Six Trends to Track for Product Success in 2022

Welcome, Housekeeping & About Productside

Roger Snyder | 00:00:00–00:04:59
all right welcome everyone to six trends to track for product success in 2022 we’ll give folks a few seconds to join and then robin will kick us off thank you

all right let’s get going all right welcome everyone uh again welcome to six trends to track for product success in 2022

i’m roger snyder i’m vp of marketing and also principal consultant and trainer here at Productside uh excited to have you all joining us today to talk about 2022 and what we see is some trends to consider both in terms of product management and in terms of the practice of product management as well as some tips for you to use in your own products i’m located in the santa cruz mountains where it rained last night but the sun is coming out how are you doing there

Robyn Brooks | 00:00:00–00:04:59
i’m robin brooks i’m a senior product manager here at Productside and uh roger yeah i’m doing great from sunny portland oregon where it’s rarely sunny this time of year [laughter] thank you for being here i wanted to go over just a couple of housekeeping things before we get started after this webinar we’d love to stay engaged with the product management community so we do encourage you to join um join us on linkedin in our leadership group and use this as a forum to chat about best practices and tips and we will paste the link to that in the chat shortly

Roger Snyder | 00:00:00–00:04:59
excellent

and during the webinar we love interacting with you please ask questions you can use the q a box on the bottom of your screen to type in questions at any time and we will leave time for q a at the end of the webinar so our most popular question is can i watch this webinar later and the answer is yes all attendees will receive a link to watch the webinar recording after it has ended

all right so let’s just go briefly over what Productside is all about our mission is to empower product professionals with the knowledge and tools they need to build products that matter

unlike other companies this is what we’re exclusively focused on the needs of product professionals and whether you need help as an individual growing your knowledge and skills or you’re working on improving your team’s effectiveness we have the experience and services that you need so please check us out at Productside.com

Robyn Brooks | 00:00:00–00:04:59
all right all right so i’m going to hand this over to roger to kick us off on the trends that we’re tracking

Agenda & Framing the 2022 Trends

Roger Snyder | 00:05:00–00:09:59
very good so we’re going to talk today about some trends in product innovation we’re also going to talk about some more of the the the skills a product manager needs in their own work every day and so we’re going to talk about product management ethics it’s become an interesting topic of late we’re also going to talk about soft skills development and storytelling because uh one of the things that we’re finding in this new normal of work is that we’re we’re a little bit more isolated and we’re struggling to engage and and be able to guide our teams both our product teams as well as just across the company being able to have effective communication so we’re talking about those things as well since that’s definitely become a pressing issue these last now almost two years

all right let’s dive into product innovation so couple things we want to talk about today how do you deliver value find new ways to deliver value to this new normal we’re going to talk about product led growth um we’ve gotten some questions lately about product lead growth as a b2b technique so we’re going to talk about that some more because it’s becoming a powerful technique in b to c but also in b to b and we’re talking about experimentation and we’ve talked a lot about experimentation in software but we want to talk about soft you know experimentation in physical products and and areas where people may not have thought about before so we’re excited to cover these topics a little bit more

all right before we do that though we kind of want to understand our audience a little bit better so tell us a little bit about how and robin will launch our poll here there we go about how the pandemic has affected your product have you experienced significant growth during this time or have you maybe just seen moderate increases is this some place where really the pandemic hasn’t had much of an effect on your business you remain kind of stable no major ups or downs have you had to pivot but you recovered or you’ve seen some moderate decreases or you’re still struggling so we really want to understand where you are in in terms of how the pandemic has had an effect on your business

Robyn Brooks | 00:05:00–00:09:59
and how are we doing with responses there yeah we’re getting uh several responses coming in um really interested to see kind of what the uh what the result is here i know we’ve seen kind of a spectrum of this with uh with with those that we’ve we’ve talked to during the uh during the pandemic so absolutely

Roger Snyder | 00:05:00–00:09:59
all right yeah so let me go ahead it looks like we’ve got a number of responses in and interestingly the most common response is that folks have seen some moderate increases um in product uh in their product usage so that’s really interesting uh it sounds like some folks have had to pivot um but we’re able to recover and then there’s some that are still struggling as well okay all right so it’s been more of the moderate increases and then some struggle okay all right so the answers across the spectrum all right well given that let’s talk about some techniques in order to think about how to deliver new value in the new normal

Delivering Value in the “New Normal”

Roger Snyder | 00:10:00–00:14:59
so many companies you know have had to adapt and grow in big ways during these past two years but there’s been this sense that we’re settling into a new normal although omicron now may challenge that once again it definitely feels like though that there isn’t we’re not going back right so this is definitely going to be a different world of work and different world of living as well and so what are some of the small ways that businesses you know can change and do things how can your products be adapted to reduce for example employee stress are you in a business where you’re serving b2b and and your customers are enterprises are there ways for your product to be able to actually help employees be more productive and also experience less stress or are your products being used at the home differently than in another setting uh in the past right so we saw the big toilet paper run at the beginning and it turns out that was a channel problem where you know a lot of consumer toilet paper wasn’t available even though there was plenty of toilet paper for you know office space usage that really was what the challenge was and so similarly is there a way now that you can be serving employees in an environment where they’re working from home more right and is there a way for you to then have these opportunities become something permanent that can be you long-term value you can deliver and i think you had an example of this right robin

