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Mind the Product

Product Management

Sunday Rewind: Metrics don’t have all the answers: a human-centered approach to business strategy by Samihah Azim

An Anthropic report on Claude misuse, Intel restructuring and layoffs: This week’s news round-up

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! 🎉

Why great product managers think like therapists

When your product is not THE product by Emily Tate at #mtpcon London 2025

Spotify invests in non-English audiobooks, new product chief at Trainline: This week’s news round-up

What AI can’t—and shouldn’t—do for product managers

How and when to sunset features – Roni Ben Aharon (CPO, Craft.io, Booking.com, Wix)

Join our podcast hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver for in-depth conversations with some of the best product people around the world! Every week they chat with people in the know, covering the topics that matter to you - solving real problems, developing awesome products, building successful teams and developing careers. Find out more, subscribe, and access all episodes on <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/the-product-experience/">The Product Experience homepage</a>.

podcaster

The Product Experience

<p><div id="buzzsprout-player-8711868"></div>
				 <script src="https://www.buzzsprout.com/1797429/8711868.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-8711868&amp;player=small" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-17439" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Farkas-Headshot-300x300.jpg" alt="David Farkas" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Farkas-Headshot-300x300.jpg 300w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Farkas-Headshot-150x150.jpg 150w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Farkas-Headshot.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></p>
<p>If you&#8217;ve got a background in waterfall processes, it can seem as if agile techniques are just about making it up as you go along. (MTP&#8217;s own James Mayes once commented that waterfall, on the other hand, &#8220;is making it up before you even begin&#8221;.) What happens if we embrace this, and bring improv techniques into the product development process?  UX consultant and strategist David Farkas talks us through how he&#8217;s helped teams to better collaborate, communicate, and work together by introducing some of the activities and philosophies to his teams &#8211; something he covers in depth in his book, <em>Collaborative Improv &#8211; Building Better Products Through Improvisation</em>.</p>
<h3>Quote of the Episode</h3>
<blockquote><p>One important thing to note about &#8216;Yes and&#8230;&#8217; is that saying yes to someone does not mean that you agree with them. It&#8217;s about acknowledging that person, what they&#8217;re sharing with the team, and sharing for the product.</p></blockquote>
<h3>Listen if you&#8217;d like to learn more about</h3>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: inherit;">Building better products through improvisation</span></li>
<li>Collaboration</li>
<li>What personality type are you?</li>
<li>Team building</li>
<li>Learning from failure</li>
</ul>
<p><span style="color: inherit; font-family: rawline, sans-serif; font-size: 1.75rem;">Links mentioned in this episode</span></p>
<ul>
<li>Find David on <a href="https://twitter.com/dafark8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dfarkas/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LinkedIn</a>, as well as Collaborative Improv on <a href="https://twitter.com/collab_improv" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Twitter</a></li>
<li><em>Collaborative Improv</em> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1795659939" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">book</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.piraterobotninja.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Pirate Robot Ninja</a>, an Improv fable</li>
<li><em>Gamestorming</em> <a href="https://gamestorming.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">book</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Hosts</h3>
<p>The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.</p>
<p><strong>Lily</strong> enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products &#8211; leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers&#8217; meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. Now the Product Director at Symec, Lily also runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.</p>
<p>A recovering music journalist and editor, <strong>Randy</strong> has been working as an interactive producer and product manager across the US and 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 and 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. Now a trainer, Discovery and Leadership consultant, he&#8217;s spoken at Mind the Product Engage (Hamburg and Manchester), the Business of Software, Turing Festival, a number of ProductTanks (London, Zurich, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Brighton&#8230; so far!) and at conferences across the US and Europe.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-14548" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/the-product-experience-headphones-300x300.png" alt="The Product Experience logo" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/the-product-experience-headphones-300x300.png 300w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/the-product-experience-headphones-150x150.png 150w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/the-product-experience-headphones-768x768.png 768w, https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/the-product-experience-headphones-1024x1024.png 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></p>
<h3>Music</h3>
<p>Our theme music is from Hamburg-based Pau, featuring ProductTank Hamburg’s own Arne Kittler on bass. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Paupulism/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Listen to more on their Facebook page</a></p>
<h3>Suggest a guest</h3>
<p>Have you seen someone give a great talk? <a href="https://mindtheproduct.typeform.com/to/oi0UyX" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Suggest a guest to us here</a></p>
<h3>Talk to us</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/MTPpod" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tweet at us!</a></li>
<li>Use the #podcast channel in the <a href="https://mindtheproduct.slack.com/messages/CE13B3A23" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mind the Product Slack community</a></li>
</ul>

core/freeform

Podcast

How to lead product transformation at scale – Jo Wickremasinghe (CPTO, BPP)

Tried and tested AI tools for product managers – Dave Killeen (VP Product, Pendo)

Why product managers are getting fired – Dave Wascha (CPTO and Advisor)

What product leaders can learn from mergers and acquisitions – Vincent Jong (CPO, Dealfront)

How to structure your product org- Trisha Price (CPO, Pendo)

How Duolingo built an AI conversation bot – Zan Gilani (Principal Product Manager, Duolingo)

From Co-op CPO to Co-Founder – Adam Warburton (Co-Founder, Rove)

How to use conflict to solve product problems – Yorai Gabriel (Author, The Innovators’ Drama)

Don’t Call it Improv – David Farkas on The Product Experience

The Product Experience

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