But beyond customer-facing benefits, AI is driving a more profound transformation by empowering individuals, teams, and entire organizations to become AI-powered. From automating routine tasks and surfacing actionable insights to enhancing collaboration and enabling continuous learning, AI is redefining how teams innovate, iterate, and execute.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming how product teams operate by streamlining processes, enhancing decision-making, and enabling smarter execution. Across the Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC), AI has become a vital tool in improving productivity and driving better outcomes for product managers and teams.

Let’s explore how AI can enhance both traditional and emerging PDLC activities.

The AI Revolution in Product Development

The landscape of product development has undergone a revolutionary transformation through artificial intelligence, touching every aspect of how products are conceived, designed, and delivered. This comprehensive evolution spans from initial customer understanding to final security implementations, creating a new paradigm for product teams.

Customer Discovery

The foundation of product development has evolved dramatically from traditional surveys and interviews into a sophisticated data-driven process. While product teams once relied solely on direct customer interactions and market research to understand pain points, AI-powered sentiment analysis and Natural Language Processing now process vast amounts of customer feedback simultaneously, revealing patterns and insights that would be impossible to detect manually. This transformation enables teams to understand customer needs at an unprecedented scale and depth.

Solution Discovery

The creative process of identifying solutions has transformed from conventional brainstorming sessions into a data-informed science. Pattern recognition and recommendation systems now analyze market gaps and customer needs, suggesting innovative approaches that human teams might overlook. These AI tools excel at connecting seemingly unrelated data points to uncover novel solutions, complementing human creativity with machine-driven insights.

Design

The design process has evolved beyond traditional wireframing and visual concepting into an AI-enhanced creative endeavor. Generative design tools now produce multiple interface variations automatically, while sophisticated algorithms analyze user behavior data to suggest optimal design choices. This marriage of human creativity and AI capability enables designers to explore more possibilities while maintaining focus on user needs.

Prototyping

Interactive prototyping has progressed from a manual, time-intensive process to a rapid, AI-driven iteration cycle. Modern prototyping tools automatically generate interactive elements and transitions, enabling teams to test and refine concepts more quickly than ever before. This acceleration of the design-test cycle leads to more refined products in less time, while maintaining the crucial element of user feedback.

Competitive Research

Market analysis has evolved from periodic manual reviews into continuous, AI-powered monitoring. Web scraping and data aggregation tools now provide real-time insights into competitor movements and market changes, enabling teams to respond quickly to threats and opportunities. This constant stream of competitive intelligence helps teams stay ahead of market shifts rather than merely reacting to them.

Data Analysis

The transformation of data analysis from manual interpretation to AI-driven insight generation has revolutionized how teams understand their products' performance. AI analytics platforms now automatically visualize data and recognize patterns, providing actionable insights faster and more accurately than human analysis alone. This enhanced analytical capability enables teams to make data-driven decisions with greater confidence and speed.

Image Generation

Visual content creation has been revolutionized by AI tools like DALL-E, transforming the time-intensive process of manual design into rapid, AI-assisted generation. These tools can create high-quality visuals on demand, dramatically reducing the time and resources required for marketing and presentation materials while maintaining creative quality and brand consistency.

Presentations

The art of creating compelling presentations has evolved from manual crafting to AI-enhanced storytelling. Modern platforms now automate slide creation, suggest visual elements, and format content efficiently, allowing teams to focus on narrative and strategy rather than technical execution. This transformation ensures consistent quality while significantly reducing the time invested in presentation development.

Project Management

Project coordination has progressed from basic tracking tools to predictive systems that actively optimize team performance. Smart project management systems now anticipate potential delays, automatically adjust resource allocations, and manage task assignments based on team capacity and project priorities. This proactive approach helps teams stay ahead of challenges rather than simply responding to them.

Development and Testing

During development, AI-driven code assistants such as GitHub Copilot can help developers by auto-completing code, detecting bugs, and suggesting improvements. These tools not only enhance productivity but also reduce errors, leading to cleaner and more efficient codebases.

For testing, AI models automate regression testing and simulate complex user scenarios to identify potential issues faster. Predictive analytics can also flag potential performance bottlenecks before they become critical problems.

QA/Testing

Quality assurance has evolved from traditional manual testing procedures to sophisticated AI systems that can identify potential issues before they impact users. These tools not only find bugs faster but can predict potential failures and optimize testing strategies automatically, ensuring higher product quality with less manual effort.

Scheduling

Meeting coordination has transformed from manual calendar management into an intelligent process driven by AI. Smart scheduling assistants now automatically find optimal meeting times by analyzing team members' calendars and workload priorities, ensuring efficient use of time while maintaining team productivity.

Email Management

Email has evolved from a time-consuming manual task into a streamlined, AI-enhanced workflow. Modern tools now draft responses, prioritize messages, and automate routine communications, allowing teams to focus on high-value interactions while ensuring timely responses to all communications.

Meeting Notetaking

Documentation of meetings has progressed from manual note-taking to automated capture and synthesis. Real-time transcription services now record discussions and automatically highlight key points, ensuring comprehensive documentation while allowing participants to focus fully on the conversation.

Customer Feedback and Continuous Improvement

AI-powered sentiment analysis tools can process user feedback at scale, identifying trends and areas for improvement. Chatbots equipped with AI handle routine customer inquiries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex issues.

AI also supports continuous improvement by predicting future customer needs and enabling proactive feature development. Machine learning algorithms analyze user behavior trends to recommend updates that keep products relevant and competitive.

Dictation

Documentation has evolved from manual typing to efficient voice-powered creation. Advanced voice-to-text tools now accurately convert spoken words into written content, dramatically improving documentation efficiency while maintaining accuracy.

Workflow Integration

The connection between tools has progressed from manual integration to seamless automation. Modern platforms now streamline data flow and task management across multiple tools, creating efficient workflows that reduce manual intervention and improve team productivity.

Planning & Strategy

Strategic planning has evolved from intuition-based decision making to data-informed strategy development. AI systems now support demand forecasting and scenario planning, helping teams make more informed decisions by processing vast amounts of data and identifying potential outcomes.

Innovation & Concept Testing

The validation of new concepts has transformed from time-intensive manual testing to rapid AI-powered simulation. Modern tools can predict user behavior and refine concepts quickly, providing faster insights while reducing the resources required for concept validation.

Compliance & Security

Security monitoring has evolved from periodic manual checks to continuous AI-powered protection. Machine learning models now detect threats in real-time and automatically identify potential vulnerabilities, ensuring products maintain compliance while protecting against emerging security risks.

Deployment and Release Management

AI streamlines deployment by automating release processes and predicting the best times for releases based on factors like system load and user activity patterns. AI algorithms help identify potential risks in deployment pipelines and recommend mitigations, reducing the likelihood of downtime or errors during release.

Continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines enhanced by AI can monitor code changes and automatically execute test cases, making deployments faster and more reliable.

Monitoring and Optimization

Post-launch monitoring has become more sophisticated with AI-driven analytics tools that provide real-time insights into product performance and user engagement. AI can automatically detect anomalies, such as sudden drops in usage or performance issues, and trigger alerts for quick resolution.

AI also helps optimize product performance by analyzing user behavior and suggesting enhancements. By continuously learning from user data, AI ensures that products evolve in line with customer expectations.

These are just a few ways to boost productivity as product teams. How are you enhancing your PDLC? Share your insights in the comments!

The AI-Powered Future of PDLC

AI is not just a tool for automation—it’s a strategic enabler that empowers teams to build better products faster and more efficiently. By enhancing each phase of the PDLC, AI drives innovation, improves decision-making, and fosters a culture of continuous improvement. As companies embrace AI-driven strategies, they unlock new opportunities to create exceptional customer experiences while building smarter and more resilient organizations.

Product teams that harness the full potential of AI will be best positioned to lead in an increasingly competitive and fast-paced market. The journey toward becoming an AI-powered organization is just beginning, but the transformative impact on product development is already clear.

Dogfooding is when companies use their own products to test, improve, and experience them firsthand as customers would. It helps identify pain points, usability issues, and bugs, fostering empathy for users and enhancing product quality. By simulating real-world usage, teams gain deeper insights, drive better decision-making, and create customer-centric solutions. The practice supports continuous product refinement, aligning internal development efforts with actual user needs.

While dogfooding continuously is important, we can also amplify such dogfooding efforts through a Product Immersion Workshop.

This hands-on practice allows teams to dogfood their own products, explore and experience their products like customers do, uncovering hidden friction points, usability issues, and overlooked opportunities. The goal? Build empathy, enhance product quality, and ensure the product continues evolving to meet real-world needs.

Benefits of a Product Immersion Workshop

• Building Empathy: By using your product, teams better understand customer frustrations and uncover actionable insights. A messaging tool team, for example, moved off Slack to fully use their own product—leading to immediate improvements as they experienced gaps firsthand.

• Revealing Hidden Friction Points: When you're too familiar with a product, you can overlook critical pain points. Immersion sessions expose those blind spots, helping teams address blockers before they impact customers.

• Gaining Fresh Perspectives: Stepping into the user’s mindset highlights opportunities to simplify onboarding and streamline workflows.

• Strengthening Collaboration: Cross-functional teams—design, engineering, product management, and support—come together to address challenges with a shared understanding.

Running an Effective Product Immersion Workshop

1. Define User Flow Assignments

Allow participants to try specific customer journeys, such as:

• Onboarding

• Checkout processes

• Navigating key features

• Resolving common issues

Encourage exploration to mimic customer behavior and identify friction.

2. Methodically Document Observations

Capture insights using categories like issue type, severity, and proposed fixes, supported by screenshots or recordings.

• Issue Type: Bug, UX challenge, or feature request

• Description: Steps to reproduce the issue

• Severity: Critical, moderate, or minor

• Suggested Fix: If possible

• Visual Evidence: Include screenshots or recordings

3. Categorize and Prioritize Issues

Organize findings as:

• Bugs: Immediate fixes required

• UX Challenges: Navigation or interaction pain points

• Feature Gaps: Missing functionalities that users need

Rank by impact on user experience and business outcomes.

4. Review and Prioritize Collaboratively

Discuss issue severity and customer impact with cross-functional teams. Align on short-term fixes and longer-term improvements.

5. Develop and Assign Action Plans

Assign owners for each fix, set realistic timelines, and track progress through ongoing workshops.

Incorporating Workshop Insights into a Friction Log

A friction log captures user pain points and helps prioritize solutions. Route the documented results from the Product Immersion workshop into a friction log that become a backlog for teams to address.

The Product Immersion Workshop fuels meaningful change by revealing insights and driving continuous improvement. It keeps customers at the heart of innovation, fostering a product that resonates with users and supports long-term success.

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Solution reviews are strategic opportunities to shape your product’s future and drive faster decisions. Are they fostering clarity and alignment—or just adding to meeting overload?

When done right, they can transform your product's trajectory. For Product Managers, these reviews are about more than presenting updates—they’re about facilitating discussions that lead to actionable outcomes.

Drawing from my experience of conducting hundreds of solution reviews, I’ve learned that the most impactful reviews are those that foster collaboration, surface risks early, and drive alignment across diverse teams.