Robyn Brooks | 00:10:00–00:14:59
yeah i can think of a really relevant example here which is uh how my whole family interacts with something as fundamental as food now versus a couple of years ago you know either my husband or i we would grab a few groceries on the way home from work a few times a week right after uh or before picking up the kids um and the focus would typically be on just easy to pack lunches because we were doing a lot of commuting quick prep dinners so that we could pick up the kids and get home and get food on the table but now that my husband and i have both transitioned to working fully remote we’re at home full-time and so we’re using services like instacart a lot more and can build that shopping list a little bit more at leisure and then order the groceries when we need them and my husband loves to cook so he’s been able to really expand the kinds of food that we’re eating and so what is on our shopping list now is very different than it was two years ago and think about how many types of businesses are impacted by these kind of simple changes at a broad scale so how grocery stores stock inventory what they stock businesses like instacart of course but then also supply chain and logistics like you were mentioning for you know different kinds of toilet paper is needed now that more people are at home versus in an office setting so right little changes like this that don’t seem like they’re impactful can be really impactful at a broad scale

Roger Snyder | 00:10:00–00:14:59
well i think you make a good point in the terms of you know a lot of us in the last 18 months know already about like well yeah okay i gotta change the way my products right so the shift from i’m grocery shopping in the store sure that’s a pretty obvious one right and and right but the but the point the second point you made is what you’re cooking now is different as well right so the different ingredients that you’re purchasing yeah right and the different recipes for example that you’re using potentially so there’s this second shift and that’s what i want to emphasize the point that’s key for 2022 is what are these longer term shifts that you as a product manager should be thinking about that could have a meaningful impact on how you serve your customers and how your product may need to continue to evolve right we already talked about the distribution channel change a year ago there’s more coming right so that that is going to be important for you to be able to think about in a longer term setting right so good i’m hoping that’s the key takeaway i want to get out of this for all of you that are thinking about okay what am i going to do differently going forward right

Product-Led Growth (PLG), Especially for B2B

Roger Snyder | 00:15:00–00:19:59
all right let’s talk about about product led growth and product like growth has been a rising capability it’s been mostly traditionally been used in b2c right where the the time to value can be very quick you’re able to get that new additional value where you’re offering a trial and then you’re offering sort for a freemium upgrade for example or you’re able to share the product with other folks uh and we’re not just talking the viral spread of social media but you know you you enjoy the product you can then send a discount coupon to a friend in order for them to then purchase the product and take advantage of it right so those have been pretty traditional common examples of product led growth uh in b2c but we want to talk about product like growth from b2b perspective as well and the fact that it’s a different audience but more and more many of these techniques are being used particularly in this concept for land and expand right and slack is a prime example of that where they start out with a free tier uh it gives you some good compelling features right off the bat so it delivers immediate value but then there are some limits and constraints that are applied so you know you only have a single workspace or you have limited video calling or integrations and then once people get hooked or excited about the base features they want to upgrade and they’re able to then invite more of their co-workers to use the product and eventually start influencing those buyers right so to the point we had in the second bullet here your users don’t have that buying authority but once they start using the product are able to demonstrate the value it offers to their organization they’re then able to then they influence the buyer to be able to actually upgrade and purchase to a paid version of slack and that kind of approach is is a great approach to then be able to get that land and expand value across the whole organization

so if you are in a b2b business and you want to be able to get more product-led growth think about how where are the right places for you to put limits on the value that then really valuable features will get paid for and how do you get those users of the free product enabled to express that value to the actual buyers so is that something where okay hey download this free sheet that explains all the value of the various tiers right and you offer that in channel occasionally are there other ways where you can say hey now here’s a key to go give a free trial of some of those more expensive features for a limited time to the people that are in authority to buy so some of those things are are i hope ways that you can see how to use product led growth in a b2b context

Robyn Brooks | 00:15:00–00:19:59
yeah it really is a little bit of a flip of the flip of the traditional marketing funnel where you’re really talking to the decision makers and then they’ve got to get the users on board you’re going straight to the users but that does have implications for how you develop your product how you market your product and what is the most important right good

Experimentation Beyond Software: AR, VR & 3D Pretotypes

Roger Snyder | 00:20:00–00:24:59
yeah agreed so then the third innovation trend is this trend of experimentation and of course we’ve talked about this before in the context of software and for those of you who may not be familiar with that there’s plenty of tools in software that allow you to be able to see what your users are doing be able to rapidly deploy say an a b test of let’s try this feature versus that feature right and then see how much uptake we get from that we’ll approach a way to solve a problem one way with a subset of the user base and then a different way for the other part of the user and see which one is more effective but in physical spaces then or physical products or consumer products how do you go about doing this and so i want to give a couple of examples one has to do with which digital transformation and it’s something that folks don’t necessarily think about but i started with coloring books right right so crayola right i mean we’re going back now to you know kindergarten when you were coloring right but crayola came out a couple of years ago now with this virtual design pro where yes you do color in this book but then you take a picture of that of that coloring with your smartphone or your tablet and it renders that picture into a three-dimensional car in this example and there’s there’s different ones aimed at different audiences so this one was cars that i chose but they also have one for fashion so you color and you create this three-dimensional uh product that then you can race in this case you could take the car out on a track and race and they even race with other people so now again another product like growth thing of invite friends to race against you and then they’re going to want to go out and buy the car and color their own custom car right yeah so it crosses over in both ways but then once you had what you know how do you experiment with coloring well now that you have a digital dimension to this you can continue to experiment try new features in the digital aspect of this product so many physical products are having adding a digital component as well and this is an example right so think about that right if i can come up with an example that’s in coloring books what could you do in your products to add a digital dimension that that would open up your ability to experiment right

