Scandinavian Product Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Today’s guest is the one and only Christina Wodtke - Professor at Stanford and author of several bestsellers, including the famous book on OKRs “Radical Focus”.

We covered:

* Foundations and misconceptions about OKRs

* Prerequisites for successfully use OKR

* Why OKRs might not be for you

* The importance of psychological safety and strategic context

* Outcome-based key results vs. output-based results

* Cross-functional team collaboration and shared objectives

* Cadences and Principles

* Exploratory OKRs

* Challenges in large organizations with complex dependencies

* And more

Christina is a legend and one of my biggest references.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

_

References:

Article: Why context and culture matter in leading with objectives

Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists

I've interviewed more than 30 Product leaders in Scandinavia, and this is one of those conversations.

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Today I'm talking with Marius Røstad - CPO at Aidn - and Espen Sundve - former CPO at Oda, who’s now a Senior Advisor at Schibsted.

Marius used to head up product at Ruter before joining Aidn as Chief Product Officer.

Aidn is one of the coolest healthcare scaleups in Norway, aiming to disrupt healthcare.

Espen has also held product leadership roles before joining Oda as its CPO, where he thrived for 7 years.

Oda is Norway’s leading online grocery store.

How does Oda build products and organize itself? What are some of the principles behind their success?

And how is Aidn doing that today, one of the most interesting tech scaleups in Norway in the healthcare space?

You'll find out soon, as well as learn both Marius and Espen's perspectives on being more strategic, their views and approach to product strategy, team topologies, the importance of speed, how to foster alignment when you’re scaling fast - and so much more.

My guest today is one of my favorite product people out there: Petra Wille

Petra is the author of one the best books for product leaders you can find "Strong Product People", she's the founder of an amazing product conference "Product at Heart", and one of the few product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed.

Petra is such a great human being, and I am a big fan of her work.

We covered a lot and, even though I am clearly biased, every product leader and manager should listen to this.

We discussed:

* Common struggles of product leaders and how to address them

* Why many product leaders struggle with time management and understanding their role

* Why product leaders need a framework tailored to their context and that works for them, to develop their people

* What you need to know to get started with developing strong product people

* The benefits of coaching and tools product leaders can use to help their people grow

* Why reading good books and contextualizing their lessons is important

* Navigating the "Instagramification" of the product industry (as John Cutler is putting it)

* Building strong Communities of Practice and their benefits

We even have a little surprise for you: we did some role-playing of a coaching conversation, so you can actually hear Petra in action and what great coaching is all about! Quite unique :)

My guest today is Manuel Pais.

Manuel is the co-author of the masterpiece book "Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow".

He's recognized by TechBeacon as a DevOps thought leader, and is today an independent consultant and trainer, focused on team interactions, delivery practices and accelerating flow.

We covered a lot, including some questions and comments from Lyse and Shibsted (read the full case here):

* Different types of teams and interaction modes, and why it's important to define them in your org

* Differences between "streams" and "products", and the importance of having stream-aligned teams able to discover and deliver as independently as possible

* Why team topologies should be seen as an ongoing model, with a mindset of experimentation, sensing, and responding (avoiding the "big reorg" antipattern)

* Conway's law and why it matters

* Navigating infrastructure changes and team topologies

* How to identify your streams using independence service heuristics

* How Shibsted organized itself in independent verticals and why value-stream thinking is important to achieve faster flow

* Product Ops teams as Enabling Teams

* Implementing and scaling enabling teams (with an example of data science teams)

* Common antipatterns when adopting team topologies

I love Manuel and Mathew's work, and see it as one of the most important contributions to the tech industry in the past few years.

I strongly recommend checking out the Shibsted case in combination with this episode, available at the Scandinavian Product Newsletter.

I had the pleasure to sit down with Jostein and Hatice and hear more in detail about their use of Team Topologies and how it shaped their ongoing transformation as well as many of their lessons learned.

Relevant links from the episode:

Main website: http://teamtopologies.com/

Tools & templates (includes ISH mentioned in the episode): https://github.com/teamtopologiesAcademy (where you can find the Effective Enabling Teams course mentioned in the episode): https://academy.teamtopologies.com/

Teamperature (a breakthrough product for assessing and managing team cognitive load): http://teamperature.com/

My guest today is one of my favorite product thinkers: John Cutler

John is an absolute legend in the product community, and one thing I love about John is his dedication to sharing the messiness and contextual nuances in the world of building products.

John has worked in Product with some of the most exciting tech companies around the globe and is the author of one of the most-read Product newsletters in the world: The Beautiful Mess.

Everyone wants to work like the "best" product organizations. But what does "best" even mean? The "best" according to what, precisely? And how important is it to contextualize this advice? What role does culture play in subscribing to these principles, and implementing them?

