Joshua May

Twice today I've been asked about how to stand out in a sea of product leaders when everyone else is Open to Work too. Anyone else trying to bust into leadership roles and struggling to get CVs noticed? This is the advice I shared today: When crafting your CV and opening lines, really spend time to understand who you're writing to and why they are hiring. They are looking to solve a set of problems by hiring a product leader—show them that you can decipher and understand those problems (look for clues in their job posting, in their team size and trajectory, funding history, press releases, etc), outline them, and talk about how you specifically can help solve those problems, and use specific examples from your wide background to show how you're equipped to help them. You want the hiring manager to read your cover letter and sort of go 'Ah yeah, this guy gets it' and breathe a sigh of relief at the thought that someone's finally on their way to help. Write that cover letter, and you'll be at the top of their pile. 

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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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"WOW, you should come join our team!", said my client. An SME I'd just spent 45 mins with. She was explaining her highly complex product. I broke it down simply... asked questions no one else had... and she was blown away. Why? She didn’t expect me, a person with no Engineering background, to understand the product so quickly, let alone explain it in a way that made it sound simple. I showed genuine passion for her subject. It's not the first time my team and I have gotten this reaction. My team of IDs is a quirky mix. Artists, creatives, and even nutritionists who made a lateral entry into instructional design. And our SMEs? - Surgeons - Vets - Architects - Butchers We mostly start as outsiders. But by project's end, we've impressed them so much... they invite us to join their world. The secret? Putting in the work. Top 4 ways to win over any SME in my experience: 1. Research their domain deeply 2. Ask questions that show you care 3. Explain it back simply 4. And most importantly, show passion for their subject Do this, and even the toughest, busiest SME will say: "WOW, you should come join our team!" 👌 #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment #WorkingWithSME #SubjectMatterExperts

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How to support your Support Team as a PM ... If you’re in Product, and especially if you’re new to the role, chances are your guardian angel is on your Support team. I see this firsthand almost every day. They know the software inside and out, they handle likely even more uncensored feedback than you do, and - just like you - every single thing they do is meant to benefit your users and your software. My other favorite tips for how to partner with Support as a PM: One: Make time for them. I know I mentioned before release notes help, but really work to find the best way to ensure that the team leads know what’s new, what's next, and which bug fixes are in progress. Is it an email? A Slack/Teams ping? A one sheeter? Ask their preference. Two: Shadow them! Especially if you’re new to the company, try to get time observing as they work. One company I worked for made several hours of shadowing Support *mandatory* for new hires and it was honestly the best onboarding idea I’ve seen. Three: If they say they’re worried and an issue is urgent - listen. The best Support folks are calm under fire and they don’t exaggerate, so if they’re worried about something, learn everything you can about it and loop in your lead engineer. It’ll be the easiest decision you make all day. And for my shameless plug, here’s to all the Ops & Support (both b'cast and software) colleagues who helped me over the years and/or bailed me out of trouble, including: Don Buckindail, Tad Lin, Robin Russ, LIT, ITIL,PMP, MIS, Kevin Spires, Matt McSweeney, Cheryl Fields, Mark Luciano, Christian Jackson, Kevin Taverner, Sue Rasmussen, Germain P. #ProductManagementTips, #SoftwareSupport, #BroadcastSupport, #ProductTeamwork

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I'm not supposed to say this, but if you don't hit every bullet point, I still want you to apply. We were worried that if we put that type of statement into the advert, we'd get a flood of under-qualified people, which, you know, I don't want... but I care more about aptitude than hard experience. I didn't have fintech or crypto experience before joining CoinDesk. But I'm the curious type of fellow who loves to learn and will dive deep into research, articles, X/Twitter, etc. When I started my career as a product manager, it was a role I was assigned, not even one I applied for. But I collected hundreds of articles, books, and videos as I learned product management. Now, I'm recognized as an expert in PM. So I don't want someone whose hand I have to hold—I need someone I can delegate to and trust to deliver. But trusting someone to deliver is different from having someone who has built the exact solutions we need. And I also don't want someone who just wants to join us and run a playbook; we need someone who will listen, learn, intuit, innovate, etc. I'm excited to already have a good number of applicants. Still, I want to find the best person, and I also want to meet great product managers who might not fit this role but could be considered for a future role at CoinDesk. So message, comment, and/or apply! https://lnkd.in/giiKCUeP

