The Everyday Innovator Podcast for Product Managers

10 common mistakes or pitfalls new product managers should avoid A few months ago I was contacted by a product manager, Areo Wong, who works in Hong Kong. He described himself as a “newbie” with about one-year of experience. He has been struggling to learn what the role of product manager was really about. After trying a few different approaches to learning more, he took a very creative path. He decided to interview 30 expert product managers and create a virtual summit of the insights shared on the interviews. This would help him rapidly learn and provide an opportunity for other younger product managers to do the same. I thought it was a great idea since my work is all about helping product managers know what they really need to know. So, I eagerly accepted his invitation to be part of his Product Manager Summit. More recently, I was discussing his experience as a product manager and what he had learned so far. He shared 10 pitfalls that he has encountered as a “newbie” product manager and that he has seen others struggle with as well… * Trying to know everything about the technical side of projects * Doing the hands-on work alone * Not saying “no” enough * Trying to please everyone * Getting too emotionally attached to the product * Just wanting to deliver something * Not distinguishing core features from nice-to-have features * Just following instructions from senior management * Always wanting to change the world with little authority * Forgetting the big picture We had an opportunity to discuss some of the pitfalls together. I expect you’ll find the discussion helpful. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers * [3:09]  What is the Product Manager Summit? I interviewed 30 product management experts, asking them to share their knowledge with junior product managers. I categorized the knowledge from the interviews into six modules: (1) Product management essentials, (2) Problem space exploration, (3) Agile product development, (4) Lean UX, (5) Product marketing skills, and (6) Product management toolbox.   * [5:45] How did the Product Manager Summit come about? I really want to learn how to become a product master from the product newbie that I am now, which is why I interviewed you for the Summit since you have the Product Mastery Roadmap. I am new to product management and the role of product manager is new in Hong Kong, my home. I  hired a researcher to collect information on product management and attended a few events, but it is a challenge to know what is really important about the role of product manager. So, I decided to create the Summit to help myself and to help other product managers.   * [8:25] You’ve created a list of 10 pitfalls new product managers can easily fall into. What is the first one? Trying to know everything about the technical work for a product. My product is highly technical. I feel unconformable at times because I don’t really know what product management is about and I don’t really understand all of the technical aspects. After learning more about product management, I have become more comfortable focusing on my product manager role. I am more concerned with the product problem than with the solution.   * [10:59] What is another pitfall? I call this doing the hands-on work by yourself. I know I’m expected to produce a deliverable. To satisfy that, I might build something for my boss to see but forget to consider what the customers really want. You have to recognize you are part of a cross-functional team and not doing the work yourself.   * [11:19] Why do you say you have to know where your fear comes from? For me, in the beginning, my fear was because I didn’t understand product management and my...

