In this Dear Melissa segment, Melissa answers subscribers’ questions about building product operations teams, staying in a position you love vs. diversifying your experiences, and how much a CPO actually needs to know about the inner workings of their product.
Show Notes
Q: How can an organization make the pivot from being reactionary in their product initiatives to being driven by market research and data? What kind of talent should a product leader be on the lookout for when building this type of team from the ground up?
Q: How should I balance my love for my current company and role with the pressure to explore new opportunities?
Q: As a CPO, do I invest the same amount of time in understanding everything about the product, particularly with a complex and feature-rich B2B product? Or should I focus on creating the necessary conditions to transform the product culture of the company? How advanced does my product knowledge need to be?
Resources Melissa Perri on LinkedIn | Twitter MelissaPerri.com
Episode Transcript
If you try to learn everything, especially in a big company, if it's a small company, it's very different, but like bigger company, bigger product, if you try to get so familiar immediately and get into the weeds, you're not gonna have time to do the strategy and that's what you were hired for. So you will pick up this knowledge over time. You'll pick it up over time just by the nature of your job.
But at the beginning, I'd spend about 30 days getting up to speed and in those 30 days start to think about which strategy decisions do I wanna make. So really concentrate on what provides the most value, what most people are using, but also where the biggest opportunities are because that's what people are gonna judge you for success on. Hello, and welcome to an episode of Dear Melissa from the Product Thinking Podcast.
The lines are now open and we're ready to answer your most pressing product questions. Which prioritization framework would you recommend and why? Hi, Melissa. Do you have any suggestions on developing a product strategy? What would be the best way to go about utilizing my product strategy? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's a lot of questions. All right, let's dive in.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Dear Melissa. It's actually our 50th episode. So if you've been with us that long, thank you so much for listening in to this little podcast that we started last year. It's grown so much and I couldn't be happier with the turnout and I just wanted to really give a heartfelt thank you to everybody out there who's been listening to us Wednesday after Wednesday for the last year.
This will be marking one year since we started this thing. So very exciting times. Welcome to 2022. We've got three great questions for you this time on the Dear Melissa segment of the show. And we're gonna talk all about how to set up a dedicated research team, what to do as a career when you're thinking about staying at the company that you are at long-term or if you should move around, and also how much product knowledge do you really need as a CPO, especially when you're starting a new company.
So we're gonna dive into those questions right after this.
All right, we're back with our first question. Dear Melissa, how can an organization make the pivot from being reactionary in their product initiatives to being driven by market research and data? Georgie Smallwood said on a previous episode that as a CPO, it's nice to have a team dedicated to research and insights.
What kind of talent should a product leader be on the lookout for when building this type of team from the ground up? Yeah, I think it's incredibly important to get in front of the research and in front of your strategy. So when you're making the pivot from being reactionary to getting more forward, this team that we're talking about is key, right?
Like you have to be constantly doing the work to find the new opportunities, to surface up insights, to surface up places where you might be able to make a difference in your product or introduce something new. So one thing I like to say for product leaders, having a team to do this really, really helps. It's not necessary.
Like a lot of smaller companies have your product managers do this alongside their current role, but it's usually because the scope is smaller because by nature your product's smaller and your company's smaller.
So it's really easy to do this all kind of combined into the product role when it's early days. But as you start to scale, you wanna make sure that you have somebody who's just at least surfacing up insights. That doesn't mean making strategy decisions. It just means surfacing up research. And that's what we really talk about when we talk about the design of this core component when we talk about product operations.
So when you're building a product operations team and you're thinking about the design, you wanna think about two different things. External research, what is the information I can gather from outside my company? And then also internal research. What is the information that lives in our data and our systems?
So let's break it down like that and talk about what kind of skills you need for each. And I'd say start from wherever you need more help. Like if your product managers are doing fantastic market research and surfacing up insights, okay, maybe you don't need that as much as the internal research component, but it's up to you.
So think about what you need to start with.
You can start with like one person in each role. It doesn't have to be a huge team, but this is what I'm looking for. So let's talk about external research first. Two types of external research. One is what kind of information can I get from our current customers? That is where your user research people usually come in.
