NY Product Conference 2019 — 3 Big Takeaways for Product Managers
On November 9th, 400 product managers, designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered at the beautiful TimesCenter for the fourth annual New York Product Conference. The conference aims to up-level the craft of product management and this year’s theme of “expand your impact” got great feedback from attendees. They not only learned from world-class speakers, but also connected with fellow product leaders in the New York community!
In Summary
- 7 keynotes from senior product leaders
- 12 lightning talks from mid-career product managers
- 1 workshop from bestselling author Richard Banfield
- 400 members of the NY Product community
The overall NPS for the event was 55. This is 18 points higher than the previous year’s score! We’re told it’s quite a good NPS for a conference. :)
The community especially loved the lightning talks from several of the rising stars in product management, who shared their biggest learning from the past year. Not only did they give engaging and entertaining talks, but also they shared deeply insightful approaches to tackling really hard problems.
In addition to the themes captured below for Product Managers, a lot was shared about how executives can enable product to have a greater impact. Brent Tworetzky captured those learnings in his excellent blog post, which is worth a read for executives and aspiring executives alike!
Three big themes jumped out to us as we reflected on how PMs can increase their impact:
Takeaway #1: Great product leaders need to think about business strategy and revenue…and today many don’t
Shelley Perry from Insight Partners started the day throwing down a gauntlet for product leaders. She predicted that “Product will lose our seat at the Strategic Table if we don’t get better at contributing to the corporate strategy.” To combat this, when Shelley talks with product people she often advises them to understand three key items:
- The revenue engine of the entire company
- How much their product line contributes
- Exactly when and how the product monetizes
90% of the time when she asks PMs to share these numbers, they aren’t able to answer. Shelley gives this a big ”FAIL!”
Thinking more broadly, Shelley also shared this excellent description of the CPO role that her firm Insight Partners uses. She advised PMs interested in growing into Product Leaders to think about this as the vision for your career and map out the moves you need to make to get there:
But remember — as Ben Foster from GoCanvas shared, revenue (like NPS!) is a trailing indicator. You must first master the product vision that will deliver tremendous value to your customers! Measure what matters to your customers and then work out how to charge for that.
“Ideally your whole monetization strategy is about aligning with your customers” — Ben Foster, GoCanvas
Bonus!! Ben also offered his excellent vision worksheet (free!) for the NY Product community. Check it out!
Takeaway #2: Companies that deeply invest in the customer experience outperform ones that don’t…by a lot!
“Talk to users to build the right thing” is a frequently repeated message in product circles, but the big gains come from following through all the way. Janelle Estes from UserTesting shared that far too few companies realize those gains because product people don’t evangelize the financial opportunity of a world-class user experience.
“The three pillars of a great customer experience are effectiveness, ease, and emotion… but emotion has a bigger influence on customer loyalty than effectiveness or ease in nearly every industry” — Janelle Estes, UserTesting
And Christian Idiodi from the Silicon Valley Product Group reminded us to validate all strategies through a lens of customer value that’s informed by deep knowledge of the customer. A big market with great looking models won’t work if you aren’t adding real value to users. He found this when he joined a company only to have his first act as a newly minted CPO be to shut down a major product investment the company had been making. The value to users wasn’t there, and he knew it didn’t have the potential to justify any further investment.
“Regardless of the strategy, there is an ultimate focus on a better experience for the user and the customer” — Christian Idiodi, SVPG
Takeaway #3: Fight echo chambers and biases in your product decisions…otherwise your products will miss the mark for key user segments
Watch for where well intentioned plans break down when put in front of real people. Inga Chen from Spotify shared that their “Keep the vibe going” recommendations worked great when a user’s mood was upbeat, but not so well when the user listened to music associated with feeling down. Recommending a “Broken Heart” playlist might fit with what users are actually listening to, but it’s not going to make them feel great about using your product. But don’t worry, get this wrong and your users will take to Twitter to let you know!!
“Fight algorithm bias with:
- Diversity on your teams
- Encouraging discovery
- Injecting some randomness” — Inga Chen, Spotify
In the world of nonprofits, Osi Imeokparia from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative shared how the team there is avoiding their bias as “product experts” who might not understand all the nuances of the space. CZI product team members think about collaboration with their users and partners first. Rather than simply watching and observing the problem, they work with those users and partners “to experience and try to understand what is happening, and, as co-designers with equal power, think about what the answer should be.” This approach can be leveraged in any space where multiple partners need to collaborate to deliver the best overall solution.
“Small things like language position yourself relative to others in a way that makes them feel less than, makes them feel unseen, and makes them feel like they’re part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution” — Osi Imeokparia, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Giff Constable from Meetup also shared how he breaks down echo chambers and biases when it comes to hiring, looking at non-traditional sources for employees who have untapped potential. He shared how larger product teams can create an APM (Associate Product Manager) program to pull internal talent from other departments. In the program they shadow a product manager for six months and, if the manager signs off, transition to become an official product manager. This helps bring in people with diverse perspectives and fights echo chambers.
We are looking forward to learning a lot more from amazing product leaders at our quarterly NY Product Meetups as well as at next year’s NY Product Conference! Save the date for Thursday Oct 29, 2020!!
Our generous sponsors this year were InVision, TKWW, Heap, Insight Partners, Two Sigma, Updater, Asana, Ordergroove, Clubhouse, and Balsamiq. We partner with companies who care passionately about the craft of product management and who contribute to the growth of the discipline in New York. This year’s sponsors went above and beyond and we deeply appreciate their support!
This conference is a labor of love and we couldn’t have done it without our fantastic staff and volunteers: Rose Pember, Lionel Chambers, Tushar, Mirando Garrido, Angela Delisle, Maggie Reagan, Tremis Skeete. Thank you team!
And special thanks to my amazing co-organizers Brent Tworetzky, Ami Stuart, and Tami Reiss!!
