Nils Davis is a resume coach who wants product managers to realise they're AMAZING, and help others realise it too. His hot take? That the majority of product managers are doing themselves a disservice by producing resumes that simply list a bunch of tasks that pretty much all product managers have done. If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time at https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot Visit Nils's site: https://perfectpmresume.com/Nils on LinkedIn:...

John Cutler is a systems overthinker, product educator and author of "The Beautiful Mess" newsletter. His hot take? That the Instagram-ification of product management sets unrealistic standards, and is driving us all crazy. If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time!    

Debbie Levitt is a UX and CX consultant, the author of a few books, including "Customers Know You Suck" and runs a thriving community of UX professionals. Her hot take? That if we are all fine doing each other's jobs (and maybe not doing them well) then AI can do all of our jobs today. Also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT5IBKsIE-E&ab_channel=OneKnightinProduct  

Melissa Perri is the renowned author of "Escaping the Build Trap" and a well-known product consultant and educator. She has worked for a long time with Denise Tilles, another seasoned product leader, with whom she has been evangelising Product Operations to help scale product companies effectively. They recently collaborated on a book, coincidentally called "Product Operations", and we spoke all about the story behind the book and the themes within it. Saeed Khan and I are planning a new...

Hope Gurion is a seasoned product coach and one of Marty Cagan's recommendations from his new book, "Transformed". Hope also works closely with Teresa Torres, teaching continuous discovery, as well as working directly with incoming product leaders to help them make an impact in their organisations. We spoke all about knowing your customers, gathering evidence, and whether continuous discovery is really a threat to user researchers. Episode highlights:   1. Product coaching is more than just...

Marty Cagan is the founder and a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, a leading product consultancy that aims to get companies to work "the way that the best companies work". He is the author of two desk references for product managers: "Inspired", aimed at product teams, and "Empowered", aimed at product leaders. He has since come to realise that "the way the best companies work" is too vague a term, and also that many companies have no idea where to get started. He's now back with...

Miloš Belčević is a product manager and author who believes that product management principles are powerful not only when managing products, but also when managing the ultimate product; your life itself. He has written a book on the subject, "Build Your Way: Applying Product Management to Life". We spoke about the book as well as some of the lessons inside. Episode highlights:   1. We can apply product management principles to life We can apply product management principles to one's life,...

Debbie Levitt is a long-time UX and CX consultant who wants us all to get better at putting our users at the centre of the conversation, rather than paying lip service. She's the author of a few books, including "Customers Know You Suck" and runs a thriving community of UX professionals. Some of the stories from that community have concerned her, alongside the general perceived decline of the strategic role of UX, and she recently came out all guns blazing against continuous discovery, PM-led...

Lloyed Lobo got his first understanding of the power of community when visiting his grandparents in the Mumbai slums, and watching people come together in his childhood during the Gulf War. He has since turned this into an entrepreneurial superpower and used community-building to catapult his bootstrapped startup into the big time. He's since written a book about all of this stuff called "From Grassroots to Greatness: 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community-Led Growth". We spoke about...

Shyvee Shi is a Product Lead at LinkedIn, a community-builder, content creator and educator. She's been making waves through her online courses but she's now co-authored a book, "Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI", which aims to help all of us survive and thrive in the new normal of AI-powered products. We talked about some of the themes from the book, and why it was important for her to write it. Episode highlights:   1. Now is the time for product managers to get into...

Becky Flint started her career at Paypal and helped build out their portfolio management and product operations functions before product ops was a thing. She's since moved through a variety of startups and larger companies before forming her own firm, Dragonboat, through which she hopes to provide tools to help companies manage product portfolios at scale.   Episode highlights:   1. Even if you have one product, you might still have a portfolio People tend to think about a product portfolio,...

Orly Zeewy is an experienced marketer who "makes the fuzzy clear". She's passionate about helping startup founders get their branding right, and enabling them to identify their own "zones of genius" where they win. She does this through her consultancy, Zeewy Brands, as well as her book, "Ready, Launch, Brand". We spoke all about the ins and outs of branding, and why startup founders need to rethink marketing. A message from this episode's sponsor This episode is sponsored by Succeeding in...

Steve Portigal is an experienced user researcher and author of two books, "Interviewing Users" and "Doorbells Danger, and Dead Batteries". Steve is a passionate advocate for the value of user research, and ensuring that people can find out compelling insights from their users. He's recently re-released a 10th-anniversary edition of "Interviewing Users", and we spoke about some themes from the book and how to make an impact with user research. Episode highlights:   1. Some people are still...

