Story Samurai

Story Samurai (00:00)
virus. So I'm I'm hype, I've got like three different types of drugs that I'm on. So let me just prepare you mentally. This is gonna be okay. Okay. So we should be good. We nobody introduced. Nobody introduced us, right? Like we just we just found each other on LinkedIn randomly. That's correct. Yeah. Okay, that that's super weird. Because usually, usually there's an introduction that happened. But I think that's kind of beautiful because

I saw your stuff and I saw your content. I was like, my God, I have to talk to this lady. and then you on the other side were like, sure, why not? So, so let me start with a big thank you for just being here and being willing to, to do something with somebody who you haven't been introduced to through a warm, intro. So I appreciate that. And if I may, I was reading your articles and you wrote an article about Taylor Swift and you're a product leader.

Just walk me through this. So that was the one on specifically problem identification, right? And so it started out with, you know, there's a lot of people that I see in product management in organizations, they tend to jump very, very quickly to solutionizing and to, we can fix that right away. There's not even thinking too much about the problem. And I've seen many times that we've missed the teams.

and the organization have missed opportunities to really disrupt or change the whole context of the problem that was presented originally. And part of that is, you know, everybody wants to jump to and be a hero because that's the hero worship of the person that's problem solving. And I've long been an advocate of we should really be putting a lot of effort and a lot of credibility to the people who are getting the right problem.

And I did a bunch of research just kind of in my thought process over how to explain this in a much more tactile way so people can understand it is of real value to spend time on the problem and challenge assumptions that are going on. I think it was Einstein that has the, if I have an hour to solve with a problem, I spend 55 minutes on it. And I hear that a lot.

but I don't see an action. And so, and we're in these conversations, it really takes a lot of discipline to stick with the listening and the challenging and the trying to optimize and restructure the problem statement. And so I put together this article. I did it initially for an internal communication in my company that I was working in, just all the other product people that I was working with.

that I was working with. And then I said, well, why don't I just kind of take all the domain specific out, put it on the internet. And my initial thing was, hey, let me see how I can get people in to take a look. And Taylor Swift was trending all over the place. And I was like, let me see if this works in regards to kind of, hey, she is super successful. And she's had a plethora of hits.

and songs and how does she figure out which one really works and which one doesn't. And I know she re -records things so she takes feedback and figures out how to really do things better and so that was the impetus for putting Taylor Swift on top of it to see how that would resonate with people. It was a lot of people laughing at me but they read it and they were engaged with it so it was kind of fun to do it.

I thought it was absolutely delightful. And could we give Taylor Swift the honorary badge of data -driven product manager leader? Would we call her that in our jargon? I would be happy to. That's incredible. Yeah, she's very smart. You said so many. I mean, my sister -in -law loves her and she's like a daughter to me. Actually, we basically raised her. She called me dad and...

my wife, mom, when she was growing up. And there is such an emotional connection between my sister -in -law and Taylor Swift. And this is across the board. It's everyone. So Taylor Swift somehow creates a very, I don't know if anybody has that same level of connection with their audience. It's incredible. I heard that she can cause an earthquake. Did you hear that one?

When the tramp is stomping on the stage. Yeah, the stomping and jumping. So the jumping of her audience is synchronized in a way that will register by equipment as an earthquake. That is that is crazy. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty impactful. I mean, she's really created a brand and resonated with her audience in a way that very, very few people have. So I look at her and I'm not only impressed with her leadership qualities and how she handles herself, but also how she has built her brand and built her product.

which is phenomenal. That's such a wonderful, you've said so many wonderful things. I think the camera was shaking because I was writing so vigorously as you were talking. So I feel giddy with like, where do I go next? What's the worst story that you can tell me about how somebody fucked up the context of the problem? Like shock the audience and how wrong it can be done. gosh.

I'm not sure I have a license to talk about those. Change the names, change the product, change the company, make it anonymous. Yeah, you know, just missing those opportunities, making a decision to instead of just taking a product and upgrading the backend, the NF, the non -functional requirements like the speed, the scalability and the stability and deciding in hubris.

basically, with Hubris that they were gonna build a new product and then transfer over everybody to this new product without, and increase prices, right? And so, and get new contracts and everything, and of course, that completely fell apart because they weren't really identifying the true problem, which was, hey, we need to have better stability, better security in order for our users to be sure that they could actively do stuff. I think that company is not doing so well right now.

