New Year, New Goals: Resolutions for Product Managers

Speaker A: Hello. It's practical product management. And we're back for season two. I'm so excited, Marilyn.

Speaker B: Me too.

Speaker A: This is gonna be fun. Okay, so I think season two should start just like every year starts. And we should talk about resolutions. You know, people love to set resolutions and either keep them or not. But I thought it would be fun for us to talk about how do sort of the common resolutions that people make. How could they show up in product management? What do you think?

Speaker B: I like it. I like it. New year, new goals. Let's think about this.

Speaker A: Love it. Me too. Me too. Um, I love, I love setting resolutions. I would say, you know, then I, I usually set too many and then I drop some off and then some of them I keep or I check in or whatever. And I think, I think it's fun to sort of rethink, even if you don't necessarily, necessarily see all of them through. I think it's fun to sort of rethink, like, how did my year go? What do I want to be different and set a course from that difference. So I think that can be fun.

Speaker B: I love it. You know, I am not a resolution setter.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I don't do it. Um, I, I feel like I always giving myself these mini challenges through the year.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and I have, like, it's funny because I have my long term goals. I understand where I want to be in five years, but this weird marking of the year, I can't. For me, it just feels weird and artificial. Um, but I understand that everybody does it. Um, and it's a great point in which we can talk about what does this mean from a product management perspective. But I just realized that if I didn't confess that I didn't actually set my own year's resolutions, I'd be a liar.

Speaker A: Uh, no, I totally get that. Well, I do have to say it's funny you said that. Now that you've said that, I'll say this. I have actually shifted. Most years I don't do a New Year's resolution. I've actually shifted to like spring equinox because I think during this time of year when you're trying to set resolutions, the world's still kind of asleep. Yeah, like, like nature is asleep. So I want my resolutions to match what's happening in nature. So the spring equinox is often like things are starting to burst alive. So I want to think about the new year. So it's like I sort of use the natural year for that. So it's, it's interesting Because I do like resolutions. But this year is kind of the. A dramatic shift for me from I didn't do a vision board. I haven't done resolutions. I haven't done any of that because I want to do it closer to spring Equinox.

Speaker B: Oh, I love it. I'm with you. I'm not a winter person. Like the snow that you see out back, not my friend.

Speaker A: So it's hard to think about, what do I want that you have the year to end when you're like, it's dark and cold.

Speaker B: I want to eat peanut butter and watch Netflix. That's what I want to do right now. That's the extent of my ambition.

Speaker A: Exactly. So we, as non resolution setters in 2025, do still think that product managers can take the. This opportunity or spring Equinox opportunity. There's always good chance to take an opportunity to look at your. What you. What you could resolve to do better as a product leader. Right. All right, so let's think about some of the. The, like, most common resolutions we know people set. So, um, one of them is, uh, weight loss.

Speaker B: Yes, man.

Speaker A: We're gonna lose all the weight this year. That's what I'm doing. All right, so if you're a product manager, what. What would that m. What might that look like?

Speaker B: I mean, I. I think there's a pretty direct correlation to, like, lose the baggage. Your backlog is probably full of trash that you should have said no to six months ago, but because you didn't want to hurt someone's feelings, you put it up. I'll put it on the backlog for you. And. And it sits there and drags your life down because you're now contending with a list of stuff that you have

Speaker A: no intention of ever looking at. Right. Yeah. It's like saying, I'm gonna lose weight and then going, you know, like, immediately going to the snack shop. Right, Exactly. I'm gonna. I'm. I'm totally gonna lose weight right after I finish this spoonful of peanut butter. No, I totally agree with you. The amount. You know, I think one of the skills that we most have to have and muscles you have to build as a product manager is learning to say no and articulate. Why? Um, because the more you say yes, the, The. I think there's two things that happen. We say yes to a lot of things because we don't know how to say no, and that bloats our backlog. Yeah. Um, and when we don't deliver those things, it actually starts to basically create A total lack of trust between us and our stakeholders.

