Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akio and if
you're looking for Effective product teams and how to get
there from a technical side or from a business side, then this
episode is for you, my guests yet.
Some agouti is currently product leader and chief product officer
and ALT EOS learning how to roller skate.
And originally from Zimbabwe. I really love this conversation
with her. And I had a lot of learnings,
I'll put all her socials in the description below.
Check her out. And with that being said, enjoy
the episode when it comes to roll right now, could you tell
us a little bit on how you got there when it comes to product
ownership and product vision and stuff like that?
Yes. So right, so we drove me to
start from like the beginning or just really specifically the
role you can start from the beginning.
That's fine. Okay, cool.
So I started as a business analyst so I was working in a
delivery team. Very closely with my David
people engineers and Architects and qas, but when I started, I
was working in a more waterfall model so you know really writing
very detailed requirements are private.
But anyway to cut a long story short, I moved from being a
business story is very long. It's trying to compress 15 years
and to 10 seconds. But yes, I moved from being a
business analyst and then over time moved into more of a
product owner role. And then moved into more product
management type work. And then now obviously working
in product leadership for the last the last few years.
So I always tell people that I spent a lot of time like in the
trenches doing very detailed work working with Engineers.
So really understanding the whole implementation and
delivery cycle, how that works, what they need?
The kind of challenges that they face when we are translating.
Out of business, Commercial requirements into things that
technical teams can work on. So that's also really helped me
in terms of being interviewed the ship, because I have a very
holistic understanding of sort of how things come together.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
When you say product leadership, what do I Envision their than?
Are you responsible for like on a managerial level of the
product owners? Or are you more of a business
owner of a group of products? How does that work?
Yeah, good question. So I think it depends on the
organization but the companies where I've been in product
leadership, it's actually being responsible for because they are
smaller companies. So being responsible for a
number of different whether you want to call them domains or
product lines. So being responsible for all the
delivery around it, all of the discovery work that goes around
it and really taking the company mission and vision.
Translate that into what What do we need to do from a product
perspective, to achieve our goals on organizational level.
And then, of course, the most important part is, the people
part. So growing people, recruiting
people and obviously retaining people.
So how do you make sure that people are feeling happy and
challenged? And they've got a good balance
in their roles. And then a lot of also product
leadership work involves processes because the product
touches so many different parts of the organization.
So, You actually have a lot of influence over the processes
because, you know, product teams need this.
And that with is from illegal from compliance from sales from
marketing. So it's really important to have
a really good handle on the processes to make the whole
product life cycle as efficient and as fun as possible.
It's not just about efficiency, but also about everybody having
fun. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that.
But then the position you're in right, if a company has a
mission and a vision and it should translate back into the
product, your then in between the product teams that Actually
execute and where that mission and vision is coming from
probably, like on a more managerial level, am I
understanding that correctly? Yeah.
So where I'm at right now is I'm in the leadership team.
Yeah. And then at that level, we're
talking about the mission and the vision.
And then my role is to say, okay, what does the product
strategy look like to actually make sure that we can achieve
those goals? So how does the product team
contribute to our mission and our mission?
So that's what I'm responsible. Before.
So I don't I want to make sure it goes from the senior
leadership team into the team directly.
So it's my job to make sure that that there's a lot of
back-and-forth going on and it's not just me, right?
So products are done by a group of people.
So making sure that it's not that I'm the bottleneck that I'm
the only person who's speaking to the senior leadership team
about our product strategy, but that everybody is actually
empowered to do that as well. Yeah, I love hearing that but
That that's some to me, sounds like a very difficult task.
Like, what are some of the biggest challenges they're in
translating that to work that a product team can do or can kind
of Taken refine? I think that From my
perspective, what makes it difficult is because of my
background. So as I explained before you
know a lot of my work is very detailed.
So I think I tend to have a fear of like another really big and
exciting sort of mission and vision that's super super
aspirational because a lot of my thinking is really rooted in
reality and I'm thinking about like okay but this could happen
and this could happen and what about this sort of product ID
that we have and how we going to make all of this happen.
So I I think for me what I always have to do is just allow
myself to feel comfortable in the uncomfortable and in the
unknown. And this for me is the hardest
part when it comes to especially being in a sort of leadership
position because you really have to speak at that Mission Vision
level and then really empower the team to work on the
strategy. So I do have to be a lot more
aspirational kind of saying, yeah we're going to shoot for
this really high thing and try and quieten down.
At Super pragmatic technical voice that I have inside.
That's like, oh my gosh, how we're going to handle this house
was going to happen and everything.
So for me this is probably that from the personally.
This is the biggest challenge for me.
Yeah, that sounds super recognizable because I'm a very
pragmatic person as well. So being on a more like I would
say, longer-term Horizon I guess and try to inspire people's is
something that's challenging for me as well.
But you mentioned something specifically in in Being
comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
I actually did a talk about this like a five-minute talk and I'll
send you the recording after this, when I have it.
But how do you deal with that? How do you get comfortable?
When it's kind of an uncomfortable situation for you?
So I think, for me from quite from quite a young age, I've
always been a very expressive person.
So someone who, you know, really sort of shows how they feel.
I don't necessarily verbalize it, but I definitely show it.
So whether it's in my face, oh my body language, but you can
really tell a gay something's not quite right.
And I used to be Very feisty again, not used to be.
I'm still fighting might be like, very, very fiery.
I would say and then sort of over time I learned how to
manage that. Right.
So for me, what's more comfortable is being super
expressive and being quite fiery and feisty?
But when you're thinking about the context of the workplace,
yeah, there's nothing quite land, especially if I think
about, you know, cultural differences.
So I'm from Zimbabwe and we Very expressive when there's a phase
of voices, the way we speaking, you know, sometimes people might
think we're fighting or arguing, but we're just having a very
animated conversation. So I would say, from early, on,
in my career because I didn't was working in the UK, is, I've
mastered the art of I really want to express myself, but this
is not the time, which is a comfortable balance, right?