What Are Solution Reviews?

Solution reviews evaluate products under development by reviewing documents like PRDs, PR FAQs, and Feature Briefs. Rather than being a passive checkpoint, solution reviews are dynamic sessions to refine ideas, resolve challenges, and achieve stakeholder alignment.

The Role of Solution Reviews

Amazon’s written narratives, like PR FAQs or 6-pagers, encourage upfront clarity and align teams before building. This approach, detailed in Working Backwards, helps ensure the right product is built right. But other companies might have different practices. Whatever your document preference, this article focuses on reviewing the solution before proceeding. A solution review centers on this doc. A well-structured solution review achieves the following:

• Ensures Alignment: Ensures the solution meets customer needs and aligns with strategic goals.

• Identifies Risks: Surfaces challenges early to avoid costly missteps.

• Secures Buy-In: Gains stakeholder approval and commitment to the next steps.

Embracing Growth Mindset: Viewing Reviews as Opportunities

Product Managers often approach reviews with hesitation, fearing criticism. This mindset limits the potential of the review. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to co-create, align, and collaborate. These sessions can be a platform for feedback, coaching, and removing obstacles that could impact product success.

Preparation for a Successful Review

• Document Creation: Write the solution document collaboratively with your team. A clear, customer-focused narrative is essential. This document should outline the problem, solution, and include an FAQ to address risks and potential concerns.

• Pre-Read Distribution: Distribute the document in advance so reviewers can digest it and come prepared with feedback. This is an inclusive process that gives everyone time to think critically about the solution.

• Stakeholder Selection: Ensure key stakeholders are in the room—senior leaders, cross-functional representatives, and product or business leaders impacted by the proposal.

• Invite a diverse team: Include representatives from product management, engineering, design, marketing, and customer support. Go beyond functional roles to consider other dimensions of diversity, such as race, gender, and background. These diverse perspectives ensure reviews are analyzed holistically and lead to more inclusive, well-rounded decisions.

• Define clear objectives: Define what you aim to achieve through review analysis, such as identifying feature gaps or improving user experience.

• Implement a regular cadence: Schedule review analysis sessions every six weeks to align with product development cycles.

• Assign ownership: Delegate specific insights to relevant teams for further investigation and action.

3. Structure of the Meeting

The review meeting typically lasts 1-2 hours and should follow a structure to avoid surprises and help PMs better prepare:

1. State goal and set context (5 mins): Before diving in, begin with a clear purpose. Before scheduling a review, define your objectives. Are you seeking to improve the product, gain input on a decision, or achieve alignment? Frame your review around these goals to elevate the discussion beyond a mere status update.

2. Silent Reading Period (15-30 Minutes): During this time, attendees silently read the solution document and take notes on areas they find unclear, challenging, or particularly insightful. This practice ensures all attendees are on the same page before starting the discussion.

3. Open Discussion: After reading, the meeting moves into discussion, where the proposal is critiqued. Key areas include:

4. Clarification Questions: Ensure everyone fully understands the solution. Attendees ask clarifying questions to ensure they fully understand the proposal. Examples: “What specific customer pain point does this address?”, “How does this differ from existing solutions?”

5. Feedback and Debate: Attendees offer direct, constructive input on customer impact, feasibility, risks, and metrics. This stage is crucial for identifying actionable improvements. Leaders should help build a culture of radical open feedback. Feedback can be in areas like below

   • Customer impact: Is this solving a real problem?

   • Feasibility: Can we realistically build this with the proposed resources and timeline?

   • Risks: What are the potential downsides or unintended consequences?

   • Metrics: How will we measure success?

   • Leadership Perspective: Senior leaders weigh in on the proposal’s alignment with organizational strategy, resource needs, and risk management.

6. Documenting Feedback: A team member takes responsibility for capturing feedback and revising the document accordingly. Feedback should be captured for post-meeting iterations.

7. Outcomes: The possible outcomes are

   1. Approval: The solution is ready to proceed.

   2. Revisions Required: Significant changes are needed, with a follow-up meeting scheduled.

   3. Rejection: The proposal is deemed unfit to move forward until the concerns raised have been addressed.

   4. Criteria for Decisions:

      • Clarity of the customer problem and solution.

      • Strategic alignment with company principles and goals.

      • Confidence in execution and risk management.

Best Practices for Running Effective Reviews

• Know Your Audience: Understand the priorities of stakeholders and tailor your presentation accordingly.

• Be Concise: Focus on the information that drives decisions or offers critical insights. Avoid long presentations.

• Encourage Open Dialogue: Create an environment where team members can openly share successes and challenges.

• Implement an “Early Warning System”: Preview key points with stakeholders ahead of time to surface concerns early.

• Follow Up: Send a recap of the meeting within 24 hours, including feedback, decisions, and action items.

Post-Review: Turning Insights Into Action

• Follow Up Promptly: Send a recap within 24 hours including acknowledged feedback, decisions made, action items, and open questions.

• Feedback Integration: Revise the solution document based on the meeting’s feedback.

• Tracking Progress: Create a system to monitor action items and provide updates in future reviews.

• Maintain Momentum: Address unresolved issues quickly and keep stakeholders informed.

How Executives Can Make Reviews More Effective

Executives play a vital role in making solution reviews impactful:

• Be fully engaged: Review materials before the meeting and be fully engaged during the review.

• Prioritize key discussion points: Focus on alignment, decisions, and visibility.

• Provide strategic guidance: Align the product with company goals.

• Ask probing questions: Inquire about performance metrics, risks, and opportunities.

• Encourage open dialogue: Foster an environment where honest feedback is welcomed.

• Document outcomes: Ensure decisions and next steps are clearly noted.

• Offer constructive feedback: Provide specific, actionable input that helps refine the product strategy.

• Maintain a customer-centric approach: Consistently bring the discussion back to customer needs and how the product addresses them.

• Be open to change: Have the courage to make tough decisions if the review reveals the need for strategic shifts

By implementing these practices, executives can contribute to more productive and impactful reviews that drive the company's success.

The Value of Effective Solution Reviews

By investing time and effort into structured solution reviews, you ensure that:

• Teams align early: Tough questions are addressed upfront.

• Achieving clarity: A document-based approach ensures comprehensive and structured thinking.

• Time is saved later: Addressing risks early reduces costly issues during execution.

• Customer focus is maintained: Starting with the customer ensures the solution solves a real problem.

Conclusion: From Reviews to Results

Exceptional solution reviews don’t just happen—they’re built on preparation, radical candor, clarity, and follow-through. By focusing on decisions, fostering collaboration, and actionable feedback, you can transform your reviews into a powerful driver of product success.

Resources:

• How To Do The Product Review Right (By Doing It Wrong) | Lenny & Friends Summit 2024

• Working Backwards Insights, Stories and Secrets from Insider Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Car

• Guide to a Great Product Review by Deb Liu

A senior executive requested input on the top 10 customer pain points, and responses revealed both overlap and significant differences. Rather than replying immediately, I investigated customer complaints and found that eight teams were independently identifying issues using different tools and processes, with no communication among them. This fragmentation underscores the need for a systematic approach to address customer pain points and improve their experiences.

Given the growing demands of product launches, teams often are in a situation where they have to sacrifice the need to improve a customer experience in the interest of building the next new feature. While new features can attract more customers, the quality of the existing experience keeps them engaged. Neglecting this aspect can lead to churn. Balancing innovation with continuous improvement is essential for creating a product that not only meets but exceeds user expectations.

A friction log—an ongoing record of customer obstacles and pain points—can be a valuable tool for product teams. It is a detailed record of obstacles, pain points, and inefficiencies that customers encounter while interacting with your product. Systematically addressing these issues enhances overall customer satisfaction and improves retention.

Friction logs should be holistic but need not be exhaustive

To create a comprehensive friction log, it is essential to gather data from multiple sources to capture a full spectrum of user pain points and challenges. Here are some key sources:

• Customer Service Calls: Reveal recurring issues that may not appear in other data.

• CSAT Surveys: Provide direct feedback on customer dissatisfaction.

• User Research: Offers qualitative insights through surveys and usability tests.

• Analytics Data: Identifies friction points through metrics like drop-off rates and click patterns.

• Product Reviews and Social Media: Capture unfiltered user sentiment.

• App Reviews: Highlight common frustrations specific to the mobile experience.

• NPS Feedback: Provides insights into what customers love and what frustrates them.

• Internal Team Feedback: Offers different perspectives on user pain points.

• Competitor Analysis: Identifies industry-wide issues and areas for improvement.

While friction logs need to be holistic, it does not have to be exhaustive. Neither does it have to be holistic right from the beginning. The best approach is to start collecting feedback from a couple of sources, and keep adding others.

Turning a Friction Log into a Product Backlog

The goal of a friction log is not to improve our internal processes but to transform it into a product backlog and actively work it.

• Start with customer impact: It is essential to understand not just the friction but who is experiencing it. Despite our best efforts, since our resources are limited and we can only fix a portion of the issues, it is important to prioritize friction points that are most painful for the most important customer segment.

• Categorize for clarity: Group issues by common themes. Categorizing helps in understanding patterns and setting clear priorities. It also helps teams solve for large groups of issues through thoughtful product improvements.

• Use data to guide decisions: Leverage quantitative data (e.g., frequency of issues, number of support tickets) and qualitative insights (e.g., user feedback) to determine the severity and urgency of each issue.

• Align with product goals: Ensure that the friction points you prioritize align with your overall product vision and strategic goals. Not every problem needs to be solved immediately. Focus on those that help you achieve your objectives.

• Involve cross-functional teams: Bring together engineering, design, and customer support teams early in the process. Their insights can help assess technical feasibility, design implications, and support impacts, ensuring a holistic approach to prioritization.

• Create a clear action plan: Translate friction log into actionable user stories or tasks. Make sure each task is clear, concise, and has a defined outcome, so teams know exactly what needs to be done.

• Measure Progress: Define metrics to track improvements like reduction in customer support tickets, CSAT, churn rate, etc., and continuously address issues causing negative experiences to improve these metrics.

• Communicate Progress: Teams closest to customers share customer issues to product teams but are often left without any updates that they can either communicate to their customers or know that the issues are resolved.

Measure Progress

To measure the effectiveness of resolving friction points, focus on these key metrics:

• Reduction in customer support tickets

• Improved CSAT or other similar metrics

• Increased engagement and retention

• Enhanced customer effort/efficiency

• Reduced churn

Getting a jumpstart to reducing friction

While managing your friction log as an actively managed backlog is a great way to improve customer experience, there is benefit in thinking of giving it a kick start through a few techniques.

Hackathons: Host hackathons where cross-functional teams focus on solving specific friction points.

Dedicated capacity allocation: Allocate a set percentage of sprint capacity (e.g., 10-20%) to address friction points regularly. This ensures ongoing improvement without disrupting new feature development.

User feedback days: Set aside a day each month for the product team to interact directly with customers, review feedback, and implement quick fixes. This hands-on approach can reveal insights that traditional feedback methods might miss.

Friction triage teams: Create small, agile teams dedicated to triaging and resolving friction points. These teams can quickly handle minor issues, freeing up the main product teams for larger projects.

