Mind the Product — 30 days later

Applying some of the 🔑major key🔑 learnings from this year’s largest product management conference.

Kyle Lubieniecki
Jul 21, 2017 · 5 min read

Thirty days ago I returned from San Francisco after attending Mind the Product — a conference hosted by product managers for product managers, and entirely dedicated to the product management discipline. Most people I know and meet are unsure what a product manager does, so it was incredible to be surrounded by 1,499 other product people from some of the best product teams around the world.

The conference had an incredible speaker lineup and during my time at the conference I had the opportunity to meet global product leaders to exchange stories, discuss best practices, and share opinions on tools.

A good product manager may be a good or bad leader, but a good product leader must be a good product manager too. — Ken Norton, Product Leadership

Why Mind the Product?

What I enjoy most about the Mind the Product organization is the practical frameworks and applicable knowledge you can learn to make immediate improvements to your product and organization. Since product roles range from team to team it’s important to learn from those operating in environments different that yours — you never know what 🔑major key🔑 you might take away.

Since beginning to organize ProductTank Toronto, one of Toronto’s largest monthly product events, this has been something the organizing team and I strive for — delivering engaging talks that present practical frameworks that PMs can apply immediately in their daily roles. Many of the ideas and frameworks presented at ProductTank 0r the Mind the Product conference are, as DJ Khaled would say, a 🔑major key🔑 to product management leadership.

The 🔑major keys🔑 from Mind the Product 2017.

As someone recently brought on as Product Manager at The Rumie Initiative, a startup bringing free digital content to underserved communities around the globe, there were many key learnings that I took away from last month’s conference. Below I’ll highlight a few of the 🔑 major keys 🔑 and discuss how I’ve started to be apply them within 30 days after the conference.

🔑 Great products come from great people. 🔑

As a PM it’s easy to fall in love and become consumed with the product development process, however, as Janna Bastow (Co-founder, ProdPad & Mind the Product) states, “product culture is the most important product you’ll ever work on.”

I couldn’t agree more with Janna. Sure, technology delivers your product, but product success is defined by humans. It’s up to humans to decide how other humans are organized and ultimately how these humans are aligned and motivated to deliver value to your users (more humans).

At Rumie, I’ve proactively allocated time for more frequent touch points with critical members of the team across our various product lines — Rumie’s Android-based RumieOS and web-based LearnCloud. More importantly, I’ve found new and impactful ways to open up communication across the organization. Our team has doubled in size over the last 6 months and I’m beginning to play an active role in hiring decisions — ensuring that candidates have a user-centric focus and an great sense for what makes outstanding products (we’re hiring!).

🔑 Tackle the largest problems & test your riskiest assumptions first.🔑

Caitlin Kalinowski (Head of Product Design Engineering at Oculus/Facebook) emphasized the importance of front-loading your team’s work with the hardest tasks coming in the pipeline first. This is sometimes so easy for us to forget, yet critical for product success.

Rumie tablets are used in varying offline environments, often with highly differentiated connectivity issues. This makes it difficult to prioritize where our team should focus our development efforts.

Understanding Rumie’s use cases.

By digging deeper into our user’s problems and laying out Rumie’s various use cases from the most offline to the most connected environments, we’ve been able to uncover some of the largest problems that our users face and begin to make strides to tackle these use cases first.

🔑 Team effectiveness trumps individual contribution. 🔑

Janice Fraser (SVP, Bionic) talked about the lack of growth in some of the world’s largest organizations and how this can primarily be attributed to cultures that discourage, punish, or hide failure. To prevent this, her answer is to take those who think differently and allow them to work autonomously to solve big problems independent from the rest of the organization.

Thankfully for Rumie, we’re a small team of hustlers. Over the past 30 days we’ve been developing ways to improve team effectiveness through more effective communication on product-related ideas.

Janice also had a few other great points that were extremely relevant to Rumie and the way we operate:

Innovation starts small. We’re just beginning, but we see the tremendous opportunity in our model and how it will impact the world.

Celebrate small wins. We’re proud that the LearnCloud is now the world’s largest repository of Canadian Indigenous Language Education.

Reward learning, not certainty. Rumie is aiming to solve one of the largest problems in today’s world. Our future is not certain, so all we can do is learn as we move forward.

Ask, don’t tell. We’re constantly curious and ask the right questions.

If you don’t believe, you don’t belong. We need people who believe in our model to drive it forward.

My work here at The Rumie Initiative is just beginning, but I’m excited to have learned so many applicable strategies and tactics at Mind the Product San Francisco 2017 that will enable me to make strides that lead our product in the right direction — a direction that continues to improve life in the offline world using the online one.

Enjoying some post-conference sun.

If you found this article intriguing and want to learn more about product at Rumie or if you’re still discovering what the world of product management is all about, connect with me at the next ProductTank Toronto or reach out via Twitter @kylelubieniecki.

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Kyle Lubieniecki

Written by

head of product @rumieinitiative | www.kylelubieniecki.com

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