Elza Georges

I wrote about storytelling, messy validation and failure in my guest post for Product Breaks this week. Key takeaways: ⁉ Spell our your assumptions 🛑 Document your failures 🛣 Don't miss the connection... Hope you enjoy! #productstrategy #storytelling #assumptionmapping

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Last week, I took Shreyas Doshi's week-long Improving your Product Sense course. I could go on and on, but I'll just give you a tl;dr: If you do product and it sounds even remotely interesting, apply. It will be the best bang for your buck and time (thwap for your time?) of anything that you do this year. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gYJzY2PR I've got a limited number of characters here on Linkedin, so if you need more to pull the trigger, I wrote a little bit about why this course is different: https://lnkd.in/gWHEakFQ

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The tighter your budget, the more important it is to invest in product discovery. Cutting user research time so you’ve got extra money to spend on development feels like a good way to balance the numbers, but it’s usually a mistake. It’s much cheaper (and faster) to test your ideas with real people before you build them than afterwards.

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So here in the UK it is election time. What if our new PM was a Product Manager? I have been exploring how to manage the most complex product organisations like a country or a big company. I would love to hear your thoughts. #Election #Elected #ProductManagement #PM

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How have I not read this before?! Insightful, informal and peppered with great advice for product professionals and anyone hoping to build great products and businesses. Whilst not all of it was new it was great to be reminded that at work ‘there are two things that matter: products and people, what you build and who you build it with.’ #buildgreatproducts #productinspiration #productbooks

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One of the biggest challenges I see product leaders face is the expectation gap. There’s often a significant disconnect between the expectations of: 🤩 How we believe things “should” be - influenced by product gurus, books, podcasts, posts 😬 The reality of the situation - feature factories, low / no discovery, limited metrics 🕴 How our key stakeholders believe things “should” be - based on a different set of ideologies and books. Navigating this gap can be exhausting. We’re trained in product management, yet we find ourselves in roles leading transformation whilst keeping up the (already demanding) day job. 🐟 Leading change is extremely tough. It can feel like you are alone in swimming against the current. 😓 We feel like we’re failing. Our product process doesn’t look how it “should” do meaning we feel like we’re not adequate. 🚚 The mis-match in expectations between product leaders and stakeholders often results in us being held accountable for delivery, yet we most often have limited influence over it. It takes time, patience and top class influencing skills to work through this problem set. Sometimes we have to make compromises in order to make longer-term progress. This is not failing, it’s being smart. 👩‍🎓 To avoid burnout, it’s critical you put the right energy infrastructure in place for yourself. The activities that recharge you become non-negotiable in your schedule. If you’re navigating this situation right now and would like a coach / mentor, get in touch!

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Can a Product Manager own the P&L for a product if the teams building and supporting the product don’t report to the #ProductManager? You must set people up for success if you want them to succeed. Giving a product manager the responsibility of profit and loss over a product without authority over how it is built and maintained is the opposite of setting them up for success. I had a conversation with Ruby Raley about this yesterday. I shared a story about a company I know where the CTO was charged with building a new product. He outsourced it to an IT vendor. They got it built in about 9 months. It was sold to a handful of clients. The clients started using it. The bill arrived from the cloud hosting service and it was $1.2M for the month‼️ The company was going to lose over $1M a month just to run the product. 👆🏻This is what happens when goals and incentives are misaligned and constraints are not communicated. The CTO was not involved in pricing; nor had he considered the cost of the architectural decisions made by the outsource team. I rarely see the engineering organization report into the Head of Product. And even more rarely are product managers setting pricing for the products they manage, or determining the size and quality of their design and development teams. Honestly, I am on the fence about this topic. I see so many product managers struggling with the demands of doing all the things they need to do to manage their products. Many PMs only have 3-5 years of business experience. Do they have the time, skills, training, and aptitude for managing a P&L too? Does the reporting structure support it? Will the executive team support it? I would love to hear from product managers. Do you manage your product’s #ProfitAndLoss? Do you want to?

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When you’re a millennial product manager, attempting to share her knowledge of product, with the wider community and one of the most successful artists in the world is currently on a mass tour of the UK, there’s only one question on your mind: What would the dangerous animals of product management be if they were Taylor Swift songs? If you've been asking yourself the same question then have I got a blog post for you! https://lnkd.in/dYxE_QDq #product #productmanagement #tech #UX

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Things that keep me up at night: ✔️ensuring our product evolves in the right direction ✔️ continuing to build things users love and are excited about ✔️showing and proving value above and beyond the AI buzzword all around Things that don’t: ✅ if I have chosen the right company and team This is me and Nima in our latest team meet up. We laugh, but truly laugh once a day. We support each other and build an inclusive culture. For me the balance adds up. Because having the right team and culture makes all the difference. How do you balance it out?