3D printing creates new options for product managers and designers beyond prototyping The discussion coming up is about the state of 3D printing for prototyping and additive manufacturing. 3D printing is evolving quickly with the capability to print in a wide variety of materials. Also, post-processing capabilities, such as metal-plating plastic printed parts, are creating new opportunities for ergonomically correct parts. 3D printing provides significant efficiencies and competitive advantages. I discussed the state of 3D printing and additive manufacturing with industry veteran John Bailotti. His background couples engineering, manufacturing, financial research, marketing, business development, and leadership, providing a valuable perspective in helping companies adopt additive manufacturing. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers * [7:31] Where does 3D printing fit into manufacturing approaches? 3D printing is an additive approach. It’s helpful to contrast this with subtractive approaches. As an analogy, think about ice cream. Hard serve ice cream is scooped out of a container. It is subtracted from the container, leaving a lot of ice cream (material) in the container. To get what you want, you remove what you want or don’t want.  This is a subtractive process. Soft serve ice cream is different. You deposit into a cone or cup only what you want with very little to no waste. This is an additive process. Both processes are complementary and can be used together. For example, currently additive processes provide less accuracy for creating the desired form of an object and subtractive processes can be used to finish the object to precise specifications.  Additive manufacturing uses less material, creates less waste, and may take less time.   * [10:51] Are there times when one approach must be used over the other? Some objects cannot be made with subtractive manufacturing or traditional modes. An example is creating the cylinder head of an engine that, instead of using solid metal, uses an internal lattice structure that decreases weight while providing strength.   * [12:41] What materials can be used for 3D printing?  Standard filament printers use plastic-like spools of material containing ABS (like the black waste water pipes in a house) or PLA (which is made from corn). Many other materials can now be printed, including other forms of plastics, aluminum, titanium, stainless steel, and carbon fiber. While filament printers warm the material and ooze it together to create an object one thin slice at a time (like a glue gun), other 3D printers use a laser to fuse a powder form of the material to create an object. The technology is evolving quickly.   * [20:25] How does 3D printing help with prototyping when developing new products?   It removes any need for tooling, allowing you to produce prototypes much faster and create variations quickly to test with customers. Also, plastic 3D manufactured parts can be finished in another process, such as plating them with metal. This means you can very quickly create an aesthetically and ergonomically correct part finished in the proper metal for testing. While 3D printing is valuable for prototyping, it can also be used for low-volume manufacturing of the final product. By not tooling for manufacturing, you save time and cost. The economics continue to change and more parts are becoming more economical to print than to use traditional tooling.   * [25:18] What does tooling mean? Imagine you were creating a case for a laptop computer. This would traditionally be injection molded, forcing warm pellets of material into a tool – a mold – resulting in the desired shape for the case. The mold is the tool. The tooling involved means the creation of the mold, which can be expensive and time consuming to produce.

Improving your internal and external self-awareness is the real secret to success for product managers This may just be the most important interview yet. While it does not directly deal with product management concepts, it does deal with success concepts. The upcoming discussion is about a book The Muse called the number-one best career book available. The book is Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life. I discussed the key concepts of being more self-aware with Insight author, Dr. Tasha Eurich. Tasha is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author. She has helped thousands of leaders and teams improve their effectiveness through greater self-awareness. In the interview she shares two categories of self-awareness and how we can be more self-aware. It’s an important topic because greater self-awareness means greater success. I’m certain you will find this to be a very important discussion. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers * [4:48] What is self-awareness? It’s actually challenging to answer because the term is defined differently by people and in literature. We reviewed over 800 studies to create a description of self-awareness. It involves two main categories: internal and external. * Internal self-awareness. This is our understanding of who we are, what makes us tick, what we want to accomplish, what we are passionate about – our internal reflections and insights about ourselves. * External self-awareness. This is our understanding of how other people see us. It is also independent of internal self-awareness, so someone may have high internal self-awareness but low external self-awareness, which means they are unaware how others view them. The opposite may also be true. The real power comes from building your internal and external self-awareness.   * [8:14] How does increasing our self-awareness help us in our careers? Self-awareness is the meta-skill of the 21st Century. At a basic level, people who are more self-aware are better performers at work, better collaborators and communicators, get more promotions, and are better leaders. There is also evidence that shows more self-aware leaders lead more profitable companies. The reason it is the meta-skill is our level of self-awareness sets the limit for how effective we are in all of the capabilities we need to be successful in organizations. It opens our potential for performance and meaning in what we do. Further, it not only influences our career success but all aspects of our lives.   * [10:50] Why do we have blind spots and are not more self-aware? 95% of people think they are self-aware but only 10-15% actually are. The good news is that anyone can improve their self-awareness. There are two groups of factors why we are not more self-aware. First, humans have a unconscious part of our nature that makes it not possible to always be objectively aware of our thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. At any given moment a person is processing 11 million pieces of information, which means much of it is unconscious. Second, culture is pushing people to become more self-absorbed and less self-aware. I call it the cult of self and it is most easily observed in social media. The opposite of self-awareness is self-absorption. It requires conscious effort and work to minimize the impact of these factors that lead to blind spots.   * [19:25] What can we do to be more externally self-aware? Start with the right mindset. You have to step back and acknowledge that other people can see you more objectively than you see yourself. This means a simple way to be more self-aware is to get more feedback. One tool for feedback is called the dinner of truth.

