Jose Quesada on Discovery, Strategy, and Stakeholder Judo at Amex

Introduction to Product Management and Jose’s Journey

Rina Alexin | 00:04.218–00:52.418

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Productside Stories, the podcast where we reveal the very real and raw lessons learned from product leaders and thinkers all over the world. I’m your host, Rina Alexin, CEO of Productside. And today I’m joined by Jose Quesada Vice President of Product Management at American Express, where he leads strategy and experience frameworks for Amex’s digital channels globally.

Jose’s leadership has helped shape the Amex mobile app into an award-winning product and a primary growth engine for the business. He’s passionate about building strong product teams, reducing risk and uncertainty through discovery practices, and establishing product strategies that deliver beyond the next quarter. Welcome, Jose.

Jose Quesada | 00:52.418–00:54.65

Thanks a lot for having me.

Rina Alexin | 00:54.65–01:01.42

I always get so excited to speak with product leaders that are actually working on products I use. So thank you for all the hard work from your team.

Jose Quesada | 01:01.42–01:08.504

Well, thanks for being a customer. I’m always very happy to hear about a customer, especially if they are happy. And if they are happy, I’m very happy to hear about their stories as well, yes.

Rina Alexin | 01:08.504–01:17.58

Absolutely. Yeah, I think I’ve been a customer since 2007 at this point. So I’ve definitely seen a difference in the mobile apps and well, would hope, right, that you changed quite a bit since 2007.

Jose Quesada | 01:17.58–01:25.614

Yeah, hopefully you’ve seen the evolution that we’ve worked on, yes.

Jose Quesada | 01:25.614–01:28.367

Yes.

Rina Alexin | 01:28.367–01:39.454

Well, Jose, I always love to ask this first question because I get a different answer every time. Let’s hear your story. How did you end up in product management?

Jose Quesada | 01:39.454–03:02.362

Sure. So it’s funny because I’ve always been truly fascinated about technology. I remember using personal computers with my brother since a very early age. And that really led me to study computer science at Uni. From there, there was what I would call a bit of a pivotal moment in my career. That is when people don’t probably remember now, but there was a moment when the iPhone didn’t exist.

the app store didn’t exist, et cetera. So all of that came together at the same time. Social networks were emerging, et cetera. So businesses really grappled with the idea of digital disruption. And before noticing, I had my first product job at the time. I was looking after the total strategy and mobile payments for a bank in London. Truth be told, I had no idea that I was really doing product management.

And since then, really, I’ve been working on the product for the past 15 years. The majority of that time with Amex really leading, getting the Amex mobile app from one to a hundred. One of the things I noticed from my career is the importance of thinking ahead and really a strategy. And that has really led me to the role that I’ve got today, where I lead the overall product strategy for American Express globally.

Rina Alexin | 03:02.362–03:50.294

You know, it’s a good point here because I remember when we were talking at some point that a lot of product leaders, they want to have this vision, they want to have a strategy, but a lot of them end up in a, I want to say like a discovery less downward spiral. And what I mean there is that they’re unable to really have a vision and have a plan for the future because they’re stuck almost building the today.

and they’re not putting enough cycles into what could be the future. And I think you’ve actually accomplished a pretty good balance at Amex from what I understand. So how do you get to that long-term vision? How do you make time for the discovery work that is so important?

Balancing Discovery and Delivery in Product Management

Jose Quesada | 03:50.294–05:10.086

Sure. So what you mentioned really is what happens to many product teams that are just focused on delivery, delivery, delivery. And the problem with that more than anything is, A just because you build something, customers will not come to it. But most importantly, you need to know why you’re building something in the first place. So the way in which we have overcome that, and I’d say we’ve made a great success out of it at Amex, is…

I first came across this concept of the old track delivery from meta-PAGAN probably like a decade ago. And the principle behind it is very simple. At any point in time, you need to have two tracks going on in your product organization. One is really focused on the future or the next 18 and 24 months ahead. And the other one is more like your BAU delivery track. Now, why is this important? Well,

A, you need to know where you’re going in the future. But also discovery is not about, and I think this is one of the misconceptions about discovery. Discovery is not about deciding how to build things. Yes, a big part of discovery is that, but more importantly is deciding whether you need to build something in the first place. So it’s really a lot more about the why than the what.

