The Everyday Innovator Podcast for Product Managers

TEI 110: How GE’s FirstBuild creates products – with Taylor Dawson

Product managers have unique experiences and competencies that equip them for senior leadership roles. Many CEOs come from a product management background, including the last 8 CEOs of Proctor & Gamble. But, what should the product manager turned senior leader (or one who is planning on being a leader in the future) do to help his or her organization be more successful, and just as importantly, be the type of organization where people are motivated and want to work? Well, that is the topic of this episode. My guest is John Latham who is sharing insights from his latest book, [Re]Create the Organization You Really Want. This is a book I have been encouraging John to write for several years, and I am delighted he has. You see, John has a rare combination of having performed research with leaders of world-renown organizations that moved from being good organizations to being the very best in their industry. He also has decades of experience helping organizations reach higher levels of performance. In the discussion, you’ll hear why product managers are suited to be organizational designers — treating the organization as a product to improve. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some questions discussed: * What led to the creation of [Re]Create the Organization You Really Want? The book presents a definition of what it means to be a great organization and provides the framework for creating a great organization. Great organizations create financial results while creating value for all stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, workforce, community, and the natural environment. Being great means creating financial results in a way that also creates value for these stakeholders, resulting in a sustainable organization. The book is a culmination of 30 years of professional practice helping organizations be great and research into such organizations. The catalyst for the book was research of CEOs who had successfully recreated their organizations to win the Baldrige Award. This research, combined with other research and professional experience, led to the frameworks presented in the book, providing a roadmap for leaders to create great organizations.   * Why are organization design and leading transformation an important topic now? The short answer is we have tried everything else, and we are still struggling to make organizations that perform at their full potential. Organization design is the alignment of four cornerstones: (1) stakeholders, (2) strategy, (3) systems, and (4) scorecard. These cornerstones are held together by a supporting organizational culture. It’s an important topic today because the pace of change is increasing along with the increasing complexity of business environments.   * What challenges do product managers face in becoming organization designers? Product managers are ideally suited to take on the challenge of designing the organization. They understand the organizational system better than those working in isolated functional silos. Also, they are accustomed to working with products that create value for customers and thinking about how to design in a value-creation manner.  Yet, they face three big challenges. First, is taking a dynamic system’s perspective to the overall organization. It is not something that is taught in business schools. Second, is a product manager’s ego. Collaboration is essential to organization design, and collaboration is something that product managers tend to have experience with, but it is all-to-easy for the ego to get in the way and we all need to be aware of this. The third is curiosity. While product managers may be curious about meeting customers’ needs and wants, they need to develop curiosity for improving the organization also – such as conducting experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.

TEI 109: How product managers can design the organization they want – with John Latham, PhD

The role of product management is encompassing more design and the need to integrate design capabilities into the product team. It is a topic that Latif Nanji is passionate about, along with designing products customers love. Latif is the CEO of Roadmunk, which creates road mapping software for the enterprise. Roadmunk was built out of Latif’s frustration to create well-designed roadmaps quickly for stakeholders. Latif shares that product managers’ ever changing roles now involve understanding and leveraging UX and UI. The challenge is how product managers properly align design principles into their work and what values product management needs to champion. In this interview you will learn a 5 element framework for communicating design in product management: - empathy in product management and design, - language of design, - data around design, - executive buy-in, and - designing the MSP.

TEI 108: Communicating design in product management – with Latif Nanji

I'm very interested in how innovation can be made better and one category of tools is related to team performance - higher performing teams can create products that produce higher value. One particular tool is Group Flow, which was the topic of a paper published by The International Council on Systems Engineering titled “Group Flow: the Genesis of Innovation.” Its author is Laurie Buss, who I interviewed to learn how teams can create group flow. When I discovered Laurie's work, I felt like I found a kindred spirit based on how she describes innovation, which is, that … Innovation is key to the continued growth of established economies, not only for the creation of new designs, products, services, and markets but also for the development and retention of top-performing employees. She has a degree from UCLA in Aerospace Engineering and is highly regarded in the international satellite industry, working with numerous large organizations in spacecraft design and test, launch, operations, and many other aspects that require innovative thinking. She also has a new book coming out in the second quarter of 2017 with a working title of "Brainpower Redemption." In this interview Laurie shares concrete steps to facilitate group flow, which includes 4 elements that are easily remembered using FLOW as an acronym: -Focus, -Location, -O (for round table), and -Work tools.

TEI 107: Create group flow for radical innovation – with Laurie Buss

I have a returning guest, Tony Ulwick, who is sharing 6 tools from his new book, Jobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice. Tony is well known for the creation of Outcome Driven Innovation and as the founder of Strategyn. When ODI was published in the Harvard Business Review, they declared it one of “the ideas that will profoundly affect business as we forge ahead in today’s complex times.” From the discussion, product managers and innovators will know how to apply Jobs to Be Done by applying 6 steps: - Define the customer’s “job-to-be-done” - Uncover the customer’s needs - Quantify the degree to which each outcome is underserved - Discover hidden segments of opportunity - Align existing products with market opportunities - Conceptualize new products to address unmet needs

TEI 106: Jobs to be done – with Tony Ulwick

Welcome to the second year anniversary of the Everyday Innovator -- another 52 episodes of discussions with skilled product managers and savvy insiders. In this year in review I share highlights from several of the discussions – emphasizing concepts and tools product managers and innovators should know. Just like my 2015 Year in review, there a lot of key concepts shared in these episodes. The review of interviews below is organized into 6 topics: why product managers should become leaders of organizations, the skills that correlate to 25% higher pay for product managers, examples of product management in action at companies, Design Thinking and its applications, tips for interviewing for a product management role, and specific innovation approaches & tools. And, the review concludes with a few of my favorite quotes from guests.

