Ben Newell - LaunchPod
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Jeff: [00:00:00] Hey Ben, nice to have you on man. Thanks for joining us today.

Ben: Thank you for having me, Jeff. . Pleasure to be here.

Jeff: I'm excited. I think Off the bat, we like to start with just a little bit of, let's get to know each other. Product management is one of those things that it can just be. so diverse and so differentiated across every company. And I've had this issue where my mother in law will say she still doesn't know what I do. So when you're talking to a non tech person, how do you define or describe what product management is?

Ben: It's funny you ask this question because my kids, I have a 14 year old and a 12 year old, and when I asked them what I do, they say, dad does a clickety clack zoom, zoom which just means typing away on the keyboard and sitting in meetings and a lot of days, a product feels like that. But if I were to describe it to people, it's fairly straightforward to say, look, our job is to understand the problems that people face.

To creatively come up with solutions to those problems and then do the work to build and then get it in the hands of those customers. That's been a pretty straightforward way for me to think [00:01:00] about product management. And actually, as I've gathered more experience in my career, I try to really come back to those principles a lot of just look, what are we doing here?

We're trying to understand the problems we're trying to come up with solutions, and then we're going to get it in the hands of people and try not to overcomplicate it.

Jeff: I love it at heart, right? I feel like that's the gist of almost any tech company you're going to be at is solve the problem, find it, define it, solve it. And. Ship a product that does that.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: I've had people go very esoteric on that and talk about having people operate in their, peak performance bubble or operate the best thing they're at, as much as possible.

And then, down to very operational. But I think that's a good one that really nails it in the bug concisely. 

Ben: I tell my family, that's for sure.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. People can understand it, right? So it works. A little bit more operational, day to day we all are ensconced in so many digital tools and things that help us throughout the day.

What are three things you can't live without tool wise throughout your day?

Ben: . It's funny. I'm always on the lookout for new tools too, and I have the remnants of them, like little timers and things that people have suggested over [00:02:00] time. And they're still just sitting there unused. For me there's a few that are really important. One that I really miss a lot of being more remote as a product manager these days is a whiteboard.

I have one here in my office that helps me to brainstorm, but it doesn't have that collaborative feeling. So whenever we get a chance to be in person, I am on a whiteboard as quickly as possible. Obviously Miro and FigJam and other tools like do a great job of replicating this digitally. So those are some of my favorite tools.

I really have. Evolve my use of Google keep to be the best version that I can get out of it as both a notes platform that works across devices and across, you know, my computer as well as my phone. And then as well as the to do list management, I just find it, it's integrated nicely into the Google workspace.

And so I use keep a ton and it's one of my favorite tools. And then I guess maybe lastly, I probably would have, at one point said Twitter to stay up to date on what was happening and what was occurring. Obviously Twitter evolved, but I think I also evolved and I tended towards [00:03:00] more, long form content.

And I really, when I wanted to learn about something, I wanted to spend more time with it. And so newsletters have been a great way to bring that about. And Substack I found to be a great platform to manage all of those together in one place. So my coffee each day starts with scrolling through kind of my Substack newsletters that are of interest to me across a multitude of things, I think as a product manager.

Not only, of course, do you need to keep up on product and what's going on in technology, but I find your better understanding of the world and what's going on culturally and problems that are existing helps you get at those, when we talk about what product management is understanding the problems people face.

You got to look at lots of problems in order to understand what that looks like. So my sub stack is a hodgepodge of all sorts of different things.

Jeff: And the solve is always in context of the people you're solving for as well.

Ben: Yeah 

Jeff: and then finally, this, I think this is my favorite one, but we all have opinions on product and what's going on and trends. What is [00:04:00] an unpopular product opinion that you hold right now about product management or process, or even just where it fits in the org.

Ben: I feel like I hold a lot of popular opinions. So thinking through a few of them if I were to share like one specifically, I think it comes back to that point at the beginning that I made of it's really like we tend to overcomplicate it and it's not that complicated or it doesn't have to be that complicated and I see so much debate on frameworks and tooling and goals systems and agile versus like, versus safe versus, all these, different methodologies that we've used to try to make our lives easier as well as tooling, whatever, pick your favorite tool of the day.

I just don't think any of it really is gonna matter until you've got figured out the people in the team. And if you understand what the people in your organization and what your team needs in order to succeed, And you then understand the different pros and cons of each of these frameworks and tooling opportunities.