Rina Alexin | 05:10.086–05:26.454

Okay, so that’s a unique perspective here. So it’s almost like discovery should be as much about disproving what you think might be a hypothesis as it is proving it, as in deciding what not to build. That’s what you’re saying.

Jose Quesada | 05:26.454–06:23.206

That’s exactly what I’m saying. And in a way, I truly believe that product people should be very comfortable with not just proving their hypothesis, which is what everyone wants, but more importantly, disproving their hypothesis. In a way, when I feel very happy at work is when we put something through discovery, we test it with customers.

And sometimes things don’t go our way. So I see a lot of red when it comes to daytime performance. Usually the reaction from product teams is, we’ve done something wrong. And my reaction is, no, no, no, no, this is great. This is the reason why we tested in the first place, right? Now we know that there are certain hypotheses that are wrong. So we can either pause or just rule out this idea completely. We can just go back to drawing board.

come up with something different, a new set of hypotheses, and again, put it in front of customers for them to really decide whether that’s going to work for them or not.

The Importance of Experimentation and Hypothesis Testing

Rina Alexin | 06:23.206–06:30.669

So Jose, I’m smiling right now because this is what I always talk about. We talk a lot about confirmation bias and the, you know, it’s just in general, you want your ideas to have a positive impact, but people mistake that positive impact for needing it to be right all the time. Instead, I like to say craft experiments that show you you’re wrong. Then if those experiments fail, you know you’re actually on a good path.

Jose Quesada | 06:30.669–06:50.608

Yes.

Rina Alexin | 06:50.608–07:24.888

So it’s great that you’re able to, I think, model that kind of behavior and culture. How do you also get buy-in from other leaders? Because I think also a lot of product leaders struggle with getting served unvalidated solutions for them to work on from executives, from other departments. Sales is a pretty common one. So how do you maybe

take what you’re saying and bring it to the rest of the organization.

Jose Quesada | 07:24.888–08:43.302

So there are two parts to that question. One is how you introduce that way of operating. So you’ve got strategy and discovery running in parallel to delivery. And the other one is more how you get the rest of the organization to buy in your strategies. But if I focus on the first part, I think what you’ve got to do first and foremost is also use experimentation. So experimentation is a tool in any good product manager toolkit. So

We used it internally in terms of we came up with this new way of working. We started small. We started creating proof points that this could work, not just in terms of how we are structured as a team, but also the value it drives. And once that you show that, that’s when you’ve got senior leadership backing and you can really look to extend it across all the parts of your product organization. So I don’t think it’s that you go from

zero to 100 overnight, it’s more like you probably go from zero to one, you create proof points, you show that it can really work in some parts or smaller part of your product organization. And once that you’ve proved that, really people and your senior leaders and senior partners across the organization, they will want you to run things that way.

Rina Alexin | 08:43.302–08:58.606

What do you mean by you’ve proven it? So maybe you can actually talk from a specific example of how you actually stood this up. So were there, let’s say, detractors that you have to convince? was there an experiment that really showed them that might have been? OK.

Jose Quesada | 08:58.606–10:42.694

I wouldn’t call them detractors. I’ll probably call them people who need to be aligned with the strategy or maybe with the way of working. that’s probably a very particularly correct answer. But in all seriousness, what I did was, okay, let’s start somewhere where it makes sense to really think ahead. And we figured out probably…

thinking about the mobile app as a product, that is something that we need to have, not just a strategy that complements the overall business strategy, but its own strategy. So it can serve a better purpose for the enterprise and really be prepared for future growth. So I made a case to say, let’s have a team that will run discovery and delivery in parallel. This team will just focus on the app as a

product or really the framework of the app. We started with a strategy, a vision, and probably what made us win the argument in terms of some people who didn’t really believe that that was going to be the case or that’s going to take longer to drive value is not only we came up with things we wanted to do, but we started with these are the things that we want to do.

our product hypothesis, this is the planning which we’re going to test every single product hypothesis and the outcomes that we feel we can drive. And that really created many proof points and milestones along the way where I could go to people and say, hey, there’s a new way of working. And as you can see, it’s working better.

