Really appreciate Tobi Otokiti for putting this together in anticipation of Product Leadership conference taking place on the 12th of August 2023.
Day 1 : Welcome note
Speaker : Tobi Otokiti, currently the Lead product Manager at Flutterwave and founder of Product Dive.
She started by welcoming everyone, speaking on what product dive does, about its coming conference and threw the floor open for Q and A.
Q1: What is something she might have done better when starting out her PM career?
Here Tobi highlighted having more confidence as something she wished she had starting out earlier in her career.
Making reference to being in meetings with fellow teammates and having brilliant ideas to share but always second guessing and being scared to share them.
Q2: With the current situation in the tech ecosystem, layoffs and inadequate jobs. How can someone secure an internship or entry level role?
One way to start is by attending conferences like Product Dive Leadership conference where CEOs, Product Leaders and industry experts would be in attendance. Providing anyone with the ability to pitch themselves and network making it easier when either reaching out later for reference for a job or collaboration. Sighting an example imagine you know someone who works at Mastercard and then an opening turns up, it would be easier to apply through them seeking recommendation as oppose someone just randomly applying.
Also have a personal branding that stands you out of the crowd. What makes you different from other PMs.
Have sound domain knowledge about your chosen field.
Always leverage on LinkedIn to connect with others in your field either above or same level as you making sure you're providing value through insight or new knowledge acquired.
The difference between a good product manager and a great one is attention to detail
Q3: How she manage stakeholders expectations
On this Tobi says stakeholders can be sales, marketing, customer success, engineering, designers, senior management etc.
She makes sure everyone is aware of the product strategy, product goals and are all aligned towards achieving it. They all understand the set OKRs.
Also an agreement on when to have meetings with them for reports(weekly, biweekly, daily) and what should be expected in these report meetings.
Q4: What does a Technical PM do differently from a regular Product Manager
Technical PMs caters to developers, they create software solutions, APIs for developers to use.
Regular/B2C PMs caters to users or customers that are nether developers or businesses
B2B PMs creates solutions to problems that other businesses can use and sell to them.
Day 2: How product leaders balance priorities for long term success
Speaker: Yami Ashama, Christopher Akande
The foundational building block for long term success for any product teams are
Discovering and understanding the right user and customer problem to solve
The right market opportunities to invest in solving
How might product teams win
Design a strategy that takes the form of a list of reinforced actions that support each other over a period of time.
Focus on your vision as a business. Ensure the customers needs are in alignment with the vision. Know that everyone has an idea on what to build next or do but how does that fit into the product vision.
Balance vision, strategy, business KPIs and customer needs. Don't focus on one and forget the other.
Don’t focus all on the customer needs and forget the product strategy
Product strategy framework
Yama Ashama introduced a couple of product strategy framework that can be used to balance priorities, one of which was THE DHM MODEL.
She highlighted what all the frameworks had in common which were:
What is your winning aspirations: this entails the value proposition/ offering that you intend providing to the users. The purpose of your enterprise.
Where will you play: A playing field where you intend to achieve that aspiration. Sighting an example two startups might offers the services of providing healthy eating for users. The first startup approach of achieving this might be to provide fresh food product to its users and the second might be to provide healthy cooked meals or recipes.
How will you win: What competitive edge does your product have, what makes it stand out, it difference from the rest, strength it can leverage on and need to have to win.
What capabilities must be in place: The set and configurations of capabilities required to win in the chosen way.
Deliver it to hand of people
What management systems are required: what systems are in place to measure success, milestones, focus on things that matter. What systems measure and supports the choices of the product team.
Winning long and short term
Product teams need to be flexible and always reassess the strategy, priorities, team structure. Know when to tweak your roadmaps, strategies.
"You always want to think big for the long term, build small for the short term"
Get clarity on the metrics that matter to the long term strategies.
Sustaining long term success
Presented by Chris
The right team and environment is required to sustain long term success. As they need to continuously discover and deliver on the right product experiences.
The environment product team work in and the results they deliver are a function of the workplace culture put in place.
Design and build psychological safe work culture for long term success where the product teams are allowed to freely express themselves and talk about anything, failure is not something they should be scared of instead they should learn from it.
Day 3: How to master influential stakeholder management: Navigating expectations and gaining buy-ins
Speakers: Nnamdi Azodo, Ayoola Dada
Stakeholder management is simply managing the expectations of different players i.e engineering manager, marketing, upper management for the success of your product.
Product management is an interconnected role as working with many people is essential to bringing products to life.
