Join eight of the top product coaches in the world for a live, unscripted "long conversation."
It's a great line up with:
Tickets are just $5 for this initial “long conversation.”
Thanks to Paul Klipp for bringing this together.
Transcript of the part where I’m on screen:
Christoph Steinlehner:
How are you?
Jim Morris:
Great to see you again as well.
Christoph Steinlehner:
You too. Maybe let's continue on this money topic. I think that's interesting. So I know you're doing a lot of discovery work. What do you answer somebody? It's like, yeah, if we just be producing nothing, we are wasting money, right? Jim?
Jim Morris:
Yeah, I think there's this I grew up in my career in startups where there was a lot of competition and there was a lot of paranoia. And I think the concept of how people spend time, I try to remind them that there are competitors out there. Try to give them sort of maybe a vision of the future where they're not the top player. Right? Like you may be in this big comfortable organization where you're successful right now, you've got product-market fit and you want to grow, but so much easier to build products nowadays. So many tools where people can write copy, people can create images, people can put the images together in a prototype. They can get things built and the stats you build them on can be competitive with large companies. Technology and startups are moving into all kinds of industries, facilities, and education and healthcare. And so I think every industry is ready for disruption. So I try to bring a sense of paranoia to get them to kind of really focus on using the resources well, but it's also using your time, right? Because every time you delay getting to some better opportunity by maybe not doing discovery and just building the first thing that comes to mind, you're kind of acting in a slower way than your competitors will act where they're going to iterate faster just because smaller companies have a little bit more nimbleness to them. So yeah, I think helping them understand the context out there, that even in a comfortable industry there's also disruption.
Christoph Steinlehner:
Interesting. Usually do you already find like this paranoia or is it like so why do they bring you in? Is it because they are seeing already like, okay, we are getting disrupted, or is it a completely different topic?
Jim Morris:
I think they see a plateauing of their general innovation and ideas and growth, right? So the leaders can basically see that they've got an organization that needs external influence on skills and motivation. So there's something that is missing that goes way back to the first conversation. Why have a coach? Right? And it was like, oh, they get stuck. And I think that's the part where getting them unstuck. What is it that and that's where discovery is not a standard type of engagement. Where are they in their process? Where are they stuck? And do they realize they're stuck? Do they realize that they're cresting this little hill and there's actually a mountain. That's the bigger problem. And so I think reframing that, hey, there's something bigger out here. And it's not just a feature, right? It's the health of your users. And are you measuring healthcare clients? Are you measuring their improvement in health or are you just measuring the clicks in the app? Are you even measuring the clicks in the app? Because you're such a successful company, you don't really even have an analytics proficiency. You sometimes do analytics, you sometimes don't. You have another person on another team that gives you some time and sometimes gives you a report. You yourself are not logging in and getting paranoid. A feature I launched last week, did anybody use it this week? My clients, they tend to be more paranoid and they tend to do really well in this analytics area and they tend to do very poorly in testing out their ideas. So the constantly building and engineering so they have sort of a different problem where it's a problem of overconfidence.
Christoph Steinlehner:
Yeah, that's interesting what you said about analytics, because I also find that often maybe that's also a difference between Europe and the US. So in Europe with GDPR and things like that, a lot of companies are really fearful about like we can't collect anything and things like that and also the investment aspect of it. So because it's like we now have to spend endless amounts of money and getting an analytics team and all these things. How do you usually start? Like if a company doesn't have anything or has a little bit but is not really good, what are the first steps?
Jim Morris:
First, I always tell product teams you need to get really comfortable with your regulatory or legal framework, but maybe make best friends with your general counsel. I always did that. In Europe, my clients in Europe, they are self-limiting. They believe that they can't do a lot of things because they are fearful. Going back to another conversation from Marton, they're fearful. And in reality, there are very clear steps in order to collect a lot of really useful information so that you can improve your product. And certainly you shouldn't be using this information to look up people and try to figure out who they are and that kind of thing. You're looking for general patterns to improve your product. And that works with GDPR. So I think getting the first thing is just to be really clear on are you self-limiting? Are you actually using the law as written? And then it's a matter of demystifying it. So some of my clients do have logins or they've been given it, they can't find it. So one session will say go find it, in the next session we'll log in and we'll make a report in Adobe Analytics right there on the screen. And I don't do the reporting, I have them do it. I've had these like in my career when I was operational for 20 years in various companies, I did a lot of this and so I know Adobe Analytics and I know Google Analytics, I know budgeting tools. And so I'm able to kind of shoulder surf and walk them through creating a report. And once they realize, oh, this is just a web interface where I click, click, click, oh, and I don't understand these couple of things, then they can go to the analytics person and say, well, what's this field mean? Because some of these companies have a lot of fields and data and so we demystify it by getting them hands-on and showing them they can do it. And then they realize there's all this data there and it opens up another way of thinking about a product. It's like you were talking about the challenges of PMs and the difference of opinion. I just think there's a gap between leaders and product managers. And one of those gaps is data. Executives are pretty good about running the business and trying to achieve revenue metrics and trying to achieve these metrics.
