There’s no better training ground than working in Emergency Services for learning how to deal with stress, uncertainty, prioritisation with imperfect information, and challenging stakeholders. Coincidentally, these are all skills that are key to working in product. Nathan Henry joins us on the podcast this week to chat about how he leverages the skills he developed as a 911 Operator and uses them in his current role.
Featured Links: Follow Nathan on LinkedIn and Twitter | Brené Brown’s ‘Rising Strong’ book | Work with Nathan at Postlight | A day in the life of a 911 Dispatcher video
Support our sponsors
Give Sprig (formerly Userleap) a try for free by visiting Sprig.com to build better products.
Episode transcript
Randy Silver:
Who will you product people come from lots of different backgrounds. Do you know anyone who did something unusual before getting their start in the field? Oh,
Lily Smith:
I think the most unusual was probably someone who was the lead singer of a heavy metal band before she got into product.
Randy Silver:
That’s, that’s a good one, I had a couple of musicians in mind, we’ve had Jeff guard health and Matt LeMay. On the podcast, who were both musicians. I know someone who’s an Olympic speed skater. And we definitely have to book them sometime. And I did work with someone who was a Polish Navy helicopter pilot. But I think lead singer of a heavy metal band, actually, that takes the gig.
Lily Smith:
And we do have someone on today who got his start as a 911. operator of the bonus points, he’s here to tell us some of the stories about how that work directly impacted the way that he works today.
Randy Silver:
His name is Nathan Henry. He’s the Associate Director of Product Management at New York agency post light. And you know, I’m, I’m just not going to waste any more time on those intro, let’s get straight to it.
Lily Smith:
The product experience is brought to you by mind the product.
Randy Silver:
Every week, we talk to the best product people from around the globe about how we can improve our practice, and build products that people love.
Lily Smith:
Go to mind the product.com to catch up on past episodes, and to discover an extensive library of great content and videos,
Randy Silver:
browse for free, or become a mind the product member to unlock premium articles, unseen videos, ama’s roundtables, discounts to our conferences around the world training opportunities.
Lily Smith:
Mind the product also offers free product tank meetups in more than 200 cities. And there’s probably one way you Hi, Nathan, thank you so much for joining us on the product experience, it’s really lovely to meet you.
Nathan Henry:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited.
Lily Smith:
So before we get stuck into our topic this evening, um, it would be great if you could give us and the listeners a quick intro into your life in product and kind of how you got started. And we’re going to cover some of the early your early history. So just give us a kind of maybe give us an intro into what you’re doing now.
Nathan Henry:
Sure, sure. I’ll bury the lead, I won’t I won’t go there. So currently, I am Associate Director of Product Management at postflight, which is a strategy firm in Manhattan. So I’m in New York. And as you alluded to my background is very non traditional. But I think that’s common with product managers. I don’t know of anyone that’s ever growing up as a five year old say, Oh, I want to be a product manager when I grow up. And so for me, and this is probably part of your question. But for me, that’s still the most fascinating part of our profession, is that there’s just not one way into it. Everybody comes with like different experiences, and they bring that with them. And then they they share that they I think we have a very sharing community where everyone can sort of learn from that. I find that that experience is so unique to our profession, and something that I learned every day from other product managers. And I think that has a lot to do with sort of the backgrounds that we bring as our collective selves to to our craft.
Lily Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. There’s not yet a product manager Barbie or anything like that. to kind of show Yeah. So going back to your very early career, then you started as a 911. operator. Is that the right terminology for the role?
Nathan Henry:
Yeah, yep, that’s true. So sometimes called dispatcher, but yes, when you were in crisis, and called 911. I was on the other end of that line. So yeah, that’s how I started. I was a poor college student in the 90s and needed a job that hopefully was a little bit more than minimum wage. In my local Sheriff’s Department was hiring part time help. So it was, you know, nights and weekends, which is great, like, take classes I had time to study, potentially, you know, when nights were smaller or slower. I think back in the day, it might have been like $8 an hour, which in the 90s was a lot of money for a 19 year old kid. I mean, I remember being able to buy books and an occasional drink or Taco Bell’s, like, I think that that was probably a good thing. So yeah, that was my very non traditional start. And I believe for me that laid the best groundwork for how I think about product and users.