TEI 105: Highlights from valuable 2016 interviews with savvy product management insiders – with Chad McAllister, PhD

TEI 104: Storytelling for innovation – with Michael Margolis

My guest today discusses another valuable topic related to the skills that all product managers need and that, according to a 2016 study, results in a 25% increase in pay. If you want to see the full list of topics, go to www.TheEverydayInnovator.com/podcast. The topic is how to use storytelling to share ideas and persuade others to join you. My guest is Michael Margolis. He is the CEO and founder of Get Storied, which serves leaders, innovators, and trailblazers who have a world-changing agenda. He helps those who are inventing the future and need to get their story straight, because ideas don’t sell themselves. He has helped Google, NASA, Greenpeace, Deloitte, and Facebook, among others. His work has been featured in Fast Company, TIME, and Wired. In our discussion, product managers will learn about the three principles for effective storytelling: * context, * emotion, and * evidence.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some questions discussed: * Our topic for this discussion is pitching and presenting disruptive innovation through storytelling. Let’s start by framing the nature of storytelling — what is storytelling about? It’s narrative strategy. It’s the process of how you take anything that is an idea — a product, a service, any business transformation — and get others to see what you see. Storytelling is how you convey that idea in a way they can identify with it, that they can relate to it, and they want to be a part of it. It’s in many ways the holy grail of what every innovator and human-centered designer is trying to solve. * What are the principles to crafting a story that influences others? The principles are Context, Emotion, and Evidence. * What is Context? This is a really important principle as it relates to idea adoption. Most of us lead with data. If you start your story with the data, the story is dead on arrival because you haven’t provided any context. You might get people nodding their heads, but they’re not really on board. They’re not leaning in. They’re not accepting your story as their story. Context is when you start a story you start with the where. What I mean by that is, where am I? When you start a story, what your audience is trying to figure out is where the story takes place. What world are you asking them to step into? What’s that ecosystem, universe, or more simply, context? Paint that picture for them and then quickly capture their imagination. If you can’t get them curious and leaning in, you’re going to have a hard time carrying that attention through the rest of your presentation. * What about Emotion? This is where you  need to show and get people to feel how much you care about who’s at the heart of this story. Who’s at the heart of the story is usually a customer or a key internal stakeholder. You’re telling a story in a way that shows that you get what they’re going through. You’re showing the emotional impact this has on people’s lives. * How does Evidence fit in? This is where you bring in the data. You demonstrate that you have a right to tell the story and that this story is real. The evidence is the proof. A caution is to not answer all the questions your audience would have. You want to let the story continue.   Useful links: * Get Storied website. * How to tell a world-changing story video series. * Undeniable Story online course that teaches storytelling for innovation and change. * Follow Michael on Twitter   Innovation Quote

TEI 103: How Karcher developed a new product that captured the market – with Bill Ott

Listen to the Interview This interview is a great discussion about a product story — from how the product concept was developed all the way through launch, including industry awards the product has received. My guest is Bill Ott, Executive Vice President of the product development organization at Kärcher. They are the world’s leading manufacturer of cleaning equipment. Bill is a hands-on executive with global experience in private, Fortune 500 and start-up environments within the consumer, commercial and industrial sectors. Bill started his career as a design engineer and progressed from an individual contributor to management roles while working for IBM, Thomson Consumer Electronics and Philips Electronics. In our discussion, product managers will learn about: * identifying customer needs, * using Voice of the Customer research to uncover and prioritize needs, * navigating the Lean cycle of Build, Measure, and Learn, and * launching successfully.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some questions discussed: * Where does this product story start? Karcher North America is the market leader in carpet extraction cleaning. The core product line was 15 years old and in need of innovation.   * How did you identify what the customer needed? Our goal for improving the product line was to decrease the time it took to clean carpet by 30%. That formed the basis of our fundamental requirements and resulted in what we call a concept definition package. We added objectives of reducing work effort that causes fatigue and adding agility so the carpet cleaning machine could work in small spaces like hotel rooms. Our Concept Team takes it from there. The Concept Team consists of the product manager, an industrial designer, an engineer and a project manager. They have the responsibility of developing the concept that ultimately goes to development. Next is voice of the customer (VOC) research.   * How was the VOC research conducted? We have a skilled group of ethnographic researchers. We do interviews as well, but a lot of the time we actual watch the operators use the equipment and visually observe reactions, how they go about doing their job, where the pain points are, and ultimately creating a map of the processes they use. We conducted VOC research with existing customers that matched our target market for the new product: universities, schools, hotels, airports, office buildings, and casinos – anywhere with large amounts of carpet.   * What happened after the VOC research? We accumulated a long list of needs from VOC research. We apply the Build, Measure, Learn cycle from the lean startup methodology. Our designers conduct brainstorming and use affinity diagramming to organize ideas for solving the needs. Those ideas are narrowed, focusing on the highest potential, and then prototyping of the ideas begins. We invite some customers to our lab to provide feedback, helping with the “measure” part of the lean cycle. Then we learn from the feedback and conduct another round of Build, Measure, Learn. Another tool we rely on is Value Stream Mapping. We have a lean master who facilitates a meeting with the Concept Team to map out the complete process from the point in time that the operator shows up to clean carpet to putting the machine back in the closet, including when the space with the carpet can be used again. This helps us identify areas of waste to eliminate.   * What is the finished product?   For more, listen to the interview or read the transcript below.   Useful links: * Bill’s LinkedIn profile *