Gamification: Turn friction resolution into a game by awarding points for each issue resolved. Offer prizes or recognition to motivate team members to contribute more.

Published friction log dashboard: Create a public dashboard that shows the progress of friction log resolutions. This builds accountability within the team and trust with customers by demonstrating active engagement with their feedback.

These approaches can help ensure that friction logs are not just a list of problems but a catalyst for continuous improvement and innovation in your product.

Other Resources to learn from

Stripe’s approach to Friction Logs

Sachin Rekhi’s video on Feedback Rivers

Most businesses start with a goal to be profitable. They aspire to succeed financially. What would the world look like if every business focused on profit and impact? What if every business balanced between profit for themselves, value to their customers, and impact for the communities they operate in? What would the world look like if every business focused on a purpose while being profitable?

There were an estimated 333 million businesses as of 2021. Most of them generally start from an idea. Most start them with the pure intention of succeeding and making money. 

But approximately 20% of new businesses fail in their first year and 45% within 5 years. One of the biggest reasons a business fails is because they are not satisfying a customer's need.

The chances of a business succeeding increase when they focus on overlapping their ideas with customer problems. By doing so, businesses deliver customer value and business value. This brings great results because customers are happy for their problems to be solved which results in business growth for the business.

But what if every business paused to ask themselves how their product could be impactful beyond solving a customer problem? If they widened their aperture and looked at solving for not just a small group of customers but also look for extreme problems that exist in the community, they would identify opportunities for radical change and become Radical Change Makers. Here are a few examples

• You meet a young high school student who does not have access to the internet at home and hence is trying to stay late at school or in the local library. You learn about it and help him out by paying for his service. But what if you widened the aperture to learn about all the kids in the community who do not have access to the internet at home? What if you created a business that would deliver wi-fi through local businesses for free for everybody in the community at a low cost? Similar to the wi-fi enabled school buses delivering wi-fi for kids.

• Imagine this situation. Bali’s beaches were turning into garbage dumps. You find one beach and would like to help by cleaning up a small patch. But that might be “volunteering”. Instead, you widen the aperture and notice that all beaches are becoming such dumping grounds. Instead of creating a non-profit to clean up, you start a business to collect all plastic from all beaches, clean it, process it, and transform them into chairs to create a business that would fund more clean-up work. Thus was born Sungai Design. 

  You are not only solving a problem for one person but solving it for many people in the community while creating a business model that will also make the business financially successful. 

Radical change starts with one person who decides to solve a problem at scale. That is the story of the massive impact Chetna Sinha had while solving Kantabai’s needs.

Mann Deshi Bank was started by Chetna Sinha when she heard that Kantabai, a welder who worked and lived on the footpath was rejected by banks. Kantabai tried to open an account to save her money so that she could buy materials to protect her home in the monsoon season. Chetna could’ve just solved Kantabai’s problem by letting her save money with her. Instead, she saw the need in the community for more women and decided to start a bank to help more women. She pulled together more than 1000 people to pool their savings and open a bank. Their first request to start a bank was declined by the Reserve Bank of India because the women were uneducated. But the women were not disheartened. They came back in 5 months to reapply after becoming literate. It was the first bank set up for rural women in India and remains a member-driven and member-owned bank. 

By focusing on the customer problem - lack of access to a bank account to save money and the broader social context - many women of low income are being left out of banks, Chetna Sinha was able to create a successful bank. 

Today, Mann Deshi Bank continues to thrive as a successful bank 27 years after that first encounter between Chetna Sinha and Kantabai. Mann Deshi Bank has 26,000 members, 97 crores deposited, and the value of loans given is 500 crores with a 98% repayment rate. That is a massive success but it started with an individual who thought of what they could do to help another person and then another and then another.

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Companies are constantly seeking ways to stand out and excel in their respective industries. One proven strategy that consistently yields positive results is the establishment and maintenance of high standards. When an organization sets the bar high, it not only challenges its employees but also fosters an environment of continuous improvement.

Some examples of companies reaping the benefits of high standards.

Amazon:

• Market Dominance

• Diversification: Beyond retail, success in cloud computing (AWS), streaming (Amazon Prime Video), and other ventures.

Netflix:

• Streaming Dominance: Leader in the streaming industry with a vast library and user-friendly platform.

Nvidia:

• GPU Dominance: Industry-standard GPUs in gaming, scientific computing, and AI applications.

• AI Leadership: Leading role in AI hardware with GPUs widely used in machine learning and deep learning.

Alibaba:

• E-Commerce Dominance: Strong presence in Chinese and global e-commerce markets.

• Digital Payment Success: Set high standards for digital payment systems through Alipay, fostering online transactions.

Apple:

• Customer Loyalty

• Market Leadership

Starbucks:

• Brand Loyalty: A strong brand identity centered around a premium coffee experience fosters customer loyalty.

• Market Expansion: Commitment to quality contributes to successful global expansion and a leading position in the coffeehouse industry.

Toyota:

• Industry Reputation: Recognized for a commitment to producing reliable and durable vehicles.

• Cost Efficiency: Focus on efficiency and quality allows Toyota to maintain cost-effective production processes and competitiveness.

Challenges

• Employee Burnout: High expectations for performance and productivity may lead to employee burnout, especially if employees feel consistently pressured to meet or exceed stringent standards.

• Retention Challenges: Some employees may find it challenging to consistently meet high standards, leading to dissatisfaction or a sense of failure. This could contribute to higher turnover rates.

• Stress and Well-being: The pressure to meet high standards may negatively impact employee stress levels and overall well-being, potentially leading to physical and mental health issues.

• Unrealistic Expectations: Setting standards that are too ambitious or unrealistic may lead to frustration among employees, who may perceive the expectations as unattainable.

• Inequitable Workloads: A culture of high standards may result in uneven workloads, with some employees consistently carrying a heavier burden than others, leading to resentment and dissatisfaction.

• Negative Impact on Morale: A constant focus on high standards without proper recognition or positive reinforcement can have a detrimental effect on employee morale and job satisfaction.

• Lack of Work-Life Balance: Strict adherence to high standards may lead to a lack of work-life balance, as employees may feel compelled to put in excessive hours to meet expectations.

• Diversity and Inclusion Challenges: High standards may unintentionally disadvantage certain groups of employees, especially if the criteria are not inclusive or sensitive to diverse backgrounds and capabilities.

Role of Leaders

Companies with a culture of high standards often exhibit specific characteristics and practices that set them apart. Leaders play a critical role in setting high standards. They can not only elevate the quality and results without negatively impacting employees or stakeholders.

• Emphasis on Excellence: Employees and teams are consistently recognized and rewarded for achieving high levels of performance and excellence in their work.

• Continuous Improvement: The organization is committed to continuous improvement in processes, products, and services.

• Leaders Leading by Example: Leaders model the behavior they expect from their teams. They demonstrate a strong work ethic, attention to detail, and a commitment to excellence in their own work. They support teams by not launching products that do not meet high standards.

• Communication of Expectations: Leadership communicates clear expectations regarding quality, performance, and behavior.

• Empowerment and Accountability: Employees are empowered to take ownership of their work and are held accountable for results.

• Customer Focus: The organization prioritizes customer satisfaction and goes above and beyond to meet customer needs.

• Selective Hiring and Development: The company is selective in hiring, focusing on candidates who align with the organization's values and commitment to high standards. There is also a strong emphasis on employee development.

• Innovation and Adaptability: The organization fosters a culture of innovation and encourages employees to think creatively and adapt to changing circumstances.

Setting high standards is not merely about achieving a benchmark; it's about fostering a mindset of continuous improvement and commitment to excellence. Companies that prioritize high standards create an environment where employees are inspired to excel, customers trust in the quality of their products or services, and the organization thrives in the face of change. Elevating craftsmanship through high standards is not just a strategy, it is a critical factor for success in today's dynamic and competitive business world.

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My colleagues think I am patient, my family knows I am quite the opposite. Both of them are right. I am patiently impatient. This patient impatience helps me work on complex problems that need a long time to solve.

How does patient impatience show up in product managers?

🚀 Fostering Urgency: Patiently understanding user needs while maintaining a relentless drive for efficiency. It's about avoiding unnecessary delays and delivering top-quality products swiftly.

📈 Driving Continuous Improvement: Constantly seeking ways to make products better. Learning from user feedback, adapting to changes, and refining products to meet evolving customer needs.

🔍 Balancing Thoroughness and Speed: Striking the right balance between being thorough and quick. It's about conducting research, gathering insights, and ensuring quality, while avoiding analysis paralysis.

🔮 Anticipating Customer Needs: Restlessly curious, always seeking customer insights, and staying updated on market trends. This anticipatory mindset keeps you ahead of the curve.

🎉 Celebrating Small Wins: While aiming for big goals, celebrate every small victory along the way. It boosts morale, fosters achievement, and keeps the team motivated.

How to develop patient impatience?

Acknowledge and embrace the paradox: Recognize that patient impatience is not a contradiction but rather a harmonious blend of two seemingly opposing qualities. Understand that it is possible to maintain a patient mindset while simultaneously feeling a sense of restlessness and urgency to achieve results.

Set clear long-term goals: Define your long-term objectives and create a roadmap to guide your journey. Having a clear vision of where you want to go helps you channel your impatience into focused action while staying patient during the inevitable challenges and setbacks.

Practice mindfulness: Develop the ability to stay present and grounded in the moment. Mindfulness allows you to manage impatience and maintain composure when faced with delays or uncertainties. By cultivating mindfulness through practices like meditation or deep breathing exercises, you can enhance your patience and prevent impatience from becoming counterproductive.

Prioritize and break down tasks: Learn to prioritize your tasks based on their importance and urgency. Break down complex projects into smaller, manageable tasks that can be accomplished within reasonable timeframes. This approach allows you to make tangible progress and celebrate small wins along the way, fueling your motivation and mitigating frustration.

Foster a growth mindset: Adopt a growth mindset that views challenges and setbacks as opportunities for learning and improvement. Embrace the belief that progress takes time and that each step, no matter how small, contributes to long-term success. By reframing setbacks as valuable lessons, you can maintain patience and use impatience to drive continuous improvement.

Seek feedback and iterate: Actively seek feedback from users, colleagues, and stakeholders to gain insights and improve your work. Embrace an iterative approach that allows you to make adjustments based on feedback and iterate rapidly. This mindset of constant learning and adaptation helps maintain a sense of progress and prevents impatience from turning into frustration or stagnation.

Celebrate milestones: Acknowledge and celebrate the milestones and small wins along your journey. Recognize the progress you have made and the milestones you have achieved, no matter how small they may seem. Celebrating these achievements boosts morale, reinforces a positive mindset, and fuels your motivation to keep pushing forward.

By embracing patient impatience, product managers can navigate the complexities of their role with resilience, drive, and an unwavering commitment to building exceptional products.

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What is “Purpose” in Product Management

To embark on this journey, we must first grasp the essence of purpose in product management. Purpose isn't merely a mission statement or a catchy tagline. It is the soul of your product. It is the fundamental reason why your product exists and the answer to the question: "What positive change does it bring to the world?" This is a bigger question than what customer job does my product solve? What customer problem does my product solve?