Lily Smith:
So before we get into the the kind of the synergies between being a 911 operator and working as a product manager, which I’m dying to get second, how did you actually make that transition from that role into product?
Nathan Henry:
Sure, so the career timeline here, so I was a 911 operator, then eventually nine on supervisor which is a whole other can of worms that will just leave on the table. I at some point I finally realised I should finish that degree going through college. And as a part time job like it became a full time job and college stopped. So after about 11 years, I just had to go back and pick up my degree in information technology, which wasn’t a thing when I started at 911. So that’s how quickly the world evolved. And got my first job out of college as a early 30. Something in web design and web programming, I did a I had a hobby and a passion, I had fan sites or tennis players finally got my degree, and got a job in Chicago. And boy, that was just the best and eventually moved from front end to back end. And at one particular point, I had to explain how a database worked to a customer. We were normalising really boring sort of spreadsheets, but no one understood it. And I was able to speak the technical programming in a way that made sense to the customer. And the company that was working with, they’re like, oh, you’re good at that. Like, you should just tell all the clients like what we’re going to do from like a technical standpoint, because they can understand you. And I found that’s my path to product, like I speak to clients about technical things. And they just kept doing that more and more. And then eventually, I learned that was called product management. And that’s kind of where I went and how I got here. So few jumps in between there from companies and different roles. But that was kind of the the synergy. He was always speaking to users about technical needs, and how we could do something or how something could work based on changes that we could make to a system.
Randy Silver:
So when you talk to clients, or customers or stakeholders, there’s one thing that they always want to know, they want to know when Can I have it? How much is it going to cost? Why don’t I have it yet. But when you work in emergency services, you know that there’s no such thing as a stable plan. So how do you deal with people that are asking for certainty when the entire point of product management is that we’re not certain?
Nathan Henry:
For sure, I think for me, the first thing is just setting like expectations. What is real? What do we know? What are unknowns and just being very clear around what the ask is how you get there. And just being very clear on it’s takes these three steps, and it takes this long, you know, here’s trade offs that you can make, I’m really good around proposing trade offs, or optionality and just making sure that we agree into those decisions collectively. And then everyone has the information that they need to make those decisions. I think sometimes, a mistake that could be made is proposing like an option A or Option B, just on its surface as a bullet point. Whereas I think you need a little bit more than pros and cons, even I think you need to go another stretch deeper and like how will this decision impact your users? How will this impact your business and so keeping those two things, layering into, like, any sort of optionality helps you go into a joint plan. And then when that plan is sort of agreed upon, or discussed and solidified, that becomes the plan. And then any changes have to kind of go back to that exercise. So it’s kind of a rinse, wash and repeat. That gets, you know, possibly frustrating, depending on decisions that are being made and unmade. But, you know, you know what, you know, today, and tomorrow, there’ll be new challenges to iterate for.
Randy Silver:
Sometimes when things change, some people get stressed, and I’m guessing your background might have give you some techniques of how to talk people down from I was gonna say from the ledge, but that feels way too long for this, but something on the nose. But you’re just de escalating a situation. How do you deal with that? Is that something you recognise and people sometimes
Nathan Henry:
It is. So I guess maybe I can talk about sort of my world lens here and how I approach the world, I feel a little bit different than other folks like, I’ll approach those situations that could be contemptuous of no one’s dying today, like I think it’s, it’s a very small number of product decisions that would yield into someone dying, there probably exist, but probably not what I’m working on, on a day to day. So I take that as sort of a centering of, you know, whatever decision you’re making, no one’s going to die. So you don’t have to be right, you have to know what’s best and provide that best console. And so for me, when someone is stressed, de escalating the situation, is the first thing that that you should you need to do there in that can just be by earning their trust, telling the the person or the client, that stakeholder that they’ve been heard, and that you do have plans to fix this, you’re going to find the best path forward for them, you’re going to give them the best option that’s possible. And really just working to gain their trust, gain, you know, clear communications, using transparency, to show them here’s the options, here’s the plan, here’s the best way forward, and really being that strategic counsel for them in this decision, whether whatever that decision needs to be made, focusing it on the problem. Removing the stress, and providing clarity would be the three things that I would suggest are the easiest way to help sort of de escalate a stressful situation.