So again, normal user researcher, someone who's really good at that craft will knock that out pretty easily. But then there's also market research and that's what industry trends are happening and where might there be synergies in other markets or other companies. That's a different type of skill usually than user research.
You're gathering information from places like Gartner and industry trends and exploring other companies. It's a much different type of research. Typically, it's helpful for a CPO to have someone who knows how to do good market research well, and then can model out scenarios that involve things like market sizing or expanding into new market areas.
Those people tend to come from a consulting background. So if you find people from like Bain or McKinsey, especially like two years analyst, they knock those things out really easy. I used to have a couple of analysts from both those companies on my team and they were awesome. It made it so much easier for us to set product strategies and roadmaps and model pricing and all that wonderful stuff for our clients.
So you definitely wanna look for somebody like that on the market research side. Somebody who really gets deep into looking at comparisons of other companies, looking at industry trends, looking at what's happening in different geographies. Lots of stuff out there that can actually look at market research, but again, very different skill than user research.
So those people are gonna be bringing insights back into the team. That's like, hey, there could be potential opportunities over here and you're gonna wanna think about it. What strategy level do I need it? You might not need it so much on a tactical, like what I call options level, like the ground floor product teams.
You probably need that more on the product initiative level like you're talking about. And then also at the strategic level of where chief product officers are making strategic intents. That's where a lot of this comes in handy. So again, you don't really need a huge team to do this, right? Like you need enough to be able to go out and then bring some insights back into the different levels.
So very valuable to have these people looking that way. But then we've also got the internal insights. So that's like, who can I find to dig into the data that's currently in our systems? Like pull it out of the accounting software, pull it out of Pendo or any analytics tools that you're actually using.
Start messing with that together. And then again, offer up some opportunities. So I wanna see insights like, hey, oh, we have like 20% of our customers in the mid market using one of our products but not really adopting the other one. And we saw it as a hypothesis they would be. I wonder why. Then that gets kicked over to your external investigators, probably your user researchers, and they're gonna go out there and start to investigate why and see what else they're using.
Maybe market research comes into help to explore some competition. That's kind of where we're looking at for that. Now, again, like you should really use this team to help surface up big questions. Like smaller questions as it pertains to like product functionality or smaller feature level, your product managers can usually handle that.
But you want somebody to constantly be surfacing this up for the bigger questions, for the more strategic pushes kind of on that product initiative level and also in the strategic intent level. And again, if any of your product managers need help, this is a great place to turn to, right? They can go and ask people in this area is what's going on.
These teams, again, are not strategy teams. Like they are not just crafting the strategy and handing it off to the product managers. They're just coming back with like, oh, here's some interesting data. Here's the models that you wanted to see. Here's the whole purview of like where we fall on the different market segments that we actually serve.
Here's where they're adopting things. Here's where they're not. We're underpricing things. Here's where we're not.
Like those types of insights could really be a game changer to get you ahead of setting strategy and make sure you're not reactionary. So that's what we talk about when we talk about research and insights team. And I think it really makes or breaks great product organizations and really helps CPOs set higher level strategy.
So think about where do I need to start? What's my biggest gap? And then I'd hire one person and then you can grow the team from there. If you are a really large company, you may wanna think about hiring a leader for that and letting them step up their team. But if you are a smaller company, that's where you're like, okay, we're gonna break this down into what do I need first, get one person in there to fill it and then think about adding it as we go.
All right, second question. Dear Melissa, I started working at my current company at the age of 27 with 20 people. Now I'm 36, we're 400 people and are scale up with international success in a niche market. I really like my job and love product management.
I see many other PMs move to new companies every two years or so and also see that my company is skeptical about candidates who haven't held a variety of job experiences. I should probably move to a new company to learn, but I feel like I learned a ton here. There aren't many companies as good in the industry that I'm working in and I want this company to be more successful.
How should I balance my love for what I do with the need to explore? Great question. This is a very personal choice too, but it's all up to your goals. I know some people who've stayed in companies that I've worked at even from the time that they were baby startups until they got sold and merged into gigantic corporations and even after that, because they love the company.