In the context of product management, purpose signifies a deep understanding of the problems your product solves, the needs it addresses, and the value it delivers to its users. It goes beyond the surface-level functionalities and design to touch upon the very heart of your product's identity. To actually have an impact on a customer’s life. To define purpose in product management is to uncover the unique contribution your product makes to the lives of its users.

What is the Role of Impact in Product Success

Impact can mean many things. It is very common for us to think about business impact and impact on customer metrics but what if it becomes the social impact compass? It is the true measure of success—the litmus test that separates a purposeful product from one that merely occupies digital or physical space. The impact extends far beyond the confines of code and design; it reaches into the lives of users, the dynamics of the market, and even the broader contours of society.

Impact is what transforms a mere tool into a solution, a product into a phenomenon. It's the measure of how much better, more efficient, or more enjoyable the lives of your users become with your product in their hands. It's the ripple effect that radiates from every interaction, influencing not just individuals but entire communities and industries.

When we are inundated with data, insights, and customer feedback, purpose can guide us on the journey toward building products that not only succeed but also make a truly positive difference in this world.

How can you make your product more purposeful?

1. Define a Clear Mission: Begin by crafting a clear and impactful mission statement for your product. This mission should embody the positive change your product aims to bring about.

2. Be Obsessively Customer-Centric: Be customer first in your approach to product management. Understand your users' needs, challenges, and aspirations, ensuring that your product resonates on a profound level.

3. Align Objectives to Mission: Set objectives that directly align with your product's mission. These objectives should serve as benchmarks for measuring the product's impact and success.

4. Measure Impact: Identify and prioritize metrics that gauge the real-world impact of your product. These metrics should reflect how well your product fulfills its mission, whether in social, environmental, or community terms.

5. Ethics in PDLC: Make ethics a foundation in all product decisions. This will help you build products that avoid harm to users, society, or the environment.

6. Integrate Sustainability Into Your Products: Integrate sustainable practices into your product's design and production. Assess and reduce the product's environmental impact to align with its mission.

7. Make Accessibility and Inclusion the core of your products: Ensure that your product is inclusive and accessible to a diverse range of users. Ensure all relevant dimensions such as gender, age, income, disabilities, race, cultural backgrounds, etc., are able to use your products

8. Continuously Evaluate Impact: Regularly evaluate and measure the product's impact against the mission. Share these results with your team and stakeholders to reinforce its commitment to the mission.

As product managers, we stand at the threshold of a remarkable opportunity. Purpose, when woven into the fabric of our products, transforms them from mere creations into agents of positive change. Your products go from being just products to meeting customer needs to shaping a better world.

With a clear mission, customer-centricity, aligned objectives, measurable impact, ethical integrity, sustainability, inclusivity, and unwavering commitment, we can craft products that are not just successful but also truly purposeful.

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To truly excel in execution, we need to transform the way we think and adopt key strategies. Here are some essential elements that can elevate our execution game and pave the way for outstanding results.

Clear Purpose and Direction

Starting with "why" provides a compelling reason for undertaking an effort and aligns it with broader organizational goals or personal aspirations. For example, imagine you're leading a team in developing a new product. Starting with the purpose of solving a specific customer pain point and enhancing their experience gives a clear direction to the project.

Setting clear objectives

Master the art of setting clear objectives that serve as guiding stars for your endeavors. For instance, a software development team can establish objectives like improving application performance, enhancing user interface, or reducing response time. Clear objectives provide a framework for decision-making and ensure everyone is working towards a shared goal.

🔥Prioritize Ruthlessly

Embrace the practice of ruthless prioritization to focus your efforts on what truly matters. Evaluate tasks and projects based on their impact, alignment with objectives, and resource requirements. For example, a product manager may prioritize features or enhancements based on customer needs, market demand, and technical feasibility. By ruthlessly prioritizing, you ensure that your limited time and resources are allocated to the most important initiatives, increasing the likelihood of successful execution and achieving desired outcomes.

There are a few frameworks out there. I like the LNO framework by Shreyas Doshi.

Plan to support your ruthless prioritization

Invest time and effort in planning tasks, setting priorities, and organizing work for maximum efficiency by following your prioritization framework. Allocate resources strategically to support your priorities. Consider the availability of time, people, budget, technology, and other necessary resources when making decisions about which tasks or projects to prioritize. For instance, a project manager might analyze resource availability and skill sets within the team to determine the feasibility of taking on additional initiatives. By aligning resource allocation with your ruthless prioritization approach, you optimize the utilization of resources, enhance efficiency, and increase the likelihood of successful execution of high-priority tasks and projects.

Track Progress and Adapt

Track progress meticulously, enabling you to stay on course and make necessary adjustments along the way. Regularly assess your progress against set goals, milestones, and key performance indicators. Adapt and adjust your plans as necessary, seizing opportunities and overcoming obstacles along the journey.

Continuous Improvement

Seeking opportunities to optimize processes, learn from experiences, and refine approaches for better outcomes.

🔥 Additional Strategies for Product Managers:

When it comes to improving execution excellence as a Product Manager, here are some additional things to keep in mind.

Proactive Problem-Solving

Anticipating potential challenges, identifying solutions, and addressing issues before they become significant obstacles is going to be an effective tool that people seldom use but using it will set you apart.

A great tool to use for proactively identifying potential problems is a pre-mortem

Creative Problem solving

Harness the power of creative problem-solving to set yourself apart as a product manager. By thinking outside the box, exploring unconventional ideas, and embracing innovative approaches, you can tackle complex problems head-on and unlock new opportunities for success. You can get better at c

Creative problem-solving not only sets you apart but also enables you to navigate uncertainties with confidence, drive innovation, and achieve execution excellence in your product management journey.

Make “Smart” Decisions

Harness the power of data and analysis to make informed decisions. Acquire the ability to gather, interpret, and utilize data effectively, empowering you to make well-founded choices that drive success. Embrace a data-driven approach to optimize processes and enhance decision-making capabilities

Manage relationships with stakeholders

Building Strong Relationships for Success Master the art of managing relationships with stakeholders to ensure their support and collaboration. Learn effective communication, negotiation, and conflict-resolution techniques to foster strong partnerships. By engaging and aligning stakeholders, you will pave the way for successful outcomes.

Collaboration and working with stakeholders become more and more necessary as you grow in PM leadership.

Frequent Product Reviews

Nurture a culture of continuous improvement and support for your teams. Implement regular product reviews to provide feedback, guidance, and mentorship. Empower your teams to learn, grow, and excel in their roles, creating an environment that fosters success.

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The State of Financial Inclusion in Mexico

Despite being the 11th largest economy in the world, Mexico faces significant disparities when it comes to financial inclusion. Only a third of adults in Mexico had an account at a financial institution just in 2017. Tere figures reveal the considerable gap that needs to be addressed to ensure more equitable access to financial services for all Mexicans.

Oxxo: Mexico's Leading Retailer

Founded in 1977, Oxxo is Mexico's largest convenience store chain, with over 19,000 outlets spread across the country. Initially, Oxxo catered to the consumer's basic needs, offering everyday essentials at affordable prices. They are similar to 7-Eleven stores in the US. They have become ubiquitous in every neighborhood. In recent years, however, the company has expanded its services to include a variety of financial offerings, making it easier for Mexicans to access and participate in the financial sector.

OXXO is making finance easy for people who find banks expensive, inconvenient, intimidating, or all three. The key lies in its broad reach, plus its intimate knowledge of its customers’ preferences and needs. Convenience plus client-centricity, squared.

During my research in Mexico, I met many people who did not believe they were banked but they had their Saldazo card which is a card that is offered by Oxxo in partnership with Citibanamex. People were using this card to make bill payments, asking employers to deposit part or all of their salary into the cards, etc., Without realizing it they were getting banked.

Oxxo's Financial Services: Bridging the Gap

Recognizing the need for greater financial inclusion in Mexico, Oxxo has developed a range of services to facilitate financial transactions for the unbanked population. As a leader in Mexico's retail industry, with over 18,000 stores across the country, Oxxo has utilized its vast network to extend financial services to its customers. By leveraging its wide reach and strong brand presence, Oxxo has introduced several innovative solutions that are helping to bridge the financial inclusion gap in Mexico. These services include:

1. Bill Payments: Oxxo allows customers to pay utility bills, such as electricity, water, and phone services, at any of its outlets. This service eliminates the need for a bank account and provides a convenient, accessible option for individuals who would otherwise struggle to make these payments. It also saves people hours traveling to a bill pay location and hours more waiting in line. Oxxo stores are in almost every neighborhood and people can make a bill payment while buying a soda.

2. Mobile Top-Ups: With mobile phones being a primary means of communication in Mexico, Oxxo provides mobile top-up services, enabling customers to recharge their prepaid mobile plans without requiring a bank account or credit card.

3. Remittance Services: In partnership with major remittance companies, Oxxo offers money transfer services to its customers. This allows individuals without access to traditional banking to send and receive money both domestically and internationally. More than $58B was sent to Mexico as remittances. Now Mexican receivers can simply go to a local Oxxo store to receive their remittance.

4. Prepaid Cards: Oxxo has partnered with several banks to issue prepaid debit cards. These cards can be loaded with cash at any Oxxo store and used for purchases, bill payments, and even ATM withdrawals. This provides the unbanked population with a safe, reliable alternative to cash transactions. One of the most popular such cards is the Saldazo card. In collaboration with Banamex and Visa, Oxxo launched the Saldazo debit card in 2012. This low-cost, accessible financial product allows users to make purchases, pay bills, and receive deposits without having to open a traditional bank account. Many Mexican people don’t believe they have any financial services but yet they carry these cards in their wallets. They simply think these are Oxxo or Saldazo cards.

5. Oxxo Wallet: In 2021, Oxxo launched its digital wallet, called Spin, allowing customers to open an account, transfer money, pay bills, and make purchases at participating stores without the need for a traditional bank account. This initiative has provided millions of unbanked Mexicans with an easy-to-use platform to access essential financial services, promoting savings and fostering financial security.

Oxxo's commitment to financial inclusion in Mexico has had a considerable impact on the lives of millions of unbanked and underbanked Mexicans. Through its innovative solutions and strategic partnerships, the company is effectively bridging the gap between formal financial services and those who have been historically excluded. By leveraging its extensive retail network, Oxxo is not only driving financial inclusion but also contributing to the country's overall economic growth and social welfare.

Resources:

CGAP publication here

Money article titled “Oxxo wants to become a superbank”

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📣The Opportunity

In 1988, Nigeria was not a lucrative investment destination due to its low per capita income, with most Nigerians living on less than $2 a day. However, the Aswani brothers saw similarities between Nigeria and Indonesia and decided to bring noodles to Nigeria by exporting from Indonesia. They believed that they could create a market for noodles in Nigeria because of the low cost and convenience of their product, which would appeal to the growing urban population.

🏆The Product

Indomie noodles are a simple product. It is a low-cost, delicious, and easy-to-cook packet of noodles. The product is made from wheat flour, created as flat dough, cut into the shape of noodles, steamed, fried, cooled, and packed along with seasoning.