I think letting them know that.
So after we get comfortable with legal framework and after we demystify the usage of it, then it's like, look, this is a form of your power.
You have no power. But if you have data, who's going to refute the data? Right?
So it's a little piece of power.
That a powerless product manager can bring to the table.
To me, that's probably a very typical journey that I'd walk somebody through to really start using and embracing analytics.
Christoph Steinlehner: Yeah, that's a really important point. I think also that's so powerful if you deviate the conversation from like I think this or I heard that, or this one customer said this to, okay, let's have less opinionated discussion with analytics which are backing us. Do you then if question for you personally?
Yeah, I was going to 5 minutes off, I would have pivot you and I talked a lot about a couple of topics and I've got something that came up this week, which is there's somebody who was wondering when they should start discovery or if they should start discovery with me or themselves because they're new. I thought this is one of the reasons we use journey mapping. And I wanted to ask you about learning the domain through journey mapping. You're like a new PM or you're a new designer. Like we've got the skills but now I'm in healthcare instead of education. Or how have you used your tools to get because my team seemed to always have a new member and I wanted to see journey mapping and new to the domain.
Christoph Steinlehner: Interesting. Yeah, I myself, so I worked a couple of years in interim product management roles. So for three to six months so you can imagine I was thrown somewhere, didn't know anything. And I always started with drawing up journey maps and running around with them. And being like, is this true? I think it's perfect. I really encourage people to do this and do it. One important thing is do it scrappy. So if you start to have your designer doing a really nice journey map, nobody will question that anymore because it's done. So the important thing is being scrappy about it and bringing everybody to like, I think it's wrong. Can you help me fix it?
And then also the vulnerability gets to the other part of fear, which is if you can get people to swap all the way from fear to vulnerability, that's a better state for people like us. Designers, product managers, lead engineers, discovery. Right. That's interesting. Right. Don't walk around trying to know what you're talking about with high fidelity. Try to purposely walk around with lower fidelity. But that's such a vulnerable position. How did you feel that confidence when you're new each time? Or did you just develop that through age?
Christoph Steinlehner: I think that's the perfect situation. When you're new, nobody will expect that you know everything, right? Even if you're well established and whatever. I think also, then maybe it's not like, okay, it's wrong, but please help me fix it. And it's maybe like that's my impression. Do you have a different one other than two different roles? So an engineer will most likely add other details in there than a designer, than a marketing person, then whatever. So marketing person will probably focus more on top of the funnel and maybe in the end. But yeah, bringing the perspective. And I think it's just helpful, as I said before, to externalize the thing also to bringing in new people also gives them time to study themselves because they probably will take some time. And having like this 1 hour meeting where you tell them everything you know they will have like 5% saved from this meeting and everything else is already gone after 10 minutes. So then it's like, it's here. Please revisit it. Add comments if you have questions. It also helps you to is it really clear what's there? So you have fresh eyes, which is, I think really helpful for a team.
Jim Morris: Yeah, nice. Anything else you did when you were new?
Christoph Steinlehner: Yeah. Running around and talking to everybody. Yeah, of course. And especially like, as Timothy said before, I think the legal people you said it. Sorry? You just said it. Yeah, legal people, they're the best people. Ever because they want to avoid everything. And usually you can be the best partner in crime with them. It's my experience if you go over this hump that they are like, no, we don't want to do anything, then they are really helpful because they are hackers by mind, usually illegal people. They love to find ways how to navigate this thing.
