The Art and Science of Managing Growing Products

Desi Velikova 00:00

Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Product Show. Today’s guest has a decade of experience in senior product management roles. He’s written two super interesting books on product management. And he’s also the current Head of Product – Engagement at ASOS. Mark Abraham has done tons of events and podcasts. And I’m pleased that today he’s sharing his wisdom with us. Enjoy this episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to our channels, wherever you’re listening or watching.

00:32

Welcome to the product show, insightful interviews with founders and tech leaders sharing how they hack product growth.

Desi Velikova 00:46

Hi, Mark, welcome to The Product Show.

Marc Abraham 00:48

Thank you so much for having me excited to be here.

Desi Velikova 00:51

It’s a pleasure to have you. Okay, so you’re a Head of Product – Engagement at ASOS. What do you do all day?

Marc Abraham 00:59

Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, first of all, I should say that no, no days are the same as a product person, as I’m sure you know. But I look after engagement. So that support folio of kind of products and features really focused on how do we engage with a source customers across the journey, and that’s on web, and that’s on apps as well. And really looking at from right to the top of the funnel, if you like customers coming through homepage, going to product detail pages, product listings, pages to point of checkout. But even after that, when people are, let’s say, to have a an item that they’ve bought in a one to return, and they want to know how to do that, or they waiting for a refund. So within that portfolio, we’ve got a whole number of kind of products and features and specific initiatives that we’re trying to move the needle on. And we’ve got, and that’s not just me, because we’ve got a 16 product owners and product designers within my team, focusing on those different aspects of that kind of engagement experience.

Desi Velikova 02:03

Amazing. So it sounds like you were involved in introducing product reviews. If that’s the case, I would like to shake your hand.

Marc Abraham 02:13

Great. I wish I could take I wish. I wish I could take credit for that. But I can’t. But yeah, that’s a big thing. So as you say, we launched ratings and reviews, which is a great way again, you could look at engagement, but it’s also just understanding, you know what product, you’re buying what other people are saying, which is really important for for customers to get that full picture?

Desi Velikova 02:35

Absolutely. I read your book, My Product Management Toolkit, I think it’s an amazing read for anyone working in the industry. And that’s not a paid mention just to make it clear. And in the book, you discuss the two main approaches to product management. One is the “build it and they will come” mindset. And the other one is basing everything on customer validation. Testing early and often. I guess, if you’re a genius, you’d always know how to get this balance right. When to trust your instincts and when to ask your users. For the rest of us it’s a skill we’re constantly developing can learning. So what’s your advice to product managers and founders who don’t know when to use one or the other? And also to people who sometimes tend to rely way too much on customer validation and they’re a little bit scared to experiment?

03:29

Yeah, I think like, like everything else in in, in product management. It’s a balancing act. The reason why I call out in that first book that you mentioned, my product management toolkit, that kind of approach of because I’ve seen a lot of people over the years who say no, Mark, I know this, I’ve been in this industry, customers will want this. And so let’s do it. And my first question was always like, how do we know? Where do we get that information from? Is there any data that we base that on? And as you say that sometimes there’s a place for that? Because you have to take a plunge almost particularly with greenfield products where there’s no data, we just have a number of assumptions. And we get to the point where we’re like, No, we need to try this. customers don’t even necessarily know that they want this or that they have a problem. So there are a problem. There are products like that. But even if you go down that route, where you have to take that plunge, as they call it, I think it’s really important to even just retrospectively do some testing and learning because it’s very risky. Especially if you’re talking about you know, big products and features and you dedicate a lot of time and efforts and opportunity costs which people easily forget about to a specific product or feature based on a hunch That is, that is risky. And the reason why I call it out in the book is that as much as sometimes we have to rely on our gut or instinct, and we develop that product instinct over years without, as you say, becoming genius, but it is something that you get much more of a feel for, I think, especially if you’re looking to scale your product or scale your business, it’s really dangerous to rely purely on instinct, yes, if you’re in a startup, and you have to take the plunge, you can’t, you know, there’s risk with as you, as you say, with user research and looking at data that you end up in kind of analysis paralysis land where, you know, you’re so busy studying data that you don’t end up getting anything in the hands of actual customers or learning from behaviors. So that’s why I talk about that balance. But going back to my my previous point about doing that plunge, launch it, ideally launch a smallest iteration of what you have in mind or what your guts is telling you, but then test it. And again, just to clarify, because I’m sure you’ve had lots of conversations, people talking about minimum viable product, when I talk about the smallest iteration, I’m not talking about just creating some rubbish product or feature and just throwing it out there launching in the market, see whether it sticks, but it’s really about, okay, I think this is gonna work for customers, I think it’s going to solve a need, what’s the quickest way that I can learn that and validate my kind of instinct, by actually getting into the hands of customers and delivering actual value to the customers in the process?

