I’ve Written 300+ Essays On Product Management, AMA

[00:00:00] Michael Mordak: It

started. So I would want to welcome everybody to the latest, uh, ask, ask the expert, uh, events that we’re running in this series. We’re starting to see these grow and become a really valuable way for our community, for members to engage with the experts who contribute to the product manager. So I really want to thank everyone who’s shared feedback so far on these.

Um, and thank you to everybody today who’s showing up. That’s awesome. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Michael Mordak. I’m the community product lead for the product manager. And I’m also your host for the day. Uh, today’s session, we’re going to get to speak to, to a thought leader and internationally recognized PM coach, Clement cow.

Uh, so Clement, you were recently recognized as a top 25 seasoned product leader by wizard. That’s wizard with a U for anybody who’s unfamiliar with the product. [00:01:00] Um, But there are some really impressive names on that list. Uh, I’m going to share it actually in the chat for anybody who’s curious. Um, there it is there.

I wanted to know, what does it feel like to be in the same company as folks like Marty Kagan and Dr. Nancy Lee, who was actually a speaker on a recent event last month.

[00:01:21] Clement Kao: Yeah, fantastic question. Um, so actually I got to hang out with Marty Kagan a couple of months ago Actually for his book signing and I think one of the things that I found really Refreshing is just kind of a lot of the celebrities and thought leaders and product management They’re just people like I’m just a person too, you know Um, so it was really cool just like hanging out with a lot of, you know, PM book authors and being able to say like, Oh, like, you know, I read your stuff.

I was a big fan. And I didn’t realize Marty Kagan had read my stuff too. It’s like, Oh yeah, Clement, like I know that you’ve like written these essays and like, it’s really insightful. I keep doing what you’re doing. I’m like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t expect that from you. Um, so that was super cool. Um, yeah, it’s just been fantastic kind of [00:02:00] being part of this, you know, mini community as well.

I think something that can sometimes happen is, you know, when you’re up on the podium, sometimes it can feel a little bit. Lonely or like, you know, speaking into a void a little bit. So love this panel, right? Like definitely have the questions come on in. Um, yeah, like people are people. Um, so, you know, very honored, of course, to be recognized as, you know, one of a select few, um, but also I just wanted to shout out, you know, those few people who are, you know, Very much contributing to the industry.

I love that they’re still very human, right? Like it’s not like very much like, Oh, now that I’m a celebrity, I’m going to like do whatever. Um, so yeah, I just really appreciate that about the product management community for sure.

[00:02:35] Michael Mordak: Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, you put it really well. And, and like to that point, I mean, like I mentioned, Dr.

Nancy was, was on a event recently, um, where we talked about, um, you know, fighting for your value as a product manager and yeah, I mean, she’s just. Just like a genuine person who like is just also really driven to help people and share her knowledge. It’s incredible to see. And, and again, congrats on getting on that list.

That’s awesome.

[00:02:59] Clement Kao: Thank you.

[00:02:59] Michael Mordak: I [00:03:00] also see a few unfamiliar, unfamiliar names today. So if you’re a guest joining us today, that’s awesome. Welcome. Super happy to have you here. This is just one of a series of monthly sessions that we hold with the product manager community. We’ve also got a host of templates and resources that our members can download and access.

If you’re interested in learning more about membership, you can check us out. We’re at the productmanager. com slash membership. Now let’s get into it, uh, because Clement has a lot of knowledge and we’ve only got 54 minutes, so let’s kick it, kick it off. Um, I want to start with the title of this. Clement, you’ve written over 300 essays on product management and coached over 7, 000 PMs.

What is one of the most common challenges that you find yourself writing about or coaching teams on?

[00:03:48] Clement Kao: Yeah, fantastic question. And so I think one of the things that people generally think is like, oh, you know, the hardest part about product management, right? It’s got to be, oh, how do I get a lot more technical, right?

Or like, oh, like, how do I influence stakeholders? Or how do I get executive buy in, [00:04:00] right? The funny thing is those things tend not to be the actual bottlenecks to people’s careers. The actual bottleneck, which people don’t talk about enough, is actually Understanding your own emotions, which I realize sounds very woo woo or very like kind of out there.

But one of the things that’s very true, right. It’s like as a product manager, you are working with all of these different stakeholders, you’re trying to understand your customers, et cetera. And if you don’t have a good understanding of your own emotional state, it can be very hard to be able to draw the insights that you need from all the people that you’re partnering with, from your customers, et cetera.

Right. I can imagine a scenario where. You’re going to some customer meeting, right? And a customer is furious, right? Like they’re saying, Oh my gosh, like you failed to deliver on da da da da da and we’re going to like, you know, terminate this contract, right? If you aren’t in control of your emotions, and if you don’t fully understand what’s going on, you might shift into a very defensive mode, right?

You might wind up exacerbating that situation. But a really fantastic product manager who’s able to recognize that, Oh, I’m currently feeling very threatened. I currently don’t feel all that [00:05:00] good, but I know how to deal with these different things and is able to kind of deescalate that situation and kind of help co regulate that customer to bring them back to a more, Dispassionate conversation to a much more logics facts.

You know, what is the situation? Let’s work through this together a much more collaborative situation that product manager tends to go much farther. Right? And so similarly, when you’re wrangling, you know, maybe difficult stakeholders, or maybe, you know, suddenly a project has shifted on you or whatever, really understanding how to manage your own emotional state is one of the most important things, right?

Kind of the way that I think about it is A PM who knows how to control their own emotional state and just is like very much in tune with themselves tends not to tire out as quickly, tends to be able to, you know, be a lot more excited about the work that they’re doing. And that generally brings you a lot farther.

Rather than having any specific set of like technical skills or whatever. Um, so that’s the thing that I really do weave into a lot of my coaching and a lot of what I write about is not just about dealing with the situation itself on the face of it, but also [00:06:00] recognizing that, you know, we’re humans, we have emotion and having that kind of self compassion and that humanity and humility to wrangle with that, I think can really help to bring people to the next level for sure.

[00:06:10] Michael Mordak: That’s that’s huge. And I think that like, I mean, the word that comes to mind when I’m when I’m hearing that is like just having self awareness, just being aware of like yourself and your emotions, all that kind of stuff. And like you pointed out at the beginning that it’s kind of a bit woo woo, right?

Like it’s, you know, getting in touch with who you are and understanding that, but then being able to apply that, like you said, um, yeah. To be able to, you know, have those conversations and make sense of things. And also a huge part of that is like to avoid overworking yourself and burning out and stuff like that, knowing your limits and your boundaries and being able to set those and be, um, be tough with, uh, be tough with that.

Um, just as like, you’re going through a bit, I want to kind of dive into that a little bit. I’m wondering, like, You know, we talk about working on like emotion management or self awareness. What are some ways that you’re doing that or that you’ve seen that happen that [00:07:00] you’ve seen to be effective?

[00:07:01] Clement Kao: Yeah, totally.

Um, and so a couple of things that is really valuable, right? It’s just even knowing that it’s something that’s important as a product manager is already half the battle, right? Like just knowing that, Hey, actually my emotions do matter. And the emotions of, you know, my customers and my counterparts matter that is already half the battle one, right?

Kind of the other component then is. Making sure to run basically these like mini retrospectives on yourself. And so after like a meeting, that’s gone, you know, doesn’t feel all that great. Or like after like a really rough day, just even taking, you know, a couple of minutes just to think, Hey, like what did happen today?