Gaining Buy-In from Stakeholders

Rina Alexin | 10:42.694–11:15.438

So essentially what I’m hearing you say is you crafted smaller experiments and you had one team do both the discovery and delivery. Now I’ve also seen a lot of teams struggle with that where they have both discovery and delivery that they have to do and oftentimes they only get recognition for what actually gets delivered, not really the discovery work. So is there a way in which you’ve made that discovery work really visible?

in your organization.

Jose Quesada | 11:15.438–12:46.694

So the way in which you change that is you need senior leadership buying. That’s really the way in which you can put this at scale. And that really undertakes a couple of things that need to change. One is a mindset change, not just of senior leadership, but say your own product team. And the reason why I say that is when you are looking at the future and 18, 24 months ahead,

What you’re looking to do is not create enhancements that drive a 10 % increase. You’re trying to 10X your product, right? That’s when you put like very big bets. So I guess that we were fortunate enough that when we were doing these, we also use it as a way to link it back to some business strategies that were emerging. So it wasn’t just us, as the program, session saying, Hey, this is the future. I’m off the app.

and the things that we need to focus on. It was also saying these are the ideas that we need to focus on, but also they complement very well where we are going as a company. So sometimes you need to be a bit strategic. I’m going to use that word in terms of seeing what’s going on and what is the context of your business. in a way, you make sure that your strategies are

very much aligned, but also you ride waves that may be already happening within your organization.

Understanding Company Strategy and Stakeholder Alignment

Rina Alexin | 12:46.694–13:01.838

So how do you counsel a product leader or maybe just a really, I don’t know, like a star performer on your team for how to actually understand the strategy of the company?

Jose Quesada | 13:01.838–14:27.684

I think it’s really helping them understand that when you start in your career and you want to do well as a product manager. And I remember when I was way younger and I was starting, I was very much focused on knowing the latest methodology from a technical perspective, understanding how mobile apps were built, et cetera. And don’t get me wrong, all of that is very important.

But those hard skills, anyone can really gain. Now, where you can be a much better product manager, in my opinion, is if you focus on the development of your software skills, whether it’s storytelling, relationship building, and within that understanding business context, I don’t think that you teach people that. I think you give them the tools.

and the data and the connections so they can understand that. But ultimately, you probably need to set a bit of fire on the belly when it comes to, I’m just working towards a much greater thing than just my domain, than just my responsibility. And the much greater thing is the overall outcomes that we want to drive here at Amex or any company that you work for.

Rina Alexin | 14:27.684–14:39.886

Yeah, I think that sometimes, and this is the, this is, guess, the underlying question in my experience, sometimes product managers don’t actually understand what their leaders are asking them to do. So it sounds like at least at Amex, you do have pretty good understanding of here is where we’re actually trying to go as a company. So, so actually, let’s actually talk, and switch gears a little bit, because we kind of touch surface level about stakeholders.

Jose Quesada | 14:39.886–14:53.894

You

Rina Alexin | 14:53.894–15:06.144

And they’ve now come up a few times. So I really like your correction. I’m using terms I think of classic like change management of who are your champions, who are your detractors and identify.

Building Trust with Stakeholders

Jose Quesada | 15:06.144–15:08.262

just been trades for many years that’s why I use those words as well.

Rina Alexin | 15:08.262–15:31.598

And that is so fair. So let me use your terminology then. How do you identify the people that really maybe are not aligned with the product culture that you’re talking about here? And how do you build trust and bring those specifically skeptical stakeholders along?