Then you pick the [00:05:00] right one for your situation that is going to get the most out of you. The people you're around and your team and I just so Often see teams start with tooling when they start thinking about whether it be a digital transformation Or how do we improve our process? Like I don't know what's what it is about it But like people are so drawn to like, oh let's consult the tool and see what it will do And I would so much rather just focus on you know what do we think the right way is for us and then we'll make the tool do it So I think none of those matter The frameworks, toolings, of course you have to have one at one point, but like knowing the people and knowing the team that's the most important.

Jeff: Yeah I have fallen down the, we will buy a tool to solve the problem rabbit hole before, and I think where I finally landed after escaping that hole multiple times is if you can figure out the problem you're solving and, really understand it and crystallize it well and have a good solve and have the right team there to help you, execute.

You need to bring in tooling that's going [00:06:00] to help you enhance that, but you're never going to be better than the strategy. Like the tooling has never been more useful than the strategy you're executing and your ability to execute. 

Ben: And almost all the tooling these days is super flexible and you can evolve to fit, whatever's going to work for you, no matter what. It's happened.

Jeff: yeah I think that's one of those ones in the marketing world. I'm right there with you where most of it is, I won't say bad, but it's just, nothing's going to enhance past understanding your users, where do they want to learn or where do they want to be reached? What do they care about? And if you can nail down those things, like things like attribution and, automation and everything, or just can only enhance if you're already doing the right.

So I, I'm right there with you, man. I love that.

Ben: Maybe, I don't know, maybe that is popular. I'm not sure, but some days it feels unpopular. Yeah.

Jeff: feel like it's one of those like becoming popular pieces where everyone's like, Let's make simple cool again.

Ben: That's right.

Jeff: Cool. Speaking about, simple and maybe more get into the core of things. Now I was digging through your LinkedIn and saw [00:07:00] you recently posted about your yoga practice and that you start the day every day.

With a quick a bit of stretching and yoga. Have also recently gotten on to the yoga train and found that just the early morning workout helps focus really catalyze the day and get me going. Not to dig in too much there, but like, how'd you come to yoga as a solution to getting your day going?

Ben: Yeah, it's I would say somewhat organically, although there is a Genesis moment for me. I had been at the first company. I started with Sabre travel technology company. I was there for 17 years. And. It was, fairly straightforward for me. I was known it's respected well within the company.

I was the youngest VP while I was there and I just felt like it was time for me to do something different. And so I left and went to a kind of startup scale up called to know it, which is in the influencer marketing space. And when I got there, the pace was very different. Really exciting, really fun but a lot different than if you've ever, [00:08:00] worked in large company and you've spent time in scale up, you know the difference between those two.

And I. Found that for me anxiety and stress is it's a challenge. I need to manage it, right? And I don't know if you've ever seen the Yerkes Dodson curve. It's not complicated. It's , a bell curve. But what it says is that, hey, when we don't have much stress, anxiety we're not at optimal performance, like we're not quite there yet.

And when we have too much, we're not at optimal. And so there's just like middle of the curve where it's the optimum amount of stress and anxiety to get optimal performance. And for me, yoga and meditation are the key to keeping me in that zone. And , it doesn't take a lot it's 20 minutes in the morning.

But it really is the key to keeping me in that center of the bell curve. And it's been a big part of just my own personal journey, my own personal mental health, but also like it relates really closely to work and like ties in quite nicely.

Jeff: Yeah, no It's definitely a good way. I [00:09:00] found the days that I don't do something yoga or some other kind of exercise, I'm slower. I don't feel as focused. It's definitely a good way to like just set my day off on the right tone, but I feel like I've learned a lot from the practice as well about.

We can all recognize the people like you. You're going to yoga harder than anyone else.

Yoga is in class. And it's just so antithetical to what it's about but we know you're going to do it. So we, we action towards that a little bit for folks like you. And the problem was I ran into, that's, the all gas, no break. It doesn't work at work and it doesn't work elsewhere, but I learned outside of work that, I found myself getting injured.

I found myself, unable to do these things because I kept going too hard and I realized pulling back there and being intentional about what am I trying to get out of each thing? If I go to the gym and lift weights, I'm trying to do something. If I go to yoga, I'm trying to stretch and recover a bit, but having that intentionality around what the point is.

Of the thing I'm doing is what's a good lesson to apply to also here when, we're [00:10:00] looking at, across several teams or, across several product teams, what's the point of the feature we're trying to ship. What's the point of the problem we're trying to solve. You don't have to be, all gas, no break everywhere.

That doesn't work. You can't, not everything can be a hundred percent top priority. And I feel like I learned that in a very actionable way from this practice as well.