And like, why did I feel that way? Like, what are some things that I want to change about the way that things happen? Just having that a little bit more kind of. Self engagement and taking that time to reflect can really make a difference over the course of your career, right? Like just even every day asking yourself.

Hey, how’d I feel right? What are the things that I thought went? Well, what are the things I want to do differently tomorrow? I’m just doing that every day, you know for a couple of months Can very [00:08:00] easily change a lot of the different ways that you interact with stakeholders, change a lot of the ways that you engage with different problems, um, help you be a lot more thoughtful about the way that you tackle things in a way that you might not typically get from many other directions.

Right. And to clarify, like I know that one of the things I mentioned is, Hey, you know, emotion management sounds kind of. Woo woo and out there, but it comes up a ton for some of the most technical challenges that you’ll ever face, right? And so I have built my fair share of very deep API integrations. I build AI, ML, computer vision product.

There are a ton of very, very difficult challenges where if you don’t navigate those technical challenges thoughtfully, A lot of emotional challenges can spark, right? Like people can feel imposter syndrome. They might feel that they’re being challenged on the technical expertise or their direction. They might feel like, Hey, why aren’t we being supported by the business for like doing this correctly?

Or they might say, Hey, why is it that other people aren’t partnering with us? And so no matter what you do as a product manager, no matter how like technical or like soft skill it is, it is always going to evolve emotions of some sort yours [00:09:00] and your counterparties. Right. And so that’s why it’s so important.

I think one of the things that I’ve seen, even just in terms of like engineering managers, like not even just thinking product management, but just other functions that are quote unquote, technical as well, a lot of the most effective engineering managers are not those that understand the tech more.

They’re the ones who can manage their, their own emotions and the emotions of their direct reports a lot better, right? Like those are the people who really do stand out over the course of their career. Um, and so again, kind of to start to have that. Just putting importance on it and then taking some time to reflect on it whenever you can whether that’s you know Each day or each week, whatever just like do whatever works for you.

Um can really help to Enable you to have much better working relationships, which then ultimately means a lot better outcomes. So yeah.

[00:09:44] Michael Mordak: Yeah, that’s amazing I I like that as a really good point that you toss in at the end there where it’s like Could be every day. It could be every week because especially when you’re getting started out, if this is something that you’re not already doing, doing it every day might sound a bit like, you know, I’ve already got this huge task list of things I need to get [00:10:00] through.

Um, so doing it like once a week is, it could be good practice as well. Is this, I’m curious, are you still doing this practice on your own? Yeah,

[00:10:07] Clement Kao: yeah. So actually I start every, every other morning ish, right? Again, like I’m not that strict with myself. Um, but you know, every two or three days, um, I open up a journal, right?

It’s like, hey, like here’s how I felt about the past couple of days. Um, here’s where I didn’t feel good about this stuff. Why didn’t I feel good about it? It’s like, oh, okay. I don’t react well to these kinds of things. I do react well to these kinds of things. Okay. How do we make sure that I feel better about it?

Oh, how did I make other people feel? Oh, I noticed that this person felt this way when dah, dah, dah, dah. Oh, well, how can I make that be a little smoother, right? Like not put them on the defensive, make sure that they are understanding where I’m coming from. Right. And so being able to just reflect on that and actually have like a written log just really helps me to.

Look back and see how much I’ve evolved over time. Right. And if it’s honestly crazy, just thinking that I’m the same person a year later, but just like reading my notes from a year ago, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like, I think I’ve gotten a lot smarter at this stuff. Right. So yeah. Like [00:11:00] you’d be very surprised by the amount of progress you can drive, even just soloing.

[00:11:04] Michael Mordak: I love that so much. Yeah. It’s like quick little like anecdote from, from my own experience. Like my friend and I had had a contest where we wrote down. Um, three things we were grateful for every day. And it was cool to see that because you’d go back in the spreadsheet from like a year ago or two years ago and, and see these little wins that you had.

You’re like, Oh, that’s what I was excited about. But just that your point of like seeing who you were in the past and then being able to measure up against where you are today. And it’s almost like a visual representation of how far you’ve come, which is a really neat thing to see. So finding a way that you can document that somewhere, I think is really important to, to building that as well.

Um, And I had, yeah, I’ve got another fun anecdotal story just on the same topic. My friend did something similar with, with her dreams, um, where she was documenting her dreams in a similar way. And then what she did was she chat GPT, like, uh, can you analyze themes throughout all these different dreams? And then it was like, write it out.[00:12:00]

So in a similar sense, you could, you could kind of see like, what are the, like, if there are common areas, you don’t even necessarily need to do it on your own, if you have got that documented out somewhere. You could, you know, get some AI chatbot, whatever it is of your preference to kind of go through, as long as you’re comfortable, like throwing sensitive information into it, your personal.

Um, okay. I’ve sucked up a lot of time on that question because I was really interested in it. I’m going to move along, uh, to a common challenge that I’ve seen come up among our community members. Which this one we talked about this, uh, quite a bit where it’s, it’s connecting near term objectives with long term goals.

So how do you tie those two things together to make sure that what you’re working on today is actually aligning with the overall vision of where you’re trying to go?

[00:12:44] Clement Kao: Yeah, totally. And so The way that I think about that, right. Is when we say long term goal, it’s important to clarify, do we mean like long term goal for ourselves or like long term goal for the organization?

Right. Um, and so like understanding which set of long term goals we’re interested in, um, can really help with [00:13:00] that. Um, in either case though, something that I’ve personally found really, really helpful. Right. And this is like something that I’ve done to myself and like, I’ve taught other people pretty successfully as well.

Is to actually treat. Your future self as like a critical stakeholder. So what I mean by that? So a lot of times I think as product managers, right? Like we tend to prioritize ourselves last, right? It’s Hey, the customer needs this and engineers need that. And, you know, design needs this and go to market needs that.

And so we are juggling all of these other things and we forget, Oh, but also, you know, if I’m, if I’m thinking for myself as a PM for my longterm goal, I want to work more sustainable hours. Okay. Well, that got completely lost in the shuffle, right? Or Hey, from like a product perspective. Oh, well, we want to build up towards this, you know, being more, uh, customer interview driven, right?

Or, Oh, we want to build towards being more data informed, right? Like those can sometimes just slip out of the cracks. And so something that I found really helpful is basically the like book, a bi weekly meeting with myself where like, I’m the only attendee, right. [00:14:00] And it’s like for an hour. And basically it’s a meeting with future climate, right?

And so future climate comes in with all of his demand. He, he comes in and he says, Hey. I’m the boss. I’m the stakeholder. These are the things that you committed to me. Where are they? Why didn’t you do them? Right? And it kind of having that forcing function there of actually treating yourself as just as important as the rest of your stakeholders can help to really make sure that you’re actually taking the time to carve that out, because if we’re just like doing it ad hoc or like trying to remember to prioritize it as we’re going to spring planning and as we’re going to like project planning and whatever, we tend to forget like, Oh, by the way, we should do these different things.

Yeah. Whereas kind of having almost like splitting yourself into an executive persona and like an executor persona makes it a lot easier for you to be able to fight for that, you know, executive persona of we have a long term to also be considering. We can’t just be indexing too much on the short term.

Right. And so I personally found that to be quite helpful, um, especially because right. It’s like, it’s a block on the calendar. And so I make sure that I [00:15:00] go to that. Um, I treat it like an actual meeting, right? So there are meeting notes, there are action items. And so it’s just. I play both sides, right? I am the stakeholder who is demanding from this executor.