A second, internal tension that you have to actively manage and
just be like, okay, I can do this, I can I can get through
this meeting without showing like a crazy facial expression.
That's like, what are you talking about?
Why do we do this though? I think from there, that's when
I started to really excited to learn a lot about being
comfortable, in being uncomfortable and just
constantly telling myself that you're not going to be sitting
in this situation forever, right?
Everything comes to pass. Like literally everything comes
to pass and this is also helped getting older.
I'm turning 40 December. So you know, it's also helped
with age where things that seem like the end of the world from
you and I was like 25. Now, you know, at 39/40 I'm
like, oh yeah, it's not such a big deal, you calm everybody.
It's all five, I mean I'm going to keep saying this probably but
I recognize in myself that I'm very expressive me.
And my girlfriend sometimes, look at me, I'm a very animated
on this podcast and she's like you make way too many faces I
That's just me. Like that's just how I look who
I am or and I I mean suppressing that or thinking of suppressing
that I think I would go insane. Yeah.
But I do get that. It can alarm people if you're
like hold up like the shit, the sink, the ship is sinking like
we need to do something. Yeah, I get that.
I think on that point. It's also about, you know, I
think when you are in a leadership position it's
actually really understanding that how you come across and how
you communicate. It has such a huge effect on
people. So if you are super animated or
your super, you look super anxious, or you look super
stretch, you're actually setting the tone for that team and
setting the tone for those people.
And when I first became a leader, I didn't really realize
like how my emotions and my emotional expression really had
such a huge effect of other people.
So it's also over time learning that, you know, No.
I mean I'm not talking about being so clinical that I don't
show any emotion but just being aware of, you know, hey
actually, I am going to really affect people and trying to
really think about that a lot more as that's happened.
Over time. Interesting.
When was that realization? Because I ate, it must have
happened a bunch of times and you would have seen the effect
of it before you would realize. Okay, this is basically when I
need to, okay? Tone it down or think about how
I act. Because, you know, then the roof
group Colossians. Yeah, I had a meeting once and
it was a team and I cried in the meeting because I was really
know what sort of stressed about something and I just burst into
tears and that meeting and I could see that the they didn't
know what to do, right? So they were just looking at me
like, okay, what do we do? Do we comfort her?
Do we like what do we do? They were, it was A very
uncomfortable situation and I think I was so in my emotions
that it took me a while to realize that oh, actually to
know what. I'm probably, this is not the
right place and I need to kind of step back.
I need to take time out for myself and really calm down.
So I said, okay, I need to step out the room and, you know, you
can all finish the meeting and then, you know, if I don't come
back in time, we can just wrap up and I just sat in the
bathroom and for me it was like because I'm what Someone who
really picks up a lot on people's emotions.
So I resent that tension in the room that discomfort and almost
like that, you know, like when you want to run away when
something is happening, you know, like I think some of them
wanted to leave the room but just were like she's our boss
and like can we actually just walk out on her?
But this is super weird and awkward.
So I think, you know, I really sort of set with myself after
that and he spoke to my manager and also spoke to a friend of
mine and you know to my mom Managers credit.
You know, he was really great because he asked me how did it
even happen? How did it even get to the point
that you started crying and I was alone?
I was like really emotional and he's like, yeah, but they must
have been things that had been happening or things that were
piling up and then that's how you had that Outburst.
So actually it's about managing those Prix events rather than
acting that, you know, you cried.
But it's like know, how did you actually get to that point?
And then he really made me very conscious about that, you know,
that gradual like Upset, I'm upset, I'm upset.
I'm actually not really upset so he he really taught me a lot
about like really recognizing that this is happening and not
letting be like the subconscious program that's just running.
And then all of a sudden it's like it's like it's like a
volcano. Someone I know very well, very
famously called be an absorber, okay.
You know, I think she just absorbs four weeks.
Almost had it. Oh yeah.
Yeah, I love that example for sure.
I want to zoom in on because you misspoke before the show you
mentioned. You love when a team is really
collaborating right? When it's a smooth operation
when it's effective in what it's doing, but a team doesn't get to
that point automatically. It needs to go through a lot of
rhaegar and figuring things out. Figuring out how you should
align and how you should work before.
You can get to that point, what have you seen that makes the
team really effective in either your Leadership position that
you are in now or maybe from a product on a perspective that
you had before. I think the biggest Epiphany
that I had is that my sincere belief is that most of the time
when a team is not working well together is because they've got
a very different understanding of where we're trying to go and
that rests with the leader that rests with the person who is
supposed to be leading with it. Is that team or that department
to make it very clear. This is where we're going so
that we're all pulling in the same.
Same direction because my fundamental belief is that
people want to do a good job and people want to work together.
But I think the one thing that we need to do a lot more is like
that, you know, that really intentional relationship
building, you know that really intentional.
You know, Patrick. I want to understand you as a
person not like I want to know like everything about you but I
want to understand what makes you take.
What do you like what don't you like and you know what are the
different ways that you receive information?
Because you know, It could be that someone says something I
could say something that I think is hilarious and someone takes
offense. So, actually really
understanding those nuances in how we communicate with each
other, and how we come across. I think, especially now, in a
world where people have a hybrid way of working, which I think is
amazing, but some people are in the office together.
Some people are remote, some people are fully remote.
So you have to think about how can you actually make that
intentional relationship building happen?
You know, when people talk about meeting at the ice water ice
water machine, where you can just get nice water but the
water machine, where you get what you just start chatting
with someone, you know, one of my closest friends, I met her at
the printer. At my first job, we just saying
she was in marketing. I was working in like, the
product team and we got chatting and she was always my in
whenever we had a bottleneck with marketing.