Ben: I wish more people would learn it. I always refer to it as drive like it's Mario Kart, where you just hold the button down the whole time, right? I just, I see that a lot. And I think of this curve a lot, when you are in this like maximum stress and anxiety levels, you are not at your optimal performance.

And I have some friends that are like, Oh, yoga. Oh, okay. What did you know? Like Eastern. I'm like, guys, look, this isn't like a, this is a scientifically known thing that if we try to operate. With too much stress and anxiety, we're not at. And so we can apply that right to [00:11:00] work and look at it and say, Hey, if we are not trying to optimize for, continuous improvement, things that help us understand the pace that we're going at, because this is a marathon, we're going to run it for forever.

And ideally, we're just getting continually better and better. And, that's happened in yoga as well. Like, when I first started, I could barely touch my toes, it 

wasn't flexible at all, I couldn't do any of the more challenging poses and, some of them started to become like, I could do it, so for me, it was like wild thing, which is flipping on your back or wheel where you're like, you do a back bend,

Jeff: I still can't do that one.

Ben: I couldn't do them when I started, but then I could. And the practice, and the like, getting better at those, and now, those are straightforward for me, I don't have any challenges with those. And now I'm like, advancing to some more advanced poses, like crow, or headstand, or some of these other different things.

Jeff: I saw your crow. It looked good.

Ben: Oh, thank you. I can't believe you [00:12:00] put that on LinkedIn. I'm like, it's okay. It's okay.

Jeff: To that point, back to lessons I've taken away from here and we've been able to take away from here. One thing I think that helped me along my early career, a superpower of mine was I could work extremely hard, , I could do the Mario Kart style.

Just keep your finger on the button and go. As you grow in your career, you find that's not always the best way. I've learned, a superpower only exists and is only beneficial in context. So I learned that, temper that and aim it and focus it and also know where. Maybe we're getting more gains from a rest day to follow the metaphor.

What on your end are, maybe skills that you've learned to develop and, maybe things that were superpowers that you learned how to better manage to get more out of it as you've come up through your career.

Ben: Yeah. I love talking to my team members about this and helping to identify their superpowers and really lean into them for them. It's something that I have found to just be, even the words. just have been really useful for team members. My performance reviews are pretty [00:13:00] super straightforward. I've used the same template for, a decade of three things we're really proud of, three of your strengths and three opportunities for growth.

What's interesting though is team members will often, I feel like they're just waiting for me to get to the opportunities for growth, especially those who are really driven. Like those type a like ability to just hold the B button down the whole time on Mario Kart, right? Like those team members are the ones who are just waiting for the opportunities for growth And I always pause before we talk about strengths and explain this that hey You are going to get hired Because of your superpower like your career is going to go in this trajectory because of your superpowers And frankly at some point your superpowers like the inverse of them Will be the things that end up in this opportunities for growth and you won't want to like you want to soften them You can't have like really difficult things that are hard to work with but for example for me you know i've been told that i'm very good at understanding complex things Simplifying them and then [00:14:00] sharing them in inspiring ways with teams.

And that's been something that I've continued to refine and speak publicly. I spoke at mind the product a couple of years ago, which was a big bucket list item of mine and really proud to get a chance to do that. But what happens though, is that a lot of times my voice can take up the air in the room.

And can really prevent others from sharing their opinion. And I started to recognize this and actually I got this it's here on my desk all the time. It's this little poker chip. It's nothing special, but it helps me to remember that my voice, does carry a lot of weight and that I should only use it when I feel like I really need to.

And so for me, it's about holding this and waiting to play this point and waiting to speak more frequently than simply sharing my voice all the time. It tends to prevent others from speaking. The superpower being able to simplify things and share it and inspire people to do so also has this [00:15:00] inverse effect of taking out the air in the room.

And so as I've worked with team members to think about what their superpowers are, we always talk about the inverse because you need to be aware of it and soften it. It's not gonna go away because it's the inverse. And so I think at some point people start to understand that and that really leads to like really getting the most out of what your superpowers are when you understand what the inverse is.

Jeff: Even if you look this is not a new thing. The idea of focus on your strengths, right? This was back to what was the book in, in was it first break all the rules? I think talks about focus on superpowers, that's the biggest thing 

it's better to focus on continuing to develop where you're really good. You usually can't dig someone out of, a rut of something they're really not good at. You're probably not going to make them great at that thing, but you can be world class at a couple of things that you're already very strong in.