Richard Blundell is a serial entrepreneur and startup advisor who helps B2B startups win by getting them uncomfortably narrow and solving critical problems. He also believes that startup founders are heroes, and recently published a book trying to help them avoid common mistakes and have the best chance of putting a dent in the universe. We discussed his approach, and what on Earth he's got against product managers. A message from this episode's sponsor - SuperProduct This episode is...

Petra Wille is a product leadership coach and the author of "Strong Product People" and "Strong Product Communities". Petra is passionate about helping product teams excel and found that some of the best companies she's worked with use "Communities of Practice" to support product manager growth. We spoke all about this, and how people can get started. A message from this episode's sponsor - SuperProduct This episode is sponsored by SuperProduct. Have you ever wished you could simplify...

April Dunford is a world-renowned expert in product positioning who wrote the bestselling "Obviously Awesome" to help us all nail our product positioning. She then realised that companies were having trouble translating this positioning into a sales pitch that worked in the field, so she's back now with "Sales Pitch", a step-by-step process to craft a winning pitch. We spoke about the story behind the book and some of the themes within it. Episode highlights: 1. All companies have a sales...

Maja Voje is a growth strategy expert who has worked with some of the largest tech companies in the world. Through her consulting, she realised that there was a problem holding companies back from product/market fit. Unable to find a playbook to guide companies to the promised land, she decided to research and write one herself. We chatted about the book and some of the themes within it. Episode highlights: 1. 95% of startups will not survive, but you can work together to beat the odds It's...

Eisha Armstrong is a company founder, digital transformation consultant and author of "Productize" and new book "Fearless". This new book goes deep on the cultural underpinnings of productisation, and how company leader can align their teams and quell their own fears. Episode highlights: 1. Many leaders are afraid of productisation... Leaders want the benefits of productisation, but are afraid to jump in because of the investment required, and whether the bets are going to pay off. 2. ... But...

Saagar Bains is a fractional product leader and product advisor who started out digitally transforming his family's wholesale business and launching its e-commerce site before moving into consulting and into startups. One of those startups was The Body Coach, started by celebrity fitness guru Joe Wicks, where Saagar had the job of translating their vision into scalable reality. For this episode, we travelled to Saagar's hometown of Birmingham for a LIVE interview and Q&A about the pros...

Namrata (Nam) Sarmah is CPO at INTO University Partnerships and the founder of Women in Product UK, a community through which she hopes to build a pipeline of female product management talent and finally put to bed the excuses that hiring managers currently fall back on when challenged on their female talent acquisition. She's also passionate about making sure we get more product people into the C-suite, and will soon be launching the CPO Track community to support this. We chatted about all...

Duena Blomstrom is a renowned fintech thought leader who got tired of seeing the same problems in the workplace and decided to go out and try to solve them. Duena took on banking culture with "Emotional Banking" before moving onto wider organisational change with "People Before Tech". We spoke about some of the common problems faced within organisations, how to try to solve them, and some of the reasons why companies resist those solutions. Episode highlights:   1. Santa Claus is not going to...

Jennifer Yang-Wong is a product leader who formerly worked at Uber, before moving into the rarified heights of Venture Capital. But, not as an investor but as the VP of Product for a tech-led VC firm. We spoke about why a VC firm needs a VP of Product as well as numerous reflections on the trouble that we can have when trying to apply product thinking and move beyond founder-led decision-making. Episode highlights:   1. There's no one way to do product management, and no one's doing it...

Gabrielle Bufrem is a product leader and product coach who comes highly recommended by Sir Marty Cagan himself. She's passionate about developing product managers and product leaders, as well as helping them be true strategic partners to the business. We spoke about product vision, what to do when it's not there, the importance of product principles and much more. A quick message from Saeed Khan and me. My former podcast guest, Saeed Khan and I are thinking of putting together a B2B Product...

Julie Starr is a renowned coach and mentor, and author of several books on the topics. We had a deep and meaningful chat about the differences between coaching and mentoring, what it takes to be a good coach or mentor, and the impact of AI on coaching. Episode highlights:   1. The expectations we have of leaders have changed We're slowly moving away from Taylorist, resource-focused management to a less-directive style of leadership. Not all companies are there yet, but even laggards are...

Daniel Stillman is a former industrial designer turned conversation designer, who wants to help leadership teams and entire organisations stop wasting their time having ineffective conversations. We spoke about the concept of Conversation Design, the Conversation OS Canvas, and the perils of "Sheep Dip" organisational transformations. Episode highlights:   1. Sheep-dip organisational transformation doesn't work You can't send everyone on a 1-hour course, not talk about it afterwards or have...