Feedback is a gift

Product Leaders

Jan 20

Especially when you get 60% of the audience to fill it out...again and again. month after month. year after year.

How do I get that high of a response rate?

Simple, I allocate class time/workshop time to fill out the form by using a couple minutes at the end. People rarely give feedback after an event is over. The forms are anonymous to encourage freedom of expression. My form only has 4 questions. https://pdg.info/survey

My first major learning was that I couldn't please everyone in the audience.

Which led to my second major learning which was that the audience matters much more than I thought. Are they beginners or advanced folks? Are they product managers, designers, engineers or their leaders... or is it a mixed group of all of the above?

The third and following learnings are all about the material I present and how to make it better.

So what does this mean?

One, a high volume of feedback-reflection-change cycles is key to long term success. (sound familiar for you Product Discovery folks out there!)

Two, I'm no longer afraid of giving new material I'm not an expert on since I have the tools to improve. See #1 above.

Three, I have cultivated low stakes, low pressure outlets (incubators, classrooms, meetups, podcasts, etc) to test and improve material before I offer it at market rates to my clients.

I used to dread feedback. Now, it's a lifeline to improvement, confidence, and new business.

Yesterday, I consolidated and emailed feedback from me, industry judges and every other student in the class to each of the 12 teams I taught from the UC Berkeley Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership. I hope they will see this feedback as a gift and use it to improve the way I have.

Thank you to Gibson Biddle for giving a fascinating talk (Mind the Product, pre-Covid days in SF) about his time at Netflix that was overshadowed (for me) by his aside on collecting NPS scores from his audience and describing how he used this feedback to develop high quality talks.

Being a Better Product Leader

Featured

Feedback is a gift

Especially when you get 60% of the audience to fill it out...again and again. month after month. year after year.

How do I get that high of a response rate?

Product-Focused Customer Advisory Boards (CABs)

What's the purpose of your Customer Advisory Board?

As a product guy, I want my most reflective and thoughtful clients that are aligned to our product vision to participate in the Customer Advisory Board (CAB).

However, most CABs are picked out by the sales, marketing and customer success teams looking to provide visibility and kudos to clients that we need to renew.

Annual Operating Planning (AOP): A Practical Approach for Product Leaders

It’s the time of year where leaders in all organizations are planning for next year, creating an Annual Operation Plan (AOP).

While these plans may not always unfold exactly as envisioned, they create a shared understanding among leaders and teams about key priorities for the coming year.

I recently facilitated a roundtable with several leaders about annual planning and distilled the discussion into an approach that is less painful and more fruitful.

Case Study: The Hidden Limits of Optimization

During my time in ecommerce, my team made some key adjustments leading up to the Christmas season with the goal of boosting conversion rates. We ran a multivariate test, tweaking elements in 7 critical areas on our most visited page type. Each area experimented with multiple variations, allowing us to test a wide range of possibilities.

Case Study: Are your renewals a house of cards?

After a reorg, my team inherited what we thought was an awesome product.

We had big name clients and a flashy demo that opened door after door for new prospective clients.

However, as we talked to current clients and looked into their use of the product (or lack thereof), it was clear this product was struggling.

The 13th month: Product Management's impact on renewals

As CTO and Head of Product, I worried about the 13th month.

After an initial 12 month subscription, we wanted our clients to sign up for that 13th month, to renew for another year.

At PowerReviews, we had 1,200 clients in 20 countries. Every month, one or more client’s one year subscriptions were coming up for renewal.

How to gain executive backing for design and research activities

A panel of industry execs weighed in on how we can get exec backing for design and research activities.

We discussed the role of UX research, the importance of qualitative and quantitative data, and how to demonstrate the value of design to non-design senior leaders.

Our Half-Baked Adoption of OKRs

Many companies adopt the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework.

They create goals but struggle to achieve them.

Only some of this failure can be blamed on the goals themselves.

Part of this failure can be attributed to a lack of an analytic culture and a lack of an analytic mindset in your key employees.

How do you know you're successful today?

It’s a simple question.

But often there’s an unsatisfying answer.

The first step towards understanding whether you're successful today starts with recognizing (and using less of) the following types of data: “Anecdata”, Reactive measurements, and Internal metrics.

I Don’t Have Time for Product Discovery

Teams are stuck in a "doom loop" of planning.

Every time there's an unpredictable event, leadership asks for more planning in order to avoid another unpredictable event.

Instead of continuing to predict the future (poorly), teams should repurpose longer term planning time for discovery time.

Product Leaders: Getting Teams Started with Product Discovery

“Start somewhere, anywhere.”

The first Product Discovery effort for a team doesn’t have to be perfect.

Product leaders don’t have to be experts in Product Discovery to get their teams started doing Product Discovery.

Product Ops: Managing Data Analysts

Data analysts provide the eyes and ears for Product Leaders. A few simple tips can maximize this relationship.

Over the years, I've managed and helped grow the career of many analysts and data scientists.

Facilitation Skills: Avoid Groupthink and One-Sided Discussions

As a coach, I facilitate most every session that I attend. The group size ranges from 3 to 100 people. These are some of my top techniques for getting the most out of individuals in a group setting.

Use these techniques to avoid groupthink and one-sided discussions.

What is Success in Product

Launching a product feels like success.

I've launched hundreds of features and products and that feeling never gets old.

Sending this newsletter feels like a launch, providing a mini rush of positive emotions.

But I know better than that.

Redefining Product Development

Many folks are familiar with the Build-Measure-Learn loop from the book Lean Startup.

The author, Eric Ries, advocates for creating shorter learning cycles.

You can speed up learning even more by starting with the Learn step. Most of my teams learn without ever writing a line of code.

Jim coaches Product Management organizations in startups, growth stage companies and Fortune 100s.

He's a Silicon Valley founder with over two decades of experience including an IPO ($450 million) and a buyout ($168 million). These days, he coaches Product leaders and teams to find product-market fit and accelerate growth across a variety of industries and business models.

Jim graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science and currently lectures at University of California, Berkeley in Product Management.

Jim Morris

Feedback is a gift

So what does this mean?

Being a Better Product Leader

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