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The Developer Success Lab at Pluralsight Flow, led by Cat Hicks, PhD does some really thought provoking and thorough work. If you're in software engineering, like 🚀 Dan Blundell mentions here, I highly recommend that you spend some time reviewing some of their research. You can find Cat and the Team's work here: https://lnkd.in/gV8vyaAv #DeveloperExperience #LeadDev #Engineering #softwaredevelopment #digitaltransformation

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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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For a while I’ve had a suspicion that product people make the best leaders. After all, this is where the progress happens! ✨ So I was very excited this morning to be joined by a whole room of product minded people at my Putting the Proof into POC roundtable. Some are testing new services, some exploring new markets & others taking on whole new ventures. 🤩 All have a concept to prove. 🤔 All have a belief that it might be possible. 💪 And all bring the courage to embrace the unknowns. From music events & mental health to sustainable travel & fusion energy, all these projects involve people, problems & technology. I wondered if we may find some common approaches but also discovered the many layers to solving a problem. Each person brought a slightly different lens based on their personal experience & context. (An important reminder that there are many approaches to solving a brief!) Far from disparate, this felt cumulative & complimentary ☺️ So, for anyone wishing to embrace a little POC thinking, we collated our top tips on how to approach the unproven. How to make it measurable. How to navigate the unknown. And how to successfully learn & grow from this. Lots of layers to this across investment, methodology, culture, market & skills. Summarised as 10 points below, maybe view this as a mini manifesto for how you & your business can embrace, explore, prove & grow a new concept! ✴ Start with a clear vision of what success looks like. A Metrics Tree can help you connect KPIs to your North Star. ✴ Validate it! Does the market need it? Can you make it happen? Will it make money? ✴ Try Dollar Driven Discovery to find product market fit. ✴ Keep it creative. In the early stages look for UX ideation skills in your product owner. ✴ Explore the POC from different angles eg. technology, customer & the business. Be conscious not to let one angle skew it! ✴ Try holding a pre-mortem (far more helpful to tackle known blockers upfront!) It’s ok for your people not to have the answers on day one. ✴ Bring a layperson onboard & champion their thinking! ✴ Visualise the journey ahead & share this with contributors & stakeholders. Agree on your definition of go / no go. Can you see forks in the path? Pre-plan what happens next. Will this be sustainable?Remember it’s ok to change course on your journey. ✴ Build using RATs (riskiest assumption test) methodology to tackle your biggest blockers upfront. ✴ The 4 Ps are Person, Problem, Product & Promise. You can pivot each of these! Are you a product owner? Do you have any other tips for companies who are looking to grow or launch a new concept? Huge thanks to all for joining this morning. Time well spent! 💫 Alana Pearson 🚴‍♂️ Jon Waring Shaun Sawyer Nick Forsberg Daniel E. J. Kealey Richard Buck #proofinpoc #growwithpurpose #productteamsforthewin

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A brilliant article by Alastair Preacher about how to keep positive and resilient whilst navigating the current challenging job market. Great tips and advice and I really recommend reading. The current job market is tough, if you're working within Product and want advice and support, we're here to help. #jobmarket #product

