The Surprising Secrets of Exceptional Product Leaders

[Music]

[Applause]

so

i’m in a unique position i get to talk

with and observe

lots of teams making mobile apps

websites and other digital tools

most of these digital initiatives will

fail

seventy percent according to mckenzie

hundreds of billions of dollars

will be lost lost on products customers

don’t want to buy

lost on products that don’t even make it

to the customer

lost on services that just don’t work

people call me because they’re

struggling my job

is to help them figure out what their

customer needs and how to get it to

market

i work with a lot of ordinary cheap

product officers

ordinary chief technology officers

ordinary product leaders

and every once in a while i get to meet

a product leader

who is exceptional these exceptional

product leaders

they’re growing their revenue and their

customer base

they’re getting all the attention you

want all the talent you want

i’ve seen what makes them exceptional

and i want you to know what it is

you may think it’s their great ideas

that make them exceptional

and they do have great ideas they also

have mediocre ones

and bad ones too somehow we got this

notion that the idea was the important

thing

to go from an idea to an app on your

phone takes a team

of people with different skill sets

making lots of decisions

on what to build and how to build it so

it’s not their ideas

that make them exceptional you may think

execution their ability to get stuff

done

now see you can get a lot of stuff done

and doesn’t mean that

anybody wants to buy it so it’s not

their execution

that makes them exceptional i’ve seen

what makes them exceptional

because all of them do the same thing

and they do it in more or less the same

way

they teach their teams how to think how

to listen

and solve customer problems now i feel

kind of dumb standing up here and saying

this listen and solve customer problems

because i’m probably not the first

person to do it

but here’s the thing i sit in your

meetings

i watch your teams make decisions then i

go talk to your customers

you may say the words customer focus

customer

obsessed you may put lots of sticky

notes up on the wall

but your teams don’t know who your

customer is and they don’t know what

they need

how do i know well when i ask you who

your customer is and let’s say we’re

talking about a business-to-consumer b2c

product you tell me

it’s for a soccer mom all the soccer

moms out there

except that doesn’t really help me

understand her

i mean are we talking about a soccer mom

with two kids a job and a nanny maybe

she has a very different life

from one who’s got an aging parent

autistic child who has to do multiple

pickups and drop-offs who has to

co-parent who has to

maybe take public transportation because

she doesn’t own a minivan

that her kids play soccer is the least

interesting valuable viable data point

about her

now if we know that she’s struggling

with finances

nutrition how to work from home full

time while also taking care of her small

children

full time which by the way sucks

if we understand that about her then we

can do something about it

now in the b to b world business to

business we hear a lot about

titles like heads of marketing except

you know heads of marketing can be

really different depending on

the size of the company the revenue the

business model the industry

but some of them are dealing with ad

fraud they’re being scammed by

fraudulent clicks

they don’t know where they’re coming

from they don’t know how to stop them

they don’t know what tool to integrate

with all their other tools but if we

know

what their challenge is then we can do

something about it see years ago

demographics might have been enough to

help us understand their customers

and that might have worked because they

didn’t have very many choices so they

settled

they settled for us but now we have lots

of choices and new things are coming out

in the market

every day which means you need to be

deeply

objectively clear about who your

customer is and what they need

you need to get out of the building do

the research look at the data find the

patterns that aren’t biased

to help you understand what they need

and it’s not enough that you as a leader

understand and need just tell your teams

what to do

because you’re not the one doing the

work see we’ve got the customer

the customer uses the product the team

uses works on that product every day

making lots of decisions about how to

prioritize things or what they should

look like

then we’ve got the product leader and

way over here

is the ceo see top-down decision-making

just doesn’t work they’re too far away

from the customer to understand them

it takes too much time to go from the

ceo to the team

that means they’re not responsive

they’re not

adapting they’re not thinking in order

to go

from the ordinary to the exceptional we

need to change the way teams think

an ordinary team will think about

following the development process

getting the work done on time

meeting the specification if that’s what

they they’re thinking about

that’s what they’re focused on that’s

what they’re going to do

it’s what we taught them to do a team

with an exceptional product leader we’ll

be thinking about

what is the customer need how can we

help them

how by helping our customer can we help

our business grow

how a team thinks matters so let me show

you an example

so this is a manufacturer and they make

the market leading

products for decking railing stairs and

other outdoor items

the amount that they know about

substructures and stairs will blow your

mind

and that’s why they’re the top choice

for contractors but they wanted to get

in the market

for the do-it-yourself diy builder

so they hired a team to build a digital

designer tool for them

but the team didn’t know anything

about how to build anything that wasn’t

software

they didn’t know what kind of person

does it themselves instead of hiring a

contractor

they didn’t know what kind of support

that diy builder

would need to guide them through all the

complex and expensive decisions about

what needed to be in their design

and their project what this team knew

how to do

was to learn really fast so they spent

hours and hours with experts building

scale models of decks

they spent lots of time talking about

railings i kid you not

hours and hours and hours on railings

they went out and they talked to diy

builders

they did prototypes and they showed them

they made sure that every decision they

were making on this project

was to help that diy er have the