Even though Indomie started with some early recipes, it introduced new product lines and flavors that were not previously available in the Nigerian market. For instance, the company's introduction of the "Hungry Man" pack, which contains double the amount of noodles as the regular pack, has been a hit among Nigerians who need a quick and filling meal at an affordable price.

Source https://indomie.ng/

🔥Market Creating Innovation

Indomie noodles was a disruptive innovation in Nigeria, as they disrupted the traditional Nigerian food market, which was dominated by local dishes such as jollof rice, eba, and pounded yam. Indomie's introduction of instant noodles offered a simpler and more convenient alternative to traditional Nigerian dishes, especially for busy urban dwellers who did not have the time or resources to prepare traditional meals.

One of the keys to Indomie's success in Nigeria has been its business model. The company started building all the infrastructure needed in the country to keep the costs low while introducing Indomie noodles in 1988 through export. This enabled them to develop a strong distribution network that reaches even the most remote areas of the country.

🤝Impact

In addition to bringing a market-creating product to Nigeria, Tolaram through Indomie has also made significant contributions to the Nigerian economy and society.

• Tolaram has built several factories in Nigeria, providing employment opportunities to thousands of Nigerians. They trained their employees in all aspects of the business, including engineering, finance, and other relevant areas.

• Indomie has built a strong distribution network in Nigeria, which enables it to reach even the most remote areas of the country.

• Indomie has invested in logistics and transportation infrastructure to ensure that its products are available in every corner of Nigeria, not only benefiting Tolaram but also other Nigerian companies.

• Tolaram has also enabled the Nigerian government to receive millions of dollars in tax revenue from the business as well as from the employment of thousands of Nigerians.

• It has also invested in social projects such as education, healthcare, and environmental conservation, through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

• Tolaram was a key leader in developing a $1.5 billion public-private partnership to build and operate the new Lekki deep-water port in the state of Lagos

• The company has also launched the Indomie Independence Day Award for Heroes of Nigeria (IIDA), which recognizes and rewards young Nigerian heroes who have made significant contributions to their communities.

Indomie's success in the Nigerian market could be seen as a market-leading innovation. Christensen defined market-leading innovation as “A market-creating innovation then, isn’t simply a product or a service, it is the entire solution: the product or service coupled with a business model that is profitable to the firm.” Overall, Indomie's success in Nigeria is a testament to the power of market-creating innovation in addressing social needs. In the words of Clayton Christensen “Indomie noodles is development”

💥 Insights for Innovators / Product Teams

• Indomie Noodles believed that their low-cost, quick-to-make noodles would be relevant to the market even though Nigeria wasn’t an obvious investment-ready country.

• When organizations think about going to poor countries, they spend a lot of time creating affordable products but don’t always think about making them available. Tolaram didn’t just have an affordable product but they also invested in distribution which was a key part of their business model to make the product successful.

• Tolaram makes all the risks a feature, not a bug. They identified risks around infrastructure, distribution, etc., and instead of waiting for the govt to solve them, they went about solving these issues themselves and made them part of their business model.

💡Resources to learn more about Indomie

📚 The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty

📢 Clayton Christensen Institute podcast

🔗 Making Space for Prosperity

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Download Full Workbook

As we move through life, it's important to take the time to reflect on our goals and priorities and plan accordingly. One way I do this is by constantly to do this is by using the "wheel of life" method, which helps us to identify key areas of our lives that we want to focus on, and set goals that align with our values and aspirations. In this article, we'll walk you through a step-by-step guide to planning your next quarter, using the wheel of life as a starting point.

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1. Reflect

Successes: Start by reflecting on all the successes and accomplishments you've achieved in the past quarter. Celebrate the goals you met for the quarter. Write down each of them, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem. This will help you gain perspective on your progress and build a sense of pride in your achievements. Do not skip this. It would be great to make this a daily/weekly/monthly habit

Challenges: Spend some time thinking about the challenges and failures you faced in the past quarter. Write them down and consider what lessons you learned from each experience. This will help you identify areas for improvement and growth in the coming quarter.

Strategies to Overcome Challenges: Review the strategies you used to overcome past challenges and determine which ones worked well. Consider incorporating these successful strategies into your plans for the upcoming quarter to help you navigate any obstacles that may arise.

Identify Energizing Activities: Think about what activities or tasks gave you energy and motivated you during the past quarter. Plan to incorporate these energizing activities into your routine for the next quarter to maintain your momentum and enthusiasm.

2. Prioritize

Use the Wheel of Life to reassess your life goals in various categories such as career, relationships, health, and personal growth. Reflect on your current satisfaction levels in each area and identify any gaps or areas where you'd like to improve. How should any of your priorities and goals shift in the last quarter?

3. Set SMART Goals

For each category that you want to focus on a little bit more in the next quarter, set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for the next quarter. Write down what you want to achieve and ensure your goals are realistic and attainable.

4. Plan

Set Monthly Milestones: Plan for when you'd like to achieve each goal during the quarter by setting milestones on a monthly basis. This will help you stay on track and monitor your progress as you work towards your goals.

Create a Weekly Action Plan: Break down each monthly goal into smaller, manageable tasks by creating a weekly action plan. This will help you stay focused and organized as you work towards achieving your goals.

5. Execute

This part is generally easy for most people. With your plan in place, it's time to put it into action. This may involve making some changes to your daily routine or habits and being disciplined about sticking to your plan. It's important to stay motivated and focused on your goals, even when progress feels slow or difficult.

6. Track Your Progress Weekly

Finally, track your progress on a weekly basis to stay accountable and ensure you're moving in the right direction. Regularly reviewing your progress will help you identify any adjustments needed and celebrate your accomplishments along the way. This may involve leveraging the weekly tracker in the workbook.

Conclusion

Taking the time to reflect on your past quarter and set goals for the next one is crucial to maintaining productivity and personal growth. By following these steps, you'll be well-prepared to tackle the challenges of the upcoming quarter and make significant progress toward your long-term goals while having the ability to adjust as you go.

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In an interview, Navrina Singh, CEO of Credo AI has given some valuable tips for PMs to consider which are woven into the narrative below. 

A deeper and diverse approach to research  

Being customer-centric is key to product management. In a world of AI product management, customer research plays an even bigger role. Customer insights come from

• Traditional customer research methods. 

• AI products produce significant amounts of data that are a great source of customer insights and customer behavior. 

• AI products might use different user experiences like conversational interfaces. User testing and customer feedback mechanism for such interfaces can be highly scalable to gain customer insights 

Navrina emphasizes the importance of bringing in new voices from a variety of disciplines, including legal, policy, and business perspectives, into AI research and development to efficiently govern AI. Bringing in experts from outside of the technical field can help to identify potential ethical issues, and ensure that the product is designed and developed in a way that is consistent with legal and ethical principles. 

Understand Intent vs Use

Products are not always used how their creators intended them to be used. Customer research focuses a lot on understanding intent. But understanding use is also critical to ensuring products minimize harm and can be improved. Understanding intent and use and the gap between them is critical to AI product management to ensure we are assessing all use cases to minimize issues like bias. Understanding intent and use is possible through

• Customer research through direct customer interaction  

• Analyzing user behavior from data

• Monitoring customer feedback through customer service, customer reviews on app store, etc., 

• Data analytics can also indicate a lot about how products are being used, providing insights into customer usage patterns and trends. 

Fit For Purpose 

Just like any product, AI products should be designed and developed to meet the specific needs and requirements of the intended user. Navrina explains that building an AI product that is fit for purpose requires a deep understanding of the problem that the product is intended to solve. Product managers must work closely with customers to identify the key pain points and requirements. Data collection, assessment, training, and testing models are key practices that will help us build AI products that are fit for customer purposes. 

Minimize Harm As A Key Design Principle

Minimizing harm is key to AI product management even more than traditional product management because 

• AI models can be difficult to understand and their decision-making processes may not always be transparent. Hence, it is important for AI product managers to be transparent about how their products work and how they make decisions. It is critical to have models that are explainable.

• They are complex and can have unintended consequences. The risk is amplified because we can’t predict these consequences. 

• AI models are only as unbiased as the data used to train them. If the training data is biased, the AI product can perpetuate those biases. This can lead to harm by excluding certain groups or reinforcing harmful stereotypes. As a result, it is important for AI product managers to be aware of these biases and take steps to mitigate them.

Understand Potential Impact

AI products can have a significant impact on people's lives, and it is essential to understand this impact before, during, and after developing the product. Building in practices like those below will help Product Managers continuously learn about the impact of their AI products

• Conduct a risk assessment to identify potential negative impacts that the AI product may have on various stakeholders, such as users, customers, employees, and society at large. This assessment should consider potential harms such as bias, privacy violations, discrimination, or unintended consequences.

• Analyze the potential benefits that the AI product may offer to its users, customers, or society at large. These benefits may include increased efficiency, improved accuracy, cost savings, or new opportunities.

• Regularly review relevant regulations and ethical guidelines to ensure that the AI product is being developed and deployed in compliance with legal requirements and ethical standards.

• Continuously testing with customers through qualitative interviews, surveys or quantitative methods to get feedback from potential users and understand how they perceive the product’s potential impact. 

Foster A Culture Of Ethics

Product managers should foster a culture of ethics within the development team and the company as a whole. This includes promoting open communication and transparency, as well as encouraging team members to speak up if they identify potential ethical issues.

Design for User Privacy

User data should be handled responsibly and transparently. Companies should have clear policies and processes in place for collecting, storing, and using user data.

Continuously Monitor And Evaluate

Monitoring product performance is required for regular products. For AI products, monitoring plays an even bigger and more critical role. AI products should be monitored and evaluated regularly to ensure they continue to operate ethically and effectively. This includes monitoring for potential biases and unintended consequences. Monitoring and assessing AI product deployment to identify any intended consequences or negative impacts that weren’t identified during product development is extremely critical. 

Overall, product managers must approach AI product development with a strong commitment to ethical principles and a clear understanding of the potential risks and benefits. Following a few of these guidelines will help companies create AI products that are effective, trustworthy, and ethically responsible.

Follow Navrina Singh on LinkedIn

To stay updated on the latest trends and developments in responsible AI subscribe to Credo AI's newsletter. 

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Share Interest to Join Product Teardown

There is a lot written about Product Sense and its importance for Product Managers. Product Thinking, Product Intuition, and Product Sense all describe the same concept. Product Sense is simply the ability to creatively build products and solutions that solve customer jobs and outcomes. Product Managers can do that when they have a deep understanding of the customer, industry, business, and their own products.

However, the word “sense” might indicate that people innately have it. While some people might be naturally better at it, Product Sense is something that can be developed over time. I wrote about a few ways to develop product sense here. In this article, you can find a structured way to develop product sense through “Product Teardowns”

Join me and a small group of like-minded individuals in a monthly product teardown session to collectively enhance our product sense. If you'd like to participate, please fill out this form to sign up.

How to do a Product Teardown

Developing product sense requires continuous effort. Conducting product teardowns is an effective way to cultivate this skill over time. It is recommended to perform this exercise frequently, either on a weekly or monthly basis. You can do this on your own or join our small group on a monthly basis.

