Geeked out! My Day at the Mind the Product Conference

Last week I was able to attend the Mind the Conference for the first time. It is now one of my favorite conferences of all time – I felt like I was with my tribe.  It’s like ProductCamp but exponentially bigger.  I’ve come back jet lagged and inspired.  I’m motivated to continue to learn, get better and to take some of what I learned and infuse it into my day-to-day job as a product leader.

The diversity of speakers resulted in a diversity of topics for the day.  They ranged from the immediately actionable to inspirational as well some good reminders of what we often already know but too easily forget. Topics included Embracing Conflict, Learning to say No, Rapid Prototyping, Story Telling and Product Failures. My favorite topic of the day was by Kathy Sierra.  Her talk was inspired by her book BadAss Making Users Awesome.  It was a reminder that our products are supporting our users in a much larger context.  To support them we need to help them find flow through challenges and to help them feel more like a human being.  It was about reducing “cognitive leaks” and not making our users think about the wrong thing.   My co-worker has a great post on this topic and the overall experience for a user. This book is now at the top of my reading stack! 

A theme throughout many of the sessions is the concept of testing your hypothesis (your problem statement), creating experiments, getting feedback and pivoting.  Getting feedback throughout the process…not waiting until the end.  Most organizations believe they’re practicing agile development but are only applying it during the build process – this is something that needs to be expanded throughout our processes.  It’s a great opportunity for us to get back to the basics of agile and take our product teams to the next level. The speaker, Marty Cagan, posted about it after the conference - it's a great read.

Finally, my favorite part was the people.  The networking was a-w-e-s-o-m-e.  So many great folks that were willing to share their ideas and what they’ve learned.  I met many product people that I’ve been reading their books/blogs for years.  This would be the equivalent of someone meeting Sandra Bullock (or for me Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black fame) but for the product space.  In addition to big names, it was so great to meet product people across industries.  I met a product manager also navigating through ACA but for the education space.  Who would have thought?  I can't wait to go back next year!  

Customer Conference 2015

I spent last week at our annual customer conference.  While tweeting about the conference I received a tweet from a fellow product manager on how it’s a good sign that it’s more party than complaint desk.  That tweet inspired me to write this post. Our conference was a good balance of customer feedback, brain candy and fun.

With over 1800 users at our conference, it was a great way to get customer feedback.  At breakfast and lunch we mingled with our customers and received a range of feedback across the entire experience: from product, to customer service and everything in between.  That type of interaction is invaluable because it gives one a more holistic view into the good and not so good of how your organization is doing.  I also gave (& attended) a variety of sessions.  Here I received more targeted feedback based on the area the session was about.  It was also a great reminder that it’s always the ‘simple’ stuff that gets customers jazzed up.  Solving those things can save customers tons of time.  

I also received many customer business cards so in the future I can set up customer visits and interviews.  An easy way to fill up my customer queue.

A leader at my organization refers to attending conferences as brain candy.  Time spent out of the day-to-day, learning and thinking about what-if.  Our customer conference had the same learning opportunity – where else can you hear Magic Johnson, Simon Sinek and Erik Wahl all speak at the same event.  Awesome to hear them speak and they really get one thinking well after the conference ends.

I showed some of my friends pics that were taken at the event.  They asked if I did any work…any one that has gone to this type of conference knows it’s a ton of work…but yes we did have fun.  And no, I’m not talking about the evening events (although they too were fun)  My co-workers made everything fun.  We had one co-worker bring his mom; she was in many pictures with co-workers and even had her own hashtag. There was a bounty on my head to see if peeps could get a picture of my being hugged (*sigh*), etc.  It was a good reminder that life is made to be enjoyed.  This level of energy makes it more fun for the folks working and your customers.

All in all a great week. 

Elephants and Toasters

I volunteer for an organization that delivers meals (not meals on wheels).  I’ve been delivering for them on weekends for many years. I like delivering for this organization because I can see the impact, interact with the clients and it’s well run.  As a volunteer they’ve made it very easy for me to volunteer.  I show up, collect my route, someone loads the cooler into my car and I go.  Easy peasy. 

I know when a new person is in charge of the volunteers and that they are responsible for those of us that deliver meals. There is always a new change that is intended to make things better.  Some times it takes a step back and some times it’s a leap forward.  One of my favorite changes was the color-coding of the meals with the meal routes.  The route sheet not only indicated what meal the client was getting (i.e. Sunday dinner only) but highlighted it in a florescent color.  The bag that contained the meal had a sticker. It included the name of the meal and highlighted the words in the same color as the route sheet– reducing my room for error.

They made two changes recently that made things more difficult for me as a volunteer.  They eliminated the florescent colors and switched them to black and white cutsie looking animals. 

Eye roll – it felt like someone made a change to make a change and not actually improving anything – but it did make for some fun water cooler talk with other volunteers. 

The second change made is they started using brand new cooler bags.  They look so much better than the old ones and I have no doubt they keep the food cooler longer.  The problem is that they’re significantly bigger. 