My girl was on top of things, but it's because we had built
that relationship. But it started at the printer.
So for me, I always see that teams.
I think fundamentally want to work together, but it's just
about understanding. What, what does this actually
look like? How are we going to be judged to
be successful as a team? And do we all understand that at
the same level? And are we reinforcing that?
And how are we intentionally? Trying to build relationships to
know each other yeah-hoo-hoo from your perspective should
drive that like should that come from the team?
In and of its own, or should a product owner drive there, a
scrum Master like, where should that come from?
Because I fully understand what you're saying, and I'm
recognizing it within my own team.
Especially now that we're remote, those printer
conversations, the coffee conversations, they don't
happen. So we more actively have to work
on team building and it gets even harder when you have a big
team. Yeah, yeah.
I think, you know, I mean, the Temptation is say, it should
come from leadership. They should be something but I
definitely think that everybody has a role that they can play.
So you know, for me I know that, you know, early on in my career
I was always so enthusiastic about trying to get people
together to work together to hang out, have lunch, have a
drink. So I think it can also be within
the team. So I think what the leaders
should do is give people the space to actually be able to
share ideas. Like, hey, I think we can do
this for team building, or hey, I think we can come together and
do this. This activity I think it could
be fun for us as a team. So I think there's one party as
absolutely leaders should role model.
And so I think leaders should always kind of be and I know
it's not easy, right? Kind of opening yourself up.
I did this before at another role where I would put out like
a schedule and just tell people like, hey you can book 30
minutes for me with me for anything.
With it's work-related or you just want to chat you want have
a cup of coffee. You want to have a laugh.
You can book this time. Me and I remember the first
quarter, I don't laugh, no one booked any time and I was like,
absolutely embarrassed and devastated, and then I said, oh
actually, and then the next quarter started and then after a
few days, people were like, well, where's that showed you?
And I said, well, no one booked it last time, so I didn't put it
out again. We want to be embarrassed, but
they were like, well, actually, it's the it's the fact that it's
there. It's actually of a comfort and I
thought, you know what? It's no, it's no water of my
back. Like, if I still put it out
there because, you know, I guess what, even if one person books
30 minutes that's really, really great.
And then I put it out again and then the uptake was a little bit
better, but I think people were just like, oh, and then people
started doing it with each other, you know, just being
like, Oh let's just like have a child I've seen chairs or does
it. So I think that's super cool.
So sometimes it also can be the leader can role model, but also
should say to the team. Like, you know, if you want to
do stuff like just let me know. So that I Can also maybe it's a
providing a bit of budget or space or time in over teams,
they like, hey, we won a couple hours to just chat and just give
them that time. Yeah, I can imagine I mean Time
is usually the issue is what I feel because the team comes
together to fix a certain problem.
There's pressure on that problem, they want to fix it as
fast as possible, but then you just work as a group of
individuals, right? You don't work together as a
team if I'm responsible for the back end and there's a lot of
back-end work then I'm going to feel a lot of pressure to finish
that instead of it being a team responsibility, I'm going to
feel like it's my responsibility but the way that we get there is
to actually take time for team building and then Has to come
from somewhere. So if, if there are a lot of
like strict deadlines, how would you still advise taking that
time? Or should it just be facilitated
through leadership in that way? What are your thoughts?
I think that when we think about planning, I think it's an
age-old problem in software development, it's over
commitment, you know, over commitment because what you
don't want to do is commit people to the point of your
almost committing at 120 percent, right?
So people don't even have a moment to breathe and then
there's just this angst everywhere, right?
People are you done yet? Are you done yet?
Have emerged yet is a test, has the as you know, and and always,
you know, say two teams. Like, you know, actually let's
just come together. What is realistically possible?
And then okay, we should be ambitious, but actually, let's
place also have this rooted in reality, if we're having
delivery problems. Now if they are things that are
late now, there's no point the next time over-committing again
so there's something fundamental that we need to sort out so that
we can commit and say okay we're good and then once we're good
and we feel safe and also a lot of that comes down to safety,
right? People are also afraid you know,
be ambitious because they are afraid that oh my gosh if we
don't make it we're going to be like the example, everyone's
going to be like right? They didn't read it.
So it's really thinking about and I think this is something
that comes from leadership, is that you should really look The
teams and understand it. Okay this team how are they
doing? How they're performing and if
there are problems, if things are flashing amber I'm a really
big fan of trying to deal with things when it's flashing amber
rather than when it's red. Because every time I've waited
until a team is in the red zone, it takes out so much energy from
everybody just to try to get to some sense of calmness.
So when flashing amber what what's going on there.
And, you know, sometimes as a leader, you have to To face up
because remember a lot of it is that upward communication that
expectation management and just really you know, be the leader
stand up and say to the leadership team we're not going
to make it. We don't we don't have the
capacity, we can't do it. But this is how we are going to
mitigate the situation or this is the reason this is the plan.
I think sometimes we leave teams too much to fend for themselves
rather than as L. Just be like, hey, I put my hand
up and I take responsibility for the situation that this team is
in. This is how I want to remedy it.
This is what I've learned from it, and this is how I want us to
move forward. Yeah.
I like that, looking forward and not too much on things that have
happened, right? Because they've already
happened. If you're already at that point,
that things are flashing red. The only thing you should do is
look forward. Look at your learnings and try
to do better as a team as an organization.
So I love that you're saying that I love that.
Turn flashing amber as well. But I have a hard time trying to
figure out what our kind of symptoms.
What would you say is a good symptom that something is
flashing amber or that you've seen.
So One symptom that I think I've seen quite a lot of the time is,
for example, when teams are like, oh yeah, we don't really.
Okay. So we all know about all of the
different ceremonies that are job teams have.