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Does the "Halo Effect" work? Question for the Product hiring managers out there....❓️ 😇 does the Halo effect of a candidate having ex Amazon or ex Google have an impact on your interest in them? does it give them more credence than someone who is ex unknown start up that went public or ex huge multi-national that you've never heard of? Whilst the principles of product management are fairly universal, not every company can be Amazon or Google, as much as they'd like to aspire towards that. Their culture is different, their ways of doing things work within their company because they have those muscles. I'd be interested to hear opinions on this as it's an interesting topic. 🤔 #product #productmanagement #producthiring #haloeffect ##productleadership

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🚀 Why Iteration Speed is Key in Product Management. Moving quickly makes all the difference in delivering great products. Here’s several reasons speed matters: 1. Stay Ahead: Quick iterations enable fast adoption to market changes and customer feedback. 2. Innovate Faster: Rapid prototyping and testing foster creative solutions. 3. Keep Customers Happy: Frequent updates demonstrate customer commitment. 4. Reduce Risk: Catch and fix issues early before they compound and snowball. Embrace iteration speed to increase product evolution velocity. 🚀 #ProductManagement #Agile #Innovation #CustomerFocus #IterationSpeed

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Experience Product people or Product Designers may want to consider getting in 2024…. 1. Growth / Monetisation – ultimately, if you can directly impact user numbers or revenue in a positive way, you’re always going to be in demand no matter the economic climate. 2. B2B SaaS – SaaS companies have an easier route to revenue and profitability than most B2C businesses. As such, there is more investor money and more roles in this sector right now. If you can show you’ve sprinkled some product or product design magic on a B2B platform then you’re going to be in demand with these companies. 3. AI/ML – The zeitgeist. It feels like even if a company didn’t know the difference between a LLM and a LLP they would still ask for AI/ML experience right now. However, what does wanting AI/ML experience usually entail? 1) You have experience working in a squad with Data Scientists on complex systems 2) You are solving challenges like how do you get humans to trust an AI experience. Are there any other hot areas I’ve missed? 

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Market awareness and building commercial acumen are hot topics in the product management community right now. Next Wednesday for #WorldProductDay2024, Anthony Marter and I are sharing learning journeys and practical tips on how product managers can build their business nous, GTM muscles and "exec speak". If you're in Auckland, and you're product-interested, come along! 🚀 🚀 🚀 #product #strategy #market #value https://lnkd.in/ger4jyKw

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Having a chat with Simon Bristow the other day, we discussed the idea of Design Debt. It inspired me to write a full article :) What exactly is Design Debt? It’s the buildup of nasty assumptions and misfires that happens when you spend too much time in the lab and not enough time on the street. It’s what happens when your team falls in love with their own ideas, research artefacts and designs, instead of listening to what real users actually want and need in real life. What do you think? https://lnkd.in/gpKiNj9x #Design EverestEngineering

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I really enjoyed Mind the Product and Mews Meet Up at Rich Mix, Shoreditch this evening where the topic was collaboration in product trios (Product manager + Engineering Manager + designer).. check out a recording at: https://lnkd.in/ejTAfGt8 It was the first Meet Up I've been to for a while and I'm keen to go to more and meet more PMs (and non-PMs) and hear how they work and learn from their experiences, which takes me back to tonight's topic: working in product trios. It's not the first time I've heard about this and I've worked this way before but I haven't implemented it where it wasn't already happening, so it was interesting to hear about how Mews (Aldair Borges, Jakub Tkadleček, Zuzana Hrušovská) and Tesco (Amanda Ho, Dr. John McCarthy) work in trios and how they got started. I love working in smaller, focussed groups with an equal balance of perspectives from different disciplines... but how do you ensure others on the squad don't feel excluded? I'm not a fan of huge meetings as they often result in a lot of conversation but little strategic discussion that leads to action, and they tend to be dominated by the loudest in the room. With one designer in a squad and often multiple engineers, the balance is also off... is product trios the answer? How do you ensure it doesn't shut down wider collaboration across the whole squad? Has anyone tried anything different? #ProductTrio #ProductManagement #PMCommunity #TechCommunity

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Are we product managers getting caught up in the daily grind, losing sight of what truly matters? The Pareto principle reminds us that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is especially true in our Work. The high-value tasks—like shaping product vision and strategy, prioritizing effectively, and preparing for major meetings—are all examples of Deep Work. 🧠 Deep Work requires large, uninterrupted chunks of time, free from the constant pressure to reply to every Slack message instantly. Sure, we can keep running meetings and answering questions, but if we neglect Deep Work, we risk becoming product janitors instead of product managers. So, how do we embrace Deep Work? Here’s my approach: 1. Pick the right Work: Prioritize tasks that will have the most significant impact on our business. 2. Do the Work: Set aside undisturbed time in your calendar specifically for Deep Work. 3. Share the Work: Get feedback and iterate to improve. 4. Facilitate deep Work across your team: Respect others’ time and encourage asynchronous communication. In a world of shallow Work, Deep Work is a competitive advantage. Use it effectively to boost your product management career and enhance your team’s productivity and happiness. Let’s embrace Deep Work and build exceptional products together! --- Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed this: 1. Save it 2. Repost it to share with others 3. Comment with your favorite takeaway Then hit follow → @shobhitchugh for more posts on product management.

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