Speaker B: Because you put something on the backlog, it never gets done. So now you're a crappy product manager. I think the other, the other place you should look for weight loss, and this is one that I think rarely happens, is in your existing product, what features are no longer being used? What does your customer no longer click on? Why is it even part of the ui? Um, has your thing evolved to the point where it's taken on a new trajectory, it serves a new use case, and what it was originally created for doesn't actually work anymore. Do you need six options on that screen or do you need two?

Speaker A: Right. You and I have used the example so often of, um, banks and their mobile apps or their websites and the number of hoops you have to jump through to get there that your customers will jump through because they need to get to their money. But do you need all those hoops? Could you lighten the load? Could you take some of the noise down? Could you make it easier on your engineers to maintain?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah. What could you do to streamline things and get it, get it thinner?

Speaker B: And I don't want to, like, incent and, like, create, uh, a riot, but, like, from a payments perspective, who's still paying with PayPal? Like, just take the button off right

Speaker A: now. People coming for you.

Speaker B: Comments are gonna blow up now.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. It's so true. Maybe the other place you could have some, where product managers could have some weight loss is that when you actually build your MVPs, they're skinny.

Speaker B: What, instead of everybody? Right.

Speaker A: What does minimal mean in minimal viable product?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Is your mvp everybody's MVP is fat?

Speaker B: Because, like, some executive, some highly paid, like, person, some hippo in the room is like, yeah, but that's ugly. That doesn't work. And this, in this random edge case, it fails. And so, like, my wife was trying it, or my, my best friend was trying it, or my shareholder was trying it, called me, and it doesn't work. So you need to fix this right now, my friend. We built it two weeks ago, right? And, you know, for 80% of the use cases, it works great. And, uh, it's driving revenue, right? But you're right.

Speaker A: You heard some rando in a room say, we only have one chance to make a first impression, so it needs to be pet perfect. No, you don't. That's not how products work. If you went right now and opened the very first version of Amazon's website, you, everyone will be horrified. Right? And Amazon's not even. It does not ever lose weight. It only gains weight. Right. And. But I still think, like, if you open a website of something that you think is great and works great from the first version to the version you use now, even though you may not have noticed the. The evolution, if you opened it, you'd be like, God, but you still used it.

Speaker B: What's that website? Uh, the time capsule website for web stuff. There's a website to, like, go look at everything in the past. Like, go find your favorite website and go look at what it looked like in the past and realize this isn't static.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: It's not boxed software. This is not your one chance to get it right.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: You can't touch it again for two years. You can touch it again tomorrow.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Congrats. So we want Skinny backlogs. We want skinny, uh, we want Skinny user experiences and tech, and we want skinny MVPs.

Speaker B: Like, does. So we talked about weight loss, but doesn't, like, doesn't like, um, incremental progress actually kind of fit with exercise more. Yeah, exercise more.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, and it's like, you know, if you go to the gym once a week and lift all the weights, it's not the same as going to the gym four times a week and lifting some of the weights.

Speaker B: Yeah, right.

Speaker A: Like, you probably aren't going to be like a. One week, one time a week, wonder in the gym.

Speaker B: Build the muscle.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. No, I love that. All right, what's another resolution that you think people make a lot that we can.

Speaker B: We can talk about, like, spend more time with family. I'm gonna spend more time with family.

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker B: I know, but.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And, like, how do you think that correlates to the job? Leah.

Speaker A: So I think there's a few places where, you know, I think it's deciding who your family is is probably the first. The first step. Right. And then, um, I mean, the goal of that, spend more time with family is often giving yourself more perspective, giving yourself better balance, giving yourself, like, the time to be with the people who really should matter most. And I guess as a product manager, the per. The person I probably spend the time with, the least that matters the most is the customer.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Which is terrible. But, I mean, it's painful to say, but it's true.

Speaker B: Every company I've ever worked with, um, everybody says they're customer centric. And when you ask how many people in this company have spent, um, time with the customer, how many people have listened to a customer call, the answer is usually like one person and it's the salesperson and they refuse to allow anybody else to talk to the customers because you're going to ruin the whole relationship and things are going to go like, that's not customer centric. That's not customer centric.