But when team starts saying like oh yeah we don't really I need a
retro because nothing ever happens that I know like okay,
something is like something is not quite right here and that
also is actually on me, right? It's not about the team because
what the team does is they take the time to have all of these
ceremonies, they put all this amazing information for, you
know, leaders, whether it's an ocean or Confluence or Google,
Docs, whatever, and we don't read it, we don't read.
We don't look at what's happening, right?
So and then all of a sudden it's like What's happening guys?
And it's like, well actually we've documented this in like
six retrofits and nothing ever happened.
So I think also, when teams are sort of disheartened and then
the other thing that I do see sometimes is, you know, I'm okay
it's not being nosy but when, you know, select channels or,
you know, in most companies, I've worked in a, we use slack.
But when I pick up on people being quite short with each
other, honestly, I just monitor it.
Kind of see what's happening, but if it does persist in a
carries on, then I, you know, I'm just straight in there,
like, okay. Is there something I need to
know about? Is it something that I can
support you with? Is there a reason that you are
feeling this way, you know, with this particular team / person
and then sort of trying to get in there while it's like not
super rude but it's really like you can hear the tone is like if
you don't do this I saw this. So, like really and then I think
another one is when, you know, when teams are talking about
dependencies, like, okay, I need this from you so that I can do
this and when the, when the conversation is not
constructive, then I know. OK, I need to figure out like
what's happening with these two teams and luckily, you know, as
I'm on the product side, a kind of will take their product
managers and be like okay you know you've got these two And
then she's like, let's talk through them, what's going on.
And then some understanding, like, okay, what are the issues
that are going on? So for me, these are some of the
things that are flashing amber, all when I get things, like
product, never do dot, dot, dot, dot dots.
Then I know like, okay, what's happening?
I've never heard that one actually thinking back to kind
of your personal experience because I've had a lot of
experience with product owners, right?
From a development, from a developer, Perspective in a
development team and there's always or mostly sometimes a
fight about responsibilities and expectations, right?
If they're not on the table we need to put them on the table
soon as possible. What do we expect of each other
in which degree do you create stories?
Who's responsible for the technical stories more for the
functional stories? Like it's always a discussion
and it there slight variations in different teams.
Sometimes, there's the tech leader takes a bit more
responsibility and take some weight off a product of Owner
who then focuses more on stakeholder management, and and
like, product Vision stuff like that.
But before we get into all of that you transition from a
business analyst position or to a product owner position, how
did that transition going? And what, we're like the biggest
learnings there was it like, because that's what I've seen in
certain organizations or we have a team of Bas.
Are you all going to be product honest just just like that.
This is kind of the way of working figure it out.
Figure it out, or was it more gradual in your way?
I think for me moving from business analyst to so
specifically for the type of person that I am, I'm really
happy that I started out as a business analyst, right?
So I could really have a good understanding of very good grip
and also on the basis of my degree because I did information
system. So I've already got like that
strong sort of technical background because I truly
believe that my superpower is being able to translate things
to different audiences because Cuz you know as a product
person, you're trying to take something that's super
technical. How do you explain like you're
refactoring something for better performance to someone who is
working in like a customer support team who just wants to
know, like, why are you not resolving his outstanding
customer ticket? I could just, just tell me in
very basic terms, right? Rather than coming and being
like, Oh yeah, so we're moving from this server to the server
and then we need to decouple these services like the customer
support team. Don't But that just tell them,
what is the result that's going to come out of all of this,
really, really great. Amazing hard work.
So I think for me, moving from business analyst to product, as
I started to really realize like there is such a big gap.
If you don't have like a business analyst, which is
solely relying on people, who are doing brother, pure product
rules, the Gap with the technical team gets bigger and
bigger, and bigger, and quite a lot in Stars.
To get lost in translation. And also all of this amazing
work that's happening in the discovering sort of phase of
things is not actually being told to the teams that are
delivering. So they can also start to
prepare their thinking or the appliance so that you're all in
sync with each other, right? So I'm not talking about, make
sure the engineering is in every single Discovery session but
they should have like some sort of a sense of what's coming.
So, I think for me, this is something that I really really
took from being a business analyst was too.
I to make sure that there is some sort of awareness of what's
coming with the with the engineering team and also
thinking a lot about how can I be a better Ally for the
engineering team, right? How can I really translate into
business terms, all of the amazing great work that they are
doing so that people recognize that, you know, these two weeks
friends that we take for granted when things have been delivered
is actually a lot that goes into it a lot of thinking of hard
work. Work.
You know, a lot of tension towards the end of Sprints, I'm
sure you've experienced that. Yeah, so, and, you know, I don't
want anyone to listen to this and think, oh, God.
You know, here's another person saying that you have to be
technical to be a very good product manager.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about specifically,
especially to do knees. I've worked in so like, you
know, payments and really thinking about all of this stuff
around like Financial Services infrastructure, there's a lot of
really technical stuff that you need to try to Understand with
the AIDS is as compliant is the scalable, is going to be the
most efficient way of doing things.
What are our customers expecting?
How are we going to make money? So where do we need to optimize
the most eccentric cetera? So I think it's also
organizations need to think about In the context of what we
want product to deliver, what type of people do, we need to
fulfill these different roles because it might be that a
specific team might need someone, who's maybe got over
business at his background, but another team, which maybe has a
tickling who is having to take on some of the responsibilities?
Like exactly what you were saying?
They may be, they don't need someone like that.
But it's just also making sure you're balancing all of these
different things and not it's not a cookie cutting machine,
right? Not everybody, same experience.
So You can't expect the same thing from every single product
person because people come from so so many different
backgrounds. Yeah, I completely agree.
It depends on the context, right?
And the experience within the team, the difficult part is
usually people just are maybe bunched together as a team and
it just expects the expectation is there for them to operate as
a team and I love that you said earlier, right?
It takes time to grow a tree. Takes time to grow as a team and
to not act as that group of individuals.