Jose Quesada | 15:31.598–17:36.666

Sure. What I’ve learned over time is you really need to decide the people who may be on board versus those who are not on board, really based on their actions rather than their words. So I just pay a of attention to what people say, the way in which they communicate, the type of questions that they ask.

etc. and I think over time I’ve developed a good way to really understand, maybe that set of stakeholders need to spend more time on because they’ve not really bought into this idea. And you should really spend more time on them. That’s really no point in you spending time with the people who have aligned with what you want to do. You need to spend time with the people who are not buying into it. Now, the way in which you build trust, I will call out

three things, this really works for people who are already there with you and people who are not there with you. And those are really communication, relationship building, and data. So communication in terms of communicate frequently and don’t surprise people. People hate to be surprised, especially in a business environment. And if you’ve got some stakeholders who are not really buying into what you want to do, don’t surprise them. Like give them

Ampoule heads up, talk to them frequently. The second one around relationship management, it talks about the fact that we are social human beings. And it’s just very helpful when you have worked on building relationships beforehand. So when those difficult conversations happen, they’re still difficult, right? But you know that that’s not coming from a bad place. And you can just assume best intentions all the time.

And the last piece, which I think is the best asset that we’ve got as product managers is let data do the talking. We all have opinions, so try to remove all of the bias and all of the opinions out of the equation. We’re just having data, as much data as you can.

Rina Alexin | 17:36.666–17:45.335

And I would also say, try to make sure that data is also relevant for that stakeholder. So you have to also in that way understand what they are interested in. So to your earlier point, leaders, they’re trying to accomplish a part of, they have a piece of the mission for the company that they’re trying to accomplish. And so the more that product management can provide data or insights into what they find more valuable.

Jose Quesada | 17:45.335–18:02.887

Yeah

Rina Alexin | 18:02.887–18:10.07

That actually helps them understand and make better decisions in collaboration with product management versus, know, kind of friction.

Identifying Key Stakeholders

Jose Quesada | 18:10.07–18:45.51

Absolutely. I think it’s just know your audience. If you are doing a presentation on a big initiative that you are driving, a strategy or something like that, and you’ve got different type of partners in that conversation, you need to make sure A, that use their language, and B, that you talk to all of them throughout your presentation and your storyline. Because if you don’t really talk to them throughout your storyline, they’re going to feel left out.

And that’s when you probably make more acute problems when it comes to misalignment.

Rina Alexin | 18:45.51–19:21.068

Well, you know, I understand that. However, I also want to say that there’s just a lot of different stakeholders. So it’s, I think it’s pretty complex for product managers to make sure that they are talking to all of their stakeholders. So to your point, you have to identify which are the crucial ones that you need in order to move your product along. So it’s, you’re focusing your attention on leaders. And then I think the

the ones that have a lot of sway, how do you identify those people?

The Value of Product Management in Business Context

Jose Quesada | 19:21.068–19:51.616

Sure. to your point, there are probably two types of stakeholders. There are stakeholders that will enable you to do things, right? And they probably come more from platform teams, some of the support functions like legal, compliance, privacy, just to make sure that you do things the right way. And you’ve got some of the key stakeholders where you really need to partner with them. By the way, I forgot the question. This one.

So what was the question on this one? I’m going to say hold it. right.

Rina Alexin | 19:51.616–20:07.109

that’s okay. I can answer. I can ask you a slightly different way. What I was trying to get at is essentially how there are so many different stakeholders for product managers to work with. you just said that you have to. Yes. So you just said that you have to include them in the story, but that’s a lot of people to include in the story. Right. So it’s how do you.

Jose Quesada | 20:07.109–20:16.804

How to identify them, yes?

Rina Alexin | 20:16.804–20:36.438

If you don’t like this question, I wanted to also kind of shift. we could kind of take this as I can do a different one, which is how do you identify the people who are having trouble understanding the value of product management? So do you want to go in that path? Is that easier?

Jose Quesada | 20:36.438–20:40.234

I’m happy either way. The problem I had is, while I was answering, I totally forgot the question. Yeah, I just forgot the question. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, my bad. No, no, it’s just that I was elaborating the answer. like, I don’t know what she asked me.

Rina Alexin | 20:40.234–20:54.298

you forgot. Okay, no problem. Let me just then we’re gonna we’re gonna and then I’m going to I’m gonna restart and I’ll also say one I thought you didn’t like the question. Okay, we’re good.

Rina Alexin | 20:54.298–21:07.875

Well, I asked you how do you identify the people and it’s almost like going back to the, you identify, because you’ve been talking about the people you’re having hard time working with, but you also need the champions. That’s where I’m trying to go to. So let me re-ask. So Jose, I hear this a lot in the sense of, you know, you need to incorporate your stakeholders as part of the story. You need to make sure that you’re talking to your audience, but there’s a huge audience.