You need to make sure that you capture these different concerns. You need to give me a timeline for when you’re going to do these different things. If you’re going to deprioritize me, why explain to me why you deprioritized me? Right. And so kind of holding myself accountable that way, by kind of splitting myself into executive versus executor has been really helpful for me to not feel like, Oh, well, I feel bad.

About trading away someone else’s comfort or preferences for like this other thing, because now I’m not fighting for me, I’m fighting for, you know, this executive from the future who said this stuff needs to happen, right? And so that’s just been really helpful, just in terms of, you know, managing the people pleaser side of myself, which I know a lot of product managers wind up being, you know, um, and so that’s just been personally pretty effective.

[00:15:53] Michael Mordak: I love that. Yeah. Yeah, like treating yourself as one of the people that you need to be pleasing, because I [00:16:00] think that, yeah, a lot of product managers will fall into that same category. We’re people pleasers. That’s why we’re doing this. We want to build something that’s amazing that other people will enjoy.

But, yeah, spinning that a bit and putting it on its head to make sure that you’re actually getting some enjoyment out of this as well. Um, I’m curious to know, have you ever, like, do you rely solely on just making sure that you’re, you know, hitting your action items by that meeting, um, for this whole purpose of like, you know, uh, making sure that the future Clement is, is going to be happy with it.

Or do you find like, uh, creating some kind of incentive around that helps you hit your goals, um, or some, some kind of like disincentivization if you don’t hit your goals, if that’s a word, I don’t know if it is.

[00:16:42] Clement Kao: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So I think, um, so honestly, just like. The way I think about it is the incentive and the disincentive is just, you know, your approval or disapproval of yourself, I think, um, and so one of the things that, you know, I will regularly feel is, for [00:17:00] example, hey, one of the things that I’m committing to, you know, future Clement in the next two week check in is.

I noticed that currently there are all these manual things that we’re doing and if we carve out a couple of hours, we can automate some of these or we can delegate some of these, right? And so if in two weeks it’s, hey, the future climate comes in, he says, I noticed that you happen to be using my people’s bandwidth a lot and you haven’t come up with ways to scale that and what is the game plan?

And if I say, oh, I don’t have a game plan. I just continue to burn their time without. Without regard, right? If you’re just going to say, why did you not respect my demands here? Right? Like I told you, we currently are underwater. We definitely need to be able to scale faster because here are the different initiatives that need to be hit.

And so. That’s unacceptable. I will be escalating to your manager. And so basically, you know, that way that’s like, Oh, okay, cool. Like I’m going to like hold myself accountable that way. Um, and so like just taking yourself very seriously as like future stakeholder, where you actually have like the executive power to do that kind of stuff.

There’s also a really great way to start to train yourself [00:18:00] into eventually becoming a people manager on your own. Right. Because in the future you will actually be holding that. actual position of power. So you might as well get into the early habit of knowing how to play that position, even if you’re just managing yourself.

Right. Um, and so that’s kind of how I think about it of, I treat it like a serious meeting where future Clement is, you know, at the level of director, product, VP, product, et cetera, or, you know, director of operational, whatever you want that to be, right. Just like holding that amount of power and being able to say, I will escalate if you don’t take action.

Right. If you did take action, that’s something to celebrate. I’m going to bring that to your manager. Right. And so that’s also like a really helpful way to also figure out what should I be telling the manager, right? Like, where are the places where I need help? Where are the places where we should be celebrating?

That can also be an incredibly effective forcing function. So in that way, you know, after your passes, you’re not just thinking, what did I do last year? Right? Like, what do I tell my manager about like my progress over the last year? Will you actually have this track record because you’ve been meeting with yourself over the last, you know, a year, every two weeks about like, you know, [00:19:00] what progress have we made?

So that’s kind of how I think about making that work. And again, just everyone kind of ticks differently. Um, so it’s going to feel super awkward the first couple of times you do it. I’m just going to be really transparent with you. It feels incredibly weird. Um, but it’s shockingly helpful. Um, so I, I would recommend trying to stick it out and giving it like two or three shots.

Before you say, oh, I’m not going to do this anymore, it feels too weird. Um, it definitely is quite valuable to just even just go through that exercise. So, yeah.

[00:19:24] Michael Mordak: Do you like audibly, you’re talking to yourself? I speak it out loud. Yeah.

[00:19:28] Clement Kao: And so like if you do it silently, right? Like you’re not going to feel that sort of accountability, you know?

Um, and so kind of one of the things, and this again sounds incredibly dumb, but it’s very helpful. Is so you notice I wear glasses, right? And so what I do is, you know, for the executive version of Clement, he takes off the glasses. And so I know when I’m speaking as executive and so it’s, Hey, last week, you said you were going to do dah, dah, dah, dah, right?

And then I put back on the glasses. Oh, well, the reason why I didn’t, it was dah, dah, dah, dah. Okay, do you think that’s a viable excuse right like I don’t care what you were doing last week [00:20:00] You didn’t meet my needs like oh, okay So then like this would be the game planet that did that right? And so like just being able to play that out loud and actually having these cues to yourself.

What role am I sitting in is Shockingly helpful. So yeah,

[00:20:13] Michael Mordak: I Absolutely love this and one of the comments we got in the chat was this is like Clark Kent versus Superman

Yeah, that’s awesome. Oh, another, another good idea in the chat was building an AI avatar clone. So you can have a meeting with your clone. That’d be really interesting too. Super, super cool. Okay. That’s, that’s incredible advice. I’m really glad you shared that. Um, I think it’d be really helpful. And actually somebody else had mentioned that they do something similar as well in the chat.

So, um, and a testament to that, that working as well. Um, I’m going to skip to another. Another challenge that we’ve seen come up in the community as well in our discussions is, um, informing upcoming features and sprints using customer feedback. So, um, this one I’ve got is a, is a two [00:21:00] parter, uh, but I’m going to start with what are some, what’s the, some of the most effective ways of collecting that user feedback for in the first place?

[00:21:07] Clement Kao: Yeah, totally. Um, so one of the things that I’m going to. Call out right is basically like user feedback is not necessarily something that is like super Clean in terms of oh, there’s definitely some process that always works, right? No matter what kind of feedback you get There’s always going to be some amount of bias or there’s always going to be some set of challenges around that, right?

So as an example If you put out a survey and you have these, you know, five different options in it, but someone is actually thinking, Oh, but what about my write an option? Right? Then you’re not capturing that information. And on the flip side, if you do a lot of like qualitative interviews, then you aren’t going to be able to know things at scale, right?

So no matter what kind of user feedback you do, there’s no such thing as perfect user feedback. The more important thing is that you’re doing it. Um, and so one of the things that I personally find incredibly important is speaking to the customer and actually walking them through. This is what we’re planning on [00:22:00] doing, right?

Like you’re like life prototypes of like where we’re currently at and just really building that deeper customer empathy. Yes, you definitely want to have some sort of like discussion guide of here’s what we want to learn, but you really want to open yourself up to being a partner of your customer and actually working on the problem together, um, rather than it being, you know, they’re the customer, you’re the vendor, right?

Um, and so that has been really helpful. Cause one of the things that I’ve noticed over the course of my career so far is, you know, Many times you put up like, let’s say like an NPS survey, right. Or you, you know, send out an email saying, Hey, please respond to this email with your thoughts. People tend not to engage.