So then the thing that you Should he need is time to get to
know each other right? Time to focus on that
collaboration. And then you can probably notice
where the gaps are, right? If we do need kind of
representation in product Discovery phases, in more of a
business analyst role or maybe we do have a tech lead role that
can fill that, right? And then you are accommodated
for exactly. And the thing you have to think
about is if you want the technique to do some of this
stuff, then make sure that when people are thinking about how
much work a team will deliver that, I'm not saying this Tech
lead is going to be focused on coding hundred percent because
they're not going to be right. So also making sure that you
don't count that person so that they can actually do that thing
that you want them to do properly.
But exactly what you're saying for people to sit down together
and talk about like, hey these are my strengths.
You know, this is an area where I still really need to improve.
How can we optimize the way we work to be able to be able to
make our team fly? And then also, for everyone's
thinking, Actually, maybe there's some things that I need
to learn and understand that will also help me, right?
So for example, I also need to learn a lot about like Financial
modeling because that's not my strongest suit, but I'm
learning, right? And I'm open about it that I
need to learn. So I like hanging out with the
content of questions. Like how does this work?
And what this mean, just really rise myself with the stuff.
Yeah, I was, those are she one of my questions?
Students because as a product owner or product Visionary,
product manager, you get to jump into a lot of domains and sure,
some domains might be familiar, but I'm expecting that.
A lot of them are also unfamiliar, like, when you get
that role and you're responsible for a product that's called a
chat bar or its payments, or it's econ.
Whatever. How do you familiarize yourself
with that domain? Is it just sitting a lot with
the stakeholders, or how would you do that?
The first thing I do is just I'm, I'm, I like learning in a
mess. Way, although with Jim and this
is not working at all, is this test is stresses being immersed.
My German teacher. I've just like, you can talk to
me in German for an hour and she's like, but this is how
you're going to learn its immersive learning of.
Not know, that doesn't work. But anyways, so what I do is
that I like to spend time with the different teams, right?
So just figure out like, what are they doing?
So may be going to some of their like, planning sessions or Go to
the sessions where they are doing refinement so that I can
at least start to hear all of the different terms and I start
writing. So I've got loads of notebooks
so I just start writing down lots of terms that I'm hearing
in these meetings and then of course spending a lot of time
with all of the different stakeholders and really
understanding. Okay what's this domain will
about? I really want to learn.
I want to understand. So now I'm working in insurance.
This is like a whole world for me like a big one.
It's Huge. It's super complicated and it's
very new ones too. So, you know, reading you're
trying to get myself into it. And, you know, I was really,
really lucky that, you know, people in this new company, you
know, they really willing to sit with me for, like, two hours at
a time, going to Basics, right? Psych, stupid down to Basics.
And the thing that I learned really early in my career is
that there's nothing like a stupid question.
So I ask all the stuff that, you know, before I might have been
like, oh my gosh, I Can't believe I don't know that but I
don't have any shame and just asking the questions then of
course there's reading. There's also a lot that you can
get from reading, but also I shared someone in our customer
care team who was working on resolving different customer
tickets and he was sitting there so patient explaining everything
to me like why the customer was contacting how this insurance
claim process, works what to look out for what I need the
different information. How they get that information,
how they make that judgment, and just spending that timeshare
doing that person, I'm actually going to be doing it on.
I'm trying to do now they're going to hear this is a oh Lord,
here she comes. But I want including to do this
on a monthly basis because, you know, really being that close to
the customers is super important, right?
When you're working on the future of the product, right?
Because you need to understand how our people actually
experiencing the product like and obviously with Dance like
making a claim is like the hardest part, right?
Buying the policies, not that bad because let's be honest, how
many people read the actual policy but when you need to make
a claim that's when you're like, oh God, like how do I make this
claim? So, really sort of understanding
the process that customers go through and what better way to
do that, but just sit with someone who's actually working
on that. So I found that to be helpful.
Yeah, I can imagine that. I mean, I know that has helped
me in the past from a technical perspective.
So when it comes to the product that you have Value that you
need to add. I can completely understand
that. That is like, you can't go
without right? You need to know what a customer
deals with. You need to know what your
business Representatives deal with on a daily basis, right?
Or at least have have that monthly check-in that you're
going to have that when it comes to stepping into a new domain.
Like I love that you say immersing yourself, but that is
one thing, right? That is a step in kind of
gaining the knowledge. That is needed to figure out
what value is there with. Value can add.
But when it comes to prioritizing, then how do you do
that? Or how do you take that next
step? So I mean, the most important
thing is that I have to understand what does success
look like for our company, right?
So what does success look like for our board our investors so
what are the things that they want to see us doing that?
They will say like hey you guys are on track or you're not on
track or you're exceeding our expectations.
And then, for me, from the product level to now, start to
put things together. So I am the queen.
Everyone who's worked with me, knows that I'm the queen of
putting things into buckets because it's the best way for me
to actually think things through.
So, I have one way of thinking where I have a bunch these up
with its product people processes and technology.
So this is one way that I put everything together and then I
say, okay, I know what other people concerns the person's
concerns, the product consists of Technology Concerns.
Someone might say, oh, why aren't you worried about
process? Because actually, I love times.
Your processes are actually hurting your product, right?
So, if your processes are a little bit bumpy or something is
not quite working, in terms of collaborating teams,
collaborating with each other, then, actually, your output is
not great or outcomes are not going to be as great as you
would expect, or you would want them to be.
So, actually, it's fixed the process, and then my other
buckets are Revenue. Incheon Acquisitions of purely,
new customers and then growth, which is, you know, I know
people say like old growth and acquisition, but the way I see
it as acquisition is every new customer and then growth is that
if you have multiple products on offer that your customers are
using products as the breadth and depth of Youth increases.
So for me, this is, this is also growth.