Jose Quesada | 21:07.875–21:24.25

Yes.

Rina Alexin | 21:24.25–21:42.39

Product managers have to work with so many different people. And we talked a little bit about the importance of being close with those that, let’s say you’re having a lot of friction with, but then how do you also just identify and prioritize the right audience?

Creating a Product-Centric Culture at Amex

Jose Quesada | 21:42.39–23:38.726

Sure. As you said, you can probably spend your whole year just talking to shareholders, especially in big companies like Amex. It’s very important to identify who are those stakeholders that are going to make it or break it, right? Your champions, we can probably call them. And it probably relates to the outcomes that you’re trying to drive, and most importantly, how those outcomes link back to the business context. And if we talk about

The value that I believe product brings to the table more than anything is really understanding context and really linking product strategies to business context. So what you’ve got to do is really think through, okay, I want to go there. Let me give you an example. We figured that this variability was suffering within the Amex mobile app. That is normal when you put too many features in an experience.

And we came up with the idea that search could be a very good action-oriented discoverability tool. In that context, if I think about who are the main stakeholders, certainly the servicing organizations, really the organization that is responsible for the call center and of the support and help that we give to our customers, they’re going to be critical because

Not only you want to help with discoverability and that will help with engagement, but more importantly, you want people to find answers to the questions that they’ve got. Right? So if you are thinking about search and the outcome relates to detail containment or reducing core volume, well, you know that your key stakeholder to get along with is servicing. If you are trying to do something that is about driving growth for the enterprise,

very likely that your QC holders are going to be the marketing teams and really the teams that won the profit and loss accounts.

Rina Alexin | 23:38.726–23:45.1

It’s essentially the team which is going to feel the impact of whatever decision you’re trying to make, right? And so you need to have them involved in the decision. So I like what you said about the business value of product management is in context. I think a lot of companies fail to see sometimes that business value of product management when they operate product management more as a cost center versus as a value driver.

Jose Quesada | 23:45.1–24:06.694

Yes. Yes.

Rina Alexin | 24:06.694–24:42.968

having context to make decisions, that’s part of, I think, the value you’re saying that product management brings. I also like to think of it from the perspective of risk mitigation, right? So there are so many decisions that a company can make about a product. honestly, taking a path is better than taking no path, which is unfortunately, I think some very risk averse organizations tend to operate more in that paralysis mode of I don’t want to make a mistake.

But what I’m hearing you in this discussion, I kind of want to ask you, because Amex is a big company, but it sounds like you are also granted the opportunity to make these smaller bets to reduce risk. also, I’m curious then, in terms of just the culture at Amex that you’ve managed to create around product management, what other value drivers argue

Developing Strategic Thinking Skills

Jose Quesada | 24:42.968–25:05.283

Mm-hmm.

Rina Alexin | 25:05.283–25:11.822

I guess emphasizing or showing to the Amex organization at large.

Jose Quesada | 25:11.822–26:59.268

Absolutely. The first thing I will say is we are lucky because Amex is a very customer-centric but also very product-centric organization. So we don’t really think about initiatives as projects. We really think about everything we do as a product. And that really helps you think long term. And it really helps the product organization to start with. Ultimately, the value that we bring is understanding context.

and really linking the context that we’ve got about how the product is used, whether the website, mobile app, the context of customers, whether through user research there’s more creative data or how they’re behaving, the context of how things are built to really be the place where the company is going. The interesting thing there, and probably something to say about product as a discipline,

It feels like the value of product is always being put into question. And funny enough, it just goes through phases. And if I can, what I will say about product is we bring a ton of value because we’re able to understand context. But also, we are there to decide whether something should be built or not in the first place. And going back to my earlier point around discovery, not because you can build something, you should build it.

in the first place. So the why is very important. Also product is there to decide when things are ready to be launched to the marketplace. Versus designer engineering, they’re really there to have beta powers to really decide how to design things, how they’re going to look like and how they’re going to operate and how they’re going to get built.