As I expected, John went deep on some of these things:

* What does it mean to work in the "best" organizations

* The nuances of categorizing an organization as the "best" and the importance of context

* Reflections on implementing the principles of the product operating model and how messy it can get given different contexts

* The importance of start starting, and being good at continuous improvement

* Some patterns and antipatterns of high-performing teams and organizations

* Foundational steps and reflections on prioritization

* Approaching setting Strategy from scratch

My guest today is the one and only Bob Moesta. 

Have you heard about Jobs to be Done theory? Bob was the one creating it together with Clayton Christensen - who's for many the Father of Disruptive Innovation.

Bob is the Founder and CEO of the Re-wired Group. He has worked on & helped launch more than 3,500 new products so far, is a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, and started his career by being a mentee of Dr Deming himself - the father of the Toyota Production System.

He’s also the author of several bestselling books, including Learning to Build.

Bob is an absolute legend and I am so grateful he took the time to join me in this insightful conversation. We covered:

* Why 10-12 interviews are enough to uncover patterns

* Jobs to be Done as a way to understand people’s lives

* Why JTBD is not a framework to understand the customers’ functional “jobs” today, but their context and outcomes (the “progress” they want to make)

* Why Bob doesn’t use interview guides

* Changing how you approach competitive analysis and market sizing by seeing the world through a Jobs to be Done lenses

* Why JTBD is such a powerful way to align Product/Design/Engineering, with Marketing and Sales

* How to approach prioritization using interrelationship diagrams

* How to visualize your user research using the Forces of Progress

My guest today is Niko Noll. Niko is a software engineer turned product manager turned product discovery coach. 

He has learned Product at scale - shipping value to 18 million monthly active users - and spends most of his time coaching teams and being a founder at Juttu, a tool that helps product teams talk to users every week.

Niko is very dedicated and passionate about helping product teams discover value sooner - and so it was a bit of a no-brainer for us to get together and talk about all this discovery.

In our chat, we covered: 

* The ingredients to get started with continuous discovery 

* The pros and cons of product trios

* The dynamics of trios and bringing user research onboard

* Practical tips to foster collaboration within product trios

* Treating a product trio like a team of co-founders

* Testing assumptions rather than features

* Creating an environment to foster continuous discovery habits

* And more

My guest today is my friend Carlo Mahfouz. He's the Vice President of Strategic Technology Partnerships at Laerdal Medical and the author of the book Reality Check. 

Carlo is such a well-articulated thinker. I love how he breaks things down and I really miss working with him. 

We talked about:

* How to become a better listener

* How to let go of your ego, and why this is key in great leadership

* How to foster collaboration between Engineering, Product and Design

* Why Engineers should be highly involved in Discovery and practical tips to foster that culture

* Why intense debate and “fighting” is a healthy sign of strong product teams

* Characteristics of great Tech Leads and differences between just a “senior” engineer

* Dangerous false assumptions that Product tends to make about engineering

* The impact of AI in society

* And more

Carlo is writing his new book “The Culture of Why and the Rise of AI” and you can follow his journey here, so you don’t miss out!

My guest today is Gabriele Bufrem - one of the product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed.

I met Gabi last year and love talking with her. She's both a superstar product coach and a great human being. 

Today's episode is like a mini masterclass for product leaders and managers, where Gabi shares practical tips and advice from her experience coaching strong product leaders and teams in companies that we have all heard about.  

We covered:

* The 4 biggest challenges product leaders face

* How to craft an inspiring and clear product vision

* What does a great product strategy look like

* The importance of collaboration, listening, and facilitation in order for product leaders to craft a good product strategy

* Workshops and techniques to surface insights and foster strategic alignment

* How to communicate strategic context to product teams

* Product Principles and OKRs

* Why product leaders should spend most of their time coaching their teams

* And more

My guest today is Marty Cagan.

Marty has probably observed and advised more product teams and leaders than anyone in the world.

For many, he's the Godfather of Product Management. Bestselling author of some of the most iconic books in our industry (Inspired, Empowered, and recently launched Transformed). Probably the world's most requested speaker in Product development conferences. And founder and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group - for many, the most credible and highest-quality product advisory group out there.

If you work in Product in Europe, lead product organizations as a product leader, or are a founder / CxO that wants to create a truly innovative company, don't miss this spicy episode. 

Marty and I discussed:

* Moving from Projects to Products

* Why Agile can only help with 1/3 of transformations (and why it's also the easiest part)

* Why Product Leadership is the key to enable transformation 

* Examples of successful transformation cases in Europe

* The importance of product coaches in driving transformation 

* How Europe took Agile in a different direction: process and governance

* Product Ops: good or bad?

* "Product Owners", as we sadly often see in many Scandinavian/European companies, and the risk of obsoletion or replacement

* How AI will impact how we build 

* And more