Product managers operate in an environment of uncertainty and change, requiring the use of Strategic Agility How organizations can improve their product performance and overall performance is as important to product managers as it is to senior leaders. Making improvements has become more challenging as the business environment for most organizations is changing more quickly and contains greater uncertainty than in the past. Organizations that better respond to these changes can create a competitive advantage and one way to accomplish that is through Strategic Agility. Dan Montgomery is a practitioner of Strategic Agility and shares with us simple and practical tools in this interview. He is also the co-author of The Institute Way: Simplify Strategic Planning and Management with the Balanced Scorecard. He has helped several organizations create strategic plans and add agility. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers * [2:57] What is Strategic Agility? It’s the ability of an organization to sense and respond to changes in its environment in near real-time. The change could be opportunities, risks, threats, disruptions, etc. Traditional strategic planning began when the business environment was more predictable. A 3-5 year strategy could be created and organizational resources aligned with it with few uncertainties. Today the level of uncertainty and disruption is much higher than in the past. This requires much greater agility.   * [5:39] What are the symptoms of an organization that lacks Strategic Agility? There are three: * Plans quickly become out of date. Top-down strategy approaches believe that you can predict the future with enough data. This has been called predictive hubris. Such plans are often authored by just a few people and lack diversity of thought. These plans rapidly become obsolete. * No true buy-in. With only a few people creating the plan, the vision is not broadly held to create buy-in. Many people in the organization may not understand the plan or even be aware of it. Senior leaders or the “experts” create the plan and the rest of the organization is not invested in it. * Taking on too many projects. I call this initiative overload. There are too many projects for the available resources. Employees quickly get overwhelmed by not being able to accomplish what is expected and progress further slows. The answer to this is to… Start less, Finish more, Pivot fast. * [8:44] What tools are helpful for this? Start less and finish more requires having a clear and effective project selection process that is aligned with organizational objectives and then uses effective project management. Pivot fast requires understanding what is and is not working and how the business environment is changing. Tools such as PESTLE are very helpful for this.   * [11:30] What are barriers to creating Strategic Agility? Some are bureaucratic that have become part of the processes of the organizations. Others are aspects of the culture of the organization, such as feeling safe to express a differing opinion. For effective Strategic Agility to exist, psychological safety must be part of the culture and fear must be driven out of the organization.   * What are tools product managers and innovators can use to influence their organization towards Strategic Agility? Two key tools are: * [15:39] OKRs — objectives and key results.  These are a lightweight approach to strategy deployment. Each quarter (or another reasonable interval) a team goes through a review of their assumptions about what is important, what they know about their strategy, and what may have changed. Then they set one or two targets for the next quarter.

What product managers need to do for success at each stage of company growth This interview should be a fan favorite as many people have emailed me asking what executives want from product managers. My short answer is that executives and senior leaders want product managers to be thinking and acting more strategically towards the objectives of the organization. However, there are a lot of specifics to discuss, and this interview does that. My guest structures the discussion around three stages of organizational growth, which he calls the early stage, adolescent, and well-established. What executives need from product managers differs with each stage. Sharing these insights with us is Scott Propp, a former Fortune 100 executive and all around product guy. Today he serves organizations on a short-term basis, helping the executive team identify the right high-value product opportunities that yield the maximum return.