And so even though it’s like, Oh, you know, we’re going to get all of this information at scale and it’s going to be quantitative, you know, and it’s going to be unbiased many times, that’s not actually actionable. Right. And so a lot of times. Diving deep with a single customer is the most helpful way to get to some action and then to be able to iterate on that.

And then afterwards, figuring out how do we abstract that to many more customers, right? Um, so that’s kind of where I would be at is [00:23:00] it’s important to bias yourself towards, you know, getting out of the building and talking to your actual customers. Um, that is really important to do. Um, in terms of getting that user feedback, right.

And so rather than putting up, like, here’s a survey and hopefully someone will respond, right. Actually going and reach out to someone that, you know, as a user and saying, Hey, I would really love to get your thoughts on this thing I’m currently working on. Can we grab some time together? That will give you a lot more actionable information.

And it’s definitely gonna be biased, right? It’s one person out of all the people that you’re serving, but it’s okay. You can always de bias it later. You can always figure out, well, who are the broader personas that I’m serving? How do I scale this to the different pain points, but without getting into the very nitty gritty.

You’re not going to understand, you know, how does your product actually fit into their day to day life? Like, how does it actually fit into their workflows? Products don’t operate in a vacuum, right? Like they are part of someone else’s life. They’ve built all these other processes that have all these other products around them, and if you don’t have that good understanding of where does my product actually fit in all of that, um, that can cause you to miss on some really critical insights in terms [00:24:00] of how it can make your customer’s lives even better and capture even more of that value for your business.

Right. Um, so again, there’s. I can’t say this enough. Customer interviews are super important. Like showing live prototypes is super important and actually being able to see where does your product fit in their life is just still underrated as much as people talk about it, it is still underrated today. So, yeah.

[00:24:22] Michael Mordak: I love that. Um, and the one thing that was coming to my head and I know, I know you kind of mentioned like there’s going to be bias if you’re, if you’re, you know, if you’re going deep with one customer, as opposed to trying to get the answer from the masses. Um, but I want to get a little bit into the nitty gritty and that’s like, is there a number of folks you aim to hear from before making like a major business decision about what to do in terms of like updating a feature or changing aspect of the product?

[00:24:48] Clement Kao: Yeah, fantastic question. Um, and so. Credit to this advice goes to like, um, the. user researcher who trained me on user research many, you know, many, many years ago. One of the things that she [00:25:00] said that I thought was really valuable is there’s no set number, right? Because each kind of problem that you’re tackling is going to be really different.

And the way that people perceive things will be really different. And so basically once you start to be able to predict this interviewee’s responses, like, Oh, I’ve heard that before, what they’re going to say next is this, and then they say that thing. That’s when you probably start to hit kind of that diminishing marginal return and you have enough information to start to say, okay, well, we’re going to start doing these things this way, right?

Um, because, you know, sometimes that particular problem is super fragmented and everyone comes at it super differently. You need to hear that diversity. And so sometimes you’re going to interview 30 people and you’re still not going to converge on something. But other times it’s just like very straightforward.

Everyone just does it the same way. And so by, you know, discussion number five, it’s, well, I already know what they’re going to say next. And then they say that thing. Well, it doesn’t really help to burn more of that time because that time could be used to, you know, make progress and like ship it and like, have it be out in the wild and learn from there.

Um, so like that is kind of one bar to think about. Uh, the other bar to think about is also, [00:26:00] you know, the other way to think about it is If I did this next customer interview, what would I need to learn in that interview to change a decision I’m about to make? Right? And if it’s like, Oh, I’m, I, I think I’m going to learn about how they purchase, or I think I’m going to learn about, you know, um, them running into this particular problem in the way that they would use the product or adopt the product, then you should continue to keep moving.

But if it’s, Hey, actually I’ve already talked to 20 people. And even if the 21st person says, I don’t like your product. I’m never going to use it. And you would still ship it as is. Then don’t talk to the 21st person because you’re wasting their time and your time, right? Like you would have shipped it anyways.

And the key thing to remember is we cannot make every customer happy, right? Like end of story. The point of a product is that it solves for a specific customer segment and drives so much value enough of that critical mass. That then they are excited to give you that value, right? Like they’re excited to purchase from you, to stick with you for the long run, right?[00:27:00]

And so to have that kind of critical mass, to have that amount of perspective, you have to make some sets of customers incredibly happy, which means by definition making other sets of customers incredibly unhappy, right? And so we can’t have the bar be, Oh, whatever the next customer says, I’m also going to try to incorporate for them, right?

Because you simply cannot, like, that is not how you build a product. Um, and so there is some cutoff point. The core thing is just understanding what is, what is the scope of the product that you’re building? How much influence or impact does it have on the kind of the rest of the business and kind of using more first principles to think through what actually makes sense rather than hewing to, Oh, well, because this is now interview number six, it must be okay.

Right? Like just like using that critical thinking to understand Is there something else that I’m going to learn? Do I need to have interview number seven? Right. I think is the more important way to approach it.

[00:27:51] Michael Mordak: Yeah. I love that kind of making it more adaptable and open to just your own analysis on that point.

But I did think it was a pretty bold decision to tell a room [00:28:00] full of product or people pleasers. And product managers that they’re not going to make everybody happy.

[00:28:05] Clement Kao: It is a brutal reality. Unfortunately. I think one of the things that is just really important is the way to make some people incredibly happy is to make a lot of other people incredibly unhappy.

And that’s just kind of how it is, unfortunately. Um, because yeah, like, if you think about it, you know, even let’s say. Wikipedia, right. Um, Wikipedia, like lots of people use it for like information gathering, et cetera. Right. And so one of the things that you could say is, Oh, well, should you, and I’m just making stuff up.

Should you put in some sort of generative AI that quickly summarizes everything that’s super in depth in Wikipedia? Right. And so for the people who want to be able to skim really quickly, right. They’re going to say, yes, I’d love generative AI. And for the people who really want like deep detailed facts, they’re going to say absolutely not because what if it’s wrong?

Right. And so no matter what, right. Like if you put a generative AI summary of that article on Wikipedia, right. If you put that up there. You’re going to frustrate all the people who love digging into the details. And if [00:29:00] you don’t put that up, you’re going to frustrate all the people who want really quick answers.

And so no matter what, you’re going to frustrate somebody, right? And so it’s important to pick your battles and to say, these are the people that I actually care about. And unfortunately that means that other folks. We’ll get to you later. Right. It’s not, we’re never going to get to you. We’re going to get to you later.

Right. Um, because again, like if you think about it, say for example, Uber, right. Uber, right. Like now lots and lots of people use Uber, but at the start it was very much just for people with incredibly high incomes. Right. And like very specific, very niche use cases. Whereas now like people actually, you know, send their kids off to summer camp through Uber, right.

Like it’s like a very like broad. And the only way that you can do that to become like a very broad solution is the first knock at a niche. So well that you have enough. Funding and resources and, you know, business value to them, break into the next segment and keep tackling each segment until you eventually capture the whole market.

Right. Um, so that’s kind of how we think about it.

[00:29:52] Michael Mordak: I’ve got to say, I had never heard of anybody sending their kid to summer camp in an Uber, but. I guess if you’re, I guess it must be [00:30:00] true. I don’t know. This is news to me. I heard you here first. Um, I did say that this was a two part. So we’re going to get into number two of this now, which is, that’s all about collecting user feedback and getting it in front of us.

