John Cutler

"In product, we're bombarded by high-level concepts like empowerment, data-driven, product-led, customer-focused, accountability, getting into the details, and high agency. But teams have trouble putting these ideas into practice. Why? And what can you do about it? When I ask people to describe the behaviors these things might entail—what I would observe (see and hear) if these things were happening—I often get blank stares." https://lnkd.in/gFCpYZ7A

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Stop gathering requirements. Anyone can make a list of features. Anyone can write down what people say they want. That’s not product discovery. Product discovery is about going deeper. It’s about understanding your customer’s pain points. Feeling their frustration. Seeing the gaps in their work. It takes time, patience, and empathy. It takes stepping away from the solution and sitting with the problem. Great product leaders don’t rush this process. They fall in love with their customer’s problems first. Because when you truly understand the problem, the solution will rapidly emerge. Are you giving yourself the time and space to discover your customers’ problems? #Discovery #Product #Agile

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Got a tough product management question? I’m here to help. In the Dear Melissa segment of the Product Thinking podcast, I tackle your biggest challenges—whether it’s figuring out prioritization, aligning your team’s strategy, or navigating the complexities of scaling. If there’s something you’re stuck on, submit your questions at DearMelissa.com and I’ll share practical advice to help you move forward. Need a faster answer? Leave me a voicemail—I’ll make sure it gets top priority. #dearmelissa #askmelissa #productmanagement #productleaders #productstrategy

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Product teams love customer feedback. But what do they actually do with it? Too often the answer is nothing. Your feedback goes into a black hole and disappears forever... That's not great, but I feel for product teams. Customer feedback is great, until you get a metric ton of it - to sort through, triage, and follow up on. Something has to give. Or does it - AI should help right! Right. I'm excited to share Pendo Listen. A new way to capture user feedback, organize insights, and test ideas so you can prioritize your resources with confidence. Check out link in comments.

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“If there is no clear owner, then it’s the PM that owns it.” I sat down with Esteban Contreras from #ProductState to discuss Product leadership, or Prioritization process at Productboard. We also dug into the concept of Extreme Ownership, which is a principle I firmly believe in. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVN47mWn #productmanagement #productexcellence #ownership

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If you're even just mildly interested in tech, product design, shifts in culture, AI..then Scott Belsky's Implications is an absolute must-read. It's the only newsletter I religiously read in full every time. Scott doesn't cover the news, he covers the implications of what's going on, and he always goes deep. He's passionate and knowledgeable on the topics of UX, UI, product design and tooling, so much so that there's been several moments in the last few months were I paused and thought "what, I've just been talking about this new emerging idea and Scott is already deeply exploring it!". Link to the newsletter in the comments!

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I’ve been thinking about how much great product design has in common with life. It’s not just about what people say they want, it’s about truly listening to uncover what they need. "It’s about creating something that delivers real value and makes a difference." The same goes for life: when we take time to understand others, we build stronger relationships and create more meaningful experiences. Whether in design or life, it’s about going beyond the surface to bring real value. 😇

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I love this more nuanced approach from David Morris for determining what product ideas should get on the roadmap. The technique I use and coach most often is a bit simpler. It's "doable" vs "desirable". David's Viable + Feasible is a nice way to split out the two aspects of my "doable". I define great product management is a simultaneous exploration of the doable vs desirable space to find the optimal tradeoff between the two. So, the exercise I facilitate has people put post-its up on the wall on a two-dimensional graph where the x-axis is how "doable" the idea is. The y-axis is how desirable it is. The "best" ideas end up closest to the upper-right corner. I then draw two squiggly lines on the chart, generally meandering, going from upper-left to lower-right. The first line is quite close to the upper-right corner, meaning that only a small fraction of the ideas will be above and to the right of it. Anything above and to the right of it is considered a commitment for the roadmap timeframe under consideration. The second line is close to the first and catches the stretch goals for the roadmap timeframe. I'd love to host such an exercise for anyone who's interested, using David's nuanced version of "doable". Thoughts? Owen Farrell, Tony Reinert, and Tony Mantoan, you've seen me host these exercises many times. How well do you think this alteration to my exercise would work? https://lnkd.in/eaTGz6ep

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Traditional requirements gathering is dead. To truly understand customers in our fast-paced world, many product teams have adopted design thinking. 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 fosters innovation by focusing on understanding user needs, encouraging creative problem-solving, and rapidly prototyping solutions that are both user-centric and practical. 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀 is a design thinking technique popular for Product Discovery initiatives. It helps product developers to develop empathy for customers and understand their problems on a deeper level. #UserPersonas #DesignThinking #ProductDisocvery #ModernProductivity  --------- My name is Steven Granese, and I post daily on Modern Productivity topics like Agile, OKRs, and Product Discovery. 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀? Add a comment to this post!

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A few shorts from this talk: #1: https://lnkd.in/g_4daXWN (see comment for #2)

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I really enjoyed working with our team to put together The Pragmatic Guide to Composability, and I really appreciate the Forward by Brian Walker! We can all sometimes be guilty of using too much terminology and jargon. At the end of the day * every * enterprise brand is trying to achieve greater composability - making sure that all of their digital investments work together to serve their business and their customers. In this report we cover how composability isn't a new concept or a passing fad, we bust some myths that may hold brands back from building a strategy for greater composability, and we recommend starting points for brands that are setting out on the first steps toward composable commerce.

