Empathy -- Lead with your EARS and not with your MOUTH
As promised, here are the slides from my talk at Impact Product Management Conference 2018 event in Budapest, Hungary.
The challenges of product development are not about products. They are about interpersonal relations.
The empathic component is what makes a product manager special. In a field that values objective performance, spending your time on empathic interaction is perceived as a waste of time because is not measurable. But there is a connection between empathy and other outcomes, such as enhanced team buy-in, smoother communication and information exchange. Empathy is key to building great products. Give it to your office community, and they will love you.
In some organizations, the strategy/decision making (roadmap) h...
Posted on November 4th, 2018
Factors that Damage Your Integrity. Reflecting on Adverse Conditions.
Product Managers rightly face criticism when negotiating or selling product vision to stakeholders. We increasingly turn to data analytics and customer insight in hopes of outlining a product's most pressing problems, whether it’s a user acquisition drop off, a shift in engagement, or failure to sway churn. My experience suggests that, if there is a poor acceptance or cultural fit, Product Managers end up with the bullseye on their back —and should take steps to understand cultural patterns that lead to unfavourable traction.
Like what? Like colleagues not being available, withholding information, not keeping their commitments, damaging your reputation by reducing your personal and professional credibility. To make progress against ne...
Posted on October 13th, 2018
How To Find The Narrative In Numbers -- And How To Sway Cynics.
I'm moderating Product Circle MTL this week. A meet up by product managers, for product managers. My discussion topic revolves around numbers. Finding the narrative in numbers. The language of product is mathematics. Your initial plans are almost certain to be wrong in some way. Your first priority as a product manager is to figure out where.
Lean principles prescribe ditching long technology development cycles. Instead, you start with an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). It’s quicker and cheaper than traditional methods. Startup-formation delivery gets determined by a Product expert who knows how to operate on good-enough data. Fix failures by iteration on ideas and pivot away from the ones that don’t work. So how does one fly low wi...
Posted on September 16th, 2018
Just How Bad Is The Pressure To Move Fast For YouTube Creators? Here’s Watchmojo's Unity.
WatchMojo was entering its expansion-stage and we knew that there was a huge market growth opportunity in front of us, if we could just execute on it quickly, avoid common pitfalls and things falling through the cracks. From previous years we had battle scars. Our VPs had already realized that things were very different at scale and managing video production through spreadsheets and best-in-breed productivity tools were not operating smoothly and had apparent problems.
“We need to become a well-coordinated execution machine with multiple global partners" Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, CEO of WatchMojo
Not fucking up the expansion of our product line
We had to rethink our approach to creating videos in order to increase our total addressable...
Posted on June 9th, 2018
What I've been reading on Product Management - 06/2018
A round-up of interesting articles I've read over the last week or so, mostly about product management, Leadership and Prioritization.
Leading by Letting Go
Getting People to Believe in Something They Can’t Yet Imagine
Value Propositions That Work
Why most product managers suck (and how to be a better one)
Slow Deciders Make Better Strategists
Rethinking Product Management: How to Get from Start-up to Scale-up
20 Product Prioritization Techniques: A Map and Guided Tour
What Product Managers Can Learn from the Apple iPod
The Complete Guide to the Kano Model
Aligning Your Product Roadmap with Company Goals
Product managers for the digital world
The Four Styles of Management
Prioritizing for Strategic Alignment
What It Takes...
Posted on June 8th, 2018
Can’t prioritize? Use this 6 Week Process to Generate Your Product Roadmap
Despite the proliferation of tools designed for road mapping, prioritization remains the most difficult part of the product. Without a process for roadmap reinforcement, it just won’t stick.
Over the years, as a Product Manager, I established an effective product management process. With it and backed with strong strategy and leadership I helped develop roadmaps that aligned influential individuals and companies. Towards the end of any given quarter, I often rely on this fast-paced and collaborative 6 week process to refine priorities. I focused it on understanding the current state, identifying strategic opportunities, defining requirements, creating a vision of the future, and defining a staged plan to evolve the customer experience...
Posted on June 3rd, 2018
What I've been reading on Artificial Intelligence and Data science - 06/2018
A round-up of interesting articles I've read over the last week or so, mostly about product management, Artificial Intelligence and Data science.
How companies can navigate the age of machine learning
The AI-First Business Model
Human-Centered Machine Learning
Machine Learning for Product Managers
Machine Learning and Product Managers
Always start with a stupid model, no exceptions.
The Cold Start Problem with Artificial Intelligence
Deep Learning vs Classical Machine Learning
Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life
What does it mean to be an AI Product Manager?
Are You Setting Your Data Scientists Up to Fail?
A Product Management Framework for Machine Learning — Part 1 of 3
A Product Management Framework for Machin...
Posted on June 1st, 2018
Tomorrow’s Product Managers Will Need Solid Data, Model and Problem Understanding
Tomorrow’s Product Managers Will Need Solid Data, Model, and Problem Understanding
When people talk about Product Management of the future, the first theme that comes to mind is artificial intelligence (AI). AI is changing the fundamental structure of every industry. We’re interacting with technology in new ways, from giving voice commands to virtual assistants to having Smart Reply suggest quick responses to our messages. In Alpha’s Product Management 2018 Insights study, a third of respondents reported having AI or machine learning incorporated into their products.
Does that mean it’s time to embrace the mathematical techniques that enable the building of intelligent software applications using the family of techniques known as dee...
Posted on May 21st, 2018
Upcoming Speaking Engagements
Below is a list of Paul Ortchanian’s upcoming and past speaking engagements.
Impact Conference 2018, Empathy - Lead with your EARS and not with your MOUTH, Budapest, HungaryProduct Circle #2, "Finding the Narrative in numbers", Montreal, CanadaProduct Management Festival 2018, Tomorrow’s Product Managers Will Need Solid Data, Model, and Problem Understanding, Singapore (canceled) Founder Institute 2017, Great companies are built on great products, Montreal, Canada
. . .
Flash Belt 2008, Minneapolis, U.S.Flash Forward 2008, San Francisco, U.S.FITC Toronto 2008, CanadaFITC Toronto 2007, CanadaFlash Belt 2007, Minneapolis, U.S.Flash Forward 2007, Boston, U.S.FITC Winnipeg 2006, CanadaFITC Toronto 2006, CanadaFITC Toronto 2005, Canada...
Posted on May 5th, 2018
Product Managers, Make your CEO provide a clear vision
There are so many articles about the challenges and stresses of being a Product Manager. But this is an article about your CEO’s duty to set a vision, to define why your company exists. For some product managers, the thought of talking openly about the void left by a missing vision statement is paralyzing. And as a product leader gets more senior, the need to clearly define the product strategy intensifies. In Alpha’s Product Management Insights study of more than 150 digital product managers, 32% percent said that their biggest wish in the coming year was a clearer product roadmap / strategy.
So how frequently do you and the CEO interface? Does the CEO provide general direction? He should provide general direction. Without it you can...
Posted on April 15th, 2018