The state of innovation in organizations is unsettling. Executives overwhelmingly point to innovation as the growth engine for their organizations yet actual innovation performance is underwhelming. There are several factors contributing to the issue and one of them is the way innovation is led. The reality is that most organizational leaders don't really understand innovation or know how to lead it. Well, that is about to change with this interview. The Center for Creative Leadership conducts original research, with findings to help leaders be more effective. New research conducted by Mike Mitchell found that leading innovation requires a different approach to leadership. This research explains what leaders need to do to effectively lead innovation. Mike joins me to discuss what is needed to lead innovation and what product managers need to know as well. Mike has a Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology with a focus on Organizational Leadership. His focus is on what it takes to successfully contribute to, and lead, innovation in an organization. He is a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership.

Adding win-loss analysis to your product management toolbox may be the single most effective change you can make. I love it when listeners suggest topics to explore on this podcast. One of those is win-loss analysis. This traditionally is considered a sales tool to understand why a customer chose or rejected a product. However, savvy product management groups recognize it as vital analysis for improving products and the customer experience. To explore the topic, I talked with Mike Smart who teaches organizations to conduct win-loss analysis from a product management perspective and also manages the entire analysis for organizations. He is a product management practitioner and founder of Egress Solutions, which helps companies implement product management best practices that build and launch successful products.

Product managers who create great customer experiences create better products. Product management is about creating value for customers through the capabilities a product or service provides. That extends beyond actual features and encompasses tangible and intangible dimensions of value. Typically, when creating a new product, we start with a core set of features. Early on this may be a minimum viable product -- which I rather think of as the minimum valuable product -- a product that provides an acceptable amount of value that catches customers' attention. Over time we add more capabilities to create more value, but that is still not what we are striving for. We need to create a whole product -- adding other elements to the customer experience that solves a complete problem and creates a great experience. The best person I know of to learn about creating an exceptional customer experience is Joseph A. Michelli. He is an internationally sought-after customer experience consultant who transfers his knowledge of exceptional business practices in ways that develop joyful and productive workplaces with a focus on the customer. His insights encourage leaders and frontline workers to grow and invest passionately in all aspects of their lives. He is known by his many books examining organizations that create exceptional customer experiences, including Mercedes-Benz, Starbucks, Zappos, Ritz-Carlton, and others. The audio occasionally dropped out during recording, but it's nothing that gets in the way of the insights Joseph shares.

How to get the right insights from the right users to have successful products Design is increasingly an aspect of product management, not just product teams. More of us are familiar with user experience and its impact on design, but where does design really begin? Every true user experience expert I have talked with about this has the same answer and that's with the user of the product or the person with the problem that we wish to solve with a product. How we actually get insights from users can be the difference between product success and failure. To explore the right way to get insights, I talked with Brian Baker at the First User Group, which is a strategic innovation firm providing business strategy and cutting-edge product design in digital, consumer electronics, and consumer packaged goods. He has delivered over 100 products to brands we would all recognize and it is likely we have encountered one or more of his products.

Making the move from product manager to product master requires becoming a leader. A competency on the path from product manager to product master is leadership. As product managers and innovators, we rarely have any actual authority. For example, we can't fire and hire employees. What product managers do have is influence, and it is this competency that allows you to motivate others to support your ideas and plan. At the core of leadership is influence. This interview explores how you develop influence and become a leader. My guest is Ken Lane, principal coach at Summit Catalyst, where he provides senior executive coaching and helps organizations with strategy development and implementation, change management, and executive team development.  