1. To get started, select a product that you want to deconstruct.

2. Sign up for the product and use it for a few days.

3. Take note of everything, from the sign-up process to onboarding, and how you use the product.

4. Delve into the product's website, read customer reviews, explore its marketing efforts, and research competing products and companies.

5. After spending a considerable amount of time with the product, contemplate the following questions. The duration of this step can range from a few hours to several days:

Questions to think through to understand a product

These are some framing questions to be thought through.

Customer and core job to be done

• Who is the target customer? 

• What is the customer's job to be done? 

Product

• What is the product's value proposition?

• How does the product solve its target customers' problems?

• How does this product help you understand its value in the first interaction? 

• What’s the signup and onboarding process like? 

• How intuitive is the product's user interface, and does it require any additional training or a learning curve?

• How easy or hard was it for you to complete the job you set out to do?

• How did you feel while exploring the product?

• What are the product's unique features?

• What is the call to action (CTA)

• How reliable and durable is the product? Are there any potential issues or defects?

Go to Market

• How are customers discovering the product? 

• Do you observe any product-led growth tactics?

Business Model

• How do you think the product is going to monetize it? 

• If you were an investor, would you invest $100k in it?  

• What is the product's pricing model? Is it a one-time purchase, subscription-based, freemium, or something else?

• Are there any upsell or cross-sell opportunities within the product?

• What are the ways the company is generating revenue? - adding on premium features, ads or sponsorships, affiliate marketing, partnerships, licensing or white-labeling the technology to other companies, in-app purchases, data monetization,

Competition

• Who are the main competitors of the product?

• How does the product compare to its competitors?

• How are they solving the problem differently? What is their unique value proposition in comparison to competitors?

• What are the weaknesses of the product in comparison to its competitors?

• How does the product compare to its competitors in terms of price, features, and quality?

• What is the market share of the product and its competitors?

• How long have the competitors been in the market and what is their history?

• How does the marketing and branding of the product compare to its competitors?

• What are the reviews and ratings of the product in comparison to its competitors?

Improvements

• What are the product's shortcomings?

• If you were the product manager, how would you improve it? What would you change?

• How would you improve the user experience?

• Are there other customer segments or personas that could find this product useful? How can they be targeted or captured?

• What product-led growth tactics would you propose?

By systematically answering these questions, you'll gain a comprehensive understanding of the product, its strengths, and weaknesses, and its competitive landscape.

Product Teardown Workshops

I host a monthly product teardown for a small group of people to help collectively develop product sense. If you are interested in signing up for one please fill this form. If you want to run your own session, here is how I found it to be effective.

1. Create a backlog of a list of products proposed by participants. Participants can keep adding to this list but we pick the one to focus on in each session. 

2. Everybody tries the selected product before joining the next session. To do this well, I encourage everybody to try the product, browse through the site of the product, do some online research to understand competition and customer perception, read through app reviews, etc,

3. When the session starts, we remind everybody about the format of the session. If it is a group of ~8 people we run it as one big group. If there are more than 8 people, I suggest you break out into groups of 4-5. 

4. Each group will then go through a tear-down of the product using all or some of the question prompts listed above

5. After 60 mins of small group assessment, everybody joins back the main session

6. In the main session, each group talks about their key observations and findings. 

This article shares a lot of detailed ideas on how to improve product sense. Even if you observed one or a few questions about a product every week, you will see compounded results in improving your product sense.

Some Other Helpful Resources

• Product Teardown by The Product Folks

• All first-time UX teardowns by User Onboard

• How to improve product sense — a practical guide by Austin Yang

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This guide is a comprehensive collection of resources to help you think about inclusive product design, universal design, ethics in AI, design equity, Justice Driven Product Design. It's time to broaden your perspective. These are a lot of resources. Start with the recommendations and keep learning. Set aside 30 mins a week at the minimum to compound your learning in this space.

Where to start

📹 Rethink what Inclusive Design Means by Kat Holmes

📹 Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil 

📹 Designing for Justice - Talk by Antionette Caroll

🔗Microsoft Inclusive Design

🔗equityXdesign free course online

🔗Mismatch Design for all: Why inclusion matters in business  by Kat Holmes

Books

🕮 Mismatch How Inclusion Shapes Design By Kat Holmes Mismatch

🕮 Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil

🕮 Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock. An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities and dismantle structural inequality. Online version of the book here

🕮 Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin. A cut through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.

🕮 Building for Everyone by Annie-Jean Baptiste

🕮 Technically Wrong by Sara Wachter-Boettcher. A revealing look at how tech industry bias and blind spots get baked into digital products — and harm us all.

🕮 Cross Cultural Design by Senongo Akpem. A List Apart book exploring how to create culturally relevant and responsible experiences that reach a truly global audience.

🕮 Field Guide: Equity-Centered Community Design by Creative Reaction Lab. A problem solving process based on equity, humility-building, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating.

🕮 How to Be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, this book discusses concepts of racism and Kendi's proposals for anti-racist individual actions and systemic changes. It received positive critical reception

Articles and Resources

📹 Joy Buolamwini, How I am fighting bias in algorithms - Ted video 

📹Joy Buolamwini on The Open Mind: Algorithmic Justice - 2019 video

📹Cathy O'Neil: The Era of Blind Faith In Data Must End - a Ted Talk

🔗6 Principles for Inclusive Design: How designing for equity & accessibility benefits everyone

🎧Intersectionality Matters Podcast

🔗Equity-Centered Design Framework and K12 Lab’s deck 

🔗When bias in product design means life or death - a TechCrunch article

🔗Adding Ethics to Design Sprints

🔗How to begin designing for diversity

🔗What is Universal Design

🔗Anti-racist reading list for designers

🔗Measuring Discrimination on the Airbnb Platform here

🔗Racism Untaught resources

🔗Creative Reaction Lab for resources, masterclasses, jobs etc., ​​Equity-Centered Community Design Field Guide - Collection of equitable design-thinking frameworks

🔗Creative Reaction Lab’s library of training webinars for designers

🔗5by5: Access and Algorithms with Lisa Nash - an interview with resources

🔗5by5: The Interplay of Design and Ethics with Ruth Schmidt - A super powerful read. 

🔗Biased Algorithms are Everywhere and No One Seems to Care - an article on AI

🔗Microsoft’s Responsible Innovation Toolkit: Harms Modeling and others

🔗Measuring Bias at Airbnb

🔗Design | A brief history of how racism manifests itself in design and how we can learn from it here

🔗The challenge of designing for everyone by Benjamin Evans, head of Product Inclusion at PayPal

🔗Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo by Natasha Iskander in Harvard Business Review

🔗Of course technology perpetuates racism. It was designed that way. by Charlton McIlwain in MIT Technology Review

🔗Typography as A Radical Act by Silas Munro in AIGA’s Eye on Design

🔗What Does It Mean to Decolonize Design? by Anoushka Khandwala in AIGA’s Eye on Design

🔗Speech recognition technology is racist by Thomas Macaulay in The Next Web

​​🔗Anti-Racist Reading List for Designers - Medium post by Lexi Namer

People to Follow

➡️Cathy O'Neil here or on Twitter

➡️Kate Crawford

➡️Annie Jean Baptiste

➡️Navrina Singh on LI

➡️Joy Buolamwini at Poet of Code

➡️Laura Kalbag on Twitter

➡️Kat Holmes on LI

➡️Sasha Costanza-Chock on Twitter

➡️Susannah Shattuck on LI

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In product management, this ethical dilemma is particularly relevant. Products have a significant impact on individuals' lives, and their design and development can have far-reaching consequences. As such, product managers must consider not only the legal requirements but also the ethical implications of their decisions.

One of the major challenges in product management is the tension between profitability and ethical considerations. There might be a temptation to cut corners or overlook ethical issues in order to save costs and increase profits. However, this can lead to products that are not safe, not environmentally friendly, or not fair to workers or other stakeholders.

Furthermore, laws and regulations are not always in line with ethical considerations. For example, a company may be operating within the boundaries of the law but still be exploiting workers, or causing harm to the environment. Similarly, a company might be operating ethically but still be breaking laws and regulations.

The solution to this ethical dilemma is not always clear-cut. Product managers must navigate the gray area between what is right and what is legal, and find a balance that serves the best interest of all stakeholders. This requires a deep understanding of the industry, the laws and regulations, and the ethical principles involved. It also requires a willingness to engage in open and honest dialogue with all stakeholders and to be transparent about the ethical implications of the product.

Product management is not just about meeting legal requirements but also about considering the ethical implications of products. Companies must strive to balance profitability with ethical considerations, and product managers must navigate the fine line between what is right and what is legal. It's not always easy, but it's crucial for creating products that are not only profitable but also ethically sound and socially responsible.

What does Ethics in Product Management mean?

Ethics in product management can include considering the potential impact of a product on society and making sure it aligns with company values and responsible business practices. This can include considering issues such as privacy, security, and fairness in product design and development. It can also involve being transparent about data collection and usage, and giving users control over their own data. Additionally, product managers may consider the environmental impact of a product and strive to make it sustainable. It is also important for product managers to consider the potential for unintended consequences of a product and take steps to mitigate them.

Managing the complexities of Ethics in Product Management is like walking a tightrope

What are some principles that Product Managers can keep in mind?

The following are some principles that can help product managers build products that are ethical, and responsible and provide value to the users.

✅ Empathy: Understand the needs, wants, and concerns of the end-users and strive to build products that positively impact their lives.

✅ Fairness: Avoid creating products that perpetuate bias or discriminate against certain groups of people.

✅ Responsibility: Consider the potential impact of the product on society, and strive to make it responsible, sustainable, and safe.

✅ Transparency: Be upfront about data collection and usage, and give users control over their own data.

✅ Respect for privacy: Make sure that any data collected is necessary for the product to function and that users understand how their data will be used and who will have access to it. Protect data from any potential misuse.

✅ Continuous improvement: Continuously monitor, measure, and improve the product and its impact on society, taking into account feedback from users and other stakeholders.

Impact of ignoring ethics in product management

If a Product Manager doesn't keep ethics in mind as they build products, it can cause harm to customers, companies, stakeholders, and individual Product Managers

❌ Privacy violations: If a product does not respect user privacy, it can lead to data breaches, identity theft, and other forms of cybercrime.

❌ Discrimination: Products that perpetuate bias or discriminate against certain groups of people can harm marginalized communities and reinforce systems of inequality.

❌ Lack of transparency: If users are not informed about data collection and usage, they may not trust the product or the company.

❌ Unintended consequences: A product that is not responsibly designed or tested can have unintended negative consequences, such as causing physical or emotional harm.

❌ Lack of sustainability: Products that are not environmentally friendly can contribute to pollution and other forms of environmental degradation.

❌ Loss of trust: If a company or product is seen as unethical, it can lead to a loss of trust from customers, partners, and investors.

❌ Legal action: Individuals and businesses can be found guilty and might face severe legal consequences.

❌ Business closure: Customers and other stakeholders might lose complete trust in a company and they might be forced to close the business.

How do you measure Ethics?