Desi Velikova 06:34

Right? And what do you think are effective customer research methods when it comes to products that are just about to launch? As part of my job, I often work with teams that are working on brand new products. So customer validation, especially when the product is not even live yet. It’s very, very difficult. So what’s your experience with that? What do you think are effective user research methods for new products?

07:00

Yeah, I think I like doing at that stage, I like doing, you know, just solution interviews where you can do them in a kind of moderated way, where they call it more semi structured. So you might have some questions, and you have a prototype to test and you get input. Or you do you know, you do it completely unmoderated, there’s tools to that, where you send the prototype to the customer with some tasks, and they do in their own time, and they record themselves whilst they’re doing it. But I think what you get from from from that kind of research, and that method is, is really the kind of behavioral side of things like I said, Nothing beats, in my humble opinion, getting things in hands of customers in actual behavior. So not even a prototype. But like we talked about the MVP, just a few minutes ago, people actually using the product and then looking at the data. But prior to that, definitely those kind of more, you know, behavioral type kind of interviews or test where people have a product prototype or working products, for all intensive purposes, even if it’s not live in the market yet, with some tasks with some outcomes that they’re trying to achieve. And they’re working through that. And they talk out loud whilst they do it, as well that will give you is an idea of the, you know, some indication of the usability of that product. Maybe one thing to add to that if that’s okay, if your step prior to that, where we talked earlier about having that hunch, you could also do a problem interview where you typically, and I like those a lot, because what it helps me to do is learn a lot about the customer problems and the outcomes that they’re trying to achieve or the jobs that they’re looking to do. Right before then going to very specific solutions. And again, these are two different methods or two different types of conversations or tests if you like with different outcomes. But again, I always like to start with the problem interview, even if five existing or potential customers just to understand their worldviews and the problem space a bit better.

Desi Velikova 09:05

Okay, and while we’re on the topic of customer interviews, I know you’re really passionate about being close to the customer and speaking to users as often as possible. What do you think are the key ingredients, the golden rules for successful user interview? Again, as part of my job, I often speak to customers of different products, and it looks easy from the outside. But it’s actually so easy to blow it because if you’re not prepared, if you don’t know what, what you’re getting out from it, you can just kind of I don’t know waste your time and waste your users time. So what do you think are the golden rules for a successful user interview?

Marc Abraham 09:44

I think there are two key things that I’ve learned the hard way over the years is first of all, and it’s an obvious one, but it’s so easy to get wrong, which is listening and really active listening, not just listening for what the customer is. Saying but also what they’re not saying, you know, just looking at body language, also allowing for for pauses in the conversation. And again, the reason why I find that so hard to begin with, because I thought, and I’m the product manager, I’ve got all these questions, all the things I want to learn about my products, and I need to guide the customer. But I’ve learned over the years, the more you listen and let you know, again, are comfortable with some silences where the customer might even give you a questioning look. And you’re like, well, I’m going to just, you know, have a moment of silence here and see how you figure out what you think or let that thought linger for a bit. Because what you get is you get a lot of rich learnings when you just again spend more time listening and actively talking or asking questions, and also reduces the risk of asking leading questions, which is easily done, where you guide the customer in a certain direction. And the customer is being nice, because they know they’re, you know, they’re helping you and they might even get an incentive after or before the conversation. So if you ask guiding questions, again, your learnings are going to be going to be going to be flawed because you’ve been leading you believe in the customer. So that’s that’s one key thing. Listening is really critical. For me, that’s a golden rule for for any form of kind of customer interview. And the second is another obvious one that really critical is being clear with yourself and your relevant team members or stakeholders what your learning outcomes is, that’s where I always start is what am I trying to learn a bit? Like I said before, when we talked about a problem interview, versus a solution interview, it’s really helpful to think what am I trying to learn here? Now that sounds really obvious. But are there specific questions that you need answers for? Are there specific norms around the product or the problem that you’re trying to solve that you need? Some some insight into, because once you’ve established that, you’ve reached agreement on figuring out the best way to do research, whether it’s interviews that we talked about, or direct customer observations, that’s another method I like a lot. It’s very much guided by what you’re trying to learn. And it also means that you’re right from the get go think about, okay, what am I trying to learn? And how am I going to use those learnings because the risk I find with with interviews, is you get a lot of great rich information from customers. But you, you can’t really apply it to the problem at hand or the product that you’re working on at the moment or the next milestone that you’ve got insight. So again, being very clear on those learning outcomes, and how you’re going to apply those learning outcomes is another golden rule for me.