Speaker A: No, no. I one time worked with a, uh, chief commercial officer who would, I would say, can, you know, can my product team go on, on these merchant visits? No, because I don't. What I don't want to have happen is that the merchants start to trust you guys more than us. And I'm like, what are you talking about? We're the ones that build the things they want. You don't want them to trust us. Right. Relationship stolen. Right. But yeah, yeah. So, I mean, so I think for a lot of product managers, um, I think there is sometimes there are layers of noise between them and their customers. So how do you push in and demand more time with customers or potential customers? Right.

Speaker B: I think it's, uh, and I think it's got to happen at a lot of levels. So again, every company I've ever walked into, the product managers always say, well, I can't talk to the customers. For some reason in this company, I can't talk to the customers. And I actually feel like, uh, this is an endemic problem. It's an endemic problem that will require leadership to align to say, yes, we actually want to be close to our customers. And that means that there's going to be multiple layers of connectivity. And you got to figure out how to manage that on both sides. You don't want to ask too many questions, but you need to have enough that you're able to build a better relationship.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but building that barrier is not helpful. Not helpful.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. Is there anyone else that would be sort of family that you should be closer to?

Speaker B: I mean, stakeholders? I think that the other common theme that I hear time and time and time again is, ah, I don't know what engineering is doing, which is crazy town. Um, because. Because engineering has a real exhaust, what I will call digital exhaust. There are sprints, there are retros, um, there are demos, there is reporting, there's backlogs, there's roadmaps, there's all this stuff that happens around the activity of producing software. I think the gap, the connectivity gap is, um, almost a language barrier. So it's learn a new language. Um, how can, uh, product and engineering speak more into the language of the business? But how is the business, the business, whoever the business is, the business has a Responsibility to learn and understand what's going on in engineering. I think. I think there are no companies anymore, there are almost no companies anymore that do not have an element of digital and claiming ignorance, um, or pretending that everybody has to speak into your language and you don't have to learn what this thing is over here because those peasants will do your work for you. Um, I actually. Yeah, I actually think that you're making yourself irrelevant.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so there's an obligation on both sides to learn how to communicate openly and together. And you have to understand. You have to understand everything. Um, but you should be able to listen and learn over time and ask questions and have it be a safe space where you can, you know, grow together. What does it mean that. Yeah, like, that you're going to work on this thing next week. How does that help us? Uh, right.

Speaker A: No, 100%. And I mean, I fundamentally think. And I think you and I've talked about this before as a product leader, and especially in an organization that values product or wants to value product, even if they don't know how yet. Part of your job as a product leader is to have those conversations and help other people to understand what product mindset is. Like, what does it look like to care about this? What does it mean to be interested in this? What do I need to care about in my role that moves the product forward. That makes the value of what engineering is doing actually exponentially bigger. Because I'm doing my job and I'm interacting with this. And to your point, has to happen on both sides. And me as a product leader, I. I have to be open to having those conversations and trying to understand them, but also setting an expectation that they will move in closer and understand us as well.

Speaker B: Right? Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's. I think that's important. I think we. We sometimes try to play a little bit of a game of heroics and buffering to try to make sure that everybody knows stuff. And we can send all the status reports in the world, but there has to be real interest and engagement.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think status reports and. And updates are effective only when the parties are working together. Otherwise, they're used as a, uh, form of defense or, um, you know. Well, I told you. I told you. That's in the email. I can document it.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And it's like, I'm not. If we spend all of our time, you know, covering our asses with those kinds of things, it's weakened. It's basically weekend parenting. So then you're not Moving closer to your family.

Speaker B: Exactly right, Exactly. Kids now, right?

Speaker A: I wrote down their lunches, do such and such, and it's like, uh, okay, thanks, weekend dad. Right. Like, thanks for messing my kids up and sending them back hungry and without any sleep.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like, so it's basically that, yeah, appreciate it. Good job, dad. Right, so. And I'm making fun of dads. It can be moms too. But I'm just, I just think, I just think that they're like, everybody has to be in the family, right? And operating from that place to your

Speaker B: point, with a similar set of standards and values and rules. It's not like one person says that, uh, you know, that we can squeeze something in the backlog tomorrow or the kids can stay up all night. And the other person's like, well, we release on a two week cadence and you have to eat vegetables and go to bed at 8. Like, you gotta have a common understanding of how things are gonna work. So that, yeah, like, everybody that's trying to get work done is getting whiplashed.