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100 APPLICATIONS 😍 In just 24 hours we've had 100 applications for our first Product Manager/Product Owner role. If you haven't applied yet, don't fret - Oliver Horlyck and I are reading every single one still, and will be for at least another week or so. So suggest getting your application in this week 👍 Also - based on what we've reviewed so far - here's some stats and a bit of gratuitous advice that may help you shine through: 💡 75% of applications chose to answer each question (including Optional). This gives them a better chance to speak to their strengths, and doesn't give us a 'Can they be bothered?' impression seeing the blanks. 📌 My advice: answer all the questions, even if it's just a sentence or two 💡 About 20% have used ChatGPT significantly. There's been no silly 'as a large language model...' style errors, but when reading 100 applications side-by-side, you actually see the same responses and same styles again and again. 📌My advice: we view a tiny bit of ChatGPT with no issue, but when seeing it across multiple answers we'll filter that application out. 💡Around 25% applied and then sent me a linkedin message. There's broadly fall into 2 groups: ▶ 50% of these were concise and human-like messages, e.g. 'Hi Elliott, I just applied, I think i'm a good fit because of [reason]. Hope to chat soon'. 📌these were viewed slightly positively, although we are not necessarily noting them against the response list ▶ 50% were long, robotic, or felt ChatGPT scripted. 📌These were viewed negatively. 💡 Separately, about 20 candidates sent me a message on LinkedIn before applying. ▶ 5 of these were useful, e.g. they'd previously worked with myself or a member of the team, and wanted to say hi to note their application was coming. (all of these were told to put their application in) ▶ 15 were not useful. They were long, robotic, or felt ChatGPT scripted. I replied to most of these and told them to put an application in anyway to assess it. 📌My advice: If you're going to message on linkedin, make it meaningful. (for example, draw a connection to someone we have in common at the minimum!). Also, preferably message after you've put the application in, so we have something to look at rather than just saying thanks.

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Ready to hear about crucial missing piece in building products? I'm delighted share I'm heading back to Agile Cambridge in 2024! Thanks to Mark Dalgarno, Ellie Kenworthy and the programme team for having me back to talk again this October. I'm going be talking on Day 2 about unveiling viability risk! I'm going to be talking about the importance of viability risk management, emphasising the critical role of stakeholders in effectively navigating this. Viability often falls between the gaps in feature teams with Product Owners. Come along and understand viability risk, how to manage it and excel as a Product team. Get 10% off your ticket with my speaker code 10Cei 🚀 #agilecam #productmanagement #risk #speaker #viability

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What is product culture? That was the topic at last night’s Product Group London meetup, expertly and brilliantly facilitated by Asomi Ithia (as always). It was a great discussion, but the wrong question imo 😊. Most product people know a good product culture when they see one: vision, outcomes over outputs, continuous discovery, empowered cross-functional teams, user-centric focus, yada yada. Just read any Marty Cagan. But that’s missing the point in my view. More interesting questions in my mind are: * Why is a good product culture important? * Is it even important? * Who is it important to? Personally I think the Product community is at risk of giving itself a bad name (probably has already) by debating the “how to create a good product culture” question. About a third of PMs last night said that their company has a bad product culture. No surprise! Product people care about product culture. What I think everyone should care most about is “is the culture effective or ineffective for the business?” How many of those PMs work at successful companies that are earning good revenue? There were a few household names - I won’t mention them. I really like Jason Fried’s definition of culture: your company’s culture is **the rolling average of everyone’s behaviour and actions over the last 50-days**. 50 days isn’t long. So if you want to change the culture of a company or a department or a team start persuading them to change their behaviour. Here are a few ideas: * Share a new actionable insight every week * Add clear context and measurable success criteria to every user story in your backlog * Speak to a new user every week (or sit in on customer calls) and share the key highlights with your team * Tell everyone about the impact of that last change (or what you learned) * Introduce regular team retros Whatever it is, if you think something can be better, embody what good looks like, do it for 50 days and if it worked then your [team/org/company] culture is now more effective, thanks to you.

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As a natural introvert, public speaking has never been my strong suit. In fact, it's something I've always dreaded. However, I recently had the pleasure of presenting the World Hydrogen Awards alongside Ciara Willis at the World Hydrogen Summit & Exhibition. Despite my initial nerves, the adrenaline rush I felt afterwards was exhilarating and left me on a high. This experience got me thinking about the importance of confidence in the hydrogen industry and the broader energy transition. Just like overcoming my fear of public speaking, tackling the hurdles in the hydrogen market requires a collective confidence and determination. It's a field full of opportunities, but also challenges. From technological advancements to market acceptance and regulatory support, each step requires unwavering belief in the potential of hydrogen and other ET initiatives as a clean energy solution. Presenting at the Hydrogen Awards was a personal milestone for me, and it served as a reminder of the power of confidence and perseverance. As we continue to navigate the path towards a sustainable energy future, let's carry this confidence with us, tackle the hurdles with determination, and excel in our efforts to make hydrogen a cornerstone of the energy transition. #summit #awards #careers #hydrogen #careers #energytransition #netzero