Jim Morris: Yeah, the lawyers that were amazing, we did a lot of work in product reviews and we stored a lot of data, and we wanted to use this data. Data and analyze it in various continents. And working through our arrangements, our agreements. What we had to put in our contracts. And sometimes we would have to put something in the contract for the next renewal cycle. And so it would take a year for all of our clients to renew and get this. But if you have the long view, and a lot of my clients do have that a year from now, they can get full access to data, full legal access to data. All right. Hey, Paul. Yeah. Hey, Paul. Hello.
Paul Klipp: That's everyone. We did it. First time out. Yay. Not too many hiccups. I want to just use the time left to thank everybody, obviously, and to open it up to questions. You can either use the text chat if you're more comfortable with that, or unmute and just there's not so many of us here. We should be able to have a conversation.
Jim Morris: Holly or Neil, any fun takeaways since I know two of you. Sorry about that. Hey, Jim.
Christoph Steinlehner: What's up?
Neil MacCleod: How are you? Good to see you.
Jim Morris: Good to see you.
Neil MacCleod: Good job, guys. No, it was great. It's funny, when we were in New York, we met with Phil Terry and Marty brought him in and I've been talking with him a little bit about kind of finding coaching market fit because I'm just kicking this thing off. I'm two weeks into this and Jim has been helping me with the website and everything like that. So this has been super helpful. He has this concept of this, listening to her and just hearing you guys. I have a lot of hands-on, 20 years of hands-on product experience, leading teams, much less experienced coaching teams. So it's great to hear even anecdotes about the experiences you run into. And I find that you guys telling those stories and the Slack Channel, hearing about some of the other pain points and struggles that some other people are facing are really good for me to keep motivation levels up and to continue to pursue it and make sure that I find that coaching market fit using my strengths. So generally, I just thought it was insightful and helpful just to listen in.
Marton Gasper: I have to say, I'm a massive fan of the format. I think the conversation did flow organically, interesting things came out of it and it was a very different, like I don't want to say family, but a lot more cozy experience rather than I am going to talk at you for 30 minutes or until I get booed off. I think this format really works for products, especially because of what did everyone always say? It depends. And to elaborate and to have a to and fro is brilliant. And something I want to point out, and I'll probably post about it if I'm not lazy enough and people agree. But I was interviewed by two females. One at least is neurodivergent. Like, the diversity is something that was there as well and it was great. I think it's very important to aim for this. And it was there and I was in the middle of it and I'm really appreciative, even though if it was just by luck, and I would have loved to talk to Nacho as well, just as much. But as the lock draws it, I bang on about diversity and there, I got it. And they are brilliant. So thank you for everyone.
Holly Chasan-Young: I agree. I totally echo that in terms of a question, I would say really to anyone. But what do you see as the barriers to doing transformation coaching? I know Marty had talked a lot about this in the New York session, kind of like, wow, senior executives aren't going to listen to anybody in terms of us as coaches. But it is so important because there's so much that obviously leaders do to set the culture, set the tone. So I'm wondering, what do you see as barriers and what do you see as the pain points where you might appeal to them to solve some of their own pain points through things like coaching and more exposure to some of these empowered practices?
Marton Gasper: I'm not sure who you're asking. If you're asking me, it's people. So it's do they trust you? Do they trust themselves? Do they feel the pain? A lot of times transformations don't happen because the pain is not visible yet. It's just in the futurist heads. But also in terms of people, like, if Marty comes in, they're going to trust him, and rightfully so, and he's going to do an amazing job and we can say like, oh, but I could do the same job. Yes, maybe, but he handles the people and maybe it's because of reputation, but it's not like we don't have any. So is that really the only thing that everyone goes back to? And I go back to it as well, and I do see that the doors open much easier for him and doors open much easier for other people who have similar expertise that I don't. And I'm not going to push in the operator role to get there, but we still have to sort it right? Those stakeholders need to be managed, otherwise there's not going to be traction.
Jim Morris: I find Marty's authority comes from his stories with being in top-level conversations with branded companies. And I feel like I just made this connection of the product manager's authority is not that big, and they get it through data, like analytics, and they get it through customer conversations. So if they talk to more people than the salespeople talk to, then a product manager gets a little bit of authority. And I think part of that authority that Marty has is that just that robustness of his data, he's seen so many data points that when he walks in, his attitude is like, look, the data point that I'm seeing right here, your company, this is where it fits in the universe, and it's either here or there. And I think in transformation coaching, if you can gather the data points somehow, I don't know. Yeah.