Desi Velikova 12:50

Yes, starting with the desired learning outcomes and phrasing your questions around them, is really a very effective strategy. And I also think that one of the biggest mistakes product teams make when it comes to customer feedback is not using it effectively. I’ve seen major product changes implemented based on biased opinions, but also having amazing customer feedback, but not acting on it. And I guess there are a number of reasons for that. But probably one of the biggest problems is the lack of a solid process. Do you have a tested framework or a process that you follow to make sure you’re getting the most out of the customer feedback loop?

Marc Abraham 13:31

Yeah, absolutely. I think, because there’s also a problem, which I think you were touching on as well, where customers give you a lot of information, and you don’t know what to do it, there were a long wish list. And you don’t even know where to start in terms of prioritizing and implementing that information. Again, similar to what I said earlier about that kind of more methodical approach of what am I trying to learn, but generally, if I think about kind of product and customer discovery, is really starting with a problem. So that’s how I’ve learned that’s how I, you know, encourage my my product owners and product designers to work is what is the problem we think, we think internally we’re looking to solve and for whom, and again, what that does is a you’re focusing on the problem before we even get anywhere near thinking about potential solution. But it also leads the way to breaking it down into very specific assumptions and hypotheses. So what assumptions Do we have about this problem about the customers and let’s list them? What are the riskiest ones? So for instance, you know, I know it sounds super basic, but if I’m in the startup, and I’ve been there, in a in an early stage startup where you’re launching your product, you haven’t achieved product market fit, your riskiest assumption is that customers will want it and that they are willing to pay for that product. Right and, and it’s cool to just be open about that and bring that, you know, call that out. Because if that’s your central question or the central assumption that you want to get some input on and you structure your research methods accordingly. You know, trust me, you’re going to use that learning to say, okay, we learned that this is not what customers want, and therefore we’re going to pivot or we’re going to maybe change the proposition. So for me, it’s really about understanding the problem that you’re trying to tackle, understanding who you’re taking that problem for. And what are the assumptions that underpin those two, two questions, and then structuring your research method accordingly. The other key thing is, which you touched on in your question is, how are we going to apply these learnings? And for me, it’s really quite simple because it’s either in most cases, I found is that your learnings feed into the decision making process where you say, are we going to go for this opportunity or not, we’ve got some customer input. And on the back of that might not be the right thing to do or not now, or very specifically, more tactically into your product development process, where what you’ve learned from the user interviews, feeds into user stories, and your experience, you know, end to end customer flow in your product, for instance. So again, but being very clear about that upfront to say, this is what we’re going to learn, this is what we’re not going to learn also very helpful to say, what’s out of scope of these interviews, because otherwise, you could be talking for hours with customers. But being very clear about that internally. And then also being clear on how we’re going to use the learnings and why.

Desi Velikova 16:36

Let’s talk about prioritization. In your book, you call it the “often dreaded” word. And I honestly can’t agree more. Being a product person, you usually have an abundance of opportunities in front in front of you, the majority of them sound amazing come paper, but then the hard part is prioritizing those opportunities, assessing them, and making sure you’re focusing on the right thing in the right time. So how do we prioritize those opportunities? How do you assess the, you know, the suggested product improvements?