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Although there’s still a lot to like about agile as a software development methodology, a downside and negative externality can contort PM and UX roles in ways that make them less strategic. It can reduce both of these roles from being externally focused and iterative to being internally focused on feeding agile machinery in ways that don’t always embody a holistic spirit of agility. For PMs, that can mean a focus on project management technical imperatives to the exclusion of strategic roadmapping and go to market plans. For UX, that can mean moving away from research, flows, and design concepts and instead focusing on “design by ticket” production. And these gaps can be reinforcing to an imperative that has less to do with customer-value creation and more to do with production velocity. What’s the solution? Allow agility to broadly inform other disciplines holistically in the product development lifecycle (PDLC), including discovery, as opposed to only narrowly adding componentry around delivery in the SDLC. For example: being able within the PDLC to have a build a “prototype to production” capability including a testing and iteration cycle. #productmanagement #productdesign #userexperience

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This blew my mind. As a Fractional CPO, I’m in a constant flux of recruitment for my clients’ teams. Recently, whilst interviewing Product Designers (PD), I saw candidate after candidate crumble under this rather expected and simple question: ‘What biases enter the user interview process and what are your strategies for eliminating them?’ Answers ranged from uncomfortable silences, to unsubtle betrayals of inexperience in the shape of - ‘I simply make sure I’m not biased.’ 🫠 Where are, to name a few, ‘confirmation bias, recall bias, primacy and recency bias, anchoring bias, social desirability bias’, and those forever sticky ‘leading questions’? Interestingly, all PDs had indicated that they have done user interviews before. They may as well not have, to be honest. Harsh? Well… If you’re not meticulous with how you recruit user interview candidates, how you ask questions, and how you analyse the results, then you’re likely confirming your own opinions, overfocusing on what the last person said, or listening more to some candidates. Basically, you’re externalising yourself into a little bias soup and calling it data. One does not simply ‘do’ user interviews, one needs to master the details to achieve results. Wondering if you’re doing it right? Free consultation here - https://lnkd.in/gHSQ_M2e

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Just finished reading this book written by a friend and former colleague. It's simple to read, insightful and includes links to useful resources. It's well worth a read for those already working in or aspiring to work in product management /development. Take a look for yourself: https://lnkd.in/dQRgCehU

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It's wild to see how many product teams still "performing activities" rather than realizing business outcomes. And even if you're a PM who feels the need to "perform work" (so that you won't lose your job), helping move forward your business can protect, well, you and your team! Go attend Matt LeMay's webinar tomorrow! On impact-first product work.

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Debate: What is Driving the Rise in Popularity of the IC Product Lead? In recent years, the product management landscape has experienced a fascinating shift with the rise of the Individual Contributor (IC) Product Lead. This role is gaining momentum and redefining what it means to drive product success. But why is this role becoming so prominent? Here are my thoughts on what an IC Product Lead brings to the table, and why I believe they are essential for any business. ⭐ Deep Expertise ⭐ IC Product Leads often possess a wealth of specialised knowledge, allowing them to dive deep into specific product areas. This focused expertise enables them to make informed, strategic decisions that propel products forward. ⭐ Ownership and Impact ⭐ Without the traditional responsibilities of people management, IC Product Leads can dedicate their time and energy to owning key product initiatives. This leads to higher impact and faster execution on critical projects. ⭐ Flexibility and Agility ⭐ In today’s fast-paced tech environment, the ability to pivot and adapt is crucial. IC Product Leads, with their hands-on approach, are perfectly positioned to respond quickly to market changes and user feedback. ⭐ Career Growth ⭐ This role offers a new pathway for career advancement. Talented product professionals who thrive on direct product impact, rather than team management, can now climb the ladder without shifting into managerial positions. In my view, the IC Product Lead role will continue to evolve, shaping the future of product management. It’s an exciting time for product professionals to leverage their skills, drive innovation, and make a tangible difference in their organisations. What are your thoughts on the rise of the IC Product Lead, and the value they bring? Have you observed this trend in your own company, or made recent hires in this area? Let’s discuss! #productlead #productmanagement #debate #product

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