Lily Smith:
And was that kind of very much your training as an operator to follow those principles?
Nathan Henry:
It definitely I think for me, you have to take Well, for 911, you have to take emotion out, when things are happening quick and life and death is quite literally in the balance. You don’t have time for emotion, you don’t have time to react with words that don’t mean something, I think I’ve learned to try to ask targeted direct questions that can be answered succinctly. In 911. You don’t have time to answer. grandiose dream state questions are open ended questions, you need a very specific answers, you have to ask a targeted question. The second part of that is, depending on the answer to that question, you need to be thinking already of what your next question is what you know, depending on the answer, if it’s a or b, what is the next thing that I need to know. So you have to be trying to stay one step ahead. And you need to be doing this very quickly, too. So there’s always a time element here. So there’s a very fast paced nature of, you know, taking information, but you’re thinking of the next thing. And you’re probably having, you know, different conversation in one year, you know, you’re writing from your left ear, you might be having a call or in one year and police dispatch, or ambulance and the other ear, so you have this sort of dual brain flow, and you’re hearing two things at one time. That is a skill that I don’t own anymore, and I am okay with that. Because that caused a lot of you hear everything. And then sometimes you don’t want to hear everything. So I’ve kind of learned to let that part go just a bit.
Randy Silver:
Sounds like that could be really useful when you do user research. But it also sounds like it’s when you’re taking those calls. You’re trying to direct them, you know, what kind of information you want, you’re trying to concentrate them? Is that something you ever use when doing research? Or is it exactly the opposite, that you want to be more open ended and see where they go?
Nathan Henry:
I think there’s a couple it shows up in a different ways. I think when situations are very ambiguous. I think you need to strive for clarity and asking targeted questions, when you have a very ambiguous problem or a problem space helps. Now some of those questions aren’t relevant. But you wouldn’t know that unless you asked. Now, I think as it relates to like users and kind of zoom into like feature planning or feedback on a feature, that should be a little bit less targeted, because you really want to get a little bit more around the interaction or the thought process that’s been maybe where some emotion could come in, or letting the the time element sort of de escalate in priority to sort of actually get observations to really hear how something’s being used. So I think it’s a muscle that I can flex depending on when I need to flex it. But again, when things are ambiguous, if I asked grandiose questions, I feel like I’m just furthering the ambiguity. I feel like I need to strive for clarity. And if I ask a question that isn’t relevant, and I get an answer of that’s not on point here, or that’s not the right answer. I think that even helps me even though it might seem misdirected, it actually tells me to go not go down that pursuit of questioning anymore, change to a different topic and sort of pursue that and see where that goes.
Lily Smith:
There’s that kind of old adage of, I think it was Einstein that said, you know, if I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend the first 55 minutes on the question. And it sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time practising asking questions and asking the right questions. So with the targeted questions that you’re talking about, like what makes a targeted question, is it you know, what are the characteristics of a very targeted question? Because to me, it almost sounds like a sort of Yes, no type answer, but then that often shuts down the conversation?
Nathan Henry:
Sure, I think it depends on what you’re trying to get out of the conversation. I think sometimes you approach the all product question you’re needing clarity, you need to understand how a feature will work or how an assumption has been made. So for me, in asking a targeted question, it’s not about limiting the answer. It’s about allowing the question to be so clearly understood that the answer itself is obvious. And so it’s phrasing. It’s using words that are clearly understood. I’ll do this activity where I will think of the questions that I want to ask I’ll just brainstorm a list of, you know, five or six questions that I want to ask an interview subject. And what I’ll do is I’ll ask it to myself, is this the right phrasing? Are these words clear? Are there anything colloquial here or anything that assumes that there’s a background or has an assumption based on knowledge that the person may or may not have? So it’s really the targeting is the words and how the question is formulated, but hopefully the answer isn’t certainly a yes or no, hopefully it is. You know, here’s my answer. And then because of the question, I can back it up with some rationale or there’s an anecdote or, you know, some other thread that can then be pulled from for a follow up question.