And okay, so now we’ve got the feedback. How do we make sure that this gets in front of our teams? So that upcoming sprints are informed with these decisions that we need to make about the products and what, what things need to be updated.

[00:30:22] Clement Kao: Yeah, totally. Um, so one of the things I would just say from experience, right, is like many times if you kind of come at it externally, like, Hey, I heard this stuff from customers and we should prioritize this stuff, right?

And other people have their own opinions. It tends not to go super well. And so something that I’ve just found through firsthand experience is it helps a lot to just bring your team with you when you’re doing customer feedback, right? Um, because them actually hearing the voice of the customer, them actually feeling it and like, actually tangibly being on the other side of that customer frustration or that customer excitement very much drives that kind of organic alignment without you having to say, Hey, here are all these [00:31:00] interviews that I did without you.

And you’re going to have to trust me without like the audio, right? Um, it’s just much easier for people to actually be sitting there and actually feel that. And so, you know, back when we were building, https: otter. ai digital loan intake applications, right? Um, you know, we might have a lot of very conflicting opinions about, Hey, how, how should someone actually navigate through the user experience?

Right. And one of the things that you might expect, right. It’s from like a user experience design perspective, you would expect that you should be using, you know, let’s say, um, the latest and greatest, you should use mature UI. You should use a lot of icons. You should keep it very slim, very like unintrusive.

But then you sit down in front of a loan officer and they’re looking at the prototype and they’re like, Oh, well, that’s just like a pretty little icon. It doesn’t do anything. I’m looking for the button that says fill out loan application. And it has to be big and it has to be bold. It has to have like a lot of feedback when I mouse over it.

Like, Oh, that’s how they work. Right. And if you don’t have people actually seeing that, they’re going to say, well, Clement, that doesn’t make any sense. Why would you use so much text and take up so much of the [00:32:00] screen? Right. But when you actually have them sitting in front of the loan officer. And they like skip that part because it’s like, I can’t see it.

I’m like visually blind to that. People will fight for it themselves, but like, you don’t have to say it. They’ll just kind of incorporate it into how they’re actually building the product and actually incorporating into upcoming sprints. And so that applies both to the execution level as well as to the broader prioritization level.

Right. So something that can sometimes happen is sometimes what can happen is. Your exec team might not agree with you or kind of your, you know, higher level stakeholders might not agree with you when you say, Hey, this is the customer pain to solve. This is the value to yield. And a lot of times, no matter how many reports you bring to them, no matter how many, you know, look at the survey and look at these numbers, et cetera, they’re just not going to bite.

Right. And so sometimes bringing them with you or like recording that, like discussion, having them hear that snippet. Right. That’s when they go, Oh, that’s actually really bad. Right. And so actually having people feel either the excitement of the customer when something’s about to be solved or the absolute frustration when, you know, nothing [00:33:00] is going right for them and actually feeling that is incredibly important, right?

Cause ultimately humans are social creatures. We are not robots, right? Like we are not robots. We have to train ourselves to be analytical, you know, and so people tend to love working with other people. Like we’re like a social species by nature. And so actually having people in the room and understanding that pain and actually feeling the specifics of it can be incredibly helpful for driving that alignment, both at like the higher level executive component, as well as the lower level, like actually executing.

[00:33:31] Michael Mordak: Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. That’s really good. Um, one thing I was thinking about as well, as you’re going through that is, um, My question would be around getting those folks, getting those team members into those customer calls. Because I, do you ever get pushback from your team when it’s like, well, I don’t want to attend another meeting where I’m just going to be sitting there and like, watching somebody.

[00:33:52] Clement Kao: Yeah. So I think it really is on a spectrum, I think. Um, so some folks, they are honestly like really, really excited to learn more [00:34:00] about the customer. Right. And so some existing cultures are already very much, Hey, like we actually want to want to work to matter, right? Like, I don’t want to sit there and code something or design something or roll out something that no one cares about and no one uses.

Right. And so most people want their. Life’s work to mean something, right? So like most people tend to want to understand like, what is the actual impact of my work? Of course, there are some folks who are very much resistant because they just want to focus on, I’m just going to do like my part really well, um, and we’ll like, let you figure out those components.

Right. In cases like that, if it’s. A couple of people, right? I would say pick your battles wisely, right? And try to think about who are the people that they listen to try to convince that person. And then maybe like you can like slowly, uh, slowly drive kind of a perception shift. But if it’s an entire organization of just like, everybody doesn’t want to listen to the customer.

One of the open questions is, is that somewhere that you want to be in the long run, right? Because orgs that don’t listen to customers tend not to create customer value. When customers value [00:35:00] is not created, you can’t capture value from them for the business, right? Like if, if you don’t create so much value that people are excited to pay you for it, someone’s going to create something that people are excited to pay for.

And as soon as that happens, right? Like your business loses money, people start to get laid off, et cetera. And so then one of the open questions is, do you want to be at a place where people don’t want to talk to other people? Right. Um, so that’s one of the things I think about, right. It’s kind of, it really depends on like, macro versus micro.

If you only have a couple of people who don’t want to go try to understand, like, why is that the case? Right? Like see if we can convince them, see who else they listen to, try to convince them otherwise. And if they still resist like, okay, um, no worries. Uh, we understand that, you know, you have this different perspective.

It was an entire organization, right? You might want to consider the long term prospects of that.

[00:35:45] Michael Mordak: Yeah. Yeah. That’s brilliant. No, I appreciate you sharing that. Um, We had a question come in from the chat here. So I’m going to switch gears to this one here, which asks, says, uh, Clement slightly off topic. I’ve read you, uh, your [00:36:00] PM job search strategies document in the product teacher class, product teacher being your coaching business, which describes the state of the PM job market at the moment and strategies to navigate it.

I was wondering if you have, uh, currently have more insights into the market state from your coaching sessions, how it’s evolving and how to be more competitive.

[00:36:19] Clement Kao: Yeah, totally. Um, and so funnily enough, that actually ties back to one of the things that I said earlier, which is one of the core themes that I’ve been hammering home is people are people, right?

Which again, like sounds very trite on the surface, but it’s actually really true. And so something that we want to keep in mind is When we’re thinking about the PM job market, right. When we try to position ourselves as like, we are a candidate that is fungible or tradable with other people. That’s when like the wheels tend to fall off, right.

It’s much more helpful to think about there is a specific hiring manager out there and that specific hiring manager has a lot of these different problems that they can’t currently solve because if they could solve it, they wouldn’t be hiring for a PM. Right. And so [00:37:00] what are the problems that other people have?

Why do they have those problems? And let’s figure out how do we actually help them solve those problems? So a couple of things I want to call out today in terms of like the current PM job market. Um, it is still unfortunately kind of overheated. There just are a lot of applicants for very few positions, right?

And so one of the things that I have personally witnessed is, you know, a job application goes up and within one week you get more than 500 applications, right? And so like, let’s do like a quick, um, let’s do like a quick empathy exercise, right? Imagine in front of you, there are 500 tweets, right? Again, tweets are very, very short.

There are 500 tweets in front of you. Choose the best one, right? That sounds really difficult. Now let’s tell a hiring manager, choose the best person that you’re going to bring into the company out of 500. And by the way, if you choose the wrong person, you are going to be, you know, asked very rough questions by your own managers, right?