What is coming up is my favorite interview I have done, at least until I have the opportunity to do an update next year. You'll hear why in the interview, but it stems with a personal connection I made with the product we discuss, which is a reality TV and web video series. First, let me remind you that product managers need to think more strategically to expand their success – to become product masters. This is what executive teams want from their product managers, and this interview with my guest is a great case study for thinking strategically and reshaping an entire organization. What if you could create a new product that significantly increased the visibility of your brand – is making it top of mind for your ideal customer – resulting in new sales and increased brand equity while also at the same time creating a rich market research platform? Oh, and if that isn't already enough, do real good in the process – transforming your organization's brand from traditional corporate America to one of the good guys – a company doing genuine good for people that further attracts your ideal customer. That is what Deluxe Corporation has done with the creation of the Small Business Revolution - Main Street, a TV series spotlighting the importance of small business in American small towns. The show is hosted by Robert Herjavec, known for his work on Shark Tank, and Amanda Brinkman, the Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Deluxe. Amanda formulated the strategy for the Small Business Revolution, and the show is a real winner and a perfect example of a product that creates value for all the stakeholders involved. I talked with Amanda to learn more about the creation of the show and its impact. Amanda is a veteran brand and creative visionary who is drawn to purpose-driven marketing and brand transformation. Her work is currently turning around Deluxe Corporation, a 100-year-old company. What she is accomplishing is phenomenal and contains many lessons to inspire product managers and innovators. I'm delighted to bring the story to you.

Product managers can create a better organization Product management is the economic engine of society. It drives value creation. Without products, whether they be a tangible item like consumer goods, such as toothpaste, a service such as Uber, a checking account, or any other product form, the economic system we enjoy would not exist. It is through innovation — the creation of new products — that value is created for customers and for organizations. Because of that, your role contributing to product and innovation is vital to not just your organization but to society. While your role is critical in this value creation, it also gives you unique insights into your organization — insights that equip you for an even larger role if you wish. This role is creating a more valuable organization. You can go from building better products to building a better organization. Phrases like organizational improvement, performance improvement, quality management, and performance excellence are used to describe such transformations. My guest has been helping organizations make performance improvements for many years. He seeks to inspire and lead people and organizations to achieve organizational excellence. And don’t think this is just about improving the bottom line — organizational excellence is creating a positive work environment along with being a responsible contributor to the community. His name is Adam Cohen. I hope you enjoy the discussion and learning how product managers and innovators can have a larger role in organizational performance. Summary of some concepts discussed * [3:19] What does it mean for organizations to improve their performance? When most organizations talk about performance improvement, they are really talking about the bottom line. This is how they can make or save money. However, there is much more to real performance improvement, which is called performance excellence. This is an integrated approach focused on the value provided to all stakeholders, including the customers, employees, community, environment, etc. It requires an aligned approach between elements that are top-down (strategy, vision, objectives), bottom-up (product, customer feedback, employee feedback), and processes in the middle. It means creating a system that improves the way the entire organization works.   * [8:58] What is an example of an organization that pursued performance excellence? OMI was a business unit of CH2M, a large engineering construction company. OMI operated water and wastewater systems for municipalities. The journey towards performance excellence resulted in many changes. Before starting the journey, revenue was $300,000 and grew to $300M. Of the many changes along the way, one was the way people were able to innovate and improve the way they worked. The concept of employee empowerment was integrated into day-to-day work. Leaders sought ideas from frontline employees and worked with them to innovate. An emphasis was placed on day-to-day innovation, change, and improvement. Customers became more invested in the organization over time. They participated in annual meetings and shared how the changes made benefited them. During the journey, the organization’s overhead rate remained below 10%. The performance transformation was made possible by how employees were empowered. Employees had a clear understanding of the organization’s strategy and the capability to act upon it. They knew how their individual work contributed to the overall strategy. Together, this created many engaged and motivated employees and made for a better work environment.   * [17:07] What are the characteristics of product managers who should be involved in organization performance excellence? The ones that are most effective have a product or product line focus but also have a strategic view.