Randy Silver:
The other place where this sounds incredibly useful to me, is when you’re trying to get enough information to prioritise things. You know, in back when I was in university, I spent just a couple of months working on an ambulance. And the concept of triage was something I had to learn. And it sounds like it’s there’s a huge overlap between triage and prioritisation. But you’re trying to take imperfect information and make a decision at pace. Is that something that is an overlap for you as well.
Nathan Henry:
100% I think, as we talked about earlier, in the in the interview here, that there’s no path, there’s no sort of college degree in product management. If there were, I think one of the lab classes would be that everyone should have to audit a 911 call centre for a couple of weeks, because that’s where you learn prioritisation. So I’m kind of on the same wavelength as you that triage and prioritisation are very critically intertwined. I think for me the volume of information and the the ability to process split second decisions, you have to sort of understand like how to vet the information, validate it in real time and make a decision. And it might not be the right decision overall, but it’s the right decision in that moment, I think it’s important to understand, you can only solve the problem that’s in front of you with the information that you have. I think, you know, also recognising like volume, you may have a feature request that has 1000 people that are asking for that, but it doesn’t really move the needle, if maybe there’s something that one person has asked, but it’s the most important thing that actually moves the needle a little bit further for your product, I think of that same thing. You’re kind of at 911. When there’s loud fireworks on Fourth of July, you would get 1000s of calls. Yes, it’s a problem. It’s loud. It’s fireworks, it’s Fourth of July, but there’s not at the end of the day, not a bunch that you can do about it. But when there’s someone in their critical moment of need having a medical emergency, it’s one voice so like, obviously, in a prioritisation exercise, the volume of 911 fireworks, sure, there’s a lot of those. But the ambulance for the person having possible heart attack is clearly the pattern here. Not all options are that easy, and that clear to delineate. But yeah, I think understand that information with what you have, and being able to make the best decision with the interface that you have. And then evolving when you learn more or hear different pieces of information. And you’re able to validate that make a lot of sense.
Lily Smith:
So when it isn’t as straightforward when your triage ng a 911? What are the techniques that you use in order to make that decision, you know, under that pressure and, and having to kind of move quickly, because maybe there’s something there that’s helpful for us product focus.
Nathan Henry:
So I think with that, I think it’s being confident in your decision. Also, knowing that the decision that you’ve made might not be right, but it’s the best that you have. I think also factoring some level of confidence. Maybe that’s because you’ve solved that problem before or you have experience of someone that solved it before. So there’s some muscle memory or some shared experiences that you could at least seek as sort of a way to pattern your your decisioning. I think it’s important to know also that, yes, you’re ultimately responsible for decisions in the product. But you have a team, you have some some pieces of a team together, you can have engineers, you can have designers, you also just have colleagues that you could ask questions to Yes, there’s a time element, everything has to be fast. But the problems that we solve likely have been solved before, probably in a different flavour, probably in a different manner for different verticals. So again, it kind of goes that targeted question like what do you really need to know that probably could fit some other vertical or some problem that’s been solved if you’re able to find the right way to ask the question. And if it’s a truly unique problem, I want to work on that product with you because I think you’re onto something that could be revolutionary.
Randy Silver:
Usually makes it easy to build an embed micro surveys into your product to learn about your customers in real time. product teams at companies such as square, Adobe and Dropbox, use user leap to gather qualitative insights as easily as they get quantitative once and automatically analyse the results. So teams can take quick action.
Lily Smith:
If you’re part of an agile product team that believes in building better products, and I sure hope you are by obtaining insights from users then give us a leap a try for free by visiting easily.com that is user leap.com.