So focus on that. Like you said, round the corners on the other things, round the edges a

Ben: Yeah, some people have trouble with this and I have always advised teams [00:16:00] like or people who might be listening who don't have a manager who's thinking about this? It's just ask the people you work with like why they like working with you or what you're good at They're gonna they're gonna tell you what it is And if at work it feels like it's weird to ask your co workers ask your family like hey What am I good at if we were going to do a project or we were volunteering together like?

What would you ask me to do? What am I good at? And trying to get a sense of that and then continue to work on it is really important.

Jeff: I want to pivot a little bit. I want to get your opinion. So speaking of being able to break stuff down and understand it and be insightful and inspiring. I have this theory and I'd love to get your feedback on it. Hypothesis here is that the difference between great companies and average companies, and this probably applies more to, scale ups than anywhere else is not that great companies succeed at more things and average companies fail more often, but rather that they pick the right things to succeed at and to be great at.

So I guess it's, Back to you. They focus on the superpowers. They focus on the things that are really going [00:17:00] to drive exponential value and they do them. Really well. I guess just off the bat, like what's your reaction to that? How does that sit with someone like you?

Who's you've probably seen from the product side a lot more than I have.

. I think, lots of teams can make things. There is a certain level of challenge in making things at all, but like lots of teams can make things to make great things to make great products. Is frankly very difficult and then to do it and then sustain it is even more challenging.

Ben: I think you've touched on one of, I think there I've said before, there are three things that like make great teams and you touched on one, which is one of the most important ones, but also frankly, probably one of the hardest ones, which is focus. And if I had a dime for every time someone said that, our main problem is focus like it's it's very common.

We all know it. And yet here we are regularly adding things to the pile. And it's, I don't, I want to say unbelievable, but, it's believable now because I've seen it for 25 years but [00:18:00] really, if you want to be great, you got to focus. And I think one of the hardest things of focus is that it does require people who may not necessarily at this moment be able to give 100 percent of their time to that problem.

You might look at them and go I don't know that our DevOps people really need to focus on this problem. Cause it. They're only like 35 percent of their time they could spend on this. And so you then, instead of taking the 35 percent and focusing it into, you go zero. You're like, okay, they don't need to focus on that.

And I think that's one of the key things is like a recognition that focus. Might, especially at the beginning, mean that not everyone can put 100 percent of their time against this thing. Although we need all of everybody's time. The second thing is really about team and it's about people and it's a, we talk a lot about psychological safety and that's really the crux of it.

People need to feel like they can say, I don't get it. I don't understand what you're saying, or I don't think that's a good [00:19:00] idea. Or be able to share things that might sound crazy upfront, like that is critically important for success of a team. And I will say in my career. I've worked in five different industries across a bunch of different situations, built many products from scratch and big products. , maybe two or three times I felt like I've had a team with like really good psychological safety. And it really matters. It makes a huge difference and it really gets the best out of everyone, especially if you have a really diverse team to now you're talking if you get a diverse team with psychological safety.

And then lastly, and, feels kind of Ted Lasso cheesy, but you got to believe people got to believe that you can solve this problem that you can be the most successful at this that you can drive to the goals that you. Have set out for the organization. You really do have to believe it and When you look at goal setting, it's one of the challenges I find all the time is people like, Oh, we'll set these really lofty goals [00:20:00] and then that will help people to, really push.

Yeah, but I do have to believe that I can achieve that. If I, if it's so lofty that I just don't believe it, I'm like, how would we ever do that? It's not gonna work. So when I look at the difference between good And good's not bad. It's better than bad. It's good. Um, The difference between good and great boils down to those three things.

Focus, do we have psychological safety as a team, and do we believe in this? And it's really hard to get those things, and then even harder to maintain.

Jeff: Yeah, I mean I think we've all been in Or know someone who's been in the kind of team that has very low psychological safety and you can feel that the team Is not Motivate and it probably ekes out to, they also don't believe as a result. But people don't, back to operating at a high level of stress probably inhibits performance.

Once it crosses a threshold that puts you over that threshold pretty quick.

Ben: Yeah, if your meetings are like, everyone's [00:21:00] camera off and no one's saying anything,

Jeff: it's not a good

Ben: you need a hard reset. Yeah, you need a hard reset. You're not gonna, you're not gonna achieve great.

Jeff: but yeah, you bring up a good, those three things. It's interesting because there is a almost dichotomy there that you have to pay attention to where especially if you are a scale up, let's say or at that kind of startup scale up high growth, , or even a big company with a challenger product, you need to focus on the right things.