Speaker A: It makes me laugh because when I was a kid, my mom was a stay at home mom. My dad traveled a lot and when and when he would come home, she'd be like, as much as we loved him and wanted him home, he messed up the routine, right? Because he was like, let's, let's cook out. And she's like, I'm making spaghetti. Like, we're not cooking. There's no way to cook that out. Right? I mean, of course there is, but know what I mean? But he would, he would come in and just, it was like he moved all the parts. And my mom was like, I love you, but go back to work.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Like, and I think sometimes when we don't bring together those values, like you said, the values and the ways of working and how we show up, it can be like that. The CEO swoops in and says something and you're like, okay, guys, don't listen to him. We're just going to be nice until he leaves the room. Right?

Speaker B: Usually works out super well.

Speaker A: Yeah, it always works out because that doesn't bite me later when I'm like, yeah, we didn't have to do what you said. It's like, I didn't say that, but it has that familiarity. I think of being in, uh, a family and having like, you're like, that guy is a menace. He's dad, but he's a menace.

Speaker B: Yeah. Dad has to understand how the family works, right? And you can still be fun dad, but it needs to be in the context of everything working together.

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And not throwing us off for 48 hours and then being like, gotta go. Right, yeah.

Speaker B: And why isn't this done yet?

Speaker A: Right. I thought by next weekend everybody would be happy. It's like, okay, calm down, dad. Right, yeah, totally. So I also was thinking that the. The. There's obviously people often try to sort of get out of debt, right? That's one of the resolutions people make, like, uh, I'm going to get out of debt. And so I was thinking, like, kind of along these same lines. There is obviously, there's tech debt and there's all the things we've built in that we need to go through and say, ah, uh, like we were talking about at the beginning, what do I. Losing weight. Right. But I think there's also, I think in product management, because we are really the glue managing so many relationships. Sometimes we need to look at the relationships we're in and say, can I go back and try to fix this relationship? What debt are we holding in our relationship together? Um, with my stakeholders within my team, within, you know, within the broader team that I'm a peer of. Oh, hello, Kitty. She's coming to the meeting. Um, she's the ones talk about resolutions. Hers does more. She wants to take more naps and get more treats. That's. Those are her resolutions.

Speaker B: I love it. Me too, Kitty.

Speaker A: Um, but. But I do think, like, there's sometimes getting out of debt for me would be to go back in and, and honor the commitments I've made, have the conversations that need to be had. Right. And, and get us back into a healthy kind of space where we're spending what we should spend.

Speaker B: Um, yeah.

Speaker A: Day in and day out.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think that, um, you know, budgeting. Budgeting is a real phenomenon in product management. It's really easy to get sort of like sucked into spending the next $5 and basically exhausting your paychecks as they come through, but really sort of taking a moment and saying, you know, where are we spending our attention, our resources? Is this the right allocation of capital? Um, and human intelligence? Um, and you can do that through, like, all sorts of models. You can like, I love the Ansoft model. Like, are we spending things in the right place? Right. Um, especially aligned to the larger corporate goals? Um, and then what does it look like to spend on an existing product for an existing customer in an existing market? And, you know, are we as efficient as we should be?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, and then how do we sort of like, parlay that into new products or new customers. And then what is the percentage or the fraction that we take out and truly go after the moonshots. Uh, and I don't know of very many places that are intentional about the spend and then track the spend. Most places are cramming things through so quickly that they end up in what we call a feature factory with a ton of technical cruft and debt. And they're on this treadmill of just launch without a lot of thought around what it's going to deliver or the thought that's there is never. You don't ever really go back and check you right. Were you not right? What assumptions do we make? Because there's like this, people get rewarded for launch. Um, and uh, and, and we don't take the opportunity. There's that natural experiment in this to say are we getting better at learning?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's just launch, launch, launch, launch, launch. So I love this idea of debt.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think we do. Uh, you know, we, I think we try so hard when we're budgeting in product to create enough buffer to know that we can keep the commitments that we're, that we're trying to be pushed to keep instead of pushing back and saying with this budget, I will need to investigate along the way how things are going. What is the right use of money? What is. You know, if you give me this, I will use it in the best way I can. But I can't tell you right now that I'll do exactly these three things right. I'll do this. I will start here and we'll figure out what the right spend is right. Of the, of those resources. But I do think, I think it's having, I think it comes back again to like those are, those are some really necessary and very honest conversations that need to be had.