Randy Silver:
So you’re used to dealing with people, or you have experience dealing with people anyway, as potentially the most stressful moment of their life. And one of our former guests, Jana pasto, has a green line about you know, what’s really hard about managing product, that product management is managing people and really Relationships are more than the actual triage and technical decisions and things like that. And you know, we give nicknames to different kinds of hard stakeholders. You may call them hippos and seagulls and zebras and things like that. When you’re dealing with with people who are challenging personalities, and trying to change the dynamic, is there anything from your background that gives you an edge on how to handle that?
Nathan Henry:
Yeah, I don’t know if it’s an edge, but I, I do categorise people, I don’t know that I categorise them in the exact same terminology that you have. I have an interrupter. And so driving back to my 911 days, inevitably, at the busiest storm, when possibly, you know, maybe there’s a tornado warning or something busy a snowstorm, something bad is happening, you’re very busy. There’s a lot of activity happening throughout the municipality. And there’s always the interrupter that’s going to call because there’s a raccoon on her porch, or there is a loud siren outside for a fire emergency and that person is an interrupter, you have to still treat that user I’m going to use the word user has a nine on one system. So to treat that user with respect, you still have to address their concerns, you still have to, you know, file a ticket, whether it be in the backlog or an actual ticket, like that’s still an input that you have to decide. So having empathy for users is extremely important, even when you don’t want to hear what they have to say like if you’re very busy on something else, that interrupters The last thing you have time for. But you also have to understand that that user still matters. They may not be your primary user, they may not be the user that you even want to use your product. But at the same time, their user, anyone has access. So you have to treat them as such. Now, what Share of Voice you give them and how you know how you prioritise their needs, that’s a different activity. But again, I think having that empathy, I’m able to scale that across across the board and understand people’s motivations, really bring it back to the product, making sure that you know, decisions are being made for the you know, the whole of the product, we’re trying to move things forward, leading with that lens. And then my last trick, if all of that fails, I’ve always found donuts are a good solution. I will always reference a donut, talk about donuts, ask about donuts. I currently have one of my clients. Every Friday in our presentation, we do a status, I put a different donut photo in every client status just to kind of keep it it’s a highlight. It’s a hallmark, I feel like I’m serving value. But I digress.
Lily Smith:
I feel like there’s a euphemism there that people will hold on to of like, there’s a raccoon on the porch. Whenever a requirement comes in this really just like not necessary right now.
Nathan Henry:
Yeah, the interrupter, the raccoon on the porch, or I would have this lovely woman, I don’t want to give her actual name, I pray that she’s still fine. She would call every single night at eight o’clock on 911. And she would just cry. And I clearly there was some some mental fragility there, she would tell you stories from the 40s and 50s, and her life and things. And she would just be sobbing, I think missing family or what have you. And all she wanted you to do was tell her that you loved her. And she would say Thank you, and good night, and then she would go to bed and you would hear from her until eight o’clock the next afternoon. So that user also exists. So your regular user that just has a very self service, you know, very easy to solve problem, even though it’s on repeat. So that’s also a different type of user.
Lily Smith:
So what are some of the other ways in which you’ve noticed similarities or synergies between products? And 911?
Nathan Henry:
I think they’re different. I have to answer this in a different a couple of different ways here. I think where they’re different, is what I really liked about 911 was the unplanned chaos, there would be some nights where you would work for 12 hours, you would take one breath, it was sheer panic, sheer terror. And like just the worst of the worst things could happen. But you couldn’t wait to go do it again tomorrow. And so that’s what’s that’s the same for me. Like, I can’t wait to make product decisions tomorrow. I’m excited to know, what are we solving? How can we fix this problem. So it’s a different level of anxiety. Admittedly, it’s a different level of temperature. Like, like I said, No one’s dying. But, but you’re making decisions and actually, you know, collaborating on something and solving a user’s needs, through some action that you’re taking. You know, it doesn’t have to be a critical episode. It could be a very small user feature, but really working through with your teammates and your client team to really understand the best way, making a good decision that maybe someone else couldn’t see or a pattern that doesn’t exist, that you’re working to strive for clarity on. Like, for me, that’s the same thing. You’re at the end of the day, you’re helping your users by providing some clarity or some service that they can then be enabled to get help. Find clarity whatever it might be for them.