So, and they've lost all of their customers because nobody wanted to pay higher prices to go to a product, a new platform that didn't have the same functionality and didn't have basically the same options that they had before. So that was probably the biggest catastrophe I've seen. There's been smaller ones where you really just miss opportunities. You miss the ability to say, hey, this really wasn't, yes, this fixes my,

my immediate problem, but it doesn't fix my overall way of working. It doesn't make my job to be done better. And so I'm kind of stuck in this thing and all of a sudden something comes out from the sidelines and disrupts everything and just wipes away all the stuff that was there as really a workaround because they were basing it on hey, how they did it manually 20 or 30 years ago. And so there's a lot of that going on because you really have to suspend your...

existing framework. You have to walk away from the fuck of everything you know and just listen and think differently and collaborate with people who really do think differently. So I think that's one of the biggest things you can do. There are some fabulous articles out there about things that have finding the right problem. There's the McDonald's milkshake article, which is pretty famous. Recommend anybody go read that. There's the idea that minivans,

were not going to succeed based upon the market research and yet it's one of the most commonly used cars today. So those are just a few examples of things that went right or went wrong based on the initial presumption that, hey, I'm going to fix this and we'd be a hero. So you've worked with a lot of executive suites. What is the moment, let's say, give me your worst story, right?

What is the moment where you're talking to this executive and what did they say where you suddenly became aware of the size of their hubris and the size of the mistake that they're about to make? Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that a lot of that was based on hubris as much as it was based on they've got so many things that are pressing in on them and they really just want they want a quick answer. They want an easy answer to the.

you know, to make their quarterly numbers or they don't really have the time to sit down and really understand things. And so understanding how to summarize stuff up so they can make better decisions regarding those, you know, those products. And I don't know that leadership is always in a position to make the decisions of the product, the solutioning. They are really there to help identify the market and the strategy and the vision.

And that then needs to be contextualized and communicated out through the company a lot better. I think the biggest mistake that I see is that they're not actively communicating those messages out to teams and to their organization so that they can become, their teams are more empowered and can actively make decisions going towards that vision strategy that the leadership is really trying to reach.

Would you, so let me reflect on my own experience. Would you agree that a significant percent of the issue here is actually a derivative of short -term thinking? Yes. Tell me more. So you agreed way too easily. Give me a fight. Like, tell me why yes and tell me why no. Well, I mean, we are driven, and public companies were driven by the quarterly, you know, numbers. In our work environments, we're driven by

How much have you gotten done lately? What have you done for me lately? How am I being measured against my peers? Do we have the ability to communicate that long -term vision? Our storytelling over the longer term, over why we're building these things and really communicating the value of investing early on. I think we're very short -term in how we, a lot of it comes down to communication because we really need to be better at communicating the whys.

huge Simon Sinek fan here. And yeah, he's awesome. And really sharing all that with the people around you and taking the time to create the message and then to communicate it over and over and over again. So I see that's really where some of the mistakes are. And it takes time and effort is what it takes. And that's not always.

on the plate when you've got fires running around you. And of course, the objective is to, if you create that vision, communicate that strategy you put in place, there's going to be fewer fires. And that's what your role goal is, to be more proactive in creating value and not reactive in trying to keep your customers.

That's absolutely wonderful. I just can't help myself because everything you're saying is resonating so strongly. I just want to tell my own stories and I'm trying to avoid that. But let me tell one, okay. I'm talking to the CEO and he tells me, this and this project, we went to all this, lots of money, right? Spent into all this effort. We didn't launch it. Why we built the wrong thing, right? Product market. And I'm talking and this is historic, right? I was, had nothing to do with it. And now we're talking about the new product.

and they're launching and he's explaining a strategy and they're building this. And I asked the simple question, how many customers have you talked to and what are the use cases that are driving value here to the customer? And you can imagine what the answer was. So how is this, how does this make sense? Like how do they make mistakes again and again and again and again? Like how does this even work? Like what's the...