confidence to take the project on

have the guidance that they needed to do

it well

and by helping that customer they were

going to help this

company grow in the diy market

see the way you think your mindset

it matters it shapes and guides and

frames the decisions we make

every day the small ones and the large

ones

the research of carol dweck and others

has taught us that it’s not only

possible to change someone’s mindset to

change a team’s mindset an entire

company’s mindset you can change their

performance

exceptional product leaders change the

way their teams think

to focus them on solving problems of the

customer and helping the business grow

here’s how i know i’m in the presence of

an exceptional product leader

within the first the first five minutes

of talking to them about what they do

they’re going to tell me their customer

story

they always do see exceptional product

leaders

tell their customer story to every

prospective new employee to every

stakeholder

to every investor and to their team

every time that team is about to make a

major decision

they’ve done the work to have the

clarity and the details about who their

customer is and what we are trying to

accomplish as a team

and they need to say it over and over

again to make sure their team

understands it if i meet you

within the first five minutes you don’t

tell me

your customer story i start to wonder

is that because storytelling is hard

because i can definitely tell you

that it’s complicated and takes some

practice

or is it because you’ve gotten so busy

in the day-to-day work of trying to make

things happen

that you started to forget who the

customer is that it’s been a while since

you talked to one

that you started to lose focus on the

big goals and objectives we’re trying to

accomplish with our company

and if the story is started to get fuzzy

for you

if you’re not quite so sure

what does that mean for your team

what goes in one of these exceptional

stories matters

so let me tell you one about the common

application

if you or anyone in your family has

applied to college in the last let’s say

20 years

they probably use the common application

every year millions of high school

seniors go online

they choose the colleges and

universities they want to apply to

they enter their essays their data they

get letters of recommendation

and then they send it off hoping to get

into colleges of their choice

the mission of the common application is

access

equity and integrity in the college

admissions process

so when they started to figure out what

do we do in mobile

they were really thinking about their

students in particular

students like this one no one in her

family

has ever been to college she wants to be

the first

she doesn’t have fancy coaches she

doesn’t have a well-equipped college

counselor at her school

she’s got to keep up with her schoolwork

extracurricular activities that will

look good on the application

and a job and maybe family commitments

too she’s got to do

all of that while handling a complicated

process of lots of different

essays and recommendations and data

points she needs to collect

and submit on time

don’t you see what she’s up against

don’t you want to help

because that’s what this team did and it

guided every decision that they made

about what to build when

and how to build it see what goes in one

of these exceptional stories has a

couple of key hallmarks

and i want you to know what they are the

first

is that an exceptional product leader

creates a detailed picture of the

customer

among a sea of people i know which one

is their customer

they’ve created a picture that’s clear

they helped us understand

what they’re trying to do what they’re

up against and what they

could achieve if things were just a

little bit easier

next they talk about how the market has

continually

failed to serve this customer how they

don’t understand their needs

they don’t see the opportunity they’re

not able to

adapt or innovate which means the market

is open for an organization or a company

like ours

to come in and do something special

lastly they tell the team how the

product is going to help

they paint a picture of the future where

the customer is thriving and achieving

their goals

where a company is serving the market

and it’s growing and healthy

we’re contributing to our community they

paint this picture in such a way

that the team is willing to commit to

the work knowing full well

that it’s going to be complicated and

it’s going to be hard

and absolutely nothing is guaranteed

now i met a lot of exceptional product

leaders are really ordinary product

leaders who can do these three

but the truly truly special can do one

more

and for most of us it’s kind of scary

they tell their team that they don’t

have all the answers

most of us want to be seen at the

leaders who have the brilliant ideas the

great strategies

who always have an answer when the team

comes to us

it’s a lot harder to say that you don’t

know to say things like

i know about our customer but not

everything go find out

i know the opportunity is there but not

exactly how to take advantage of it

let’s go figure that out i know that

things will change

i know that we will get things wrong and

when we do

we’ll figure it out together see what

makes them truly magical and exceptional

is that they both can paint a compelling

vision of the future

that we all want to get to but yet they

leave plenty

of space for their team to fill with

their ideas

their contribution their experience and

what they learn from interacting with

customers

it’s these two things together that make

them so exceptional

except it’s not magic

this is something that you can learn to

do

too having a high performing team

making a successful product is possible

you can figure out how to do this

you can learn to do this and it will

suck at first

but you’ll get better along the way and

i promise you

that it’s worth it here’s your first

step

start telling your story if you don’t

know who your customer is

go look if you can’t understand the

market opportunity and uniquely identify

what is available

go find out create a compelling vision

for your team and

welcome them to contribute their ideas

make it safe enough for them to tell you

when you’re being a dumbass

tell your story to everyone you meet

tell it all the time it will suck at

first

but it will get better the picture will

become clear

the team will be more effective you’ll

lead your team to something

exceptional go make something great

together

[Applause]

[Music]