So I put things into different buckets and then understand
like, okay, what are we being was the most important?
Work that we need to shift right now is it like a revenue metric
and then thinking about the products the people that process
and Technology what are the different things that can affect
our Revenue that we need to prioritize?
And then it becomes a much easier conversation because once
you put all these things into buckets that we all kind of
speaking the same language I do and you start to have a more
reasonable conversation where I can say Patrick, that sounds
more like a retention thing and we're focusing on Revenue, it's
not so much a subjective thing. Like all but I think this but
we're talking about the same thing and when you have those
buckets and you have those ways of actually really putting
things, very, very separately from each other.
I know there's some gray like retention can kind of come
everywhere, but I do think that this really also helps to use
when you're having those discussions plus also when
you're communicating the hard decisions like you know
sometimes if we're really focusing on Revenue we might be
having a An issue. But there's nothing we can do
about that in a meaningful way for us to make that promise.
So we have to be very clear. Like this is what our goal is,
is there a way that we can kind of put a Band-Aid over this
retention thinking? And then when it really you have
the capacity to do it, they will do it in a meaningful.
Proper proper Focus way, rather than sort of kidding ourselves
thing. I'm going to do a bit of
acquisition, a bit of retention of everything, and a bit of
growth. Because when you try to do that,
The thing that you're going to do is you're going to totally
stressed out, all of the other teams that end up supporting
these launches. So, like, product marketing and
sales, and Business Development, you know, what they need is
something chunky, something they can really communicate to be
like, hey, we got this thing rather than I've got a little
bit of this little bit of this, a little bit of this little bit
of that. Yeah, I love that because from a
technology point of view like stories in a vision is usually
broken down in epics and when we are When I let me, let me give
it to myself and working on, like a thousand different
things, or at least, that's what I'm feeling with in a Sprint.
Like, I lose focus of what we're actually delivering at the end
of the day. And I think that that is the
result of us, not focusing on one of the buckets or two of the
buckets or things not being in Pockets, which means everything
is just kind of Blended together in that way.
Do you see it that way as well? Sorry, I didn't I lost you for a
second. Sorry about that.
So I was saying the way you explained the buckets to me,
that's kind of a reflection of that in a development team.
If I'm working on several aspects or if I'm feeling like
I'm spread out over several domains, then the conversations
is not happening in buckets or they don't exist or we're just
taking everything which means we're kind of doing a little bit
of nothing. Yeah.
But I think it's also like from, you know, this is something that
I also challenge the Is you know, if you see a Sprint which
doesn't have like a coherent story to it or you feel like,
you know what I'm doing this thing, but I just don't feel
like it's really gonna move the needle or actually really don't
think there's gonna have that much impact.
This is where, like, you know, it would be so good to like
speak up and ask the question, is this really the thing that we
could be working on? And if you know, that there are
things that actually, if we worked on X, Y Zed, we really
could, you know, Make a big difference, then that should
also come up. So I think it's trying to get
all sides to actually come together and really thrash
things out. And I think some tension and
some disagreement is totally fine as long as it's in a
respectful way. So I think it's fine to disagree
on things. But, you know, I always say like
disagree and then commit, right? Once the decisions made the
decisions made and we all push in that direction.
But the important thing is that, you know, people ask picking up
saying, you know, I had to be For where, you know, I had to
engineer who sent me a DM on slack and just, you know,
because I have this whole presentation and I thought it
was great. And then he was like, man, that
did not make any sense to be, you know, what?
I'm focusing on, you know, he was talking about another of,
like things that needed to be sorted out on a technical level.
And it was like I was not aware of it.
I didn't actually, you know, and actually can we sit together and
talk about it. And then when he explained it, I
was like, oh okay, gosh, she had.
This is actually we can Something quite important
because I know what's coming into two, three quarters.
And this needs to be done properly first for us to enable
us to do those things later. So it was good.
That that person felt comfortable enough and I think
this is the thing about being approachable, being open and
being quite vulnerable. You know, I also tell my team
about things that I've done that, I'm not quite right or
when I reflected never made mistakes.
So then, they also feel like, okay, I can also tell her that.
Hey, I'm not happy with X, Y Zed, We should be thinking in a
different direction. I like that a lot.
I mean I do it naturally, maybe it's because I'm stubborn but I
want to be effective as a team, right?
And I want to add value. If I feel like the thing we're
working on is only affecting like 0.5 of the customers.
Well, a different slice, could affect 20% in a better way.
Then I'm going to be like, okay how much customers does this
affect do? We really need this versus the
other solutions that we can build?
But I've also seen colleagues and people in the past that love
a Ology solution. If you have that problem, we can
solve it with this and like, but do we need to write?
Someone needs to be able to ask that question.
Do we really need this versus the being the person that brings
the solutions because bringing the solutions.
I love that as well, right? Don't get me wrong, you solve a
thing feels good, but it needs to have impact, right?
And the right impact in the right value for the company and
for the customer and I think they're usually the friction
losses as well or Dare is where the most discussions line.
Yeah, you know this is something that I remember you know, really
early in my career I had a boss. He was so brilliant.
So you know we would come up with this is how we're going to
do it and then he'd be like why are you making this so
complicated? Like what do you think?
What do you what do you think the business will get poor game
by you sort of over complicating this a overcomplicating it
because you just kind of want to deliver a really complex
solution for your Our own vanity as a team or actually really
focused on what you need to deliver because it doesn't have
to be that complex. So he was very good at
deconstructing things and then helping us to reconstruct it.
But in a way that was, you know, really really efficient from a
capacity perspective. I don't like to use resource
because I don't like that word. I think it's he should say
capacity capacity perspective. So I really took that at the
listen for me as I went on is having that Be healthy and I can
say it is friction right? Really having that healthy
debate like okay if we make it over complicated, do we really
really have to do this to be really really have to solve it
or in the first version of The Office of the product that we're
delivering does. Every single pot have to be
super slick or do we need to focus on part 1, 2 and 3?