You need the team that, feels safe, but they feel safe in also having the belief and almost the hubris that you can change this industry. But still the discipline to look at it and have that hubris while also saying we need to focus on a few things. We can't do everything. We're not going to be world class at everything.

And it's a rare mix to be able to get that wisdom and that just drive and, ability hit the B button when you need to. And, but also once in a while you need to, you need to hit the break and maybe do , break slide into a turn. So

Ben: But you asked me at the start, what are three tools you use each day? Or if I asked you to [00:22:00] go to your phone and we were focused on software, I've done software and hardware and like this mix of real world stuff. But if I were to ask you to go to your phone and tell me the great things that are on your phone and great products, it's not going to be that 

Jeff: it's a couple, right?

Ben: Yeah. So does everyone do it?

Jeff: Yeah,

Ben: Even it's hard to make happen. And, you want to set the goals for it, but also, it's very difficult to build great things that people love that stand the test of time as well.

Jeff: exactly. I think this brings us to a good. Point to jump to, you've talked a lot about kind of the progression of product management and that there is, you can't just jump right in and you're not gonna be a master right away. There's this idea of, one Oh one, two Oh one, three Oh one of progressing and maturing through the practice that is product management.

Can you maybe go into in detail a little bit, like what are those levels, what defines them and, I'd love to talk about this a little bit and understand it better.

Ben: Yeah, absolutely. I think this has been something that I've come to throughout my career and recognized [00:23:00] and, helped form like the techniques to get this done and regularly had the chance to do one on one and regularly had the chance to do two on one. I really only got into the three on one stuff a few times.

And this is where you start to see that great products start to exist. I was thinking of it a little bit like we talked about yoga and how, some of the poses were very difficult for me at the beginning that are now fairly straightforward. But I didn't start out on day one, trying to do a headstand or a handstand, like I wasn't trying to start with the most difficult and complex elements of yoga on day one. And yet. I so often see this happen in product management. We have some great thought leaders in our space who are talking about the 301 techniques and what that really takes to be great. And. I agree with almost all of it. Like it's, wonderful work and I have a whole library here of all of it that I've read yet too often.

I see teams start with those things instead of, [00:24:00] all right, what are the basics? Like we need to make sure that we can do the basics before we can start looking at some of these pieces. And so when I look at product management, one on one to me, it's really, the product org is set up, it drives.

And it's capable of consistent execution. So people know that the product org is where these ideas come from and where you bring ideas to you understand your value in the market. And you know what your three to five big initiatives are. So you have a sense of what you're working on a realistic roadmap, something that you can believe in as a team.

This is not always the case. It's like you have a realistic one. You've got some top level metrics and the rest of the org knows to get feedback to you. So when a customer comes to you. And then lastly, you can get things done., this is an achievement. If it's set up, it's driving and you can consistently execute, that is an achievement that you should be proud of as a team.

So many teams cannot do this. And if you can't do these things. Frankly, you don't have a lot of business talking about fully empowered product teams and [00:25:00] talking about prototyping and talking about some of the 301 techniques. You need to be able to do these base things in order to then progress to them.

It doesn't take forever to put it in place. It's probably. Six months three to six months depending on where you are today but one on one is an achievement that teams should be proud of when they get there

Jeff: mean, it sounds like one on one is, you're getting your undergrad basically. It's already a college level course. I've seen multiple companies have done okay. That weren't even doing that. So how do we get into 201 then?

But what's, going back to, the all gas here. I'm always craving, what's the next thing? What's,

Ben: I when I was at uh, myovision, which is where I was most recently Which is a company that creates technology for cities To improve safety and reduce traffic and improve sustainability we did a pretty substantial product transformation and we started with a lot of the 101 pieces and we were able to achieve it, but like It was impossible to get the team to like revel in the like, hey, good job.

That's a great thing They're like what's 201? I'm like, okay. All right. All right. Let's [00:26:00] go there 201 is I think we're most You of our purest product managers would say okay, this is where you're really doing product management. You're starting to get a deep understanding of the data and what your customers are looking for.

And you're driving via a strategy that is aligned to those things. You deeply understand your data, you deeply understand your customers, and you're driving towards a strategy. So your goals as a team are connected to the company's goals. They're not like an independent, Oh, we've got separate product initiatives that we're pursuing, which is common in one on one necessary, but you want to see it tied to the company goals.