Marc Abraham 17:13

Yeah, it’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? And it’s funny, because in my second book, which is called Managing Product = Managing Tension, that’s probably one of the most common tensions where, you know, there’s so many things as a business, that as product people want to be doing that we maybe should be doing. But there’s a clear delta between that and what we can actually do. And I’m not even talking purely from a people perspective, from a technology perspective from a commercial perspective. So prioritization is not you know, that issue in those straight up decisions are not going to go away. What does work though, what does make it a bit easier is to have a consistent process or approach to making those trade off decisions. And I like to always do, and I encourage my team to do kind of basic opportunity assessments, and really use the same assessment, the same eight to 10 questions, I’ll give you some examples for each of these opportunities, because then you can really start doing a more objective evaluation of what is the problem that we’re trying to solve here? What’s the value that we’re expecting to deliver through this particular product, or this feature or this improvement? And that’s value primarily to the customer? That’s the first focus, because my simple thinking is, once you’ve done that, how does that translate into into business outcome, but the two are related. But But again, that’s the key element to assess. And do that consistently across a number of things we could or should be doing. Also looking at kind of market size questions like, should we be building it? Or is it worth getting off the shelf? And another thing, which we often don’t look at, because we’re all positive people, and we think, yeah, we can build these products, no problem, or we can improve the future. No problem is thinking about product risks, and are not even think about risk purely from an execution point of view. But also from a commercial point of view. Again, coming back to what I said earlier about your unknowns and your riskiest assumptions. Maybe the risk with this particular problem is that the market is fit. So often it’s not, you know, people are not going to adopt this new product for this new feature. And what do we need to do to mitigate that risk? So if you’ve done that assessment, I was going to eight to 10 questions across a number of potential opportunities or potential priorities, you can really have that conversation of, you know, again, comparing them against each other and sometimes it does feel a bit like apples and pears. I appreciate that. But that’s why I think things like value risk market saw They will apply across the board. And we’ll give you an objective measure for For comparison, if you like. And what I also say to my product managers is, keep in mind that when you think about it from a pure roadmap perspective, and you think about the priorities that you work on, typically, you always work on one or two, what I call big bets, which, you know, like I said, right at the beginning of the conversation, that’s the plunge that you take is a business raising, going all in, we don’t know if it’s going to work is scary. But we have to really go big on this, because we see an opportunity, we’ve done some research. But yeah, it’s still gonna be plunge. And some what I call, you know, quick wins, where effort and complexity is relatively low. But equally, the return on investment from a value perspective, from a cost perspective is lower as well. And you typically have that balance of one big hitter, where effort is high, but potential returns are really high, too. And a number of kind of quick wins.

Desi Velikova 21:04

I love them. I love the quick wins.

Marc Abraham 21:07

We all love the quick wins. I think that the risk is and again, I talked about this in the second book is if you’re only working on quick wins. The risk with that is that you think I’m doing great stuff, I’m pushing out stuff all the time releasing my cadence is amazing. But you’re not really doing much to innovate or to differentiate, there’s a risk there.

Desi Velikova 21:27

Absolutely. Yeah. And one of the biggest challenges for many product managers, and we’ll just touch based on that is balancing between business and user needs. And that’s not only for product managers is the same for designers. So the product manager is usually in charge of the product or part of the product. But unfortunately, as we know, they sometimes don’t have the authority in the organization to make change happen as quickly or as effectively as they want. So what do you think is the right organizational structure, especially for smaller companies and startups to make sure that the product delivery process is running smoothly? Where does the product manager seeking the organization who do they report to? And who do they manage?

Marc Abraham 22:16

Yeah, so I think, to your question, I think there’s definitely a structure element that helps. So I, especially in larger organizations, it helps if you have a, you know, CPO to exec level, who can really within the larger organization, fight the flag for product and, and really deal with, with some of the bigger questions around as you say, customer outcomes versus business results, even though I think the two should go in tandem, but really be that kind of evangelist at the highest level within your organization. And you can have in that, in that scenario, you can have a product manager reporting into head of product or directly into the CPO.