And then let's see how it goes and then we can do part 4, 5 and
6 ones. We've got a bit of traction or
we can see that it's really working.
Etc. Etc.
So So I think kind of having those conversations as a team as
well, but making sure you actually come back to do the
improvements because I know that this is where engineering teams
also lose trust with product to use is that we say like, oh no,
let's just do the basic version and we'll come back and we'll
make it better and then two, three quarters later, they're
talking about the same thing. And then a year down the line is
like, oh, we want to do this and then they like, hello.
Remember that thing? That we were supposed to prove?
We never get back to it. So this is also It's about, you
know, trust and making sure that the product team, you're
remembering all these things and saying, you know what?
We made a commitment that we would improve this thing.
Let's not break our commitments. It might be that we have to
think about what we have promised that we're going to
deliver and come back and say, like, you know what?
We have to improve this. This, this which will take
capacity away. Yeah, I agree.
I always, I mean, I divide it into two problems that were
solving as product teams. I guess, business problems and
Technology problems. And the more Tech that you build
up, the more technology problems.
You're going to have to figure out and solve basically.
And at some point, if you don't give that attention, then your
technology problems are so much that your speed of delivery of
the value that deliver either. You can't because of the
technology problems that you've created, or you're just slower.
And then people are going to notice in the output is not
going to be the same, but, but technology problems are
business, property. Excellent.
Yeah, exactly. This is the thing, you know, I
was telling a friend the other day, I was like, you know, I
feel like engineering, they need like a PR team that and, like,
explain things in a way that it's got impact and people
really understand it. But not from people who are very
non-technical, can understand it because I think that we have
created this thing. We, we talk about technical debt
as if the technical teams have implemented something that they
just dreamt up themselves. House.
But a lot of times where do those shortcuts actually come
from? They come from we've committed a
date of delivery or we've said that we are already going to
deliver excellent. Or customers or X number of
Revenue. So what we need to do is like,
really short cut that solution that we're going to deliver and
just to live with the shortcuts, right?
And a lot of times you know the a generative they don't want to
do that but they are like pushed into that corner so I think that
we need to Rebrand things and just say like Business or
organization or debt, then you can break that organizational
business debt. A lot of times.
There's also problems with processes though.
It's not always the actual coding.
It's not always, I think this is just a piece of the problem, but
there's so many other factors that really severely affect that
part, which is the actual coding.
Yeah, I think I might adopt that business debt and it's reflected
in the code base. Yeah, movement.
Got a movement. I like that a lot.
Because you're right, right, the business decisions.
That we make based on the assumptions that we have are
based on the current point in time, in the context, that we
know they can change over the future, right?
And your Co place is always going to reflect the current
state and if your future has changed, then we're adopting
future features. Then some we need to do a
cleanup or we need to adjust for the future knowledge that we've
gained. And if that doesn't happen, that
is business that in that way. But we call a tech that Yeah, it
really is the now we started, we started a movement.
I think we don't use technical debt, anyone's business.
I'm going to put you in my team. One of the one of the final
questions I had and it's because it's a issue or a potential
issue I'm struggling with now in my team is that size is becoming
an issue? I love that you pointed out,
communication is key and getting to know each other what they
want to do, what you can do, and what you can contribute within a
team, knowing that of each other allows you to collaborate.
It better and be more effective as a team instead of a group of
individuals. But the bigger the team is the
more time it's going to create. If I'm in a team of eight, I
have seven other people that I need to kind of give attention
to her. Give the same attention to for
us to be effective as a team. Have you seen that as well with
the rest of Team size wise? Because I don't have a good
solution in there. I think from a managerial point
of view sometimes there's a stigma of, let's throw more
people in there and then it's just gonna fix itself and then
sometimes people split up and they Of two smaller teams, which
don't really communicate and you have different problems.
But team size is always going to be an issue.
So, I think, you know, I've been in a team myself where there
were 10 of us, I think, the most important thing actually was
that from a, from an architectural / domain
perspective, we could actually work on this thing as a group of
10. I mean, I wasn't doing Hands-On
coding. So they were, I think a
Engineers, so they were able to do it without stepping on each
other whatever. So I think that's the first
thing to make sure that you can actually work at that size.
And be efficient, I think that the whole thing about getting to
know each other and understanding each other is it
doesn't have to be like this whole like, oh my gosh.
We're taking like a whole day out and we're going to, like,
hang out as a team, but, you know, like something I say to my
all the different teams that I work with is you have all these
regular ceremonies in your Diaries?
Why don't you just like do it piecemeal, like like just do it
iteratively? Maybe on.
My day, make your stand up a little bit longer where it's a
little bit more. Yeah you do the updates within a
10 degree to. At the end of the week, talk
about my car, to the, we go for you with anything that we can do
differently or once in a while. Why don't you make your Red Crow
a little bit longer and have that those discussions?
But it doesn't always have to be like this.
We're taking 10 people out for a whole day but you can really
sort of take those opportunities when you have that time together
because I think what has to happen is, you know, we think
that way be efficient by just focusing who work for that 60
minutes. But then they probably are some
underlying issues that if you were to resolve those underlying
issues you might not even expecting.
That's you might build up so much trust with each other that
you need 40 minutes so why don't you just invest that extra 30
minutes every month? May be an increased one of your
ceremonies and kind of have that discussion.
So something that, you know, I've seen being done, which I
think is so great, which I saw one of them.
Managers doing was at the beginning of the quarter,
there's team at the okay, ours, but she specifically took time
out with the team once a month. I think she's to extend their
planning sessions so that have planning.
And then at the end of the planning, once a month, they
would look at they all chaos and talk about how we want to be.