What is the I'm a big Daniel Kahneman guy actually changed my LinkedIn in tribute to him. He died this month. I saw him. Yeah. And what psychology is working here to make us just fallible to this mistake? I don't have a psychology degree. I love the book Sapiens and I can't remember the author's name, but.

phenomenal book on how human beings think and their way it's always the top of mind thing and you know the the last in first out type of thing where hey this is what's called recency bias. Recency bias that's right and so these are things that really impact us and as human beings we that's kind of who we are and you know having taken the time to slow down and think.

is something that comes with a lot of maturity and I don't see a lot of psychological safety in most environments to allow people who have, let's say, not quite as much maturity to feel comfortable in doing that. And I think that's one of the things in coming in and talking in groups and really slowing people down. And I know we've got an environment where everything has to go faster, faster, faster.

AI is here, let's make sure we deliver, which you're summarize up. But there's real value to slowing down and thinking about things and thinking about what the responses are, thinking about what the questions are and taking a little time, I wanna say moment, because sometimes it takes more than that to really come up with things. Because I find that when I slow down and I might walk away from something,

ideas will come to me because I'm constantly processing them in the back. And I think that's a real value in learning and continuing to learn. There's also the environment where we're not rewarded in our ability to learn. It is come in and do it right all the time. It's not a, what did we learn from this mistake that's happened? I've had a lot of learnings in my life.

There's this movie that this guy working for the CEO, I think it's a movie, I can't remember anymore which one it was, and he loses like $10 million. And he says, okay, you're going to fire me like it's okay, I'm gone, like, don't worry, you know, I'm not going to make a scene. I can't remember, I need to find it. And then the CEO goes and like, are you fucking crazy? I just spent $10 million on your education. I'm not firing you. And we don't...

We don't have that culture, right? It's this culture of making mistakes are learning. So I was talking to one of these, one of the entrepreneurs I mentor and he said, Ari, like I made a mess. I fucked this up. I wasted time. I'm like, no, no, you are learning. This is great. Like this is, this is excellent. You're becoming the expert and you know, there's an investment in that. So you said something amazing. You said the psychological safety and I'm going to add on.

that this is about failure, right? Tell us more about psychological safety. You know, psychological safety goes, there's a, I mean, it's a big, big thing, right? And it can encompass a lot of different things. And a lot of teams, there is not that psychological safety. Like they don't feel, you know, we're always talking about high performing teams, but that takes psychological safety. And that means that you're working with people who have your back.

You're working with people who are listening to you and trying to understand what you're saying, not reacting in a defensive mode to, hey, I have to shut them down or I have to one up them. I really want to listen to what they're saying because they may have a really, really good point. And one of the things that... Let me break. I want to kind of knock on that door a little bit. Is a psychologically safe environment necessarily an environment where people are nice and politically correct all the time and try not to hurt each other?

absolutely not. Absolutely not. So that's weird, right? Like if we because we think safe and we're thinking, we need to be super nice and maybe we down our criticism, maybe we don't, maybe we're not direct, we kind of sugarcoat the shit out of stuff. And you're saying absolutely not. Talk about that for a moment. Well, you know, psychological safety is a place where you can express yourself and talk without having to worry about how somebody else is going to react.

and get their feelings heard. And you can really explore things. And of course, there's a, you know, I talk about a maturity because I got to stop you there for a moment. It's not about. So when you're psychologically safe, it's not about not hurting other people. Right. I mean, sure. You don't want to hurt other people. But it's about it's about being able to speak freely without being concerned that you will be hurting other people. Yes, because they're able to take feedback in a mature way.

and maybe you don't know what you're talking about and you need to kind of argue about it a little bit. So it's really this constructive debate, what we really, you know, going back to the history of democracy, this is really discourse, public discourse, isn't it? I think that's a great way of saying it. I like that. I'll have to keep that. Yeah, no, absolutely right. And the intent is not to go there and hurt anybody. You're not going there and saying, hey, you suck, right?