Why stakeholder management is important?
project success
Effective resource allocation
risk mitigation
communication and collaboration
change management
reputation and trust
continuous improvement
organization support
Types of stakeholders
Horizontal stakeholder: These are your peers, team mates i.e developers, designers, legal, customer success
Vertical stakeholders: These people are senior management i.e your manager, CEO, CPO, board
In managing stakeholders, PM role is to make sure everyone is on the same page, feel valued and appreciated.
In managing horizontally, PMs must make sure their teammates:
Have a shared interest
Are part of Decision making
Team work and corporation
clear sense of communication and transparency
collaborate cross functionally
Vertical Stakeholders: A simple framework was introduced that can be used to keep upper management updated on the product.
RACI framework
R - Responsible: who is responsible to see to that a task is carried out
A - Accountable: individual that can be held accountable
C - Consulted: Individuals that their opinions are asked, their input is consulted during and after development.
I - Informed: These individuals need to stay updated about the happenings of the project.
In managing up, PMs should co create with thier stakeholders every step of the way, seeking their input and opinions. Also create a reporting frequency either daily, weekly, biweekly in the manner in which the stakeholders like to communicate.
Regular reviews or demos can be carried out to present work done and seek feedbacks from them.
PMs can play into psychology of people, to do this Robert Caildini principle of persuasion can be applied.
Reciprocity: before you ask for something from someone, you must have offered something, either done a task for them, helped them out of a tricky situation etc
Authority: people follow those they believe have power authority to get things done.
Consistency: be consistent in your work and action.
Social proof: when it comes to decision making, people often look around to see what others are doing, before making their minds up.
Scarcity: people naturally value things that are rare, difficult to come by e.g exclusive invitation to your app.
Liking: people tend to draw close to people who like, compliment, appreciate them and tend to do same.
Day 4: How to drive your career from product owner to Chief product Officer
Speaker: Oji Udezue
This session was so insightful and inspiring.
Oji who is currently the CPO of typeform stated of with the place of luck in his career saying he was incredibly lucky.
But apart from that he pointed out that one should be willing to make sacrifice, displacing personal comfort to succeed in your endeavour.
Having a clear sense of where you want to go.
In pursue of one's career, be able to predict the future, making bets based on what you know and taking risk.
Lack of bets means no reward, even in failure there's something to be learnt.
Also creating and maintaining relationship within your peers/colleagues is a valuable human resource.
Being on a continuous learning path, staying abreast about the latest trends in the industry.
Do your work and well
Always Standout, don't accept mediocrity.
Empower your team do their best work.
Always look for a way to improve the process of your team/organization.
Be a leader, create community. Do something you've always thought about. three things will set you apart
"curiosity, wisdom, originality"
Day 5: How Product Leaders drive innovation and team alignment for success
This was a 2-in-1 session with Ogochukwu Umeokafor handling the first and Nifemi Oluboyede the second
Team alignment is a state in which every member have a common understanding of the teams goals, objectives, priorities, shared vision of the company and work collaboratively towards achieving them.
"Stubborn about vision, flexible about the details"
8 ways to foster strong team alignment
Clear vision and goal
Effective communication
Role clarity: Each member should have a clear sense of what task they are required to perform.
enable collaborative environment
Empowerment and autonomy
Regular feedback and recognition
continuous learning: Encourage continuous learning and skill development within the team. Investing in team members growth enables them stay updated on industry trends and fosters innovation.
celebrate success: celebrate every millstone your team reach, celebrate each member when they achieve success, do something extraordinary etc. celebrate them within and outside the team.
Second session was on How to build strong foundation in product leadership: the art of managing up.
Practical tips to product leadership
Business acumen: As a PM, building business muscle is a plus. this helps in seeing beyond the technical and customer side.
Domain knowlegde: Having strong domain knowledge in a particular field e.g fintech, edTech
Technical skills: Having technical knowledge helps in articulating and understanding how your product works, development aspect of it so your dev team can't jonz you.
Outstanding soft skills
Having exceptional passion for product
Ability to pick and lead great talent
Meaning up: success driver
Engaging in two way communication
Prioritize the important stuff
Articulate change and keep abreast of trends and happenings
Be inquisitive and fill the gap
win-win mindset
Demonstrate leadership
Understand superior's expectation
Pitfalls to avoid
Overpromising and underperforming
Losing sight of customers
Not being solution oriented
Not adapting to change
Not balancing short and long term goals
Micromanaging
Ignoring company goals
Thanks to organisers. You can join the product dive community too