They love what it stood for. They watched it grow. They felt like they had a meaningful job there and they learned as that company went through various different stages of its life cycle. So that's one thing that you could do. Like you're always gonna learn if your company's rapidly growing and expanding and I know people who've had a lot of success for that.
I also planning a career around learning. Like if you're learning in your current company, that's a really good sign. That means you're evolving, you're growing and it's giving you enough energy and enough things to actually build up your repertory skills. So that's good. One thing I would look at for you is what are your career goals?
Is it to go on to be like a top product executive, excelling at your craft? If so, maybe you would wanna move somewhere else and learn things that you didn't even know that you didn't know. And that's the beauty of going somewhere else is that it'll surface up things you didn't expect. If you do wanna do that, like you might wanna diversify your experience a little bit.
I know people do look for this or if you feel like you've hit a plateau in your company, that's when I would start to look at it. It doesn't mean you have to go today, but long-term planning, you might wanna move strategically. Another thing that you could do instead of moving though is do some other types of jobs in your current company.
So like if you wanna be a product executive and you don't know anything about sales, can you go help them with sales ops or go be a liaison to the sales team? Like what opportunities can you create for yourself in that organization to more round out your skills? I know when I'm looking at resumes, I'm looking for where have they done these things before?
I don't care if it's in the same companies, although I wanna know if you've got biases towards how that company works. And that's what I think people look for when they are skeptical about people who've been at a company for a really long time. They're like, okay, well, did that company do what I'm hiring for well?
And if it did, and it's like recognized in the industry for that, you're not gonna have a problem. But can you demonstrate that you did it well in your interviews and on your resume? If so, you can stay at that company. You can play a variety of roles. You can check off those boxes that, hey, I got with these skills, even if I was there.
So I think that's if you wanna be like a product leader, but maybe that's not your goal. Maybe you wanna just like kill it at this company and be a part of that team.
Yeah, stay there, keep doing what you're doing. Like that's your goal. The other thing to think about as well is you say you want to help this company be more successful. I'm wondering, like, it sounds like you're successful already. Do you know what it needs to be more successful to thrive? Sometimes we don't know that because we're like stuck in this company.
We only see one view of things and we don't know what we're not knowing, what we're not doing. In that case, you might wanna go out and discover your unknown unknowns, right? Like the things I didn't even know that we should be doing. And then you know what? You go back, you leave on good terms. You can usually go back to a company.
I mean, I wouldn't like peace out if you're in a bad spot with the company and they really need you right now. But like, maybe this is a conversation you have with your boss. That's like, hey, I wanna go out and figure out what we could be doing, like what else we could be doing. And I'm not gonna learn that here.
I wanna give you like tons of notice and I wanna go, you know, stretch my wings a little bit, but one day maybe I wanna come back. That's not a bad question.
And if you have a really good boss, they should be really helping you with that, right? Like that's something that bosses want to see. They should want to see you grow. So I wouldn't be afraid about that. Also, here's one other option. And this is different for everybody. Can you do a side project? Can you advise another company in the industry?
And I mean, this is all based on time. I know not everyone's scenario works out like this. We've got family commitments. We've got other things on our plate. Not everybody can do this, but if you're like, no, no, no, I don't wanna leave this company. Love this company, but I do wanna learn things I didn't know before.
Probably other ways you can learn that and maybe you don't have to leave. Maybe you dedicate three hours a week with something else so that you can learn those things. So I say, don't get FOMO based on like what other people are doing. Really think about what's your long-term plan and is your current path helping you be set up for those things, right?
Before you, you know, worry about leaving. But if you're not ready to go, don't go, don't go. Don't feel FOMO.
If you're worried about like making a leap to a CPO one day, yeah, I'd probably look at that and I'd plan that out. But that doesn't mean that you have to leave right now. And it also doesn't mean you have to go to a new company every two or so years. It's really funny because I think in other industries, people get yelled at for moving jobs every two years or so.
And here we see it as like a downfall. I remember like when I was graduating from college, people were like, oh, you can't move companies every two years or so. Like you don't get enough experience. But if anybody's worked in a scale up or a fast-growing company, you know, you learn a lot in two years.