And your team, like the people who report to you, they’re going to say, do you understand how to manage people? Did you pick the right person? Right. And so when you think about like. [00:38:00] The problem that that hiring manager is going through it’s wow. Like it is actually so hard for them when they’re faced with 500 cold applications.

Okay, well then let’s think about it again from the hiring manager perspective. What are other ways in which they could avoid having to go through this mess, right? Like they open up a job rec and then they’re like 500 applications have to go look at all. Oh, well, if someone could vouch for a person, right?

Say, Hey, by the way, I noticed that you’re hiring for this PM role. I’ve talked to Clement before. And by the way, Clement knows how to do da, da, da, da, da. You probably just want to interview him first, just in case, but like, you can knock him out totally fine, but at least just interview him first. And then you can go through the other 499 in your cold pile, right?

What’s the hiring manager going to do? They’re going to interview Clement, right? Because it’s, Oh, well, someone already vouched for him, right? Like, I don’t need to go through that pile. I really don’t want to go through that pile, right? Cause again, think about it. The hiring manager, they’re not just a hiring manager, right?

Like they have to move their own metrics. They also have pressures from their bosses. They also have issues from customers, right? They don’t want to be going through this interview process. [00:39:00] And so when someone is coming in and saying, Hey, by the way, I noticed that you’re looking for this role. And Clement happens to fit the bill.

You should just talk to him first, right? That can make their lives significantly easier. So what does that mean for us? Right? It means that we need to be thoughtful about which organizations are we going after, right? I generally don’t think it makes a ton of sense for people to be sending out, like, let’s say, you know, apps to 20 different places, right?

Because again, then you’re just going to be one out of 500 in a week, and you’re just going to, you know, be looked at later. Instead, think about what’s an org that I’m really excited about, where I think I’m going to create value for them. Again, it’s not, Hey, I want to be hired by a really cool company, right?

It’s not, Hey, I wish I were a Google PM. So I’m going to apply for Google. No, no, no, no. What value are you going to create for that company? What’s something that you’re super good at that they really need, right? So flip it on its head. The hiring organization is the customer. What is the prom that they have, right?

Then for that org, find someone who’s not the manager, find someone who’s not the recruiter and, you know, [00:40:00] Demonstrate your interest to them, right? Like, hey, like, can we talk about, like, what is it you’re currently tackling? Like, I have some ideas, like, I have all this past experience. And when you’re able to get that person to vouch for you in front of the hiring manager, then they’re going to be much more, then the hiring manager is going to say, okay, oh, I have nothing to lose.

I might as well interview this person who was referred in. And so you’re going to say, Oh, well, you know, actually Clement, I could just get a referral, right? Like I could just have someone, you know, say, by the way, I referred to them. You could, but let’s go back to the hiring manager, right? Like there’s an exercise in empathy as a hiring manager.

I have 500 applications in front of me. Right. And by the way, a lot of people are just kind of putting in referrals. And so 20 percent of these applications, so a hundred of them. I’ll say referred by X, right? I don’t really care that they were referred, right? Like I can’t figure out out of a hundred applications.

Who should I interview? But if someone walked up to me and said, by the way, you need to talk to Clement. I’m going to go talk to Clement, right? And so the important part is not getting a referral in the system. That doesn’t matter. What actually matters is [00:41:00] getting a human being to talk to the hiring manager.

Slack is fine. Email’s fine, whatever. Right. But make sure that there’s some actual touch point with the hiring manager of you need to talk to this person or maybe even not need, right? Like, Hey, you should just try talking to this person, at least ahead of all of the other people in the resume pile, because I’ve at least vetted that.

They’re a person that seems like they’re a good culture fit. They seem excited. They seem to understand our problems way better than trying to dig through that entire 500 resume pile. And so the way that I think about it, right, is right now it’s very much an exercise in empathy of trying to understand which hiring managers have problems that you are going to be the best person to solve.

And then find the people that they will listen to and convince them that they should listen to you. And then that way you can kind of jump ahead in the interview process rather than, you know, sending in all of these cold applications. And so I’m going to say something that is going to sound honestly kind of crazy.

One of the things that I say when, you know, I, when, when a new coaching client comes in is they will say, hey, Clement, I would [00:42:00] really love for you to review my resume. I’m willing to like pay you money for it, right? I will tell them, I don’t want to see a resume right now. Instead, tell me who is in your network and who will actually advocate for you.

Because I’ve seen this, right? When people advocate for you, they don’t look at your resume, right? Like your resume is not part of the consideration process. And so you only need to improve your resume. If there’s no one fighting for you inside the organization. If there is one fighting for you within that organization, your resume doesn’t matter that much.

Cause you’re not fighting us the other 499 cold applications. You’re just the next person they’re going to go talk to very casually, right? And to just treat it less like a, Oh my God, I’m a candidate and Oh my God, it’s a market. It’s very much a human problem of the hiring manager is so frustrated. It’s just, Oh my gosh, I don’t want to do these interviews.

There’s so many applications out there. If only someone could tell me which next person to talk to, right? Solve that problem for them. And they will be very, very grateful to you. So that’s kind of how we think about that general challenge.

[00:42:54] Michael Mordak: Yeah, I mean, the first thing that comes to my head too is like, if I’m the hiring manager, I would probably look at those [00:43:00] 500 applications of like, 500 tickets in your backlog.

Like, you don’t want to go through that.

[00:43:03] Clement Kao: No, no, nobody wants to. You don’t want to do it.

[00:43:06] Michael Mordak: Um, oh,

oh, sorry. The call just like, dropped from my screen for a second there. I thought I got booted out for a minute. Sorry about that. No, no. Um, I did have a question and it was going to be, would you go so, so far as to just like tell people almost to try and get hired without a resume?

[00:43:28] Clement Kao: So I wouldn’t necessarily say that far.

Right. And so you definitely still need to have some sort of resume because it is still like a hiring formality, right? Like if you don’t have a resume at all, you’re kind of, you know, it’s kind of suspicious, like most candidates have resumes. Um, and so it’s kind of similar to how, so again, I’m going to say something that’s kind of.

Shocking, I guess. Right. But. You would never ship a product without a product spec, but some of the best products out there, actually their specs are not super detailed, right? And like that sounds insane, but we have to take a step back, right? [00:44:00] What is the point of a spec? The point of a spec is to make sure that everyone is on the same page of what problems are we going to solve and what problems are we not going to solve, right?

And what looks like successful progress against the problem. And so you could have a super lightweight spec because you’ve built all of this trust with a lot of people and you can build an amazing product that honestly the spec is like, I don’t know, like less than a page. It’s like less than 200 words.

On the flip side, you could have like a gigantic, very detailed spec and that product doesn’t fly because you still haven’t built that trust. Right? So similarly, you definitely need to have some sort of resume, right? But if you’ve already built up trust with the hiring organization and it’s like not so important what’s in there, but if you don’t have a lot of trust with the hiring organization, your resume needs to be rock solid because you’re being evaluated as like a stranger to the organization.

Um, so that’s kind of how I think about it.

[00:44:44] Michael Mordak: Yeah. No, I love that. That’s thanks for adding the color there. Yeah. Um, we’ve got so many questions coming in now, so I’m gonna, I have to scroll quite, kind of far to get to this one. Um, this one came from Harsha. Oh. And he actually asked to, um, ask it live. So Harsha, you should be now able [00:45:00] to ask your question.

