Podcast: Fighting Fires in B2B Product Management

Richard Mironov -

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