Robyn Brooks | 00:20:00–00:24:59
yeah and the ar and vr space is is kind of it is a trend that we’re tracking because it is poised to really take off you see a lot more smartphones including things like lidar sensors that are going to make this an even more engaging experience here within the next few years so great time to get out in front of it absolutely

Roger Snyder | 00:20:00–00:24:59
and then the second trend i want to talk about is uh there is this capability in three-dimensional printing to now be able to print preto types right you can actually create an example in this picture here an example of a remote control for example right or an example of a part that you’re going to then see how well that part integrates with the rest of the product so the 3d printing costs have come down significantly in the last five years and they create these opportunities for you to build pretotypes to be able to try out things at a much lower cost i used to be in the smartphone business so i know what it was like to actually create a prototype a real one very expensive hundreds of thousands of dollars but now you can predo type something get that in front of a small user base test out their responses their their feedback their thinking about how it feels and looks in their hands and you can rapidly innovate this way by being able to do this and i’ve added an article down here uh we’ll include a link to this article in our follow-up email of how agile engineering principles now are are influencing not just software but product design and physical manufacturing and and any kinds of consumer products that are physical so i really want to encourage folks to think about using these new techniques even if they don’t have a software part or a digital part to their product there are now ways to more rapidly innovate and experiment absolutely

Ethics, JEDI & Responsible Use of Customer Data

Roger Snyder | 00:25:00–00:31:59
all right let’s move on then into some of the softer side of product management discipline and talk about ethics right and this has been in the news quite a bit even just recently right and so you know the the challenges that meta and some of its subdivisions have had with the reveal of what we’re called the facebook papers um definitely revealed that there were some issues in terms of were these different divisions of meta making the best choices for their users or are they making the best choices for their own bottom line and and how are they balancing those things and that’s definitely become a big issue and a concern and on the blizzard side as well right i know if you want to comment on the blizzard side of that

Robyn Brooks | 00:25:00–00:31:59
sure yeah this has been um a pretty impactful situation particularly in the in the gaming community where you see this kind of hidden toxic work culture where you don’t have the right representation the right voices at the table and so it makes things like diversity and inclusion really important to be mindful of as a whole part of your business for your customers and also for your employees because that toxic culture doesn’t produce a good product in the end right

Roger Snyder | 00:25:00–00:31:59
right and the challenges that meta has been uh experiencing are things that then all into question how do you go about using customer data are you are you encouraging healthy long-term effective behaviors of your users that will then keep them a healthy loyal customer longer term right so let’s dig into this absolutely and talk about these issues right so we’re going to talk about some techniques and and concerns not just concerns but also approaches that you can use to up the ethical approach that you as a product manager can take to making products for your customers right so we’re gonna have a jedi we’re talking about the usage of customer data driving healthy user habits and promoting sustainable practices all right so let’s talk about jedi i i absolutely love this i’m a big star wars fan so the fact that now we can say jedi in a professional setting is just really exciting

but jedi is adds what maybe you’ve heard before dei diversity equity and it adds justice to this right and in terms of justice it is looking at this bigger picture from the beginning is our proposed solution productive or is it potentially harmful and how do we mitigate that harm right who could it harm and and and what could we do to prevent that harm in the first place so i hope others are familiar with the other three categories here in terms of diversity uh in terms of equity and in terms of inclusion right but just to hit briefly on them so in terms of diversity inclusion are you getting all the best ideas you can by having a more diverse set of voices at the table when you’re thinking about features when you’re thinking about benefits are you having a good diversity of voices that give you this broader set of possibilities to even choose from in the first place right and then over the course of this in terms of inclusion not only is it at the beginning when you’re sourcing ideas but then when you’re testing are you testing for example you’re doing a beta test or you’re doing a focus group are you bringing all the voices to the table in that focus group or in the survey are you conducting a survey across the broad base that represents correctly your user base but maybe make sure that more of those minority voices are included in that user base right we have another webinar that we can point you to that talks about the benefits of bringing a more diverse set of folks to the table both up front as well as in your test so

Robyn Brooks | 00:25:00–00:31:59
i would say a really key place to keep an eye out for this is when developing personas um you know we we talk about frequently in our in our courses um about you know proto personas and then fleshing those out into full-blown personas and there’s been kind of some evolution of the persona in the industry over the last couple of years too often you stop with the proto persona and that can have a lot of inherent bias if your products are being developed for people who kind of look like you and think like you then you might be missing a big part of the market and missing voices that are going to be really impactful so don’t forget the next few steps conduct empathy interviews talk to real customers and don’t just focus on demographics right because two people that look very similar on paper might face very different real problems that your product is trying to solve so keeping those things in mind is really important because it’s going to make your product better in the long run