Speaker B: And I love what you just said about um, directionally this is where we're going to go. But I can't tell you exactly what that looks like right now. I think too often we're expected to know what we're going to deliver in Q3. And I just think, um, in fact I got, you know, this is. I'm m just gonna steal a thought from someone that I respect, that I, I had worked with. Um, I don't want to make a decision now when I can know more.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, in, in the future, in a few weeks, in a month, I'll make a better decision then. I understand what I think the frame looks like. But let's leave some of those later Decisions to, when we have more information, we're gonna make a more informed decision and it's going to be better off for everybody. Uh, and I think that that's, uh, that's appropriate and that's kind of how you budget as a family.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: We kind of know what we're going to bring in over the course of a year. We understand kind of what some of the big things are. We understand what our savings goals are, but we're not budgeting for our, you know, heater to, to break in March, but we're still going to deal with it. Right. Because that is an important pivot to make.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I think that maybe on, um, using that example you just used, I think as a part of the reason why I think this is a good resolution is that last year when I looked at my budget and my, and my family and I knew I'm going to spend about this much at Christmas, it feels different if this year I have a 16 year old and I have to think about, okay, wait a minute, what, you know, is there a car in our budget this year? Do I need to figure out what transportation insurance, like, you know. So, uh, your family doesn't operate on a fixed budget year on year after year after year because your kid doesn't stay four.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So, so what does it mean to have a 12, um, year old versus a 15 year old versus a 19 year old. Right. And what does that do to my budget? And I think our products also have, they are growing up. They have an infancy, they have a, um, you know, a toddlerhood. They go through that though, the awkward teenage and preteen years and then eventually they're an adult and maybe they eventually sunset. Right. And I think they're still expensive. Uh, exactly. And I mean, I'm a, I'm a very expensive adult. Right. I have things I like to do. Right. But I, but I think we don't. If we just said this should always cost X. Okay, that's not how it works.

Speaker B: It's not, it's not. And I think that a lot of companies don't, um, A lot of companies and a lot of product managers don't start to map that business evolution and maturity to what happens with the technology. And they're, they're really tied hands in hands. And, and I think that without explicit conversation and planning, what happens is you tend to try to do more with less or stretch what you've got or blow your budget or, or instead of being thoughtful and being like, well, hey, Two years from now, we're probably going to need to start looking at this. So why would we sign a contract for this piece of software for three years when we know there's a decision point in here, um, or at least put a clause in where there's a buyout and then know that's your cost of getting out? I feel like people aren't intentional.

Speaker A: Right. No, I agree. I agree. And I think that that's an important thing for companies in general. But for product managers, I think that's why that resolution could be an important one. To sit down and be like, wait a min, where are we and where are we going to be? Even if you're, even if your planning cycle is not annual like this, where you can show up and do that, still worthy to sit down and say what happened last year that might have caught us by surprise, that I maybe should have known and what should I be looking for going forward? Right. Yeah.

Speaker B: So, okay, I think another one just unintentionality. Let's, let's just draw that one out just a little bit more. A lot of people want to meditate more or less or, um, or be more intentional. I. And I just saw an article or a thing on Instagram or something from Spotify, um, about meeting intentionality. M and is there a point in time in the year to rethink your cadence, your communication, all of your meetings, the attendees in the meeting, just to ensure that you're being as lean as possible?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, because big meetings are expensive and people love to be in meetings but like they're highly ineffective.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: M. So when, at ah, what stage do you clean those up and how do you start to rethink? Are we spending our time then the time of our people in the appropriate way? And how do we thin out, how do we thin out meetings without making people feel like they've been voted off the Island?