It makes it hard for those loading the bags into the car – they can no longer sling it over their shoulders.  It also makes it more difficult to put into the volunteer’s car.  I’m lucky my car is a hatch and that my route only has 1 cooler.  If my route had more than one cooler – I would no longer be able to volunteer or I would have to switch from the route that I’ve had for 10 years.  I’m not sure what others are doing to get around the new space issue with the coolers. 

These changes got me thinking to my former role as a product manager and my current role as a people leader.  Before making changes to a product or a process understand how it impacts your stakeholders.  Watch them perform the function in the as-is world, talk with them, understand their challenges and make sure when you roll things out communicate the why of the change.  This will allow you to minimize the water cooler talk and get more buy-in.  It will also ensure that not only are you fixing the problem but you are not introducing yet a new one. 

The Art of Lollygagging

Since it’s the holiday season, I thought I would write something lighter J 

Back in 7^th grade my Social Studies teacher would tell us to stop lollygagging when we got a little too rambunctious.    Since then, it’s been one of my favorite words and recently has become one of my favorite activities (helping me get out of a funk). By its very definition there are no rules to lollygagging – but I can make some recommendations.  

According to Urban Dictionary, lollygagging is “Idly wasting time, hanging around with no purpose”. Lollygagging for me is a slightly slower paced version of hiking and/or exploring.  I typically do this in and around the city of Atlanta.    I’m looking for cool street art, random nerdy things, and neato scenic stuff.

While I typically have a plan (I know it seems contrary to the art) – there are two keys: 1) You need to be ready to have a squirrel moment and 2) the pace has to truly be leisurely.  Regarding item 1.  You need to be ready to walk off the beaten path.  If you hear music playing around the corner - follow the beat, if you see a bird that's really interesting– follow it (just make sure you look where you are going) , if you see an ice cream shop – stop and get a cone, if you see a large structure/boulder/random rope – climb it….you get the picture.  Speaking of pictures...

Pics or it didn’t happen (#lollygagging).  Words of advice – hold onto your phone when taking pictures.  I accidently dropped mine into a creek on a lollygagging adventure…

Shout out to Jorge for inspiring this latest post.

Have a happy holiday!

Follow my lollygagging adventures on instagram @kelliej21

Intersection of People Leadership and Product Management

It’s been far too long since I’ve written a post!  Work and lollygagging are getting in the way of my blog and I need to fix that.  I’ve switched into a people leadership position and it is a little bit harder to write about specifics. 

I had drinks with one of my favorite product people, Jason, and we were talking about my current role and what I’m doing. He informed me that I have been product managing people leadership, which I had never really thought about but when I did, realized he was correct.   I’ll probably always be a product manager at heart. 

The things that translate well between people leadership and product management include managing all the expectations of your stakeholders.  My main customers are the people on my team and I need to serve them, but I also need to serve market demands and other stakeholders.  My manager has expectations from my team & me, other departments have different sets of expectations from the team and like all things there is not enough time to get it all done.  Some of my time is used setting the correct expectations with all the stakeholders and keeping them informed on what your doing and why, as well as what your not doing.

As a people leader you are continually getting feedback on how the team & individuals are doing, sharing the successes and getting better (customer interviews & surveys J). It’s also about setting a vision of where you want to be 3 years from now, creating a plan to get there and getting buy-in on that plan.  It’s being agile enough to adapt to the needs of your organization and people as the environment changes.  My title might have changed but I feel many parallels in my current role to my former product manager role.  And of course I use a Trello board to help manage it all!

Dare to Learn

Several weeks ago I received a text giving me grief for not posting an article in over 2 months.  I started to think about why that was?  (I’m still a product manager at heart – I always use the 5 why’s)  It’s because I hadn’t been learning.  All of my prior posts were inspired by something that happened during the week.  Many were littered with typos because I was writing at midnight buzzing on adrenaline from a night of Improv and I wanted to write down everything I learned while it was still fresh.

Becky Blalock’s book Dare, Dares you to learn at every age.  Learning new things helps give you credibility, gives you confidence and gets you to the next level…and apparently it inspires me to write a blog post.

One way that I learn is local networking events.  I love to talk with others in the product management community.  I’ve made connections that have turned into friendships.  We go to lunch, out for drinks and talk about common challenges we all face and learn from each other on how to solve them. We bring best practices back into our organizations. 

I learn by doing things outside my work context.  Taking Improv classes helped me with listening, teamwork and confidence.  Even more valuable, I connected to people that I would have not met in my regular circles who have allowed me to grow as well.   I need to continue to look for these opportunities.

And of course I learn by reading.  There are traditional leadership/business books (currently reading The Alliance: ManagingTalent in the Networked Age) – and than again picking up books outside of your domain is crucial  as well (try Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly).  There is so much you can learn outside your domain that is applicable and can give you new insight and generate ideas into your work and personal life.

So I’m echoing Blalock’s challenge to dare you to learn.