Roger Snyder | 00:25:00–00:31:59
absolutely so yeah in terms of your last point the psychographics of how they behave could be very different right right and absolutely what they’re looking for what value they’re looking to receive can be different right so great points definitely so consider being able to get some jedi training to help bring a broader perspective to your product management team and ultimately be able to deliver products that appeal to a wider audience

now we talked earlier about some of the struggles and challenges that meta has dealt with this year and that brings us around to the antidote to that is to really taking into account how do you ethically use your customer data and in this chart this is a very effective chart i hope to as you’re looking at each step of the way when you’re acquiring or your data only acquire what’s really actionable don’t gather more data that you really need anonymize that data whenever you can so that again you you are uh respecting the privacy of the folks that you’re gathering this data from then analyze it and look for trends nothing nothing changes there necessarily but then you want to also make sure that you store it in a sanitized way so only the aggregated data only the trends that you needed are there for the long term storage and then get rid of whatever you don’t need right so then you are then hopefully obeying and following the privacy statements that you’re putting out in front of your customers interestingly enough just this morning i got a new privacy update on my android my smartphone from samsung of like with my health data and they updated it and i was like i’m going to read this i really want to know what are they doing with my health data because that’s very personal to me right and it was clear that they aggregate that data when they do it for analysis so that’s that’s important to make sure that you’re clear about that even in how you tell your users you’re using the data right so you want to understand the customer journey that’s great you want to be able to build your product so it better serves their needs but then you’ve got to respect their use and make sure that that the data you’re using stays anonymous and isn’t missing

and i think the upshot of this for me is that not only is this a good business practice and more ethical use of customer data but it also really can help your product be more focused because if you’re capturing all the data then you’re really it’s easy to get lost and not understand really what it is that you’re gathering and why and that’s why focusing at the very beginning of this what are the actions we’re going to take when we look at this data making sure that it’s actionable is going to make your product better in the long run so that when you go to analyze and you’re looking for those trends you’re reducing the noise in the data that you’ve collected right

Healthy Habits, Indistractable Users & Sustainability

Roger Snyder | 00:32:00–00:37:59
yeah very good point so then we turn to making sure that you’re also driving healthy user habits right and so you’ve gathered this usage data can be very powerful but then you want to avoid some of the traps that you can fall into one of those traps for example is that more usage is better right whatever problem your customer’s trying to solve is using that product more often really the thing that’s going to help them be more effective and efficient in solving their problem or is it possible that if you’re creating a product that becomes addictive that you’re creating a whole new set of problems for your customers that are either hopefully unintended consequences potentially even intended consequences that have a downside on the health of your user base and that’s again one of the problems that we’ve seen this year with absolutely companies right yeah you want to avoid and you’ve got an example right

Robyn Brooks | 00:32:00–00:37:59
yeah i’ve got a great example of this um we’ve just done some smart home upgrades to our home and one of my favorite products that we implemented was the lutron cassetta smart lighting system where i had to use an app to set it up but really the less i have to use that app the more the product is actually doing to improve my quality of life because once i have all of my lights configured i should be able to use automations i should be able to use my voice or just the switches on the wall so if they had implemented instrumentation that measured the success of the product by how often i was using the app that would actually be the inverse of uh of how effective that product that product is for solving the problem that i hired it to solve so when you think about measuring engagement of your users really focus in on what problem are you trying to solve for them because using your app or your device more might not actually be the most effective way to measure how if how effective the product is at solving their problem

Roger Snyder | 00:32:00–00:37:59
right right what does success look like so in fact yeah for example if they are in the app multiple times that day or multiple times in the in the first 24 48 hours it probably means that they’re finding it difficult to set it up there’s actually not a good behavior going on there and and that’s something that you or or it’s not a good experience excuse me and therefore watch for that and say okay hey wait a second how do i help the user not have to keep going back at this right yeah

now to be fair you know like we did these slides over a week ago right and just yesterday instagram announced that they’ve launched a new feature that are going to urge users the article talks about teens but i wanted to be about all users right it launched a new feature that urges users to take breaks so now instagram is actually proactively asking users hey you know you spend enough time on this let’s do something else go take a break and so i think that now maybe it’s a response to the challenges they’ve had in the last few months but whatever it is it’s still a good idea right and so think about that for your products are there things that you should be doing too to also encourage healthy behavior and remember too a healthy user that doesn’t resent your product from making choices is going to become a more loyal user right so this is about impact of course you you want to from an ethics standpoint make sure you have healthy users but you also from a business good business practice you want loyal users any loyal any user that feels like you’ve taken advantage of them or huge is is immediately going to resent that and not be a loyal loyal user so that’s something to be thinking of the long term value that you deliver and the loyalty you want to engender

now it’s i found this and i’ve watched this unfold right because i’ve been i’ve been in user experience for a long time as well as a product manager near you all uh produced this book hooked and it was a big book when it came out and it was all about how do you build addictive products and then five years later he came out with almost an antidote to the first book which was indestructible and and he made a good premise though he’s like look i’m not trying to say that the products need to completely change although i think that’s true but i also want you as a human being to just become capable of being more focused so it really was an antidote book in terms of being able to become more focused in your life because the digital world’s not going away right and there is value you get from your smartphone

Robyn Brooks | 00:32:00–00:37:59
i think this is really representative of also some of the cultural shifts that have happened in the last five years and how much more powerful algorithms have gotten at making us addicted to products um and so now we do need to take a step back and think what is the impact of this on our culture what is the impact of this on on human beings and how do we find the right balance between making engaging products that solve problems for our customers while also making sure that we’re keeping kind of the big picture in focus

Roger Snyder | 00:32:00–00:37:59
right absolutely and so as a product manager the takeaway here is yes you should think about how can you make your product maybe habit-forming but not addictive but also be thinking about how do you make sure that it also still engenders a healthy relationship with your product right absolutely as a product manager i would encourage you to read both of ner’s books because i think that that will give you the the bigger broader picture of what’s been going on here and avoid some of the dark side consequences that we’ve seen lately absolutely

so another dimension um of thought in terms of how to make great products and and do it ethically is sustainability and i’ll let you explain this one a little bit uh robin because i really like this chart that you’ve got here on on the different dimensions of sustainability and this triple bottom line

