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]