You start roadmapping problems to solve versus features. And you can realistically understand what that looks like. You're directly interacting with customers and getting feedback prior to rolling something out. So whether that's beta or demos or, early adopter programs, you're doing those kinds of things when you have to decide what to do, you are considering build by partner.

And [00:27:00] now I always add AI to this list like build by partner. Let AI do it. A lot of times in the beginning, it's build every the answer to everyone is built. When you get into 201, you're really considering what these look like. And you know what the leading metrics are for those top one, two, three, four.

Three to five metrics that you identified in one on one. You know how to affect them now in one on one, you know what they are. You're measuring them. That's great. And two on one, you know how to affect. So for me that's now we're getting into the two on one. We're directly talking to customers.

We're understanding the leading metrics. We're roadmapping kind of problems to solve. And our goals are tied to the company.

Jeff: so would you say at this level now you're understanding, what affects those kind of business outcomes that you're looking to drive and you're planning for, how do you drive those forward? How do you drive those? Like you said, in line with then they ladder up to business goals.

Ben: Yes. That is your, understanding what it is customers are wanting. You're cause you're talking to them directly. And you're seeing what happens when you deliver these [00:28:00] capabilities to them in the form of data and in the form of feedback from them. And when you think about what to do next, you're thinking about it in the context of customers and their feedback.

And we had an initiative called Customer First. Everyone has this we want to put the customer. This is really like 201, like when you're really doing it. There's a lot of lip service given to it in 101, but in 201, you're really doing

Jeff: I feel like that's, the simplicity with which you talk about it and you've, you've mentioned this is a superpower. Yours is breaking things down, making them inspiring. And part of, I think of being inspirational is being a little inspirational. Making things seem simple. That's actually, there's a lot of failure points possible in what you just talked about, right? Talking to the customers, pulling out the right insights, like asking them the right questions, ensuring you're getting the right stuff from them first. Then understanding enough to go and action a plan off of that.

And then making sure that how you are doing that is furthering the business goals of the company and getting [00:29:00] you closer to, what you need to do as a company to be successful. Cause there's a lot of ways you can do something useful for the customer, but maybe it's not in line with the long term vision, or maybe it's Useful, but it's 

Ben: specific customer. 

Jeff: yeah, or really different from the other things you've done.

So now it's really confusing your product. So I think, it sounds really simple in practice, but this is where two Oh one seems to start to get complicated is you have a lot of dependencies where you have to understand you have to action correctly and you have to build that on top of that, on top of that to make it really work well.

Ben: And we're one on one I, find you can do as a product team, like you could start to get a lot of that in place, you need your engineering counterparts probably pretty heavily, but generally you could do this in isolation not totally, but generally in two Oh one. Okay.

Now you're really relying on the rep. You're starting to rely on the rest of the organization in order for this to have success. So if you're going to tie to the company strategy, you better have a good company strategy that's clear. And you know what it looks like. And, that's not always true, right?

So if that's going to be part of your 201, then you better have a good company [00:30:00] strategy. If you're talking directly to customers, then you likely now have a path by which you're interacting with your account management teams, your sales teams maybe it's a community site where you've got direct to consumer users.

You have some of these pieces in place and it's not always true that those things are in place. If you're really thinking about build by partner, AI, you're working closely with engineering, like you're deeply connected with them and thinking about what that looks like. I share all that to say.

Now it's more than just you and one on one is about putting the product in place and saying, this is what we do, this is what we're good at. Here we can show you the value that we demonstrate. And now it's starting to bring the rest of the organization. Three on one is where you're really getting the rest of the organization involved.

And now you're talking about the team. And I think when we talk about empowered product teams, which Marty Kagan, has spoken passionately about, and I love this concept, that team is not [00:31:00] just product design engineering. It's all Account management, sales, support all the rest of your organization coming together as a team to solve that.

And that is, a core element of the 301 pieces. And when you're at 301, now you're talking empowered, cross functional teams are experimenting regularly, and they have the systems and processes in place to like, pivot quickly. And make those adjustments and a lot of people want to start there when I'm getting started in an organization, people are like, we need to do this.

I was like, I know we need to do that, but we can't just start doing handstands on the first day. We've got to stretch out. We got to warm up. We got to get it. Some of these things in place so we can make that happen.

Jeff: I think, the simplicity with which you lay it out the. Complicated nature of doing these things, right? This is something where execution really matters. And you're, I heard someone say, your strategy is never better than the execution.

This is getting the details, understanding, those nits about what does the customer need? How do you work with teams across the [00:32:00] company to understand that and to build it? So it's a great framework. I appreciate you going through it.