Robyn Brooks | 00:32:00–00:37:59
yeah sustainability i think sometimes has a reputation of being more green right and that’s certainly an aspect of it but as we talked about jedi as well you know you’re kind of balancing impact on people impact on our planet and of course impact on profit because as a business your goal is to be profitable but keeping all of these things in balance is going to help your business thrive in the long term and you see this with customer behaviors that have been changing and this has been a trend that has been tracking for decades not just months or years right customers are increasingly looking for social justice and sustainability and products they’re voting with their wallets and so developing your products and services within this context is going to be important going forward

Roger Snyder | 00:32:00–00:37:59
definitely so we have a couple of examples of this um the first thing the first is in consumer products in chocolate right so there’s been a fair trade logo uh and it again has been out for a while uh and and there’s but now more recently there’s data to prove because i read some articles and we have a source down there at the bottom that you can follow that link later on we’ll put that link in the follow-up email uh chocolate brands with a fair trade logo have seen increased sales and they’re also able to sell their product of a higher price so they have and now the data shows that in fact that has been a successful strategy so when you treat your farmers more ethically when you provide more money to the farmers and then you’ve got this fair trade logo that demonstrates that you’re doing this people will pay people will pay they have a conscience especially in a a consumer product where they want to know that the money they’re spending is is being used to help everybody in the value chain and i think there’s there’s been some controversy actually the article i’ve linked to when you can read deeper if you’re curious about this of maybe fair trade actually doesn’t do enough and there are now even more ethical approaches to this value chain but it at least has started a good conversation and and as a product manager i want you to see that it actually has created value both in terms of happier more loyal customers and even more profit for your product as well as sharing that profit all the way down the value chain absolutely

Robyn Brooks | 00:32:00–00:37:59
and we see this impact even in the consumer electronics space where you know right to repair and sustainable sourcing of components has gotten a lot of traction lately and um you know so you see products like the fair phone and the framework laptop that really focus on sustainable sourcing of parts being able to do self-repair because as consumer electronics get more and more tightly integrated and slimmer and lighter you know we’ve seen this trend of making them really really difficult to repair and then that ends up increasing e-waste

um so you know where i have a phone i use it for two or three years and then i have to go buy a new one because the battery is is worn out

um and so you do see uh you know this sort of pressure on the industry and because of products like the fairphone and the framework now you’re starting to see even big companies like apple and samsung create more friendly repair programs and increase access to parts um that that is that is kind of making waves and there’s you’re seeing that pressure in the industry so this competition is uh is proving to be really valuable um because it is helping uh as you see customers voting with their wallets um helping to kind of drive more sustainable business practices so definitely a trend to watch in 2022

Roger Snyder | 00:32:00–00:37:59
absolutely and i know that i have been frustrated you know i’ve been a diy person as a homeowner years and i’ve become increasingly frustrated with uh you know oh well so the vacuum cleaner broke or um you know the robot vacuum cleaner but also just the regular vacuum cleaner boat it’s like you can’t get parts for that anymore it’s like well what is that right why don’t we allow for repair i don’t want to throw out my entire vacuum cleaner fix this one part and there are screws on it why can’t i fix that so it goes into the design of the product at the beginning but it also integrates supply chain of like repair parts right or replacement pieces all of that needs to be considered again whole product but all of that needs to be considered as your product manager right and can you actually again build better customer loyalty and potentially increase the long lifetime value of that product because then people will buy those replacement parts right and then there’s absolutely some good profit margin on some of those things so we hope that the sustainability dimension is another one that you bring to your tool kit and how you build a product that’s going to be more successful in the marketplace

Soft Skills & Collaboration in a Hybrid / Virtual World

Roger Snyder | 00:38:00–00:44:59
all right so now let’s talk about some soft skills again the fact that so many more folks we think are working from home or working in a hybrid environment means that attention to these skills is becoming more valuable but let’s pull our audience and find out how much of an impact this is having so i’ll let you watch the poll

Robyn Brooks | 00:38:00–00:44:59
yeah so let us know are you or your team struggling to collaborate in a hybrid or a virtual company setting and you know is it really at the bottom they’re a serious struggle or is it yeah we’re frightening virtually not a problem at all i’d like to kind of know where are we on this are you on the spectrum and we do have a choice for you’re not virgin hybrid at all we want to know about that as well

yeah this is really interesting because i’ve seen kind of the whole spectrum of folks that did return to the office full time and folks that have gone fully virtual and then somewhere in between right you’re in a hybrid environment maybe some of your employees are fully virtual but some are back in the office um and uh yeah it’d be really interesting to see

okay it looks like we’ve got some good responses i’m gonna go ahead and end the poll and let’s take a look at the results okay so neutral okay not a struggle not great we’re doing okay all right well it’s a little most of the positive that’s pretty cool that’s encouraging all right struggling a little bit but yeah all right so there’s there’s definitely some positive aspects of this but let’s still talk about a couple of techniques that we think would help you make it even more effective as you’re working in a virtual environment