And it's very different than working for a very, very large organization that moves slowly for 10 years. So don't think about it that way. Think about what you learn and if you can demonstrate that and you love this company and you wanna stay there, as long as you feel like you're learning, I don't think you can go wrong.
All right, last question. Dear Melissa, I've listened to many episodes of your podcast and I've loved them all. Thank you. Here's my question.
It is known that the PM has to have deep knowledge of the product, but as a CPO, do I invest the same amount of time in understanding everything about the product, particularly with a complex and feature-rich B2B product? Or should I focus on creating the necessary conditions to transform the product culture of the company? I know I can't lead a product department without knowing anything about the product and its users, but how advanced does my product knowledge need to be?
So here's the big thing where CPOs go wrong. They get too into the weeds of their product and the nitty gritty. So it's like, yes, you do wanna know about the product, but do you wanna know everything about the product? Probably not. So we have to strategically figure out what do we get up to speed on and what do we not?
So no CPO walks in on day one and is an expert on the product at all. You should know generally what it does, but you're never gonna be an expert on like all the tech debt in the background of each individual little tiny piece, especially if you work on a super big, complex B2B product. So where do I start?
What do I get up to speed with? This is something I had to do all the time when I was consulting. You can get ramped up pretty quickly and start to make strategic decisions pretty quickly, but there's a couple of ways to do it. One, you need to know enough to be dangerous about setting strategy and understanding where there's gaps and opportunities.
So you should first leverage your team to give you insights into what needs your full attention. Like I sit down with a sales team every time I go into a new company and I say, show me, like pretend I'm a customer, show me your pitch. Cause I wanna understand what people are buying, how the product works, what's the most like demo-able features and what people typically use.
Then I go sit with the support team and I say, okay, what do you get called about the most frequently? What do people use the most? I sit with training teams and I ask them the same question. So what I'm trying to learn there is what are, and I try to watch customers too. That's another thing. If you can watch customers, talk to customers, oh, beautiful, beautiful thing.
So try to do something like that and figure out like what are the main user journeys and the main features that most people use that provide the most value.
And then secondly, you want to take some of that information as well and figure out where are the biggest gaps. So again, go to back to sales. What do people keep asking for that would help you close deals? And why don't we have it? Start to look into that. Start to figure out like what does our product not do?
Right, it's just as important to understand what your product doesn't do as what your product does do. So I'd start there. And then you turn to your team for the rest, right? You have a team that's probably worked on this for such a long time. You don't need to hold everything in your head. They have it in their head.
So talk to them about what's important. Once you get those major user journeys down, then you know who to go to on your team to dive in a little bit deeper. What does this functionality do? Why is that like that? Why is this like that? But if you stick to those types of higher level things like I was talking about, you can usually do your job setting strategy and giving enough direction to your team about where to focus.
And then they get to make decisions on the nitty gritty product level on a day-to-day basis.
If you try to learn everything, especially in a big company, if it's a small company, it's very different, but like bigger company, bigger product, if you try to get so familiar immediately and get into the weeds, you're not gonna have time to do the strategy and that's what you were hired for. So you will pick up this knowledge over time. You'll pick it up over time just by the nature of your job.
But at the beginning, I'd spend about 30 days getting up to speed and in those 30 days, start to think about what strategy decisions do I wanna make? So really concentrate on what provides the most value, what most people are using, but also where the biggest opportunities are because that's what people are gonna judge you for success on. Make sure you're concentrating there.
Don't get pulled too deeply down, but you got a whole team. That's why you have a team. Rely on them, rely on their product knowledge and learn from them as you go. Don't worry about doing this all in the first week. It's not gonna happen. So that's it for our Dear Melissa episode this week.
If you have any questions for me, please submit them to dearmelissa.com. I go through this every week, pick out our questions and every other week we release an episode on it. So I love answering all your questions. This is the best way to reach me. Some people try to email me specific questions or put them on LinkedIn.
I can't answer everybody's questions. So that's why I started this podcast because I would love to answer them. But I hope that I can help everybody. I hope that a lot of you, I do see all these questions from you. A lot of you have the same questions. So I wanna be able to provide advice for everyone.
So go to dearmelissa.com, submit those questions and we will see you next week with another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast.
