chris’s “Employee Manual Design Fiction” project.
* A playlist of 120(!) of Chris’s videos on YouTube, including Adversarial Product Management, The Future of Meetings, and Decoding Decision Making in Product Management.
* We talked about complexity and complicatedness, using the Cynefin sense-making model. Worth watching this video series from Dave Snowden (inventor of Cynefin) to learn more.
* Wardley Mapping: An Intro To Wardley Maps (by Simon Wardley), Learn Wardley Mapping.
Welcome back Chris Butler!
My guest on this episode is Chris Butler, whom we first heard from in episode 107! It’s great to have him back, sharing some of his new projects since we last talked 18 months ago.
Chris is a self-described “chaotic good” product manager, as well as a prolific writer and speaker. His work focuses on helping product managers operate more effectively – helping teams make better, less biased decisions, and build new and innovative products. He has been a product leader at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cognizant, KAYAK, and Waze. He created techniques like Empathy Mapping for the Machine, Animistic Design Mapping, and Confusion Mapping to create cross-team alignment while building AI products.
I first met Chris in a product manager meetup,
Customer Reviews
Must listen
Nils gives you insight into Product in ways other podcasts don't. Love the format and the content. you’re guaranteed to walk away with value bombs.
Insightful!
Appreciate the insights to necessary skills, how to ‘fine tune’ the ones you have, (sometimes just from looking at it from another angle). Focused on outcomes and ‘what you can do today’, it offers you the chance to experiment with a small facet of product management per episode.
Great for Product managers
Was recently turned onto this show by a colleague. I really enjoyed the recent episodes about “The Smart Sales Method” and the episodes talking about storytelling. Great stuff!