Roger Snyder | 00:38:00–00:44:59
great all right so in terms of soft skills communication of course always important we’ll talk a little bit more about that do you as a as a product manager leading a product team that’s multi-departmental cross-functional do you have some good skills and influence and negotiation and and what about tools for making more personal contact in virtual world i mean the picture that we have over here on the right is what it used to be like right but now what we’re finding is it’s it’s a lot more of this virtual interaction where everybody you see is a two-dimensional image on the screen just like you’re seeing right now in the plumber right okay so let’s dive into briefly some of this and by the way we’re going to give you a gift at the end of the webinar actually it’ll be in the follow-up email on how to get better in some of these areas we’ll talk more about that but in communication active listening responsive listing you can google those two techniques and those techniques allow you to be more effective even in these virtual settings of understanding the different levels of listening learning how to reflect back what you think you have heard both in terms of the facts as well as the feelings and then really make sure you’re understanding what’s being said so that you can then be more effective in into directing in both directions in both understanding and communicating because remember too that if somebody else doesn’t understand what you’re saying i always take the perspective of okay well i failed then if if the message didn’t get across it’s my fault that the message didn’t get across how do i then take a different approach to getting that message across and and then use these techniques to make sure that it was received right so take that approach of of being positive about your intent and wanting to be sure that other folks actually understand what you’re saying and then use these techniques to to capture that understanding right and again we’ll talk absolutely about tools on how to do this then in terms of influence and negotiation influence has these different capabilities again there’s a whole book on this so i’m not going to go into a lot of detail on influence techniques but excuse me but these techniques i’ll i’ll pick up one or two of them right so in terms of reciprocity if i give you something you’re more likely to feel an obligation to give something back so as a product manager be very free in how you share information the more you are absolutely share user data customer journey information all of the the interview results either what you learn from sales or customer support the more you give that data the more likely your co your your friends in marketing or engineering or in sales are likely to give back data to you as well so very powerful technique that’s just one of them and we’ll talk there’s other resources you can use to learn the other things or you can google you know the concepts of influence and these techniques will come up

in terms of negotiation when you’re actually trying to drive towards a decision you want to use some techniques to make sure that you’re getting to the best possible decision for all the parties involved right so here it means having a dialogue making sure you understand each other’s needs then making sure that you are clear about your intention to really reach understanding you’re not just striving to get what you want you are also driving to actually have an understanding of what the other party’s needs are and and when you start from that intention instead of i just want what i want things go much more effectively right then you agree on on challenges that you may have uncovered on both sides and therefore courses of action right so in a negotiation you may be well okay you’ve just asked me for something that i don’t have the authority to give you let me go away and see what i can do to see whether that’s possible or not or come back with an alternative so that agree on courses of action is another key part in terms of making sure everybody understands what the next steps are right ultimately you want to satisfy the various interests as much as you can and have an efficiency in your approach so these negotiation techniques should be able to help you be more effective in coming to effective decisions

Robyn Brooks | 00:38:00–00:44:59
and i think this is a really core skill there’s a lot of things that product managers are kind of inherently skilled at with regard to finding problems and solving problems those same skills apply when you’re working with stakeholders when you’re working in folk with folks within your organization think about what problems they’re facing what impacts their decision making process and you can start to sort of bake that in with these skills um to have more effective ability to negotiate

Roger Snyder | 00:38:00–00:44:59
excellent yeah all right so now let’s talk about a little bit more some tools for personal contact so if you are in a situation where you’re in the hybrid world or you’re in a completely virtual setting here are some techniques that that we’re using actually at Productside and that i think you might find effective if you use slack we’ve actually integrated something called donut and i think there’s probably other tools out there so i’m not necessarily giving that product a specific shout out but it’s really helped us set up these virtual copies where it every two weeks pairs up members sometimes it will get a triad as well but it’ll pair up members of the team for an informal conversation so that you do actually like meet at the water cooler right or have at or at the coffee machine and you sit down and just have a half hour conversation of just hey how’s it going what’s going on in your life okay so that is something that that we have found very effective i think i have my next donut next week in fact and i have found it great because i’m learning more about the personal lives of the people that i work with and and some of those people i’m working with i’ve never met in person right yeah i had a donut recently with someone who we hired earlier this year uh she’s based in montana we’ve never met him right so the virtual copy gives us a chance to get to know each other as people been very helpful we’ve also instituted this concept of a fireside chat where we have no agenda and we meet for half an hour once a week and just let people talk let people say you know i saw this this week what are we doing about that right and sometimes you know we don’t have the ability to immediately answer the question but we can take an action to deal with it or other times it really just leads to a great informal conversation that isn’t something to solve but it’s something that’s on people’s minds and it gives people space to talk space to get out their concerns right so the fireside chats that we’ve implemented have been really helpful and then the last thing are these various social events right we schedule time for uh for for trivia uh for playing games together for socializing right

so there’s there’s opportunities and we even did some clever things like i can even show you because i have it sitting on top of my desk robin huh in this one i don’t remember whether you did i i did yes it was very fun right i never thought i was artistic and yet here’s my little artistic attempt right and so that was a very fun and different side of the brain activity for most of us who were very analytical and it was really a very fun social event right so yeah about these opportunities

Robyn Brooks | 00:38:00–00:44:59
yeah and these tend to replace some of the things that are lost when you don’t have that person-to-person contact like that water cooler conversation or sitting in the lunchroom with somebody you don’t have six meetings with every day right

and replacing some of the hallway conversations and after meeting huddles um where you talk through issues that come up that maybe aren’t something that would be addressed in a meeting and you can bring those to the fireside chat and chat about people’s home construction projects during virtual coffee

um and then definitely the team bonding and team building experience with the social events and this is just a small set of ideas but hopefully it’s helpful as we adjust to this new normal where you’re in virtual or hybrid environments

Roger Snyder | 00:38:00–00:44:59
right right and i saw in the chat that uh christina said that you know it’s worse because my team’s online but i have to be in the office so she’s on this camaraderie or or support to align with all the other teams so hopefully some of these techniques will help you i really hope that those those are good tips for you

