Don’t put PM in a box 📦, Increasing customer satisfaction 👍, Founder mode in growth 🚀, and more
Weekly Roundup 19 - October 20, 2024
👋 Hey, Sam here! Welcome back to the 🔁 Weekly Roundup edition 🔁 of The Product Trench. Each week, I curate deep dives, trends and resources related to product management and leadership.
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Happy Sunday everyone! 😎
It’s been a minute! I am back and almost done fixing my jet lag.
It was a great trip and time well spent with family. Plus, we got to see some pandas 🐼 (see picture at the end). My 2-year-old insisted they were dogs 🐕. I didn’t bother correcting him 🤣. I pick my battles, okay?! Mine was trying to make him sleep on a 24-hour flight back.
Anyway, I digress! I know you missed the Weekly Roundup, so let’s get to it.
This Week's Roundup 🔁
What your biggest weakness really is.
Creating a product hierarchy.
Why founders should understand the worldview of bureaucrats.
6 ways you can increase customer satisfaction immediately.
Growth teams should stay in a founder mode.
The importance of business models to building great products.
Leading B2B product management in high-resistance environments.
What your biggest weakness really is (14 min read)
The article argues that candidates often fail to recognize weaknesses that matter most to hiring managers, such as domain gaps or limited experience. Instead of hiding these, reframe them into strengths by showcasing growth, adaptability, and problem-solving. It's crucial to craft a narrative showing how your unique path adds value, even if it deviates from traditional expectations.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Acknowledge your real weaknesses and show how you've turned them into advantages by using storytelling to highlight personal growth.
Creating a product hierarchy (3 min read)
Instead of viewing a product in isolation, think of it as part of a broader portfolio. A well-structured product hierarchy helps align teams around customer needs and strategic goals. This hierarchy shapes everything—from product strategy to marketing and messaging—by organizing products from broad categories down to specific features. It enables teams to execute independently while staying aligned on market objectives, leading to clearer communication and stronger market positioning.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Start collaborating with marketing early using a product hierarchy. It ensures alignment on positioning, messaging, and timing across the product lifecycle, and prepares tailored messaging for varied stakeholders.
Why founders should understand the worldview of bureaucrats (9 min read)
Bureaucrats often prioritize job security and risk avoidance over innovation, which can be challenging for startups. To succeed in selling to them, emphasize stability, minimize perceived risks, and use social proof. Their decisions are primarily driven by the need for defensibility rather than a desire for bold ideas, so frame your pitch accordingly.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Emphasize how your solution is low-risk, defensible, and aligns with precedents, using strong social proof to appeal to risk-averse decision-makers.
6 ways you can increase customer satisfaction immediately! (4 min read)
Customer satisfaction hinges on delivering promised value, ensuring the product is worth the cost, and providing a pleasant experience. Segment customers using NPS to prioritize efforts: promote happy users, convert neutrals, and address detractors. Strategies include reducing friction, surprising users, improving experiences, and preventing dead ends. High satisfaction drives loyalty, making it critical for growth.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Ensure customers feel satisfied by balancing value, refining experiences, and addressing issues proactively to drive retention and organic growth.
Growth teams should stay in a founder mode (6 min read)
Growth teams must remain in "Founder Mode," characterized by agility, innovation, and direct problem-solving, regardless of company maturity. This scrappy approach is vital for preventing stagnation, as it helps detect emerging opportunities and market shifts. Unlike "Manager Mode," which focuses on scalability, growth teams thrive by iterating quickly and staying close to customers, ensuring impactful outcomes.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Keep your growth team focused on continuous experimentation and direct user feedback to maintain momentum and avoid complacency.
The importance of business models to building great products (5 min read)
Product managers should align their work with the business model to drive revenue, not just focus on features. Key areas include reducing churn, increasing customer usage, and targeting metrics that lead to sustainable growth. Features that don't directly impact these areas can waste resources. Understanding the business model deeply is essential to prioritize efforts that contribute to long-term success.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize product changes based on what directly impacts the business model, not just feature outputs.
Leading B2B product management in high-resistance environments (9 min read)
Navigating resistance in B2B product management, especially in environments where stakeholders may lack experience with agile or incremental delivery, is challenging. Common issues include misaligned expectations, risk aversion, and technical debt. Strategies to overcome these include using the OKR framework for vision alignment, adopting an MVP approach with A/B testing to secure buy-in, and employing multi-channel communication tools to reduce misunderstandings. Additionally, addressing technical debt through phased modernization and lean budgeting helps balance immediate needs with long-term product scalability.
⚡️Your Actionable Takeaway: Prioritize clear communication and use visual aids to align diverse stakeholders, while balancing short-term demands with long-term product vision.
Some Pandas for ya. Or, as my kid called them, woof woof
👋 That's it for this week's edition. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your week.
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See you next time.
— Sam ✌️
All the 'fast growth' stories from yesteryear (facebook, dropbox, airbnb, etc.) are all very much scrappy-oriented. Whether 'founder mode' is the right wording I'm not sure (Chamath was being a lot of FB's growth and he wasn't a founder, as an example) but I agree with that premise. Scrappy wins the growth.
thanks for the good articles and summarize. I really enjoyed the insights on "Keep your growth team focused on continuous experimentation and direct user feedback to maintain momentum and avoid complacency. We are in h1'25 planning and it's a good reminder to ensure that the right teams continue to be religious about finding growth.