It's important to note that measuring ethics in products can be complex and may require multiple methods to provide a comprehensive understanding. Additionally, different people may have different ethical standards and may therefore have different perceptions of what is ethical. Some metrics that can indicate if a product was built ethically include:

📈Labor standards: metrics such as the percentage of suppliers that are audited for compliance with labor laws, the number of workers trained on ethical practices, and the number of workers who have raised concerns about ethical issues.

📈Environmental impact: metrics such as the product's carbon footprint, water usage, and waste generation.

📈Transparency: metrics such as the availability and accessibility of information on the product's supply chain, the company's policies and practices related to ethical issues, and the company's response to ethical concerns raised by stakeholders.

📈Social impact: metrics such as the number of people positively impacted by the product, the number of people who were negatively impacted by the product, and the number of people who were displaced or evicted due to the product.

📈Human rights: metrics such as the percentage of products that have been audited for compliance with human rights standards, the number of workers trained on human rights-related issues, and the number of workers who have raised concerns about human rights issues.

📈Product safety: metrics such as product recalls, the incidence of product-related injuries and deaths, and the results of safety testing.

It's important to note that these metrics are not exhaustive and some may not be applicable to certain products or industries. Additionally, some metrics may have different weightings depending on the context, industry, and stakeholders involved.

📚 Resources

Ethical product management is a broad and evolving field, so it's a good idea for product managers to stay informed about new developments and best practices. Some books to get started are

📚"The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future" by Sheila Jasanoff

📚“Ethics 101: What Every Leader Needs To Know” by John C. Maxwell

📚"The Responsible Company" by Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley

📚“Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business” by John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia

📚“Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution” by Robert Chesnut

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“Finding” our purpose is not easy. Neither is it too hard. I spent years researching purpose, people living purposeful lives, and learning from great thought leaders who say the purpose is irrelevant. I am living a purposeful life and have helped many answer this question for themselves. This workbook is a result of my learning and application.

With thoughtful reflection, you can define your purpose and forge your path toward it. I have curated a workbook that will help you with prompts for you to define your purpose statement!

Get Full Free Printable Workbook

Your purpose statement is what will guide you in deciding what to do and what not to do. It will be your compass on how to live your life and how not to.

Before you start, remember

• Purpose doesn’t have to be one BIG thing

• Purpose doesn’t have to save the world

• You can have more than one purpose

• Your Purpose could change over your life.

• You might not find your purpose but you can design it

• You can find purpose in whatever you are currently doing.

Get Full Free Printable Workbook

10 Steps to Defining Your Purpose

1. Reflect on your life: Your life so far has deep insights about what your purpose is. Reflect on it.

2. Identify your values: We all have a set of values, whether we acknowledge them or not. When we know our values, we are able to better align our work, life, and priorities with them. Identifying your values is critical to defining your purpose.

3. Identify ‘Who’ You Care about: Who do you care about? Whose life do you want to make a difference in? Everybody has a purpose to serve someone.

4. Identify your Strengths: Think about what you are good at or what your friends, family members, or colleagues say about you. You can also take tests like Strengths Finders to find out your strengths.

5. Know your Passion: What do you love? What are you passionate about?

6. Identify What problems do want to solve: What are some problems in the world that you would like to solve?

7. What could you be paid for: Identify which of the problems from the previous exercise can be ones you could be paid for solving

8. Bring it all together: Bring all your thoughts from the previous steps into one view as below

   

9. Design your purpose statement: You can write as many purpose statements as you like. They can be in your personal life or professional. They can be paid or unpaid. Use the template below to write them. Your purpose statement should be simple and clear. It should be actionable. It should be focused on the effect you want to have on others. It should be expressed in affirmative language that resonates with you.

10. Forge Your Path To Purpose: Get input from your colleagues, friends, and family. Their feedback and input will help you keep editing your purpose statement. Review your current life to see if you are living your life according to your purpose statement. Are there things that you can improve to be more aligned with your purpose?  The following questions can help you adjust

    1. Does my life seem to be aligned with my purpose statement?

    2. Am I living by my values?

    3. Am I helping those who I care about most?

    4. Am I working on solving the problems that are most important to the people I care about?

    5. Am I leveraging my strengths?

    6. Am I working on things I am passionate about?

    7. Do I feel joy in my work and life?

       If your answers are No to any of the questions, adjust your life to get back to leading a purposeful life by making changes to align with your purpose statement.

You can download the full free printable workbook to design your purpose and forge your path towards it.

Get Full Free Printable Workbook

This workbook is a result of years of research, the application of frameworks, and my own experiences of designing my purposeful life and helping many others0000000. Resources that inspired me over the years are

📚 Find Your Why  By Simon Sinek, David Mead, and Peter Docker

📚 HBR Guide to Crafting Your Purpose by John Coleman

🔗   HBR Article: You Don’t Find Your Purpose — You Build It

🔗   Let’s Work Magic: Where does the Purpose Diagram come from?

➡️ Many articles on Ikigai and purpose

➡️ People living their purpose

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The VP’s name was Gerardo Rios. I met him at Procter and Gamble early on in my career, first as a legend in leadership, and then as a VP in my organization. Everybody loved him; I never heard a bad phrase next to his name, which is odd for a shark swimming in a big pond among other sharks. 

His demeanor, tone, line of questioning, and clarity were quite impressive. He was the type of leader that, somehow, you would fall in love with the mission he proposed. I honestly couldn’t explain this unique effect of expansive waves across the organization, until one day I was invited to one of his leadership team training sessions. 

Honestly, at this point, I don’t even know if he knew I was there, or if he remembers me at all (he ran a 2k+ or maybe more organization at that point). But what he taught me in that training has shaped my leadership style forever. I’ve since delivered 10+ years of leading teams as small as 1, and up to 90 people with great relations with my direct and indirect reports across the organization, and with zero known HR reports. 

During that training, he started without a deck; he just stood up in front of 12+ people and said the following: 

“Leadership can be summarized in one single word - CARE. Caring about your customers, your employees, your peers, your leadership team, your community, truly just caring about the humans around you and the business you are in charge of.”

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From that point on, he started sharing examples of how CARING for others pays off. How about asking an employee about his/her day and family, a customer about their health, or your boss about his/her worries? He talked for about an hour, without a deck, just connecting with his audience, caring about them, asking them why they struggle with being leaders, and showing that caring for others was the most important skill you need to lead. 

From that day on, in every darkest hour when I’m leading a team, I ask myself “Am I caring about others?” That question has constantly given me the confidence to follow through one more step, course correct, or just stop the current path of action. 

The pursuit of building high-performing teams

While caring for others as a principle can always be a guardrail for decision-making as a leader, the moments where you face the biggest challenges are when trying to produce a high-performing team. A “Peak team” is one that produces exceptional results constantly, such as the “Chicago Bulls” from the 90s or the “Argentina World Champion Soccer team” from 2022.  This is by far the toughest task you have as a leader and not having a systemic approach will keep you from reaching the dreamland of a peak team. 

A few years back I embarked on trying to build a framework detailing what caring means for your employees. I devised a simple tool that now pops up in my head during critical situations, and I have an action plan to keep building my peak team. Let me show you something I’ve built for myself, and this is the first time I’m making it public.

Introducing the “Caring Leadership Framework”

When you think about your employees, you are constantly facing two main topics: 

1. Are they at peak (at the best they can be overdelivering) or underperforming (delivering poor results)?

2. What is their level of engagement (with their work, peers, leadership, and customers)?

When you start a new role as a leader and start with your first 1:1; you usually sense where your employee’s engagement is and have a little window to see their performance. But, as time passes and you get overwhelmed with your own work and keep asking your team to deliver X or Y in Z time, you start getting the hard truth about who is who. You start to see who is at peak, and who’s under-delivering with high/low engagement. 

Now it’s your turn to first ask, “Do I care about my employees?” and, “Do I care about THIS EXACT employee?” I honestly hope your answer is always “Yes.” Remember that no matter what situation you are in, you are leading the team and you have to care for the health, security, stability, realization, sense of belonging, and performance of your team. 

Once you have done your self-assessment and understand where you stand about your actual behavior and sentiment towards the employee, you can move on to the next steps. You need to understand that caring for your employees means you can help them be at their peak and help them “be the best they can be,” and be highly engaged with meaningful work and relations (as Ray Dalio would say).  

Quadrant PHE (Peak-High Engagement)

Employees in this quadrant are the ones that are producing great results and are constantly engaging with their assigned work and building relations across the organization. They come prepared to your 1:1 with a clear agenda, bring thought leadership to the conversations you have with them or with others, and build connections across the organization to get things done. These employees are the example you are trying to set as the standard for the rest. 

These types of employees are what chess calls your Queen. Read carefully, “DO NOT LOSE YOUR QUEEN.” You can see what losing your queen feels like on the series Billions when Chuck Rhoades loses Kate Sacker for not caring about her, just himself.

Personally, I have lost very few PHE direct employees in my career (two to be exact), but when you do, trust me, you regret it every day for a long time. 

As of today, I still regret losing a particular PHE. He was at a PHE quadrant and I pushed him to a PLE (Peak-Low Engagement) quadrant due to my lack of care for him. I missed the shift in his behavior, and ultimately he went to another team despite losing his promotion (because the new role was a lateral move under a new manager.) 

I didn’t listen enough and didn’t spend time observing his body language, words, and actions. I lost him by overstretching him, pushing him to become a manager and taking on more responsibility, while at the same time, he was becoming a dad for the first time and had family members going through severe health problems. I completely misread him. I thought stretching him was the right course of action, but what he wanted was not to be stretched, but to have at least 1 thing under control. He didn’t want to lead others and wanted to stay as an individual contributor. (Sadly Steve Jobs was right on this occasion; he would be the best manager the day he decides to embark on that kind of role.)

As a manager, when you see that someone is performing at their peak and is highly engaged, this is the moment where you want to stretch their skills. This is the moment to scout more complex problems (more engineers as a PM, higher budget as a growth marketer, bigger scope area for a PMM, etc.) and produce a brief for them and prioritize this over other less impactful work. 

Remember, stretching doesn’t mean “Set it and forget it.” This is the moment where your job is to walk next to them and to teach them a new skill that will return in many multiples for the company and you. If you just ask for a tough project to be resolved, you can easily move the employee to a UHE (Underperforming-High Engaged) quadrant, which is a risk zone for breaking the team and/or the employee. 

For this quadrant, remember:

1. Stretching their skills is the main course of action.

2. But don’t forget to listen if more skills are what they want, or you can move them to a PLE quadrant. 

3. Walk with them on the new skills; do not throw them into the shaky waters or you can push them to a UHE quadrant

4. Course correct fast with heavy support if they fall into PLE or UHE, or you might lose your employee or break the team dynamics.

Quadrant PHE (Underperforming-High Engagement)

Sometimes, your highly-engaged employees will fall into this dangerous zone where just being engaged is not enough to deliver peak results. If the employee does not have the skills and competencies to deliver what is required, no matter how engaged they are, the result won’t come. What do you do here?