Storytelling with Data

Roger Snyder | 00:45:00–00:49:59
all right so the last topic we want to cover is the importance i mean we’ve talked a lot about data driven right data driven has been a trend for years now and as a product manager you want to be data driven but sometimes there’s been an overreaction and i’m missing out on the fact that you need storytelling as well i mean we’ve been storytellers all the way back to uh you know the the cave person days right so telling impactful stories with data is what we’re talking about here and you really want to be able to do these three things and let’s dive into this a little bit deeper right so first off you want to understand your audience right so if you’re presenting to a set of engineers you’re going to set present a different set of information than you are if you’re going to be presented to set in executives right executives are going to want crisp brief information with just the high level most important pieces of analysis whereas engineers are probably going to want some of that but they’re going to want all the underlying data as well presented in a meaningful way but what you need to do then is string that data together into a meaningful dialogue right and we’ll talk about that in a moment then you focus on the people and their problems right it’s not just about the data it is about creating this narrative of who is the leading character and one caution i want you to think about here is think about your customer in the starring role all right yeah your product is not the star all right customer is the star and how are you making your customers journey an exciting or at least beneficial fruitful productive journey so you’re helping them solve their problems so put your customer in the star enroll and you and your product your company and your product are all in the supporting roles okay so you focus on those people on those problems and put your customer as the star enroll that’s that frame shift will help make the whole story more effective long term right and then know about the outcome in terms of the story that you’re trying to tell for the particular decision that needs to be made right now all right is this decision one that gets influenced by data right probably if you’ve got the right data but it still also needs to be a compelling story so how do you weave the right data into the story to make your case to get to the outcome that you’re hoping for right so gathering the right set of data based upon the audience and of course based on the problem you’re trying to solve i mean to the earlier point about the ethical gathering of that data only gather the data you need for that particular problem right and make sure you then understand what that data is telling you and then weave together the story that’s more compelling to your audience to get them to understand why they should make a decision one way or the other it doesn’t mean that you’re always going to get the answer you’re looking for in terms of your decision but it will make a far more effective case and in the case in the terms of like customer experiences telling a story really brings it to life and makes it more exciting for everyone to work

Robyn Brooks | 00:45:00–00:49:59
absolutely yeah it’s not just about showing 20 different charts and graphs and then letting people make their own uh decisions about that you know you want to have an opinion and you’re really again you’re making your users and your customers the starring the starring character in that story

um and you’re going to see a lot better results um with uh with the outcomes that you’re that you’re seeking with this methodology

Roger Snyder | 00:45:00–00:49:59
excellent it’s also quite frankly just more fun it is you stare at data all day long and kind of like your eyes glaze over right so let’s let’s kind of recap what we’ve talked about today in terms of trends in 2022 for product innovation i hope you come away from this thinking that you want to ask yourself some questions like how can you deliver new value to the new normal that we’re encountering right and and we had post-pandemic here but really it’s it’s becoming the pandemic is an ongoing thing and some of the changes that we’ve had in the way we work and the way we live are going to be permanent so now how do you deliver that new value and it’s the second roller thing yeah in 2022 it’s a second order of things not just easy stuff was distribution chain and the use of more mobile apps right the harder stuff now is the double click like robin’s example of now our habits of what we consume like what you’re cooking at home or the way you need you know you don’t pack lunches the same way that you used to right those are things that you need to be thinking about in new ways as we continue to shift right things are continuing to shift in the way we operate right then think about product like growth how can your product more automatically grow your business and we gave you a couple of examples both in terms of software and hardware or physical products so be thinking about how you can uh be able to do that more sorry my example is b to c b to b sorry b to c b to b especially how can you more possibly engage the audience so that the audience themselves sells more of the product or service that you’re using absolutely and then the last one was look for ways to experiment and we’ve talked a lot about that in software but today we talked a little bit more about how can you experiment with physical products consumer products and be being able to understand and accelerate the way you deliver value to your customers given these new normals we also then talked about the discipline of product management and how things like taking jedi training could help you see more opportunities not only have a more diverse workforce which in itself is an inherent good but also be able to build better products as a result right then ask some of the hard ethical questions is what we’re doing right and we gave you a couple of different dimensions to think about in terms of using customer data in terms of the health outcomes of your product right think about assisting sustainability easy for me to say as a new dimension of thought in your whole product thinking right and then we gave you some tips on hopefully you can use to improve communication your influence your negotiation skills and then be able to and i i wrote this very thoughtfully consciously work to keep it personal consciously work to keep work personal we’re all people even though we have a lot less physical contact it’s very important to have human interaction right and then lastly up your storytelling skills put data to work but then to tell a more compelling story