But the intent is really to depersonalize things in a way that you can talk about the facts, you can talk about repercussions, you can talk about what is happening out there in a way that somebody's not gonna say, you're attacking me because that's my idea, and being able to walk away from things. And we can talk a whole lot about being able to give feedback and take feedback. Taking feedback is a big skill.

and it's something that I've worked on for years and years and years, you depersonalize it in a way that, okay, you understand you're getting feedback from somebody's point of view, and they are, if somebody takes the time to give you feedback, there's a big thing right now where they're calling it a gift, right? And that is really big in understanding, all right, so this is, I may not take that feedback, I may choose to not take it, but I'm going to listen to it because there's always this,

you know, there's a learnings in that and talk about those learnings as well. And, you know, I, I go to, you want to do something fun? Sure. Okay. You want to do a simulation to show the audience what, cause what you're saying is just, it's so incredibly insightful and important, but I fear that we need to show and not just tell. That's what my investor always told me. Ari, don't tell me, show me. Okay. So, so let's do role play.

And I'm going to come on hard and you're going to show us how it's done. Okay. And if you want to really have fun, show me first how it's not done. Show me a bad and then I'll give you a gain and show me a good one. Okay. I've tried to like dampen down my bad things. So I don't know if I can let those go again. Okay. So let's, let's play, let's play again. You're doing an absolute shit job on this interview. I'm so surprised to hear that. Maybe you can give me more information about what you think. Why you're saying that.

Wonderful. Isn't that beautiful? So even though I came on as an asshole, right? You were what? What is the word that describes your strategy? It was curiosity, right? yeah. I was going to say receptive, but curiosity. I love that. I love curiosity. I think that is one of the main skill sets or values or things that you really have to have to be successful just about anywhere, really. So but yeah, I mean, hearing you say that, I was like...

I wonder what I did. I wonder what you see. That was just beautiful. I feel like it was half candid and just half you showing your amazing skills. Obviously, I don't think that I'm in love with everything that's happening. But isn't that beautiful, right? Like you have trained yourself to take criticism and respond with curiosity. Isn't that beautiful? To me, that is just absolutely beautiful. I think it's an art and a science at the same time. Yeah.

it, both of those things, I think is absolutely something that people can learn. And you have to practice it and get better at it. And you know, I do this in not just my professional life, but private life to where that's right. Any of my writing is I won't talk about what my kids say about me. But you know, a little bit too direct. But you know, when I have a writing group that I go to, and they're pretty direct about what works and what doesn't work.

And you also, in receiving that, you have to really understand that this is what they are experiencing. And if they're experiencing what you intended, then awesome. But if they're not experiencing what you intended, then you need to revisit what's going on. And all that flows through into your professional life as well. And I will say that as a result, products get better.

and value gets better to the customer. If you bring in these cross -functional teams that have different perspectives, different experiences, and you can really, really find some options that could really resonate with customers, and you can kind of experiment with that. But without getting that feedback and being open to that feedback, and then cycling back again, creating that psychological safety where everybody feels like they can contribute, what you're going to get is, this is the product I want.

go deliver it and it's not going to succeed in the long run. Yeah. Absolutely delightful. I feel like we can talk for hours, but sometimes short and sweet is the best. Let me sum this up, wrap it up in respect to your time because we started a little late. Let me ask you this. If you had to give our listeners who are all product leaders on their journey, if you had to give one recommendation,

on how to make themselves better product leaders and in the process obviously have a positive impact on their companies and their organizations. What would that be? Interestingly enough, I just talked with a young product manager yesterday and he was asking the same question. And I think years ago I would have said critical thinking was the prime thing that a product manager should have. I still think they should have that.

But first and foremost, and we already touched on it, is that curiosity and that passion for learning and passion for learning new things and going out there and the empathy for experiencing life in somebody else's shoes. I think first and foremost, and that takes confidence, that takes a level of maturity to be able to go out there and not lose yourself and come back with some great learnings to synthesize in.

That's the number one thing I would take is that dial down your ego and come in with humbleness and really try and learn things from other people because it's amazing the knowledge that is out there. That's right. You hinted at it, but ego really gets in the way, doesn't it? It does. Fear and ego. I don't want to be stupid. I don't want to be the dumbest one in the room.