Speaker A: Right, right. 100%. You know, it's really interesting you bring that up because I. Some people who are watching this may know I just took this role where I'm fractional chief product officer. I work three days a week. Um, what's wanted of me is still a chief product officer. Right. But what it means is that every minute I spend working for the company has to be a value add because there are two whole days that I'm doing something else.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I'm not available. Right. And it has been a real eye opener to me to how much when I did it five days a week. I don't feel like what they want from me, is that different than what I, what they wanted from me when I did it five days a week? The difference is my time. And so meetings are like, precious. And I'm like, do I need to do this right? Do I need to be there? Can someone else be there? And if we're going to do it, are we going to do it once and make a decision and move on or is it going to drag or more meetings? Right. Like, I need us to be very intentional. I need to be very intentional, but I also need the team around me to be very intentional about how they use my time. Right. And so it's been a really. So I was talking to a friend of mine and I was like, imagine that you were going to do the same job you're doing, but you had to cut two days out. What would you cut? And if that's, if you can think of that, is there some way for you to use that thought, uh, exercise to say, where can I be more efficient with my time now?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You and I both know a five day a week job ends up being a, uh, 50 hour a week or six day a week job. Because you always have to, like, I mean, I'll do that on the weekend. Why? Right. Why are, why are you doing that on the weekend? Why can't you do it during your week? Right. And what do you need to say no to.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: In order to do that? Right. Because not everybody's going to go to a three day a week job. I'm not saying that. But using it as an exercise to say, oh, shit, what would I cut?

Speaker B: Well, I think that the interesting thing is, um, most, most people in our industry are paid to be strategic.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: A certain portion of your time is all about being strategic.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, and yet when you look at where you're spending your moments, a lot of what you're doing is tactical.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you're not, you're not actually giving the company what they're paying for, which is that step back to say, hey guys, are we really doing the right thing? You're just, you're, again, you're grinding out the next thing, which is obviously part of the job.

Speaker A: Like, sure.

Speaker B: Um, but freeing yourself from some of the tactical work to enable you to do the other part of your job that you're also being paid for.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, should be a priority.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's what's been interesting for me is realizing that these three days every week have to be strategic. Um, I cannot spend much time in the weeds. Because I've got, I've always got to be thinking about, does every minute of this count? Right. So I go into the weeds when it's absolutely necessary and then I have to pull back up and be like, okay, someone else do that. Yeah, but I. We're moving over here. Right. But yeah, no, I think it's super, super important and think that intentionality is so important. And it ha. It is almost a meditative practice. Like, you have to sit and be like, okay, what's the most important thing I can do to do day? Yeah. To move myself, the product, the team forward, the business forward.

Speaker B: Do you color code your calendar?

Speaker A: Oh, hell yeah. I'm. I'm laughing at you saying that my calendar is like very clearly. Like, this is a one on one. This is a, uh, meeting with the executive team. These are like, this is an external meeting. This is with these 100%.

Speaker B: I do too. The, the thing I saw from Spotify was like, programmatically, once a year, all recurring meetings get deleted.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I don't know how I feel about that. But I will tell you, um, as a practice. What? You know, most companies I've worked at usually take a little break over Christmas. Yeah. Or I take a break over Christmas. Um, and at least in that period, I cancel all of my, like, all of my team meetings. Um, and then I re. Put them back on.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: If stuff happens through the course of the year and like, yeah. Uh, you know, you just like, stop.

Speaker A: Right. And I mean, even as a leader, like saying, okay, in some cases, do I need all of these weekly one on ones or can they be every two weeks or once a month? And where's the maturity in my org? Where's the maturity with my stakeholders? What has changed over the course of a year that you don't need to talk to me every week for an hour. Maybe you need talk to me every week for half an hour. Right. And going and having those conversations and saying, I think you're ready to fly a little bird and you don't need me every week for an hour. Right. So I'd like to take back that hour and give you one hour a month or whatever it is. I'm not saying everybody should do that, but I think you have people on your team who are ready for that.