Savvy product managers use platforms This episode focuses on platforms — a topic I haven’t discussed yet on this podcast. An effective platform strategy is important for growing organizations as well as those that are starting. There are different perspectives on platforms and this interview primarily explores digital platforms. My guest is Larry Keeley, a strategist who has worked for over three decades to develop effective innovation methods, based in science and analytics. He is President and co-founder of Doblin Inc, an innovation strategy firm known for pioneering comprehensive innovation systems that materially improve innovation success rates and innovation return on investment. Doblin is now a unit of Deloitte Digital. Larry is also the author of the book Ten Types of Innovation, the Discipline of Building Breakthroughs, which you’ll hear us talk about towards the end of the interview. Summary of some concepts discussed * [2:55] What are platforms and why are they important? We live in a connected world. The connected world has transformed what we build, how we build it, and how we make it important. I have two definitions for platforms. The complicated version is an integrated offering that collectively creates a holistic customer experience that is open to others to extend. If you are extremely clever, your platform will create a new ecosystem to do business in. The simple definition is that a platform makes it easy to do hard things. For example, Goolge makes it easy to find information. Successful platforms are not tightly controlled by its creator but leverage other contributors who make it great. Openness is needed because in our modern world no one is smart enough to anticipate all the things all of us will want to do. The platform needs to make it easy for others to adapt and use.   * [9:55] What are examples of platforms? They are more abundant than you could imagine. Well-known platforms are Uber, Airbnb, iTunes, Amazon, Amazon Web Serveries, Alibaba, New York Times, This American Life, IBM’s Watson,  and MRI machines to name only a few. Platforms become known as the way with the lowest friction to accomplish an objective customers have.   * [14:43] What role do platforms play in innovation? Today they provide modular capabilities to quickly and inexpensively create innovations. For example, if we start a business, we would need a way to collect payment (e.g., PayPal), maybe create a digital rights management system (e.g., iTunes), and populate a database system with customer information (e.g., AWS). Using existing platforms for these capabilities is fast, cheap, smart, and robust. If you have no-to-limited resources, you have to find the blocks of capabilities that allow you as an innovator to do something new. Modern innovation is less about doing something entirely new and more about the eloquent combination of existing blocks that result in value to customers.   * [18:59] What is the role of Cloud in platforms? The Cloud provides the ability to have greater efficiencies in several areas, such as economics, security, energy, and speed to implementation. We have moved from what would have taken an innovation team 7 to 8 months to implement to now only taking 1 to 2 weeks by wisely using platform capabilities.   * [22:10] How do platforms impact industries? With platforms, companies and innovators enjoy greater efficiency, but it extends to industries as well. Entire industries benefit from dramatically lower total cost, making the world more efficient.   * [25:35] How is a desirable platform created? If your offering (product) employs software, is connected to other elements, and demands frequent updates, then it already is a platform. A good offering consists of eloquent technology combined...

Which of the 7 Change Styles Do You Use as a Product Manager or Innovator? Our work is the work of innovation. A few years ago I heard the word innovation expressed as in-a-new-way. It’s a helpful phrase to remember that the very nature of innovation means doing something new — something we have not done before — something in-a-new-way. This puts us at the center of change. The very nature of our work as product managers and innovators is change. We often need to help others we work with understand why change is required. It is a skill we can learn and my quest calls it Change Intelligence. She wrote the book on the topic, Change Intelligence: Use the Power of CQ to Lead Change That Sticks. She coaches business leaders, teams, and product managers to effectively lead change in their organizations. She is also a highly sought-after speaker for leadership and change keynotes all over the world. Her name is Barbara Trautlein. There are three primary change styles. Listen to identify your individual change style and how you can more effectively work with others who have different styles. Summary of some concepts discussed * [1:05] Why is building our capacity to lead change important? New products and improved products represent big change both internally and externally for an organization. This means product managers and innovators must be leaders of change. Building your capacity to lead change is mission critical in our modern business environment, but it is too often overlooked. If you are interested in leadership training, there are many options, which are generally focused on communications, managing conflict, coaching others, etc., but developing competency in leading change is missing. Now it doesn’t have to be. You can increase your Change Intelligence and lead others through change.   * [3:30] Why does change equal pain? Neuroscience researchers have found that our brain responds the same to physical pain in our bodies as it does to change in our environment. Even if you are change-friendly and are able to more easily adapt to change, your brain still responds to it as pain.   * [6:06] What is Change Intelligence? Intellectual Intelligence, IQ, is needed for solving problems and developing products. Emotional Intelligence, EQ, is needed to partner with others so we understand our own emotions and those of others. Change Intelligence, CQ, is awareness of our change style and the ability to adapt our style to be effective in different situations and with different people. CQ requires both awareness and adaptability. So often when people are asked to lead change or play a significant role in change, which is the norm for product managers, they encounter resistance. Overcoming resistance is the topic most written about in change literature, which creates an erroneous mindset that change is about controlling other people. We can only control ourselves – our mindset and behavior. CQ helps you be more aware of how you approach change and how to better react to others’ response to change.   * [9:24] How does knowing your Change Intelligence help you lead change? What looks like resistance in others is an opportunity for us as change leaders to do something different – something more effective. Being aware of your style helps you control your reaction to change and help others navigate the change.   * [10:05] What are the 3 styles of leading change? It’s a simple and actionable model, which is people lead change from the Heart, Head, and Hands.   * [20:14] How can knowledge of your change style be put into use? With a product team it can help you identify blind spots the team may have regarding change. If the team is missing a change style, knowledge of CQ will help you know how to fill the gap.

