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Product Management

Three product leaders to learn from at #mtpcon inside Pendomonium

Eira is an editor for Mind the Product. She's been a business journalist, editor, and copywriter for longer than she cares to think about.

Eira Hayward

<p>In this keynote from #mtpcon San Francisco, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/navyarehani" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Navya Rehani Gupta</a></span>, Chief Product Officer at Peek, looks at the art of zooming in and zooming out and at finding the right focus for every perspective and every situation.</p>
<h3>The story of New Coke</h3>
<p>Navya starts with the story of Coca Cola’s disastrous reformulation of its recipe in the mid 1980s, in a response to losing market share to Pepsi. <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New Coke</a></span> was a sweeter drink and its launch was a disaster. Says Navya: “The original taste was so ingrained in American society that to many people changing the closely-guarded recipe of Coca Cola felt like painting the Statue of Liberty pink.” Coca Cola brought back the original flavour two months after the launch of New Coke.</p>
<p>It’s a story with key leadership lessons that apply to building products.</p>
<ul>
<li>The leadership team failed to zoom in to customer sentiment when trying to combat declining sales.</li>
<li>They failed to anticipate the intangible components that were driving Coca Cola’s success.</li>
<li>They also failed to zoom out and fully appreciate the market landscape.</li>
</ul>
<p>Customers loved Coca Cola because of its unique taste and its brand equity, but the leadership team decided to emulate Pepsi. It’s a blunder that could have been avoided if Coca Cola’s leadership team had zoomed in to the customer sentiment and zoomed out to the market landscape.</p>
<h3>What do we expect of product people?</h3>
<p>Navya then talks about her time working on Wall Street, for Uber &#8211; and for Peek during the pandemic &#8211; and how these experiences taught her the art of zooming in and zooming out.</p>
<p>She says:-</p>
<ul>
<li>We expect product people to be strategic but to get their execution perfect.</li>
<li>We want them to be all over the detail but always keep sight of the big picture.</li>
<li>We want product leaders to create empowered teams but still stand in front of investors and justify the why, what, how and sometimes when for the team.</li>
<li>We expect product people to stay calm throughout this, because they’re the cheerleaders for the team.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Zoom in, zoom out tips</h3>
<p>Navya has four tips for mastering this art of zooming in and zooming out.</p>
<h4>#1 Make room to zoom</h4>
<p>Navya says that not all time is created equal. Most people underestimate the cost of context switching and overestimate the amount of focus time they have.</p>
<p>She addresses this by dividing her time each week into four categories: planning, executing, thinking, reflection.</p>
<h4>#2 Have a conversation about conversations</h4>
<p>A conversation about conversations helps you to come in with the right depth, Navya says. She spends time at the end of each day looking at agendas, and pre-read material to see where her team is at &#8211;  whether they’re over-generalising, bogged down in detail, what she can do to help, and so on.</p>
<h4>#3 Know when and how to flex</h4>
<p>Navya believes that taking inspiration from analogous industries can lead to radical innovation. Next time you’re stuck, she suggests, you should take a step back and try to frame the situation more broadly. Look for inspiration from analogous industries.</p>
<h4>#4 Get better every day</h4>
<p>Focus on continuous improvement. As Navya says, product people love retrospectives, and for a long time she has conducted her own personal retro every quarter. She asks herself three questions:-</p>
<ul>
<li>How can I maximise my impact?</li>
<li>What are the root causes of my lowlights?</li>
<li>Which of my activities require an adjusted zoom setting?</li>
</ul>
<p>This personal retrospective has helped Navya identify areas of the business that were overlooked, she says. It has also helped her zoom in on side projects to create a bigger impact and helped to create rituals for Navya and her team so that they can zoom in and out together.</p>
<h3>Want to turn the learning from this talk into action?</h3>
<p>Our exciting #mtpcon San Francisco 2023 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/resources/mtpcon-san-francisco-2023-keynote-kit-sign-up/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Keynote Kit</a> brings you all of the insights from our San Francisco keynote talks plus additional helpful discussion points and thought starters so you can easily translate the insights into actions – perfect for making effective improvements to your role, team, and product. Plus, get an email notification when each talk is published! <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/resources/mtpcon-san-francisco-2023-keynote-kit-sign-up/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sign up now.</a></p>
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