Rina Alexin | 26:59.268–27:09.517

Okay, so we’re entering the realm of strategy here, right? So that’s basically what you’re talking about is making the decision on what gets built versus not built and providing the context and essentially the reasons why those decisions are being made. I think strategy also, if I were to think about myself or other, myself in my earlier career, strategy is one of those words that I would hear often, but not really get enough.

Jose Quesada | 27:09.517–27:24.76

Mm-hmm.

Jose Quesada | 27:24.76–27:27.014

You

Rina Alexin | 27:27.014–27:38.744

ability to practice or really know by doing it well. So maybe that’s something that we can talk about here around how do you get better at strategic thinking?

Long-Term Vision and Strategy Execution

Jose Quesada | 27:38.744–28:34.566

For sure. And I’d say it’s one of the most misunderstood activities, really, what strategy is. And also, in a way, sometimes got a bad press because of that. So I think, Eileen, in your career, what you need to do is get out there, learn by doing, make yourself uncomfortable, and most importantly, be curious.

really, that is the most important thing. And when it comes to a strategy, you need to try to see the bigger picture or really the overall context where you’re operating as soon as you can within your career. But also ask for help. There are many people around you, you’re immediately there, et cetera, who can really help you understand what a good strategy is. Let me tell you that, product managers who are early in their career, they just don’t know.

Rina Alexin | 28:34.566–28:47.608

Okay, so let’s actually ask you, how about I ask you, what are the building blocks of a great strategy as in how do know you’re doing it right? Is there a way to know?

Jose Quesada | 28:47.608–30:28.134

I believe so. And in fact, it’s something I’ve been using for years now. So let me tell you about how I think about it. I’ll probably give an example to put it into context. So ingredients of a good strategy. Ideally, you’ve got a vision that the strategy is linked to. Why? Because if you’ve got a vision, you’re going to be ambitious. You know where you’re going in the future and where the strategy is helping you to get closer to it.

The second thing is it needs to be founded on data. So you need to get yourself immersed with your team on data. And when I say data is business performance, market trends, use of behavior, any user research or user feedback that you’ve got. Now from there, you need to start hypothesizing and saying, well, do we have a problem here to solve? Do we have an opportunity?

And it’s absolutely right to have a program on opportunity. And those are completely two different things. From there, you’re going to have to come up with your desired outcomes, some hypotheses on how you’re going to achieve those outcomes. You need to create a story about how that’s going to be built because, ultimately you need to be very visual with your strategy as well. And ultimately, and I think this is one of the areas where people don’t spend near enough time is

What is the plan for you to prove that this is going to work? Or if it’s not going to work, that you actually find out very soon in the process. So at a high level, that’s really how I think about the good ingredients of a good strategy.

Advice for Junior Product Managers

Rina Alexin | 30:28.134–30:45.677

So then I think a lot of people might struggle with that concept over a long term. Sometimes, and I think this has to do with like understanding a vision or having a big enough mission and goal because it’s easy to understand what I want to accomplish this quarter. It’s a little bit harder to understand what I want to accomplish 18, 24 months from now. So, but that’s really where I think strategic thinking can really improve a company and like move the needle for it.

Jose Quesada | 30:45.677–30:57.638

Mm-hmm.

Rina Alexin | 30:57.638–31:06.902

versus just focusing on the short term. So is there anything that you do to maintain this more long-term strategic approach?

Jose Quesada | 31:06.902–33:20.152

It’s just what we believe in, really. If you just think about the next quarter, I think you are really missing why you are doing things in the first place. It’s probably very easy to have short-term goals, but ultimately you have outcomes that you want to drive over time. And the way in which we’ve done it recently, for example, is we thought about what is the vision and mission for the Amex mobile app.

And what we said is we really want to set the standard for mobile out there. Just generally talking and really trying to create the best customer experience. So from that vision, the next step was let’s look at data. Let’s see how the app is performing. And we realized that we had opportunities around depth of engagement and discoverability. And at the same time, the company decided to start going beyond car products.