And I think as product managers, we all go in there with a little bit of like, hey, I'm going to be the big guy. But the more it's forced on us, right? It's expected of us. You're expected to have the answers. It's it's intimidating. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there's that being able to talk back and talk back, but the response to leadership who's demanding that of you. And I call that speak truth to power. That's what. Yeah.

That's pragmatic marketing, I remember. Absolutely. So, so I want to I basically almost out of time, but let me wrap it up with something that I just can't not ask you. Excuse my South African accent. My every time I say can't my wife is like, can't can't can't. She's just cracking up at me. Competitive youth soccer coach.

Complete shift, right? 180 or maybe not. What's the commonality between storytelling? Let's focus on storytelling and competitive soccer. So European football or soccer as they call it over here is always been part of my life. And I played in college and have coached since college all the way up.

So I really, really enjoy going out there. I mean, soccer is like just the whole, you know, energy on the field. And then teaching and coaching, and I do young women, girls, mostly anywhere from 10 up to 18, giving them the power to be able to go out and perform and make decisions on their own. And then also teaching them ways to do that. So soccer is not a...

prescriptive sport is a very dynamic decision -making sport, which is one of the things that I feel that is really, really important for youth to learn how to make those decisions. But also, I think teaching the teams and teaching product managers how to go out and take what's there and make the best decisions that they possibly can at the time. In addition, there's that learning aspect to it, right? You're gonna make mistakes on the field.

will you be resilient enough to get up and keep playing and learn, okay, maybe I don't do that next time, is the same thing that product managers and teams need to do in the corporate world. So it's kind of like an addiction for me, the soccer thing, I think once you're in that, you kind of understand that, can't let it go. But there's a lot of overlap there in regards to planning vision, road mapping, designing the,

you know, what you're going to do practices, building those skill sets, identifying what's actively happening on the field. So you can respond and adjust and then, and then overall making sure that the message that you're giving your teams is being received in the right way. So, and then you have to do it. I don't know if you're talking about soccer or product management anymore. Like it's this, it's the same thing. This is absolutely, I mean, the analogies here are incredible.

So much, so much that I mean, every sentence I wanna stop you and say, like, you said 10 important things that I need to address right now. This is absolutely amazing. You said mistakes on the field, right? Obviously, this is the young ladies, but this is also the product managers, right? It's hand in hand. They're on the outlook, right, for the best decision, right? You said that. And you're teaching them really, and.

Keep me honest here, but you're teaching them how to make high quality decisions under pressure. Yes. Yeah. And this changes their life and their outlook on their whole entire being. Do you have any, and this, I'm going out on a limb here, but do you have any story that you can share about how soccer and this process of how they are learning life lessons through soccer has changed their lives?

Yeah, I think there's the resilience. I mean, the number one factor where you can tell if people will succeed or not has to do with resilience. And when you have a team that is struggling and let's say they're not winning and there's always particularly here within the sports, it's really a matter of, hey, your measurement of being successful is winning, which it really isn't that thing.

But learning how to become resilient and not get down and when you have a say a losing season, I've had a couple of those. It's like, so what do you do when you have a losing season and your parents are like, hey, what are you doing out there? We need to like change some stuff up and learning to speak truth to power because your parents are your stakeholder, right? Learning to...

pick yourself up when you see something has failed, learning to work with your teammates, which is really huge, and pull your teammates up. And so I've had teams that have had like horrible, terrible seasons, and even I'm like, my gosh, what's going on here? Can we try new things? What can we do? But ultimately, what I always say, I've said to my own kids, was that you do learn more by failure than by winning. And...

If you keep at this, if you're still really enjoying doing this, even though you're losing, then that's phenomenal. And there's your resilience in figuring out what you're taking away from every situation. So I think, and I've seen it multiple, multiple times. I've seen individuals do it where they get really, really upset and you're like, you're going to make mistakes, just accept it. You're not going to be perfect. And once they get to that point, they can pick themselves up and move on and keep going and really enjoy the fact that.