Is there something going on? And we're not quite reaching our
goals. She did that off her own back,
and I thought that was brilliant because she's not like she was
taking everybody out. For like two hours to go through
all the locals and what they were doing through the cortex,
because I've been talking to them about.
This is slowly, it's not thinking about the next quarter,
right snow? Slowly.
Stop thinking about, is there anything that we really want to
put on the radar of the senior leadership team that we really
want to advocate for ourselves? The team that we really want to
work on this because of X, Y Zed and there was a very big feature
that they wanted to work on. They did the discovery over
certain amount of They got the dependencies ironed out, but
they did this over a quarter and they came with such a slick
proposal. There was no way anyone in the
division, team was going to say nag guys because they were still
on point, they were so ready but they had been building this app
over the quarter so it doesn't always have to be this big bang
thing so every so often she would send me you know the
materials that they were going to use for the big presentation
and I was Glue kid thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so happy to see and
they were all working on this thing together so everybody when
they had some time, could kind of pop into the presentation at
the employees table, but it meant that, by the end, they
were so coordinated. They were also invested.
They were all Super Hyper aware of what was going on that when
it came to actually do the presentation.
They were like, oh no, we don't all have to be there.
One person can speak for all of us.
Yeah, the crush that then, that's so cool.
And it's a gradual build-up, right?
You don't just get Like that overnight you have to give it
attention the attention that it deserves and that attention
takes time and iteration over a longer period of time.
Only then can you realize what you actually need to?
It always fascinates me that we expect you to just work, but
what relationship in our lives just works from the time we set
eyes on each other, even our parents or siblings.
It's it's an Ever evolving thing.
Being right? It's an investment of time of
energy of emotion. It's never, you know, this is
this really, you know, I know it's work but you know, you're
not going to sit eyes on some and be like, oh I like working
with Patrick, I got it. Yeah it's not going to be like
that. You have to invest in that
relationship, right. You have to invest in talkin and
understand each other and being open in a way that everybody
feels comfortable, right? Because not everybody feels
comfortable with being super vulnerable.
But you know what is Version of comfortable.
So I also know, what are you boundaries?
What do I need to think about and then to build up that trust.
I have a funny story. I was in a meeting and there was
a young lady in my team and she was saying like, oh she wanted
to kind of speak more in meetings and stuff like that
because you wanted to build the confidence and I was that old
gray. I will give you as many
opportunities as possible. And then over two or three
meetings, I would say like, oh I'm just going to pick someone
to speak in a So I picked on her twice, she set up a call with me
and then she said to me, please don't do that.
Please don't please don't pick on me.
Please don't pick me as the first person.
It makes me really uncomfortable and I was like, okay I get it.
Yeah, thank you for giving me the feedback and I didn't do it
again, but it was just that openness, right?
I thought I was doing what she wanted.
I thought I was supporting her, but I was actually making a feel
uncomfortable, but she felt comfortable enough to tell me
like, yo, No. That is not how this isn't
whack. And yeah, and it's about trust
because I know it's not, like I said, oh, I'm trying to support
you and now you're telling me, I said to her fair enough, and I
apologize if you feel uncomfortable.
And I'm, you know, I really took that as really good feedback.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's so cool that you
have that environment, that she can come to you and be like, no,
no, no, this is not what I meant, right?
Is that safety is not there. It's gonna be Behind your back
to other colleagues are cheeks. Always calls me out first.
Then like, I don't like, it makes me nervous and you don't
want any of that. Yeah.
And the next thing she's like maybe she would if I did she'd
never said it. She just start trying to like
avoid me no resentment starts to build up, she doesn't trust me.
So yeah, once we got the out, the door, I was like, okay cool.
Like, thank you for letting me know.
And you know what, I'm not sitting here like, oh you have
always been like this. I haven't because, when I first
became a man, Sure I would have taken that as such an offense.
You know I'm super upset and super wound up by it but then
it's really about realizing that no children.
It's not actually about you, it's about that other person and
this is the core of leadership. Is it really stops being about
you really? It's not about you.
It's about everybody else was around you.
I love that that had to sink in for me, but I completely agree
with what you said. I've had a blast talking about
all things product ownership, your history and your take on
things as well. I love you take like I think in
my past if a lot of people, if a lot of even developers or
product owners or teams, adopted your thoughts, I think things
would have been a lot smoother, so I hope a lot of people can
learn from this. Is there anything that's still
missing or any advice you'd still like to share?
I think the thing that I do want to say that, you know, I would
hate for anyone to listen to this and feel like, oh yeah, you
know, she's like saying that you have to be technical to be a
great to be great in product because you don't have to be.
I think what's important is that from an organizational level,
you are set up for Success, right?
So you set up for Success, if it's a very like technical thing
that you Have someone who is your partner, who can support
you with that. So, you know, I think for a lot
of people, it's really understanding that, you know, a
lot of your success is down to your environment.
So really constantly thinking about like, is this the optimal
environment for me. And if you don't feel like it
is, you should try to address it and try to speak up.
It's really important because a lot of times, you know,
sometimes there's leaders, we get they lost in stuff and you
know we think we've been helpful, we think we're being
effective but without that sort of 360 feedback loop.
We can get a little bit lost and we can sometimes lose sight of
things and, you know, we don't know everything.
We definitely don't know everything and we make mistakes
every single day. So you know, just keep us aware
and keep challenging us and yeah, to be to be better, better
leaders. Beautiful.
Yeah, I completely agree. Cool.
I'm going to round it off their cheetah.
Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much.
You've inspired me by the way. To get like a super nice
settings. I can record like nice podcast
love of very lucky with it. I'm gonna, I'm going to round it
off here, then cheat some more cootie.
Everyone. I'm gonna put all her socials in
the description below. Check her out.
Let her know you came from our show.
And with that being said, thanks for listening.
We'll see you on the next one.