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Mind the Product

Guest post

Why you should do as few things as possible

Artificial intelligence (AI)

How Stack Overflow is competing with AI – Jody Bailey (CPTO, Stack Overflow)

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Deep dive: Creating effective retention strategies

5 difficult conversations and how to have them

Microsoft lays off 3% of workforce while renegotiating partnership with OpenAI

Navigating the workplace as a young product manager

A recovering music journalist &amp; editor, Randy Silver has been working as an interactive producer &amp; product manager across the US &amp; UK for nearly 20 years. After launching Amazon’s music stores in the US and UK, Randy has worked with museums and arts groups, online education, media &amp; entertainment, retail and financial services.  He’s held Head of Product roles at HSBC and Sainsbury’s, where he also directed their 100+-person product community.   He's also spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg), at a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford,  &amp; Brighton... so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.

Randy Silver

<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginasmallwood/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Georgie Smallwood</a>, Chief Product Officer at TIER Mobility, knows a thing or two about product leadership &#8211; you don’t get your third CPO title without learning some strong lessons along the way.  In this keynote from MTP Engage Hamburg 2022 she shows us how product leadership is not only relevant to people at the top table.
Georgie tells us: “When I say product leader, I need to caveat. That is everyone. Leadership is a core capability of product management. Whether you are an associate product manager, a junior product manager, a product lead head of product, a VP, a CCP, a CPO, a core part of the role is leadership. And that innate quality and success as a product leader has some foundational blocks to it.”
Using the game of Tetris as a metaphor, she describes how you apply a foundational approach to manage the chaos, ensuring that the foundation &#8211; your team, your strategy, your processes and the relationships with your stakeholders &#8211; are in place, giving you the best possible chance of success.
Tetris is a nifty analogue for what product people do &#8211; it never quite goes according to plan, it’s relentless, and any success is quickly forgotten as you focus on the next challenges.  A good run can be undone by some poor planning; a great foundation can be undone by any lack of focus &#8211; but there are ways of approaching it that yield better results.
<h3>How do we play Product Tetris?</h3>
Georgie’s methodology focuses on four basic questions:
<ul>
<li>Status: Understanding, what have you got now?  What’s the situation?</li>
<li>History: How did this situation or challenge come to you?</li>
<li>Existing game: How is it being done now?</li>
<li>Future: What’s on the horizon? What’s likely to come next?</li>
</ul>
She explains how she’s applied this approach to both strategy and building and managing a team, with some great examples along the way (watch the video or read the transcript for the full details.).
<img decoding="async" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/b55522d3-ca53-4561-9f69-50630e3457b8_Georgie20SHEF.png" alt="" />
If this looks familiar, it shares a lot with the philosophy behind OODA loops (Observe, Orient, Decide &amp; Act), an approach to aerial combat &#8211; though the way Georgie applies it is more aligned to the way that Product is practised.
She concludes with a warning: “Your Tetris board is never going to look like this, ever. Have you ever played a game of Tetris that looked like this? No &#8211;  product management is exactly the same. It&#8217;s going to look something like this. You&#8217;ve just got to know where your gaps are and understand how to play the next piece on top of it and really make sure that you assess things as they come to you.”
She says that you can only play the game with the information that you have at the time and the pieces at your disposal. “We all want things to be perfect. We all want the vision to be super clear before we create the strategy. We all want to make sure that the strategy, that all our initiatives roll up cleanly to beautiful OKRs. But  you can only play the game with what you&#8217;ve got at the time. So take the time up front to assess the pieces and then: game on! Welcome to product  management!”
<h4>There’s more where that came from! Access more insights from our past events</h4>
<a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/surveillance-art-dying-phones-and-fake-likes-dries-depoorter-at-mtp-engage-hamburg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Surveillance art, dying phones, and fake likes – Dries Depoorter at MTP Engage Hamburg</a> 
<a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/how-to-recognise-and-beat-the-knowing-gap-christina-wodtke-at-mtp-engage-hamburg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How to recognise and beat the ‘knowing’ gap – Christina Wodtke at MTP Engage Hamburg</a> 
<a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/get-innovation-ready-your-product-manager-is-on-fire-by-julia-shalet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Get innovation-ready, your product manager is on fire! by Julia Shalet</a>

core/freeform

A year with ChatGPT and product innovation: Navigating the AI landscape

Mastering perspective – zoom in, zoom out as a product leader by Navya Rehani Gupta

Modern-day leadership by Janice Fraser

Master the art of leading through influence by Shyvee Shi

Is your innovation project on track? by Tendayi Viki

Finding your frosting as a product leader by Jeff Birkeland

Learnings from London: The secret sauce to hiring great product people by Kate Leto

Incomplete by design – Matt LeMay at MTP Engage Hamburg 2022

Learnings from London: Going from Meh to Awesome by Shiva Rajaraman

The art of product management with Ken Norton

Product Tetris: The ultimate game of leadership by Georgie Smallwood

ProductTank Fukuoka

ProductTank Kyoto

ProductTank Tallinn

ProductTank Istanbul

ProductTank Buenos Aires

ProductTank Denver

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Ahmedabad

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Richmond

ProductTank Sheffield

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Valletta

ProductTank Bologna

ProductTank Vancouver

ProductTank Bratislava

ProductTank Stockholm

ProductTank Bonn

ProductTank Milano

ProductTank Madrid

ProductTank Columbus

ProductTank Belfast

ProductTank Bangkok

ProductTank Kraków

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Rotterdam

ProductTank Cardiff

ProductTank Abu Dhabi

ProductTank Lausanne

Product Management Foundations BST

Product Management Foundations ET

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Reston

ProductTank Reading

ProductTank Bielefeld

Communication & Alignment BST

Communication & Alignment ET

ProductTank Paris

ProductTank Frankfurt

ProductTank Milton Keynes

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Pittsburgh

ProductTank Manchester

ProductTank Malmö