Jason Knight invited me onto his One Knight in Product podcast for a wide-ranging chat about product issues and organizations.
This episode: Fighting Fires in B2B Product Management
Full list of episodes here
We covered lots of ground including:
- What a “smoke jumper” CPO is and the types of problems one solves
- The difficulty that teams sometimes have landing a message with leadership & why they often need to hear the same message from a consultant
- The mistakes some companies make by prioritizing domain expertise over product management, and how this leads to bad product behavior & biases
- The importance of understanding other teams’ motivations, and using your PM skills to work out what they actually need
- How agile was written by software guys, doesn’t mention customers at all, and why PMs have to talk with (listen to) large numbers of end customers/buyers
- The differences between B2B and B2C product thinking and how some of the classic product advice doesn’t translate to the world of B2B
- The importance of taking your product thinking discussions to the right level & not trying to persuade front line people
- The importance of building coalitions as a product leader to make sure you’re not just seen as an outlier where good ideas go to die