[00:45:01] Harsha Srivatsa: Yes. Can you hear me folks? Yep, we can hear you. Um, I have a rather future looking question for you specifically Clement. Sure. It, it’s about, um. I keep seeing that AI and automation is eating into the product manager jobs and functions and, and, you know, your article is one of the first articles where I saw the power of prompts in product management.

I don’t know if you recall that article, but you listed out. product sense, right? So that was my first, oh, wow, you can do product sense, which is supposedly an esoteric skill with prompts. And I was like blown away. And now I read about Lenny’s article, but saying that it is a very real possibility. A lot of AI product management functions and jobs can be replaced by AI.

So my real question is, what is it that uniquely, um, Differentiated area where humans like us in product management can, uh, can focus on [00:46:00] developing to superpowers. And then, you know, perhaps, um, you know, survive this onslaught of air and automation. Is it creativity? Is it ingenuity? Is it tacit knowledge? I just want to know, uh, I just want to get your pick your head thoughts about, uh, what is it that we need to work on the present and also plan for the future?

[00:46:21] Clement Kao: Yeah, for sure. Um, so one of the things that I’m actually going to say right is when you think about what does a I do like I basically pattern matches. It basically tries to predict things that it’s seen before into new situations, right? And so it’s really good at replicating things that it’s seen before.

But is not very good at coming up with new stuff, right? And so that’s one observation. The other observation is that human beings have needs that keep changing all of the time, right? Basically, if you solve some problem, a new problem appears. Um, you know, what, um, Jeff Bezos said, right? Like, humans are divinely discontent.

As soon as you solve a problem, a [00:47:00] new problem appears, right? And that’s really key. A new problem appears. That new problem is not something that AI has seen before. And so really the most important part about being human is about looking for problems that other people haven’t seen yet. And then finding ways to go solve that problem.

And so quite transparently, right? Like, and again, this will sound crazy. So my wife is, um, is, you know, a machine learning manager at Amazon. Right. And so like, she knows her stuff. And one of the things that she keeps saying is like, Clement, I don’t know why you spend all this time writing SQL queries, right?

Like generative AI knows how to write SQL queries. It should not be that hard. And say, okay, well, what about like this particular use case? And like, I rattle off all of these different challenges and like, Hey, I’m going to prompt the AI to give me the query. And the query is always wrong. Right. And so it’s like, okay, now it’s wrong.

I have to like, go debug it. Or I could just have written it in three minutes instead of throwing it at AI, having it be wrong. And then trying to fix that wrong thing for the next 20 minutes. Right. And so. The [00:48:00] reason for that is because the queries that I’m writing, those queries are not things that AI has seen before.

They’re very targeted problems where it’s, I have this product hypothesis, knowing that there is this particular problem that no one has solved yet. And so I need to go dig into this particular subcut of the data. The A is not going to give me that, right? To be fair, A is very good at helping with particular, uh, general problems, right?

So, hey, currently, right, like, maybe my SQL query, all the variables are named terribly, right? Like, please come in and, like, clean up the documentation for it. Fantastic. It knows how to clean up documentation. Or, hey, maybe my query is not structured in a way where I could have the run time run really quickly.

It’s like, oh, well, you should add in filters here, here, and here for date. Sure, makes sense, right? But in terms of What is the question that I’m supposed to be asking and what is an answer that will actually solve the question, right? That is not a thing that AI is currently good at. I’m not gonna say that it’s gonna be forever not good at it But the key thing that I think is actually incredibly important for a product manager And you know you you [00:49:00] you might see this in like future responses or in like other things that I’ve written, right?

The important thing about a product manager is that they’re proactively looking for problems and they are trying to pick up new skills on the fly, right? And so something that I genuinely believe is you don’t need to be good at a skill yet if you can be very quickly good at that skill, right? And so something to think about, right?

A lot of folks will say, Hey, um, Clement, what is like a high leverage skill that, you know, I should learn right now? Right. It’s like, Oh, well, the problem is you’re going to face lots of different problems at work. And I don’t know what the problems are going to be because like your product is going to be in a very different situation from my product or anyone else’s product.

And so if I told you get really good at, you know, writing product specs, right. But hey, actually it’s all customer discovery. I just led you down the wrong path, right? Or Hey, get really good at data analytics. I was like, Oh, but actually we are not at the point where we have enough analytics to analyze data.

Or if I said, Hey, get really good at customer interviews, but Hey, actually you could run a bunch of AB tests because you’re working at Amazon or Google, right? [00:50:00] Any advice I give you is wrong, right? And so the more important thing is, can you learn something super fast? Because then it doesn’t matter what skills you don’t have.

Cause you’ll pick it up faster than anyone else. Right? And so that’s what I would say is like the most important thing is if you can pick up skills quickly. It doesn’t matter what skills you don’t have, because all you need to do is say, I want this skill and then you get that skill, right? And so, real example, right?

I was not previously an AI product manager. I was not previously an AI and machine learning and computer vision product manager. Um, but I know that I can learn things very quickly, right? And so just because I didn’t know those things didn’t mean that I couldn’t figure it out. And so, Within the span of a couple of weeks, I figured out, you know, how am I going to label data?

How am I going to figure out false positives versus true positives? How am I going to figure it out? Like runtime and inference and all of this other stuff. And because I could pick that up so quickly, it didn’t really matter that I didn’t know anything about AI before because I just picked it up when I needed it.

And that means that I wasn’t picking up things around, you know, let’s say security products or e commerce products or social media [00:51:00] products, because I don’t need those skills yet. Right. And so as soon as you see a skill that you need and you can pick that up very quickly. Then that is the most important part.

And then you should generate the skills that you need based on the problem that you solve. Right. And so if I see that there’s this new problem, then I need some skill. I’m going to go pick up that skill to solve that problem. That will keep you in demand forever. Right. Whereas if you say, Oh, I’m going to try to, I’m going to try to pick up every possible skill that I can.

Right. Like I’m going to learn how to code and I’m going to learn how to design. I’m going to learn how to write PRDs and whatever, and you do all of this stuff upfront and you don’t need them yet. The problem is that skills decay over time, right? Like if you don’t write like queries in SQL all day, right?

Knowing how to do it academically, like, you know, three years ago and then being asked to then write a query now, you’re going to forget some stuff, right? Again, I used to be really good at SQL and I didn’t need it for like four years. So I got really bad at it and then now I need it again. And so now I’m good at it again.

Right. And so by being able to be like [00:52:00] flexible about, I’m going to pick up these skills versus I’m going to drop these other skills. Okay. That will make your life a lot easier and a lot less angsty in terms of, Oh my God, I need to learn all of these things immediately. It’s like, no, no, no, no. As long as you know how to pick up a skill really fast, it doesn’t matter what you know, versus what you don’t know, because you’ll just pick it up.

Right. And so that is my challenge to you is identify Why does it take me some amount of time to learn something? What is the way that I could cut that down by one day? Then how do I cut that down by another day and then another day and then another day and kind of cutting, cutting the time that you need to pick up a skill is the most important meta skill that you’ll ever pick up.

And that will keep you ahead of AI. So that’s how I think.

[00:52:39] Michael Mordak: That was a ton of great advice. so much for going into into detail on that one. That’s awesome. And I think we’ve got time for, for one more. Um, So I’m going to scroll up to where that one was because I had just lost it in the chat. Okay. This one came from, uh, another, uh, member in the audience here.

So this question says as a mentor for product folks, can you [00:53:00] share three traits you’ve noticed in people who make strategic moves in their career, especially as they relate to gaining more influence, uh, better opportunities or additional cloud in their current role?