23:01

But I think

Marc Abraham 23:03

it’s really important. And again, this applies to startups as well, because it’s easy to sell, you know, we product managers, we need to work in the right structure, and no one gets it, we also need to make sure we have that bigger picture of what what the commercial metrics, how is what I’m doing in my team over here on this particular feature over there impacting the business vision or mission specific goals that we’ve got for the year or for the quarter. So again, that’s that’s agnostic of structure, I think in startups, slightly different from a structural point of view, where typically a product manager will work very closely with with the founder CEO, because the founder, often is, you know, is a product person. Yeah, they’re they’re effectively the head of product, right. They, they were working on a product way before the first product manager came in to have the idea, they launched it, they tried it to test it. And we just have to really be cognizant of that and work very closely. Whether it’s reporting to the CEO founder or just working closely with him or her to really understand what their vision is and how we as product people in our teams can contribute to achieving that vision.

Desi Velikova 24:16

Right. What do you think are the most important qualities of an outstanding product person? What are you looking for when hiring people for your team? But also generally, what do you think the key ingredients of being a successful product manager?

Marc Abraham 24:32

Yeah, it’s it’s it’s it’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Because product managers come in all shapes and sizes and go to product management University and get a certificate saying you’re now a product manager. Now the key at the most basic level, the four core things I typically look at and I talk about this quite a lot because it is a hot topic in our in our space, but I look for people in our customer focused. Look for people look curious people who are good at communicating and are good at collaborating, right. And there’s overlap between those four things. But they can also, you know, again, I assess those individual aspects. And they’re really critical. So maybe if I can elaborate a bit more on those four components, so we talked about customer centric. And what that means in the most basic form is I want to speak to candidates, and I want to see product owners who are always thinking about customers obsessed with the customer. That doesn’t mean just to be clear that you slavish Li have to follow everything that the customer says or say that they want in inverted commas. But you need to, at a minimum, always think about how does this affect the customer? Why would the customer want this? How would the customer use this and the rest will follow? Again, we talked about research methods, learning from customers looking at data that will come but you need to have the initial kind of thinking about the customer. And that’s in reality, easier said than done. Because there’s so many other pressures that we you know, we’ve got internal stakeholders who follow objectives to meet, we’ve got business results. So it’s very easy to forget about the customer, but one of the red flags, for instance, and the reason why I’ve, you know, not continued conversations with candidates previously, where they said to me, Mark, I don’t really speak to customers.

26:23

Well,

Marc Abraham 26:25

yeah, I did, I did ask that or what is holding you back. And they were like, well, we don’t have the right tools. And we’re not allowed to and unlike, this is a red flag for me. Because even in the simplest form, I remember working in early stage startups where we didn’t have a massive customer base, it’s different angels now as you can imagine. But I would go into coffee shops and do what they call kind of guerrilla testing, where I just literally sit there and had a cardboard sign saying, you know, buy your coffee, if you want to have a chat with me, right. And that’s how I learned from target customers learned about their needs in the most basic form. The second one is closely linked to that is that curiosity is and for me, I always say to my product managers, wherever I work is you’ve got one superpower, as a product manager, there’s a lot of things that we can’t necessarily influence, we don’t have authority over one superpower, which is questioning, you can ask loads of questions, particularly because of the nature of our role where we intersect with with the wider business, we’re intersecting with the customer with technology and the implementation. So we’re across all of us three things. So we’re in the best position to really have that bigger picture and form that bigger picture. And how we typically do that is by asking questions. So just asking, Why goes a long, long way, like someone comes to you with what might be a great idea. The first thing I expect a good product manager to say is why? or Why not? Or why now, and then you can build on that. And your as you get more experience, you’ll find that your questions become more sophisticated. So you don’t always have to ask why five times, let’s say, but that’s really key. And again, people who want to speak to customers are curious about the customer secures about competitors, or products that are outside of their industry, just to learn from what other people are doing or thinking. And also and again, this is a critical point as well as data. Now I’m not saying when I interview, that you have to show me how great you are at SQL and that you’re almost like, on your way to becoming a data scientist. But I really want to understand how you look at analytics, how you use analytics to, to look for the right questions to ask or to inform your decisions. Communicating is the third key thing that I look for. So how well can you communicate up and down in an organization outside an organization because that’s what we do, again, going back to that kind of role that we play the intersection, it means that we have to communicate a lot, and we have to be as clear and as transparent as possible. And finally, that collaboration piece really, really critical. You know, I’ve seen a few examples over the years of product managers who thought they were those kind of product genius is geniuses that you forget at the beginning of the conversation where I’m just going to figure out what we need to do how we’re going to do it, then I’m going to tell some engineers in the corner, how to do it, give them the brief and then I’m moving on to the next thing, right? That’s not product management. This is a team sport. It’s not a solo act. And that’s something that I can you know, pick out during that interview process, like how well are people and collaborating? How will our people at showing empathy with the people that work for or with how humble are they? How have they got examples of how to get how they kind of almost crowdsource, you know, Id generation and solution formation. So yeah, those are the four things so look for collaboration. Communication, that curiosity and that customer focus.