Randy Silver:
So something else I’ve noticed, that’s a bit of an overlap is, back when I did my very brief stint, the people had to find coping mechanisms of how to deal with the stress of doing their job. And I meet a lot of product managers who feel the same way you know that that all the responsibility know that the power problem of representing things, but not necessarily being able to drive everything. Are there? Is there anything you’ve learned about how to de stress or just you know how to turn off at the end of the day and leave the job at the job?
Nathan Henry:
Yeah, I think that was the most important thing. You know, again, as a 19 year old working at 911, I heard the literal worst of humanity, and I heard people then their most darkest time of need. And I took that home a lot. I took those voices home, I took those actions home, I took that, that home with me. And at some point, you have to stop, you have to realise that you’ve done your best you made your decisions, you provided the help you’ve you’ve answered that. So for me, in product decisions, you know, again, I still lead with no one’s dying today, like that is a thing that I get to say, because with my product decisions, no one is going to die. Whereas before, that wasn’t always a certainty. Like there was a very real chance that someone was going to die when I was doing my job not for lack of anything untoward. Just that’s the nature of that type of work. So for me really understanding at the end of the day, the worst thing that could happen is your feature doesn’t work. Your website doesn’t launch. It’s okay. It isn’t, it isn’t ideal. Your clients might be mad, your team might be disappointed. There might be some financial issues that your company has to deal with. But it’s at the end of the day, it’s a website, it’s a feature, it’s you know, you can log a bug in JIRA and fix it tomorrow. So I think just keeping it, you know, really honest to yourself with how relevant that needs to feel. Yeah, you can beat yourself up for making a bad mistake. I think you should learn from mistakes. But I don’t think you should take it home with you. I don’t think you should be thinking about it tomorrow. I think instead of dwelling on it, how do you fix it the next time? How do you fix it right now? How do you learn from this? I think actually sitting with that and understanding like how, how would I handle this situation differently? It was what I tried to do. Sometimes it takes a minute, I fall into old habits that we’re human, we all have that. But I think really focusing on the positive and what you can learn and how you can be better prepared to hell that next time, because again, no one’s dying.
Randy Silver:
Is it as simple as that? I mean that in terms of you put it in context, you make a decision, and you give yourself permission to relapse once in a while. But try and get better or is there other things like doing meditation doing other things that really make a difference as well?
Nathan Henry:
Sure. Well, my first coping strategy is definitely donuts. I think I’ve mentioned doughnuts always help. Yeah, so no, I think I think it’s fair, I think, for me acknowledging this, there’s something sitting with me, it’s bothering me, my number one tip is acknowledge it, say it out loud, write it down, I would I think the worst thing someone could see of my work history would be my slack DMS to myself, because that’s where I have like my failed product ideas, or where I sort of chastise myself for maybe not making the right decision or doing something wrong. So but I also use that as my outlet, I will say that thing to myself in Slack, because I don’t want to say it out loud, because I’m in an office. And that would be weird. But I want to tell myself that because I feel like I need to acknowledge that I need to give that power. Because once I let it out into the world, I don’t own it anymore. I don’t have to think on that. I have to dwell on that. And I can choose it and do something about that. I can say, you know what, that decision wasn’t great. But here’s what I would do next time. here’s, here’s how we would handle that. Or maybe it was just the decision that was I made because it’s the information that I had. And I can give myself permission to move on from it. But I think acknowledging is something that I find people don’t do, they’ll hang on to things a little bit too long. Get it out there, let it go move on, and just do better the next time. Easier said than done. But that would be my my tip.