Ben: Like change management becomes really important here. There's a lot of change in what I just described. So you better be good at it. Communication, you better be good at, cause you're talking across the whole organization, depending on the size of your teams, that can be very difficult.

And then of course you need this like mentality of continuous improvement, which stems towards the psychological safety and the belief that we talked about as well. So you gotta have those things too. while back to I can make it sound like it's simple and Ideally good things are simple, but it can be very difficult in it.

Generally.

Jeff: And so to dive into one thing there cause I think it sounds like an important part of that is. You're probably not going to operate this way if you don't have a team that believes and is feeling psychologically safe. I feel like it's very hard to do all those things right and have the confidence in yourself to crystallize these ideas and execute on them well and work across teams.

If the belief that you're doing, can achieve this [00:33:00] isn't there, or if you don't feel like you're in a spot where you can action these safely and you're constantly just worried about, messing up or making a misstep. So you've also talked a lot on that vein about bringing joy back to the workplace or joy in the workplace and why it's so important and having, a joyful team.

And I don't think you're getting at we should have carnivals and pizza parties and stuff like that, but more really like intrinsic. Like satisfaction almost

Ben: Yeah I think of it like smiles is what I think of you know you touched on a couple things there. One thing I want to say is You can't make all of it happen As the product leader, like you've got to get some teammates in the process of making this happen of creating a psychologically safe environment.

You can do things to mess it up for sure, but you can't independently. Make it happen. You've got to get some colleagues and some partners in this process. Obviously your head of engineering is going to be critically important and being a good [00:34:00] partner. Some organizations have product operations to help you in these ways.

You got to reach out to your head of sales. You got to make sure that it's not just you that in these conversations without you, These things are getting repeated. And when that starts to come together, it's really exciting to get it moving and get it off the ground. Everyone, there's a lot of smiles in that time and a lot of celebration.

Jeff: Now, how elusive is this? Cause it seems like, we're, everyone talks about, we're post Zerp and and all that. And there's been a lot of headwinds for a lot of companies. And I think, product, especially over the past two or three years, I think we've seen a lot of teams reduced in size quite a bit.

It seems it's easy to be joyful when you're in a psychologically safe environment. And, you're showing a lot of progress, your company's doing well, things are humming. It seems like also you can, be churning revenue growth, but you can be in a not joyful org because, maybe that psychological safety isn't there, but just you got product market fit and you're going and you're banging stuff out.

But it seems like the critical piece there is, [00:35:00] Is it possible in an org that, maybe isn't performing or, is having a tougher time right now? How do look to bring join that kind of more tenuous environment where maybe they're not growing, 50 percent year over year, a hundred percent year over year they're not hitting goals necessarily, but they're doing good product work still.

Ben: Yes, you are correct. It is easier to smile when things are going well. There's less pressure and there's less anxiety. Again, if you think about the curve. You might not have enough to be an optimal performance, but it is easier.

When things are going poorly though, what I like really want people to understand is the answer is not no smiles. Like I can guarantee that is not the answer. Like the answer is how do we continue to let people feel safe? And how do we create an environment of experimentation of pressing forward of optimal performance? Because. If we can't have that, we're definitely going to keep failing them. Like the answer is not push people into the area [00:36:00] where their performance starts to go down. And yet that is almost always what happens when things start going poorly. We jam on the B button. We're like, work harder, work more, work harder.

And we scientifically know that's not the answer. And yet we do it. And this is where like your experience as a leader. And the discipline to know these things and say, yeah, I've been here before. I know what this looks like. The answer is not jam on the B button. It is, we've got to make sure that we have an environment of safety for these teams and that there is the right amount of anxiety and stress.

Of course, we're not saying back off and do whatever you want. That's not the answer, but the answer is how do we get the optimal level of improvements from the teams? And joy. These are great ways to make that happen, and the only way it will happen is if you model it as a leader. If you can have a whole team who, at one point was a really psychologically safe team and joyful and spending a lot of time [00:37:00] interacting and smiling with each other. And if you bring in a leader who just doesn't reflect that or doesn't feel that way, it will destroy all of them. And you really need to make sure that as a leader, you don't let that happen into the optimal.

Jeff: It's interesting. situation, I always go back to, there's an anecdote from I think it was 2020 at this point or 2021. Where something like this exactly happened, right? , a lot of our go to market centers around content. We want to create content for the people who would use and buy our product and build trust that way.