And the company started going into banking products as well. So we put all that together and said, we need to create an app that is more customer centric. And we need to create an app that is much more suited for the future growth that the company is going to have. We came up with a bunch of hypotheses on things that could help us. So for example, search is one of those examples. If you’ve got too many things going on in your product, well,

have a tool that helps with discoverability. And once that we had those hypotheses and we had come up with some concepts, obviously, it’s needed to say that none of this happens in isolation. So we talked to a lot of people at the same time, but ultimately we had not just the vision and the strategy, but we had a plan for the next 12 months in terms of

these are the ways in which we’re going to prove or going to disprove our hypothesis. And there were times when things were looking all green and it was great and it was just like moving from one step to the other. And there were times where things didn’t really look right and we had to question our hypothesis and question how we had designed the product.

Rina Alexin | 33:20.152–33:32.302

And to your earlier point at the start of this episode, that’s a really good thing, right? Because you don’t want to go down the wrong path. So having that information allows you to make better quality decisions.

Jose Quesada | 33:32.302–34:01.296

Yeah, this is going to sound kind of intuitive, but it makes me very happy when I see red. And the reason why it makes me very happy is it helps the more junior product managers learn a lot. If everything goes well, probably one of the things that is happening is you’re not pushing your product that much. So you’re being very safe with where you’re going with that. So you actually want to push it. So sometimes you just fail.

Rina Alexin | 34:01.296–34:26.316

So let’s take a moment and talk to these junior product managers. So we’ve now spoken a bit about the importance of discovery practices, stakeholder alignment, what the value of product management is and strategy. If you were talking to a junior product manager who’s looking to upgrade in their career, what advice would you have for them? Where should they focus?

Jose Quesada | 34:26.316–35:35.854

I’d say two things. One is really soft skills. That is the one bet that you need to place on your career. Storytelling, relationship management, really be curious about what’s going on. The other thing I’d say is be open to change. In fact, change is one of the best agents for opportunities. And probably earlier in your career, you think that

change is not necessarily good or you’re very worried about change. And don’t get me wrong, there’s uncertainty when there is change, but there’s a ton of opportunity that comes from change. And ultimately just get involved and not just internally in your company, but there are many tools at your disposal. Get involved in local product communities, talk to people, get a feel for what product looks like in different industries. And this is important because

Product as a function is very different across industries, across companies. Even within Amex there are different ways of doing product, depending on the domain and what your focus area is.

Rina Alexin | 35:35.854–35:49.709

I were to boil down something that I heard you say, think throughout this episode is that the things that would benefit you in your career actually at first counterintuitive. Red is something that we want to avoid, but it’s actually not. It’s powerful when you understand it. Similarly, having mistakes or all of those things are things that we

Jose Quesada | 35:49.709–35:59.814

Yes.

Rina Alexin | 35:59.814–36:03.95

learn from. So I like that career advice that you’re sharing right now is get involved and don’t be afraid of making a couple mistakes because you will and that’s a good thing.

Jose Quesada | 36:03.95–36:09.12

You

Jose Quesada | 36:09.12–36:32.358

I’m just personally a big believer in that way of working. I see my job as I give my team autonomy, accountability, I set the vision and the direction, the outcomes that we want to drive, but you get there. And if you make mistakes along the way, that’s actually good. You’re going to become a better product manager.

Rina Alexin | 36:32.358–36:44.49

You’re speaking my language here, Jose. I so enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for sharing your insights and your thoughts. Where can our listeners follow you or connect with you after they hear this episode?

Jose Quesada | 36:44.49–37:02.63

So they can go to LinkedIn, and they just can find me by my name. So that is Jose Quesada. And yeah, just shoot me with any questions if you want to talk. Product strategy, mobile apps, websites, et cetera. Yeah, very happy to talk to people.

Rina Alexin | 37:02.63–37:02.63

Wonderful. And thank you all for joining us. If you found our conversation valuable today, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend and subscribe to Productside Stories so you don’t miss a future episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope today’s insights inspire you and propel your product journey forward. Remember, every challenge is just a lesson waiting to be learned. Visit us at Productside.com for more free resources, including webinars, templates, playbooks, and other product wisdom.

repackaged for you. I’m Rina Alexin and until next time, keep innovating, keep leading, and keep creating stories worth sharing.