Lily Smith:
I think that’s a really great, great tip, actually, and it reminds me of today, Bernie Brown, the author. And she wrote in one of her books, I think it was rising strong. So she writes about shame and a kind of recovering from shame and basically, and trying to be braver and she gives very similar advice around you know, if something happens to you, like get it out, write it down and she calls it like the shitty first draft of, you know, you can behave like a child because no one’s ever going to read it and you can say exactly what you think you don’t have to be professional or growed up you can just get it all out of your system and it’s very therapeutic. So yeah, I think that’s excellent advice.
Nathan Henry:
Yeah, once you get it out of your brain is Doesn’t have power over you anymore. You can choose to have power over that thought that sentiment, whatever it might be. So I’m a big fan of, if it takes up space in my head, it’s bothering me. So let me get it out in some fashion.
Lily Smith:
Yeah, I think that’s great advice.
Randy Silver:
So we talked about letting go of stress and things. Another way that I find to be useful in and something we’ve talked about in the past is doing some scenario planning and preparedness planning, getting ready for things. And I know when you work in emergency services, you have disaster plans, and you have things to live for Worst case, how does that work? How did you carry over? I know you said earlier to us, that you carried over something from that into your approach tended to have that crossover?
Nathan Henry:
Sure. So one of the things I most quickly learned was that you should plan you should have some level of planning, I can give you a quick anecdote, this is true story, my literal first call that I ever took as a 911. Operator, I started the three to 11 shift. And it was three o’clock. Exactly. And the call was a hostage situation, a man with a gun holding his family with hostage situation, and there were shots fired at the time. And so I had no plan, I have no idea what I’m doing. This is day one for me learning and in trying to do this new job as a 19 year old kid with no experience in this world. And so for me, I will always remember, I didn’t have a plan to get out of that situation. But I made one really quickly, let me tell you that. And so my planning was I have to get help, how do I get help? And it was what’s the first step I take? What’s the second step I take and make quick, fast decisions. I can go on to that story more and more. But for me, that told me, I cannot approach situations without any sort of thought or planning anymore. So that was my learning tool. So what I do is I, I also tend to have a doomsday perspective, because of that job and working in there for 13 years, like not much good happened. There was good, but not all good. So for me, when I go into an unknown situation, I actually asked myself, what’s the worst thing that can happen? What like, what is the failure here? What’s the worst thing that can happen? And if I acknowledge that’s the worst thing that can happen it chances are, it’s probably not that bad anyway. But it gives me a place to sort of give that space to talk about it, put it out into the ecosystem, and then actually begin to like, it dials down my tension, my anxiety to start focusing on Okay, well, what do I need to get out of this meeting? Like, what do I need to get out of this decision? I don’t start from, Oh, my gosh, I can’t handle it, I start from like, well, that’s not going to happen. So what is going to happen is almost like a funnelling activity, I suppose. But I would think maybe I’m an over planner, but I plan for every scenario as much as you can life throws curveballs all the time. Of course, you can’t over plan. But I think specifically around product decisions or client meetings, you know, new engagements for clients, those types of things, really understanding what do you need to get out of this? What value are you bringing? And what’s the worst thing that can happen? Those are three questions, I’m gonna ask myself, every time I go into a situation, because I know what I’m striving for. I also know what’s not going to happen, the worst thing is likely ever the thing that’s going to happen, but at least I’ve acknowledged, I’ve announced it, they’ve made peace with it, in case it does happen, it doesn’t. And then I can have a productive meeting. From there, I’d rather start my lens of possibilities from what’s not possible than try to find myself being clarity, and having lack of context or just even creating anxiety that I don’t need, I want to focus on like moving forward and positivity and not sort of spiralling into like the abyss of unknowns and question marks.
Lily Smith:
So when you’re thinking about planning for the West, you kind of mentioned that you think about it in terms of like the, you know, meetings that you’re attending, and things like that. But there are other sort of work scenarios where you’re thinking about planning for the worst. And just thinking about, you know, you could take that to the extreme. So how often, you know, you’re doing that scenario planning?