[00:53:10] Clement Kao: Yeah, totally. Um, so the way that I think about it, right.

It’s basically. Your hiring manager, like your supervisor is your customer, right? And so something that is incredibly helpful is basically. Anytime you want something in your own life, right? You want to align people’s incentives to yours. And so one of the things I mentioned much earlier on, and I think a core philosophy of how I teach product management is first begin by creating customer value.

You want to create so much overwhelming customer value that customers feel like, Oh my God, if I didn’t have this product or this solution anymore, I would be in deep trouble. And I really want to pay for this thing. Right. And so. If you create overwhelming value for the customer to the point where they say, Oh my God, if I don’t have this anymore, I’m in deep, deep trouble.

I need to pay for this. I need to keep this product around. Right. Then they’re [00:54:00] more than happy to advocate for you. Right. And so similarly, the way I think about it is many times people are thinking about how do I get promoted, right? Like, how do I show that, you know, I’ve got the right stuff, et cetera. A better question to ask is how do I get my manager promoted?

Because if my manager gets promoted and my manager gains power, they will naturally want to keep me around because I’m the one who facilitated that. Right. And so rather than fighting your peers over who’s going to work on the more interesting project, the more visible project, ask instead, what is it that my manager is struggling with?

And what are the things that they wish disappeared from their life? I’m going to disappear that for them. Right. And so maybe one of the things that, you know, your manager has challenges with is, Hey, I’m currently having challenges, you know, working with this particular set of stakeholders, right? Well, hey I can just start to have meetings with them.

I can start to empathize with them. I can start to understand why do they have so much trouble working with the product team. And by being able to ease that and make that super easy. Right. And now that set that group of people who used to be obstacles are no longer obstacles, right? Like now they’re actually champions.

They feel [00:55:00] like product is listening to them. They feel like, Hey, I have a champion on the inside. Now your manager feels, wait, it’s like so much easier to get things through now. And like this particular team that used to not like us seems to really like us. And they particularly really like Clement, you know, that can really help to increase your manager’s ability to ship things.

And then when they ship more things, they gain power. And then that means that they will give you more power. Something that’s very, very true, especially for very large organizations. It is very hard sometimes for a manager to promote you because there are limited spots at like their level of seniority, right?

So like, let’s say, let’s make up stuff. Let’s say that your manager is L4 and you are L3. It is really hard for your manager to promote you to L4 because they’re L4. Technically they don’t have the authority, right? But if you made your manager L5 because you created so much value for the company because you reaped all of this profit, right?

You increased all these new revenue streams, you cut all of these different costs, made people so much better at working together, right? Your manager L4 becomes L5 and they’ll think, [00:56:00] well, now that I’m L5, right? I need to make sure that the person who helped me become L5 doesn’t leave the company because how am I gonna become L6 later?

Right? And so they will bring you up with them, right? So that’s kind of how I think about it is ask not how do I get something for myself? Ask how do I get something for other people to the point where they’re gonna fear the day that I leave, right? And so I say this kind of, kind of jokingly, but kind of not.

You can definitely kill people with kindness, right? If you make other people’s lives incredibly, incredibly easy, right? People are going to be scared that you’re going to leave, even if you’re not going to think about leaving, right? Even if you have no intent of leaving, if you make other people’s lives super duper easy, right?

They’re going to start thinking, Oh, shoot. What if he leaves? Right. And so that’s kind of how you want to think about it. It’s less about what can I get out of the situation is how do I make other people’s lives so much better that they can’t help, but want to root for me. Right. And so similarly, right.

One of the things that is. Quite true is, you know, right [00:57:00] now, a product teacher, I actually have too many coaching clients, like I actually can’t take on any more people. And the reason for that, right. Is because I really fight hard to make sure that people are succeeding at work. Right. And sometimes I’ll say, look, I’m sorry.

Like I need a life, right? Like on weekends, I need to go shopping and, you know, take trips. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. But please, please, please, like you just got me promoted and you just got me a job and whatever, whatever. Please let me pay you for another two hours of coaching. I’m like, I can’t, I literally cannot, like I need to go live my own life.

Right. And so you want to be so in demand because you’ve created so much value for other people that people can’t help but want you around. Right. And so like, that’s kind of how I think about it. Um, and that applies irrespective of what your job title is or what your function is quite transparently.

That is how I went from being a, not a product manager to being a product manager. This is like, you know, I’ve, I’ve written about this somewhere, right. But part of the origin story is. This is going to sound insane. I noticed that for a lot of executive meetings for some org that I [00:58:00] was at. We didn’t have a good, we didn’t do a very good job of tracking who committed to what action items and what progress did we make.

And so every quarter that we met, we would say, what did we do last quarter? And then basically, you know, year after year, we weren’t making progress. And I said, well, this is kind of not amazing. I’m just going to take notes. I’m just going to take notes of like who said what, and why do we say that? I’m just going to like send that around because, you know, that might be helpful, but like, oh my gosh, like now we’re starting to make a lot of progress.

And the meetings were clients in those meetings. We make progress and in the meetings where Clement’s not in those meetings, we don’t make progress. We should put Clement into more meetings, right? And so then I had all this executive exposure. I started solving executive pains. I’m like, well, why would we want Clement to be a user researcher?

He should just be a product manager instead. And so they try to make me a product manager. I said, I don’t want to be a product manager because I don’t think I’m smart enough. I don’t think I’m senior enough. And they said, you’re, what are you saying? You should be a product manager for sure. Right. And so they forced me into product management, right?

Which is fantastic. I love that. Um, but basically you want to be, you want to have created so much more value for people that they are fighting to [00:59:00] give you more stuff to do because they know you’re going to fix it for them. Right. So that’s kind of how I think about the problem. Um, I realized I was like very long and rambly, but I also realized that.

You don’t hear that perspective very frequently. Like a lot of people are like, Oh, find the most visible project and like, go fight people for it. Right. It’s like the most visible project is not what you want to fight for. You actually want to fight for the things where no one is solving any problem there and everyone’s frustrated and no one’s doing anything about it.

And you just make that problem disappear. You’re going to, why did that disappear? Who made that disappear? Oh, Clement made that disappear. Let’s give them more stuff. Right. And so that’s where you want to be at in your career.

[00:59:33] Michael Mordak: Yeah, that is incredible. And I think that was like some, some really, really fantastic advice.

And I, I mean, everything that we talked about today has been incredible. So I just want to thank you again. I know we’re over time already. Uh, but I mean, like I, yeah, I gotta listen to you continue to talk about that kind of stuff for the next hour as well. So, um, I just want to say thank you so much for your time today, Clement.

Um, this was hugely valuable. Um, I know that everybody in the call, um, We [01:00:00] really got a lot of value out of, out of the conversations today. So, um, I threw a couple of links in the chat for everybody. Um, feel free to, uh, check out our next event. That’s going to be happening later in July. We’re going to be talking with a panel of folks talking about leading, uh, our teams, leading people to build better products.

Um, and then also if you have a second to fill out the feedback form for today, let us know how we did. Um, and, uh, I just want to say thank you again for, for hanging out with us for an hour. If you want to find out more about the community again, it’s the product manager. com slash membership. Um, and we’d be excited to see you over there.

Clement, thank you so much. And, uh, we’ll chat with you again sometime soon.

[01:00:40] Clement Kao: Yeah. Looking forward to it.

[01:00:42] Michael Mordak: All right.