They're in this fabulous sport and they're learning things or hanging out with their friends. They come home with a sense of accomplishment that's really going to take them further in their life. It's such a wonderful adventure. This combination that you alluded to, team building and resilience, I call it grit, true grit. I really do think it's one of the superpowers. I'll finish with a story of my own.

It'll probably be cutting editing, but that's okay because this is more like that you than me but my my my son basically is in I want to say sixth grade and he just did the Idaho test for eighth grade. This is recently this is a Couple weeks back maybe one or two and he got a 97 percentile in eighth grade. Okay, so and he shows me this beaming and I told him you're an absolute idiot. I

and never ever stop working hard to cure yourself of your idiocracy. And I'll tell you something, I haven't finished my journey either. And if you always remember that, then don't matter what your success is, your goal is curiosity. Your goal is to cure yourself of this terrible disease of ego and stupidity or ignorance. It's the unknown unknowns, right? As long as you remember that, you'll be great.

And I don't care that you got a 96 or a 97 or 80 or a 40, because I know you have the right mindset. And for me, you will always be an idiot, as will I. And that's the only thing that matters. And my kids, they proudly, they beam, they say that they are genius dumbasses, right? It's that duality of smart and stupid. You can be successful, but you can also acknowledge your own limitations and know that you have so much more to learn.

And I think that's absolutely delightful. So I'll tell you one more story and this will all probably get cut, but I don't make any editing decisions. So this is more of a wrap up. My son, he is five, but this happened when he was four. And this girl, same age as him, five years old, is hiking with us. And my son is walking and she's on the back of her father.

And then they kind of get down and we have some food. And she looks at his shoes and they're torn and they're dirty and they look bad and they look like, you know, they look like, you know, like he doesn't have money to get new shoes. So she said, your shoes are so dirty and ugly. And a four year old responds and he says this, he says, they're hiking shoes. That's what they're supposed to look like. Right. And to me, that's confidence. It's awesome.

It's not simple, but it's also the acknowledgement that making mistakes, getting dirty, fading, having things break down, it's part of the process, that's how we learn. So to me, that was just, I felt like I learned something from my four and a half year old at that moment. I thought it was absolutely delightful. So with that, let me just say thank you. Now you - Yeah.

One last thing actually, sorry I just can't end this, which is great. You offer your services to the public.

Yes, I do. So coaching for product management or leadership that's really looking to understand how to deliver valuable things on to the marketplace. And so what I do is I work with leaders, a lot of small business leaders who may be the ones in the hot seat right now because they started the company over, hey, I'm a product manager and

and product leader and everything. And yet there is a very, very specific skill set that has developed, you know, you develop that over a long period of time to understand exactly what the right sizing of your deliverables are to prove out what you really do. And the smaller companies have a much shorter risk tolerance because they're, you know, they're, they got to deliver things and a lot of people, they tend to over deliver and

it used to be over deliver and or under promise and over deliver. And now it's like, no, you need to deliver the least amount you can do to actually figure out what decision your next thing is. And so typical accelerator stuff, but really when it comes down to is no, it's understanding how do you make those decisions for a product, technical products that, that, so that you can deliver out to the market and be successful that way. So yes.

I think I've got at least 10 people to introduce to you. You are an absolute delight. I'm so grateful. And again, we've never met before. We've never talked before. And a lot of people will be like, you send me your questions. I'm like, no, you're not getting my questions. But nonetheless, I think this is the best discussion I had today. So I'm going to say.

Thank you so much. I really enjoyed myself too. So yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. I was really just trying to make sure I had the better answers for you than anything else. So I really appreciate you reaching out. I think the best of us comes out naturally, as long as you can ask the right questions. I always tell my, when I'm teaching, I teach in different universities, I say, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.

So I'm the only one at risk here because I'm the one giving the answers. I like that. That's a good way of saying that. And obviously there's no stupid answers either because you need to, this is the second part of it, because you need to feel safe to make mistakes because otherwise you won't learn. But that's a lot to digest in one bite. Thank you so much. What's your website? How do we get to you? How does everybody listening?

Well, so right now I really only have I'm only on LinkedIn, but you can get me directly via I am or you can also email directly.