Nathan Henry:
That’s true. I don’t I don’t do scenario planning on every decision that I make. But sometimes for product decisions, specifically, maybe when I’m just defining like an MVP, or release candidate, no decisioning. If this feature doesn’t go in, what’s the worst that could happen? Like, what is the worst impact to that user? So it’s a little bit smaller of a lens of worst, but worse still being sort of the thing that you’re trying to solve for, like, I want to quantify how bad could it be, I’m looking for the input to help me sort of guide, what is the best way forward here. A lot of times that surfaces in a way where I don’t have all the information that I need. So I find sometimes an agency work you work quicker with less enriched data. Sometimes you just don’t have access to all the users or all the stakeholders. And so if I don’t have confidence to the level that I feel good about with a decision, that’s kind of where I bring in What’s the worst that could happen? mentality? Sometimes the answers are clear, sometimes the situation is familiar. I’m not gonna, you know, sort of over plan in those engagements. But there are times when I find that activity to be really helpful to understand the risks, and making sure that I’m at least acknowledging the risk. And then if I choose to take that risk, or at least have a baseline to understand what what could be the worst thing that could happen, right? I don’t think it’s ever going to get to that point. But at least I have understood the consequence of that risk.
Randy Silver:
Nathan, I’m sure we could ask you a lot more questions about this. But unfortunately, we’re running out of time. But we would be completely remiss if we didn’t ask you one really critical question. you’ve alluded to it a number of times, but you’ve never told us. What is your favourite donut?
Nathan Henry:
Oh, my favourite donut, and I want I’m gonna give them the plug for this. I don’t own this company. There was a couple locations in New York City in Manhattan. It’s called daily provisions. And they have crawlers they have different flavours of crows, and they’re all wonderful. But the maple crawler from daily provisions is by far and away the best single handed donor they’ve ever had in earth. And I’ve travelled and eaten a lot of doughnuts and a lot of places. And they are number one, by far. I actually use that as a litmus test to determine if we’re friends or not. I brought up the office, and I saw who took him who didn’t and I kept the list. I’m not gonna, I wasn’t aware of that.
Lily Smith:
Do you have your own personal discount code that you want to like, give out to anywhere, I don’t know. But I really feel like I should at least get like, you know, half off or something on my next one.
Randy Silver:
It’s gonna be a couple weeks between the time we record this and the time it goes out. So if you get a chance, and you send it in to us, we’ll put it in the show notes. There you go.
Lily Smith:
Thanks, Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been really fascinating hearing about your time in the emergency services and and also your time in product.
Nathan Henry:
Thank you so much. It was so great to be here, longtime listener first time guests. So maybe, maybe I’ll be back. If people find my stories fun. I’d be happy to have a part two and more and bring up bring doughnuts.
Randy Silver:
And for anyone listening, Nathan East threatening to write a book about this. So do let him know if you want to hear more.
Nathan Henry:
I have a lot of 13 years worth of stories. I didn’t give you the road kill story. We’ll save that for part two. Thank you, man. Thank you so much.
Lily Smith:
Please do give Nathan a shout if you’re interested to learn more about how his role at 911 is serve as product and you want him to write the book. Or maybe you share the same career history and can also share how emergency services shaped you as a product person
Randy Silver:
would make a lot of sense if the product world was full of x nine one operators. I mean from that conversation there’s a tonne of transferable skills, speaking which do you fancy joining us on the podcast to tell your own story?
Lily Smith:
If you do then give us a shout on twitter at MTP pod. The guest form is linked to in our bio. See you soon. Bye. Hey, it’s me, Lily Smith and me Randy silver. Emily Tate is our producer. And Luke Smith is our editor.
Randy Silver:
Our theme music is from Humbard baseband power. That’s p au thanks to Nick Hitler who runs product tank and MTP engage in Hamburg and plays bass in the band for letting us use their music. Connect with your local product community via product tank or regular free meetups in over 200 cities worldwide.
Lily Smith:
If there’s not one Nagy you can consider starting one yourself. To find out more go to mind the product.com forward slash product tank.
Randy Silver:
Product tech is a global community of meetups during buying for product people. We offer expert talks group discussion and a safe environment for product people to come together and share greetings and tips.
About
The Product Experience
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 The Product Experience homepage.
Comments 0