How Product Managers and Innovators Can Validate a Product Concept for a Target Market Creating a successful product requires a diverse set of skills and one of them is properly validating a product concept. One form of this is market validation — understanding what a market segment values in the form of a product that solves a meaningful problem. To explore the steps for conducting market validation, I spoke with Bryan Elanko, who works on strategic planning and commercialization initiatives for National Oilwell Varco. Bryan has worked in the oil and gas industry for almost ten years across various design, engineering, and management roles. In one of these roles, he implemented NPD systems to drive increased collaboration and innovation, which makes him a great guest for you, the Everyday Innovator. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Summary of some concepts discussed * [2:30] What is market validation? It’s a reality check of the business opportunity, customer, the customer problem, and your proposed solution. It’s also a process to uncover snippets of reality that is behind anecdotal statements. Finally, it is a way to judge the agreement or alignment between what you see, hear, feel, and experience regarding your product and its reception by a market. * [6:40] What problems are created when product managers don’t use market validation? Product managers need a feedback loop – a means to judge ideas that were a success and ideas that were not and why. Market validation gives you a means of knowing why product ideas are or are not a success. Using the “ready-aim-fire” analogy, market validation provides the knowledge to know if you are ready to develop a product concept into a product. Three main problems exist if you don’t do market validation properly. * First, you are potentially delaying a successful product launch by releasing a product that does not offer customers sufficient value to entice them to purchase the product. * Second, the organization will struggle to reach financial goals because products are released that are likely to fail. * Third, you’ll allocate your resources inefficiently, devoting resources to projects that should have been killed but were not. * [11:52] What are the characteristics of an effective market validation process? Some of the things that stop people from doing market validation are the myth that it is too time-consuming along with the myth that the customer is already well understood. Consequently, an effective market validation process must be quick, concise, and easy to execute to dispel the myths. Mark Zuckerberg gives the advice to “move fast and break things.” This is also good advice for conducting market validation. * [19:53] How can market validation be conducted? First be clear about the context for the validation work. Is it for incremental improvements to an existing product, a product line edition, or a new-to-the-world game changing product, for example. Then, start with the customer, creating a clear definition of the ideal customer. This tells you who to focus on because next you want to understand the problem from their point of view and the key pain points the customer has. Then consider solutions that solve the customers’ problem and validate that the solution provides sufficient value to the customers. Those are the three essential steps: (1) customer, (2) pain points, and (3) solution. In the process be clear about assumptions you have made throughout these steps and take actions to eliminate the assumptions. Without market validation all you have are assumptions. Market validation gives you facts that decisions can be made from. Start market validation with face-to-face interviews with your ideal customer. Eight to ten customer interviews can provide insights into about 80% of the customer pain points.