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Nice! That fits with the definition I've been using for ages: A Product Team is a group of people who can: 1. Ask a question 2. Get an answer 3. Understand that answer 4. And take action based on that understanding It doesn't have anything to do with who comes to stand up, who takes Jira tickets, or even reporting lines. If you don't have a group of people that get together regularly who can do all of the above, then all you've got - at best! - is people who can push code into production & make it look pretty. And that's just not good enough. Clifton Gilley - shout if you're up for a chat sometime.

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Sobering commentary on the state of platform engineering. Key takeaways on where PE needs to go from here: * You can’t manage what you can’t measure * Platform as a Product Mindset shift needed * Platform Engineering is socio-technical - the blending of adoption and transformation with engineering.

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When working on larger projects and / or those with high outcome uncertainty, many org cultures (surprisingly pervasive even in many startups) tend to prioritize tackling low-hanging fruit or default to taking a consensus path ironically termed "the path of least resistance". This approach of solving easy sub-problems ("known unknowns" as Donald Rumsfeld fmr. US Sect of state, would have termed it) builds in sunk costs & illusions of progress, creating inertia to course correct. Most modern project or program operations turn out to be successful if we view them as a portfolio of risks (sorted by highest impact, high uncertainty to lowest impact, high uncertainty). Tackle the ones at the top first. Prove or disprove your hypotheses. Source of image: First round review #product #bets #operating #principles

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The Net Promoter Score had transformed how we measure customer sentiment. In 2003 the creators of NPS have shown"scientific proof" that this is the "One Number You Need to Grow". 20 years later NPS is still very dominant. But the reality is far less clear-cut. Here's the fascinating story of how NPS came to be, and why you may not want to fully trust it.

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Mark your calendars for the annual Productboard's Product Excellence Summit 2024—a must-attend half-day virtual event bringing together thousands of product experts. 🌟 Here’s what’s on the agenda: - Future-proofing Your Business: Master AI and build resilience. 🔮 - Getting Strategic Alignment: Rally your team and align business strategies. 🧩 - Driving Operational Excellence: Manage and scale your product teams effectively. 🔧 Join us https://lnkd.in/eEsrAnnc and take your product strategies to the next level! 🚀 #ProductExcellence #ProductLeadership #AIInnovation #StrategicPlanning #OperationalExcellence #Summit2024

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Product roadmaps shouldn't be treated like a to-do list. They're living documents that tell the story of your product's evolution and adapt with customer needs. 🌱 I learned this lesson the hard way. Early in my career, like many founders and product folks, I viewed roadmaps as rigid plans to execute against - plugging items into project management tools and checking off boxes each quarter. While this felt satisfying, this output-based approach missed the point entirely. 😬 Here’s the roadmap philosophy I live by today: The art of roadmapping isn't about the output - it's about the process. 🏗️ Or, as Winston Churchill offers, "Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential." When viewed through this lens, startup roadmaps are a tool that helps you: 🗣️ Articulate your vision clearly to different stakeholders 🎯 Prioritize work that moves you toward that vision 🛞 Adjust quickly based on customer feedback 🤝 Unite teams around shared goals For early-stage companies, I’ve found the best way to do this is to create and maintain three versions of the roadmap, each for a distinct audience: 1️⃣ Annual roadmaps for investors: Focus on major milestones and market opportunities 6-12 months out. This shows your strategic thinking and excites investors about long-term potential. 2️⃣ Quarterly roadmaps for customers: Share concrete value coming in the next 3-4 months. This builds excitement while maintaining flexibility to pivot based on feedback. 3️⃣ Internal roadmaps for teams - Break down the work into specific problems and experiments to tackle this quarter. This connects daily tasks to bigger goals (which we manage in Linear). For each version, the key is focusing on the problems you're solving rather than features you're building. This shift in mindset leads to better products, more engaged customers, and teams that understand the "why" behind their work. ❤️ The best roadmaps aren't about checking off feature boxes - they're about delivering value by aligning your team, customers, and investors around a shared vision for the future. If you’d like to dive deeper into my thoughts around this topic, I’ve written up a post on creating your first roadmaps as a startup founder on the Clarify blog. I’ll drop the link in the comments 👇

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Whenever I'm asked to speak publicly on my roles in leading product as a CPO, I generally talk about two really important tenets. 1. Product is not an idea or a thing, its the execution of an idea and 2. Speed over perfection. During a 1 on 1 mentoring session Jeremy Vo did with a founder, he talks about speed over completeness. Startups have that advantage over larger, older companies, in that they can move and pivot based on feedback much faster. The tenet holds true in larger companies as well, its just harder to pivot given all stakeholders involved.

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A handy visual guide for Product folks about to contemplate and communicate, well, just about anything. As with so much in our domain, simple at surface, elaborate to execute, but priceless when proper.

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