Free Resource, Q&A & Closing

Roger Snyder | 00:50:00–00:59:59
all right so hopefully these techniques will help you as you’re moving into 2022 so our free gift today is our ebook the phenomenal product manager and this book talks a lot about communication influence and negotiation and these techniques are tried and true but extremely valuable and even more important these days so uh when you get the follow-up email from us after the webinar look for the link to be able to download this ebook and it’s short by the way it’s it’s a really great read and it’s very short and i hope you can find it a useful tool to help improve your communication skills

excellent thank you let’s get to something all right okay so we’ve got a couple of questions coming in if you click on the q a section within the webinar tools feel free to continue adding more questions but i’ve got a couple here to start off with

um that i’m really curious to hear your your thoughts roger so i’ve got this one that if i’m a product team member how can i help improve the ethics of my whole team as an individual contributor oh right so as an internal contributor you may not feel like you’ve got the authority necessarily right i think i think i would start just by some asking asking questions uh you know use some of the techniques that we were talking about earlier well so how are we going to use that data right if you just become more conscious in the conversations that you’re in of asking these questions over and over again you can start that influence that’s that’d be one technique i would use and the other one would be maybe in my one-on-one with my manager ask the bigger questions in a smaller audience of hey can we think more about these various issues how do we avoid this i always would also encourage you to come at it from the perspective of what benefit will our group have by thinking this way so use some of the tips that we talked about like for example with respect to sustainability there’s data that proves that having a sustainable product can command a more premium price and hasn’t fixed so come to each of these conversations with a uh you know what’s in it for me uh attitude so you’re both raising the right questions but you’re also showing that by thinking about these things we can actually make better products

Robyn Brooks | 00:50:00–00:59:59
absolutely and i i love the the idea of of approaching this from the perspective of being curious because as a product manager we’re naturally curious so asking the right questions thinking about your company goals and your products goals and tying some of these ethical questions directly into those asking the right questions in front of the right audience to start getting your leadership thinking so yeah there’s absolutely impact you can have as an individual contributor um towards some of these ethical challenges great question

Roger Snyder | 00:50:00–00:59:59
yeah okay i’ve got another good one here so if we can’t afford a 3d printer right now uh how else can we experiment with more physical products yeah it’s a good point right so if you’re a smaller company or a startup you may not be able to afford these things when you’re working on on a consumer or physical product um get a little bit more gorilla about this uh one of the examples i’ve seen before was the creative use of cardboard so you can actually use cardboard and a pen and and make make some mock-ups that are physical still uh and you can do you use an x-acto knife right make this a sharp looking preto type so not something that works but something that stands in as a representative of value and you can use things like like wood or cardboard or other simple materials to mock up your your understanding right now of the products uh physical dimensions and use that in a focus group right use that in customer interviews be able to put that in front of sample users or prospects and see what their reactions are right you explain the story behind it and you can probably supplement with like a powerpoint that shows a more uh compelling virtual sense of it but still having that physical product that they can put in their hands and get a sense of will help and and you can do it with things like cardboard and wood i mean the original palm pilot right a little bit was was actually prototyped in wood first right wood and a stack of cards that had little hand drawings people think of balsamiq today this was actually hand-drawn user experience cards and it was like those books you used to read as a kid where if you’re going to cross the bridge go to page 36 if you walk along the street and go to page 40 right so the cards i don’t have the whole visual user experience and then you tapped on a button it would take you to a different card so you could completely mock up a user experience that way

Robyn Brooks | 00:50:00–00:59:59
absolutely and i would also keep an eye on some of the digital tools in the ar and vr space because those are becoming more accessible i think there’s still a little bit of a learning curve but over the next year to 18 months to two years those tools are going to become more affordable and more accessible even for non-technical audiences so keep an idea on those keep an eye on those spaces as well

um and i think you’ll find that there’s there’s some significant value there and being able to do rapid prototyping even for physical products

Roger Snyder | 00:50:00–00:59:59
okay i think we’ve got time for one last question uh this is a good one so how can i approve my ability to influence other folks particularly the engineers on my team uh okay yeah so the engineering team is often the one that product managers struggle with the most right so i always want you to think about it you know from starting from the perspective of what what is going to motivate them what is going to help them understand your problems i hope your customers problems a little bit more so start from the perspective of what motivates them right if they’re interested in solving problems right they’re they’re totally excited about solving problems or they want to find new technical approaches to things can you come up then with the data and then the story to go with it that shows the problems that they want to solve in a more effective way right particularly when maybe they’re excited about a shiny new object technology when really it could just be a ux change you need to come with that data to demonstrate that you’ve done your homework and you’re not just expressing your own opinion the one mistake i made early on in my product management career was it was like well i’m the product manager so my opinion counts more right that’s not a long-term recipe for success it’s not you actually have to come with the data to prove that it’s not my opinion it’s about what our customers actually need so the more you gain more influence the more you bring real data that demonstrates to the team to the engineers too this is why we want to solve this particular problem and if we did this it would increase the customer satisfaction it would increase profitability so that’s the last piece you bring the data you make your compelling argument then you show what’s in it for the whole company and you turn the engineer into a hero right you make the engineer hero in terms of like you’re going to help us build a product that’s way more effective that delivers more profits or it gets more users for example

Robyn Brooks | 00:50:00–00:59:59
i agree and i would say also think about you know when you’re some of the things we discussed about negotiation right what are the things that those engineers need what are problems are they facing are there ways that you can advocate for their needs so that they’ll be better advocates for the things that you need for the product as well so it is always a give and take absolutely great

Roger Snyder | 00:50:00–00:59:59
all right um yeah thank you roger yeah i want to end with this that if you’re on a team of product managers and you could use some help learning some of these skills thinking about how to go about improving the skills of your team contact us to adagroup.com and we’ll be able to help you in team training private training or individual training whatever it might be that you need to improve your skills so i hope you’ve had a great time with us today and i hope you are able to use some of these techniques to get into 2022 and become a more effective product manager

Robyn Brooks | 00:50:00–00:59:59
yes thank you everyone for attending and have a wonderful day all right thank you bye everyone

i’m going to give people a moment to copy links before i close

all right hopefully that’s enough time we’ll include these links also in the follow-up email bye everybody