Speaker B: Or how do we turn some of those one on ones into peer meetings so that you're actually helping each other.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Part of, part of my jam is, you know, if I win the lottery, uh, everybody should be able to function without me. And that means the team better be freaking cohesive.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. Like, there should be collaboration across. You guys should be reviewing each other's documents. You guys should be talking about how you're dealing with different things across the platform together. Don't just tell me.

Speaker A: Right. How is your family? Yeah. How do you sustain past. Past me being in the room, past me being the leader?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah.

Speaker B: 100.

Speaker A: I think that's so important. Okay, last one. Um, I'm gonna have a new hobby this year. I'm gonna learn to play guitar, learn a language. I'm gonna take up knitting. I'm gonna become a runner. Like, these are. These are my hobbies that I'm gonna take up. What does it look like and what does it look like for product managers to do it?

Speaker B: I mean, my mind immediately jumps to experimentation, building out hypothesis, learning something new. Um, figuring out how to see if a thing will work and. Or not. This is, like, where my heart, like, flourishes. This is my jam. If anybody wants to make me happy. Let's talk about how do you do rapid experimentation and product management? Absolutely. Learn a new skill. Um, absolutely. Go see if something will work. How can you test an idea in two days?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How can you test the psychology of an idea in two days? You want to try a new hobby, like, get your experimentation engine humming. And that really unlocks, um, everything. It means that nothing is now a bad idea or off the table because it is so inexpensive to test a theory.

Speaker A: Yeah. I love that. It's been. It's been really fun. Like, um, recently, I'm hiring. I'm making. Doing a hiring run. Right. Trying to hire a product manager. And I'm asking them about, like, what's your experience with a B Testing? Tell me about the best one you ever did. That is a fun question to ask. I've never gotten to really answer. Ask that question, but it's been fun to ask it and hear people say, oh, we did this, and they tell me what they experimented with. And you can see people light up from the joy of talking about a time when they went and learned something new about their customer, about their product, about the journey. And I. So I totally. I totally understand that. Like, it is such a. Such a joy to learn something.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I will also tell you, my friends, every single person out there has a bunch of natural experiments already in your data. Yeah, it's already. You don't have to make up new stuff.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Go look at your data, because there's a bunch of things that you can learn. And the Most interesting thing is the things that look odd. And that's where you should start today.

Speaker A: What does this mean? Right.

Speaker B: Exactly right. It floors me when people do not have full instrumentation because you are wasting, you're wasting so much time with your customer. There's no way you would have a contact center or an, an in person, um, like a store where, where you just didn't have people.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like a contact center where no one answered the phone. You pick up the phone, it's a blank line.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You always have to have something there, like to help your customer. A digital interface needs instrumentation. Your customer is no less present on that thing. And if you just toss up a website and think that like four action buttons are tagged, is everybody appropriate metrics? Like. My friend, you need to comment.

Speaker A: You've missed the boat, Leah.

Speaker B: And I will tell you about why that's a really shitty idea.

Speaker A: Real bad idea. Here's all the things you're not going to know and you're gonna be like, I don't know what to do because we didn't, we didn't record anything.

Speaker B: You don't care. You don't know and you don't care. And don't tell me you do care, because if you cared, you would know.

Speaker A: Like, yeah, absolutely. So true.

Speaker B: Uh, like go and call the people at like Mixpanel or Amplitude and get a real analytics package and start thinking about what your people. People are doing.

Speaker A: Like what you're. What's actually happening.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Not just my guess. Right. Um, because again, once again, you are not the customer.

Speaker B: No, no.

Speaker A: As much. As much as you want to be, and maybe you are a customer, you are not the customer.

Speaker B: It doesn't matter if you're a customer. You're inside the company. You have knowledge that the customer doesn't have. You have context the customer doesn't have. Your opinion doesn't matter.