Desi Velikova 30:03

Fantastic. That was like a playbook for hiring a product manager.

Marc Abraham 30:08

And I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s, I think it is, for me, it’s it’s a great starting point

Desi Velikova 30:13

is that I just love, the element of this natural curiosity that you’re describing, this is one of those things you can’t really teach. It’s probably sometimes, you know, a personal characteristics where people are naturally curious to get to the bottom of things. And it also shows the passion in their motivation. So that was a great recap. Great reminder. And if you are starting in product management, now, how would you spend the first, let’s say, three months at the job. Imagine you’re just fresh out from university, or you’re just, you know, decided to make the leap, and you’re starting product management,

Marc Abraham 30:53

you know, ideally, and again, this is ideally, because in retrospect, ng two, you know, you’ve first started product management. But I think, two things that I would have loved to have done and learned almost on day one, if possible. So first of all, I would have tried to look for an opportunity where I could create a product or feature from scratch in a few weeks time, just really gone through that lifecycle of discovery to delivery to iterating, in the shortest amount of time possible, because you learn so much from just getting that first product or feature over the line. And that then informs the rest of your, at least your first year, let’s say as a product person. And and I know the reality often is we come in a new into a new role, and we’re trying to figure out who’s who, and what am I doing and stuff. But I’ve learned even when I onboard, new jaw nurses almost give them like a project or a piece that they can, you know, complete in the first couple of weeks just really just bring things to life. It’s not just taking things in, but already learning by by doing if you like. And the second thing I would do is try to you know, from day one is tried to be as lean in my thinking as possible. I can tell you, you know, we talked about assumptions and hypotheses when I first learned about that a good few years ago, that was like, eye opening for me like this is this is how you really develop products and iterating products and learn from customers in a sustainable and scalable kind of way. So yeah, I would definitely go do that straightaway don’t wouldn’t touch anything else in terms of mindset, if you like, and that sounds really single minded. But I probably I guess I would be my you know, first couple of days product person.

Desi Velikova 32:43

antastic. That was a great conversation, Mark. And before I let you go tell me from your experience, what do you think are the red flags that a product is heading for trouble?

Marc Abraham 32:56

There’s a number of red flags. Obviously, the most obvious one is declining customer base, or usage of the products. And you see that from a monetary perspective. But you can also look at the pure model usage data. I think it’s also I think we’ve all seen products that iterated or brand propositions that iterated but where they miss a trick in terms of connecting with their customers. So they created a new thing. And people were on must saying, Can we have the old version backward? This doesn’t do what I need it to do. You’ve complicated. So I think that’s another red flag for me is where the product is getting too complex for users and becomes something that users don’t want or don’t need. So that’s a key red flag but equally I’ve seen products that haven’t iterated or improved at all with some known bugs. And for whatever internal reasons, it hasn’t received the love boasts launch that it that it that it deserved from a customer and a business perspective. So yeah, those those are three kind of key red flags that come to mind.

Desi Velikova 34:08

Thank you so much for your time. I wish you all the best with your career where can people find your own wine? And maybe you can mention your two books again that Yeah,

Marc Abraham 34:19

of course Yeah, my books are available on Amazon. So if you look for wherever you’re based, but if you just search for either mark a Bremen it’s marked with a C or you look for my product management toolkit, which is my first book or managing product equals managing tension my second book on Amazon you’ll find it there in all the formats that you like. or you go to my website which is Mark Abraham’s or calm again, Mark Abraham mark with the see where I blog quite regularly, I do product reviews or writes about product management related topics, or simply connect with me on LinkedIn and we’d love to hear from you following this conversation.

34:59

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