And we found it to be a very effective way to go to market. But one of our blogs years ago was, the distribution mechanism was search. It was very, SEO focused and there was a Google algorithm change that just tanked traffic. We lost 50 percent of traffic overnight. And the team, freaked out which makes sense.

It, on faces is the, natural reaction. And we managed to get them back on track and keep driving and actually feeling good about it. Cause we focused on what we talked about earlier. What is the [00:38:00] superpower of this team? And do we know that's the right thing that we want to keep driving at?

And it was we focused on, we've always created great quality content that, explains things well and serves the people we're trying to inform in an effective manner. And we continue to focus on it and said, we've always kept doing this. We did not lose traffic because, you all got less good about doing this thing that you are amazing.

What happened is this outside factor change, we're gonna keep doing it. We're gonna learn from that. We're gonna make some tweaks to address it. But we want to keep doing this core thing well and what ended up happening is they, we were able to turn their kind of thought process around that.

No, we're still a great team. We're going to keep pushing. And within, I think four months we had actually ended up growing an additional 50 percent over where that drop had started from because we were able to keep them going, keep them, feeling safe and keep them driving.

But like you said, you don't want to up the stress beyond what people are capable of handling. But can you use it to inspire even better? And in that case, you can definitely do that.

Ben: There was a time period [00:39:00] where the product was dependent on Facebook's APIs. And if you liked something on Instagram, we would get notified about that and send you an email with a link to the products that are inside of it, of that image. Zuckerberg was preparing to, to speak at Congress and Facebook without any warning or notice turned off the APIs. And so our metrics, you know. wait, what's wrong zero? What's going on here? , so rally whole organization in a meeting room, we've got to figure this out. , we'd been playing with the idea of our own mobile app. Could we make it happen? I don't know if we really felt like we were just doing so well in this other space.

We felt like eventually it'll happen. But so bring everyone together clearly understand the focus. All right. We have to create our own solution now. This is, that's focus. , to your point, this wasn't our doing. And so what are the answers? What's possible? People started yelling things out.

Engineers were like, I'm looking at this other API. It looks like maybe we could pull this off. All these kinds of things were having a very safe environment. It wasn't the like, Oh, [00:40:00] make that happen immediately. Okay, great. When will it be done? It was more like, what could we do?

So you're creating this safe environment. But understanding that we had a goal, which was all right, we've got to get this product to market as quickly as possible, and we have all these, Customers who are used to our service today, who we know will adopt if we can make this happen.

And so a belief that we could do it. And so again, back to those three things of like, how do we focus, how do we create a safe environment for people to, be themselves to exhibit that joy, to, to challenge each other. And then how do we create the belief? And that, we launched the product and within nine months, we'd had a million new users, which, was better than what we had seen for Twitter or better than what we had seen for others early stage.

So we were really proud of that moment. But it stemmed from a similar kind of story of like, Oh, what happened here? And we've got to work to resolve it. Those are nice sometimes almost better than It's slowly deteriorating and we don't know quite what, what we're doing wrong, which is tough sometimes.

[00:41:00] Yeah,

Jeff: the right team, catastrophe can be the catalyst that brings about just the next level of greatness out of them. I think that's just such a great encapsulation, that story there that you just told about, what we've gone over we're running to the end of time, and I don't want to steal your whole, I could steal your whole day here, and I keep talking to you for quite a while, but I know we've all got busy days I think that's a good spot to end, great example of all these principles rolled up into an actual practical application.

So yeah, Ben, man, thank you for coming on. I appreciate the time. It was a real, it was joyful. I feel like you put a little joy back into my work day. Great to learn this stuff too. Great to talk about yoga. Where, if people want to follow up or people have questions, what, what's a good place to reach out to you, LinkedIn, or is there somewhere else or.

Ben: no, I appreciate that these days. LinkedIn is usually the best place to connect. I try to share some of these kinds of things on there regularly. Feel free to follow along and comment if folks want to do that. And it, our product community is. Often product can be a fairly lonely job.

And so I think it's important for [00:42:00] product leaders and product managers in teams to see what others are doing, to talk to each other. Sometimes we can create that joy amongst our community for each other and continue to press that forward. I've really appreciated your thoughts today, Jeff, as well, and really enjoyed it and hope folks can.

Get something out of it really doesn't have to be that complicated. In terms of the spirit of what you're doing, it is complicated to make it happen though. And there are some things you've got to do like we talked about to make that a reality.

Jeff: Nice. Love it. Thanks so much. I feel like there's more to talk about, so we'll have to have you on again soon, but for now, appreciate you coming on. Have a good one.

Ben: You too.