Speaker A: Right. It's so true. The other thing about sort of learning a new hobby that I think is relevant here is this idea that, um, what is what as a product manager? So going all the way down to I'm a product manager on a team, um, all the way up to a leader, what skills would it be good for me to learn and to learn something new around that might open up opportunities for me. Right. So if you're a product manager who doesn't know about AI, maybe your hobby should be learning about AI.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If you're, if you're a product manager who wants to lead people but you've never done it, what do you need to Be learning now so that when you step into that space, you're not like, I'm gonna learn against these people,

Speaker B: or can you just teach? Right, right. I think, I think leading is not especially first time managers have this really weird conception that leading is bossing people around or making someone do it the way you would do it.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Um, and I actually find that, that the. The best leaders I've ever worked with, they don't actually care how their people get the work done.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Um, the thing, they want to empower people. And so can you teach your skills and then ask people to go implement and tell you what they did differently? That's part of letting go of, like, you.

Speaker A: You.

Speaker B: Thou shalt follow my six steps and then never deviate. Like, how do you learn that? Uh, to teach and be taught back.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. 100%. Like, and that's. I mean, I think one of the freest moments as a leader is the moment you say, I don't know, but let's find out.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Like, when people are like, leah, what do we do? I don't know.

Speaker B: Let's figure it out.

Speaker A: Like, that's. What do you guys think we should try? Right. What do you think we should do? Like, I think as a leader and as a human, learning to say I don't know and being comfortable with that has been one of the joys in my life. And the way I want to lead and the way I want to live. Right. Instead of being like, I know how to do all the things.

Speaker B: Just how to tell everybody everything.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: People that tell everybody everything are such a buzzkill. Like, no one really wants to be friends with those people.

Speaker A: Nobody is mostly looking to get away from you. If people, if you start doing that, people you can tell, they want to walk out. They want to back to the, the door.

Speaker B: Yeah. No one's taking you to coffee. You're no fun.

Speaker A: Nobody wants to be your friend. Oh, no. What they want you to do is stop telling them what you know.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: No, thank you. That's what. And if people stop asking you questions, it's probably a good sign that you tell people, everybody, everything you know. I don't ask Leah questions because she just talks.

Speaker B: She knows everything.

Speaker A: Yeah, she knows everything. That is not. That is not what people say about me for sure. Because I'm like. I say, uh, I don't know a lot, and they're always some surprise. I'm like, oh, I don't know.

Speaker B: How are we gonna find out?

Speaker A: I don't. I don't have Any idea?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Yeah. All right, well, sounds like we've given people plenty of things to consider, so I would love for those who listen to pop in comments about, like, oh, oh, here's what I'm going to resolve to do over the coming months and to go look at and to try. I think that would be fun to hear from people. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, let's have some conversations about what are our resolutions, um, and what are we going to do different and why would we do that and what are we going to learn from it.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I love it. And I think that's what we're going to do in this podcast. We're going to see, like, what does season two hold? What do we want to do? The same. What do we want to do differently? I think from my perspective, I want the feeling that it's just a couple of girlfriends hanging out to feel the same. Um, but I. And I want people to continue to learn, but I think there's some intentionality that you and I are thinking about, like, how do we want to use this podcast? And how do we. What do we want people to get from it? And so I think that's also one of our goals as. As podcasters.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Do I need to call myself a podcaster? Like, this honestly started just. Just to. Just to give us a chance to have a conversation, which is what one of the things I really love about it.

Speaker A: It. Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but, like, am I a podcaster? That feels very official.

Speaker A: Fancy.

Speaker B: You are.

Speaker A: We have. If we're starting a season two, I think that makes you. I think that's how you officially become a podcaster.

Speaker B: Wow. I feel like a Pokemon that just leveled up.

Speaker A: I know. Check. Check you out. All right, well, tune in. We'll be back with some more top fun topics. And, um, if you have ideas for us, send them our way. Um, topics you want to talk about, or if you're somebody who wants to come talk to us about something, send us a message, and we'll see if it's a good fit. So it's fun. And I'll talk to you next time, Marilyn. Bye.

Speaker B: Uh,