Let me tell you about my favorite UHE employee, Miss X (yes, I’ll keep her anonymous). My boss said she was a project manager who had a huge potential to become a Growth Product Manager. Honestly, I loved working with her, and I was confident in my ability to inspire and coach her to become a great PHE employee. 

She came on board, and my typical strategy with transition employees is to give them something easy they can execute, while I can take on the big part of rallying the stakeholders. This usually yields great results and lets the employee get a sense of the execution and how I engage with others. The first project was to “set an entry point on the app.” This entry point was going to bring millions of users as a result, and the product execution had low complexity. 

In 2 months, the entry point was live, the product growth was at +50% in new users and the employee was at the PHE quadrant. So my next task was to stretch Miss X to new challenges that require more skill. 

Next project, a promotion across all the sign-up flows across 2 different apps. Yes, I went aggressive on this project. Still, I felt this employee had the experience of a project manager and she was a very fast learner. As expected, she jumped at the problem and started to bring a very organized project into place. Everything was moving smoothly until one month before shipping, she flags that we might slip the launch date. 

When I went deep into the details of the execution, it was obvious that we weren’t just going to slip the date, but we were actually going to launch 2 months late. She clearly didn’t have the skills for product requirements collection or the articulation of the needs of the engineering team. I wasn’t auditing requirements at that point, thinking she was used to this work as a project manager. Sadly, her skills were not ready yet and I had made a PHE a UHE employee. 100% on me. 

The action you have to take in that kind of scenario is not to just take over, point fingers, and assign another PM to save the day, regardless of whether that's what your instinct is. Because remember, doing this would not be caring for others, and you could lose this great learning opportunity for your employee. So the key action here is COMPRESS.

You need to compress as much knowledge as possible in the shortest possible time into the employee. The knowledge needs to be simple and consumable by the employee to spot the gaps which result in “underperformance” and provide clear direction on how to solve the gap. This is the moment when Yoda teaches Luke.

You have to keep a close distance from the employee. Do not let fear enter their decision-making, let them know you are with them and any decision from that point on will be 100% owned by you. Set daily stand-ups, explain how your caring leadership style will change temporarily and why, and roll your sleeves to make the project a success. 

As for my favorite UHE employee, she was on that quadrant for 2 months while we polished her skills, and then she launched the project and grew the user acquisition by 20-30% 🙂.  She came back to the PHE quadrant, and I decided to hold off stretching more until she launched the next project (the same promotion but on a different app.) 

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Quadrant PLE (Peak-Low Engagement)

The Peak-Low Engaged quadrant is where guerrilla warfare starts in your team. This is where one of the best performers starts setting the example that not being engaged is the right way to keep performing well; Where not caring for others works “just fine”, and where the devil of the story is always the boss. Disengaged employees are the bad apple that not only rot themselves but can infect the rest. This is a very, VERY dangerous quadrant for high-performing teams. 

Here, your job is to REVITALIZE the relationship with your employee. Usually, these employees fall into this quadrant because they’ve lost or don’t have status, have low intimacy with you as a manager, or didn’t get the promotion they believe they deserved, or any other such reasons. Employees in this quadrant are probably the toughest to deal with because they know that they’re good and that the team, and especially you, depend on them to stay at their peak. 

Revitalize the relationship by going for a walk, inviting her/him to key important meetings with leadership, asking about team structure and their thoughts about others, asking them about their main concerns at work, and then truly acting upon them. Do not ignore them and just give up on their behavior. Just like teenagers don’t know better, these employees need your help to rediscover who they are, what they want, why they want it, and how the company or the mission you have for them fits in that framework. 

Don’t get me wrong, though. If after trying on your end, the employee stays on that quadrant, your job is no longer to revitalize the relationship between you, her/him, and the company. Your job is to revitalize their aspiration and their career path since you don’t have anything else to offer. 

For example, on this quadrant, I had an employee who was, by far, the best at his craft. But out of the blue he just wanted to do something else. When I pressed what that “something else” was, he admitted that he had no idea. So, in turn, my style changed from helping revitalize our relationship, the mission of his job, and why the company needed him, to define his life and career goals. Ultimately, this person ended up leaving the team with a soft landing plan that would help him answer that question for himself. 

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Quadrant ULE (Underperforming-Low Engagement)

Honestly, this is the hardest quadrant to prove that you truly care about others. This is an employee that already given up on the mission, and is far from capable of producing peak results. As a manager, you might want them to leave organically, simplifying your life and eliminating the need for the awful session with HR to do an offboarding plan. But, as I said, as a leader you care about everyone in your team, and “no one should be left behind.” 

Your response here is to “reshape” because, clearly, things aren’t working for the employee and the company; either the mission isn’t clear, the restrictions are too tough, or the skills and competencies aren’t right. It’s your job to reshape the role of the person, or the person themself while dealing with the pressures in your day-to-day life. 

Reshaping the role means having a clear assessment of what this person can and cannot do. Think through all the problems you have across your organization where this person could be at the PHE quadrant, and then lobby across the organization on behalf of your employee to make sure this change can happen as soon as possible. You were going to fail either way on the status quo, so change is the only true answer here. 

Execute the change with grace; Don’t be a bad human and leader by just stating the obvious (Change the “You are underperforming” to “We are underperforming”). Be assertive with the employee on why you need them to change and what will happen if the employee stays in the ULE quadrant, which is very likely to be a PIP (performance improvement plan) or a layoff (potentially for both of you if the results don’t come.) Obviously, no one wants this outcome. 

“How fast do I need to make this change?” you ask. Honestly, 2-3 months. Don’t wait too long, or you will pay the consequences. I had an employee that I held for 8 months while knowing that she was on the ULE quadrant since month 2. I tried COMPRESS, REVITALIZE, and STRETCH, everything except RESHAPE. Why? Because reshaping meant I had to move her, and I didn’t have anyone else who could do the job. Which she wasn’t doing 🙄either way. 

This put me in a very bad position, since I didn’t change her fast, didn’t hire someone fast, and we both ended up underperforming for the team. When I hired someone to help her, she left the company, while the new hire and I ended up being left with an absolute disaster. This ultimately yielded 0 results for the company and the whole team was dismantled. 

Great, now what?

I’ve dedicated about 3,000 words to explain the Caring Leadership Framework. I’ve shared the good and the bad of my personal experiences and how not using it gets me into trouble and using it makes my team members reach peak performance. The grace of this framework is how easy it is to remember and how you can profile an employee based on observation and take action right away. 

Still, how do you start using this today? 

Introducing the “Caring Leadership Logic Loop”

This flow is quite self-explanatory, but nonetheless, I’ll explain each concept in one paragraph and hopefully, you can start today with a caring leadership attitude. 

To be an effective caring leader, you need to: 

Do your work. As the leader, you have to spend time thinking about the mission, vision, and strategy of your team. Read blogs, write documents, make doodles, and spend at least 1-2 days thinking about what’s coming for each of your team members. You have to be sure of what you need from each member, or they will be lost and you won’t be able to place the key players in the right positions to perform at peak ability. 

Observe. Once you have a clear ask for your team members, and you have briefed them on what you need/want from them, It’s time to observe as much as possible. You have 2 eyes, 2 ears, and only 1 month for a reason; Listen and observe 2x or 100x more than you talk. 

Document what you observe. Have a document with each employee’s name (in my case, I use a note in the ‘notes’ app from Apple) and write every observation you make (e.g. the employee did X and I was expecting Y, or the peer said Z.), add the date (it matters), and add print screens. Document, document, document. 

Infer. Once you have at least 1 month of observations, you can now infer what is going on with the employee. I love the term “ladder up” which basically asks you to ask, “what does this observation means” and then, “what does this means” until you get to a point of no other path. A bit of first-principle thinking in this exercise will help you have good insights into what is truly happening with each employee.

Hypothesize. Now is the time to start building your hypothesis on the quadrants your employees are in. Personally, I write this on a spreadsheet and write what the plan of action is for each employee on how to get them to the PHE quadrant. 

Test. Design tests to validate your hypothesis. Think on, “I believe the employee is on XZY quadrant, if I do ABC employee will move to YYY quadrant,” “To verify that, I will do CCC for ### time,” “I will look for CYC results,” and “I’m right if RRR happens.” 

Validate. Validate the outcome of your tests by writing the conclusions of your tests on your personal excel. 

Make changes. Based on your learnings, now is the time to make changes for your employees.

I truly hope you start caring about others today! 💪

Want to connect? Email me at jorge@kverge.com

A guest post by Jorge Samayoa Founder of KVERGE, a company focused on helping all tech professionals to over deliver, and former Director of Growth Product Management, Strategy, and Operations for PayPal. And Designed by Raymundo Valdez VP of Design for KVERGE. Want to read more of his amazing content, subscribe to KVERGE’s newsletter.

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However, using the word “sense” might indicate that people have it innately. While some people might be naturally better at it, Product Sense is something that can be developed over time. When I first heard of product sense, I wondered if it was something people innately have and assumed I did not.

I developed a deep empathy for customers, a deeper understanding of what solutions would work, and a holistic view of the industry and other solutions. As a PM building products to improve people’s financial wellness, I developed deep expertise in customers’ financial lives. I spent a decade immersing myself in the lives of financially underserved customers. I probably read every book on poverty, financial inclusion, microfinance, and related topics.

Did I have a natural product sense? Maybe not. Did I develop a deep product sense? Absolutely!

I have seen the following tactics work for people in developing product sense.

🎯 Develop Customer Empathy

Get entrenched in the lives of your customers. Immerse yourself in your customer context. Know about their lives, their contexts, the jobs they are trying to do, what gets in the way, their joys, etc., You can read more about developing customer empathy in my post "Radical Empathy”

👉 Know Your Product

As you build your product, document the entire end-to-end customer experience. This includes the marketing pages customers might see, blogs, API integrations, onboarding, product experience, customer service, and anything that touches your customer experience. A true test of this would be if you are able to demo the entire product to a new customer.

🤔 Learn customer perception of your product

Observe how people interact with your products. This is best done through User Research. Learn about what they think the purpose of your product is, How they interact with your product, how they feel, and what they experience at each step. This will help you gain deep insights that will help you improve your products to solve customer perception.

🔍 Product Critique

Invite folks from different teams to critique your product. Learn from their observation and improve your product and your skills from diverse perspectives

💡 Try other products

Analyze other products and experiences frequently. Observe your own interactions with other products. Try new products, observe how you heard about them, observe new onboarding experiences, think of who ideal customers might be, and understand why things work or don't work. Assess how you might improve these experiences. This should be your favorite new hobby.

📝 Compare products

Compare products from different companies that are solving the same customer or problem. Observe how each of them approaches solving the same problem. Try and analyze why they might have made certain choices. Think about what you would’ve done differently.

💥 Demo Jams

Host demo jams where you invite others to demo their favorite products and share why. This will help you try other products at scale while also helping you learn about other people’s perspectives.

Resources

Diverse perspectives on the concept so that you can form your own perspective of Product Sense.

🔗 Marty Cagan - “Product Sense Demystified”

🔗 Julie Zhou - “The Power of Product Thinking”

🔗 Jules Walter on Lenny’s newsletter - “How To Develop Product Sense”

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