The Product Experience

What organisations get wrong about market expansion - Chui Chui Tan (Growth and Strategy expert)

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Join us on this week's podcast as we explore international product growth with Chui Chui Tan of Beyō Global, an expert in culturalisation. Discover how she helps businesses thrive in new markets by understanding cultural nuances and values. From her user experience roots to her role as a global consultant, Chui Chui highlights the importance of cultural intelligence in product development and international strategy, offering tips even small enterprises can use for growth.

Featured Links: Follow Chui Chui on LinkedIn | Beyō Global| Buy Chui Chui's book 'Research for Global Growth - Strategies and Guidelines for Cross-Cultural Insights'

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Speaker 1:

You know, lily, we've done well over 250 episodes of this podcast and yet I think this week is the first time we've chatted to someone who's working from their friend's backyard in a Spanish farmhouse.

Speaker 2:

I know I was very jealous not to be drinking sangria in the Spanish sun, but since we're recording in both our traditional audio format and now in video, you can actually see the amazing backdrop.

Speaker 1:

And how cool is it that we talked to an expert in helping companies learn about how to launch and succeed in new countries while she's abroad.

Speaker 2:

I'm not going to lie, it's pretty cool, your video, though. Where were you this week on the set of Game of Thrones?

Speaker 1:

No, I was just in a budget hotel. I did a talk as part of Agile Manchester and I was up there for that, which is, you know, great. I had an amazing time, but nowhere near as cool as being in Spain.

Speaker 2:

You'll have to watch the video to see the reference to Game of Thrones, because it did look very grand. To watch the video to see the reference to Game of Thrones because it did look very grand. Maybe someday you'll be as cool as Dr Chui Chui Tan, the director and founder of BioGlobal and the author of the new book.

Speaker 1:

Research for Global Growth. This was great. Chui Chui is the person to work with in this space. She's been working with Spotify for ages, along with Bumble and many, many more amazing clients, so let's get straight into it.

Speaker 2:

The Product Experience Podcast is brought to you by Mind, the Product part of the Pendo family. Every week we talk to inspiring product people from around the globe.

Speaker 1:

Visit mindtheproductcom to catch up on past episodes and discover free resources to help you with your product practice. Learn about Mind, the Product's conferences and their great training opportunities.

Speaker 2:

Create a free account to get product inspiration delivered weekly to your inbox. Mind, the Product supports over 200 product tank meetups from New York to Barcelona. There's probably one near you. Hi, chi-chi, really nice to meet you. So thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me, and today we're going to be talking about your journey as a culturalization strategist and how to succeed in international markets. But before we get started on that, give us a quick kind of lowdown of how you got into international strategy.

Speaker 3:

Cool. So yeah, for the last 16 years I have been helping businesses for example, Spotify, the Washington Post, Fiverr, Merit International in simplifying the complex cultural landscape into actionable strategies that help them to drive success in different countries and globally. And it can be to help them when they are about to launch in a new market or to take the same market that in and into the next level, and I also advise C-level and senior management on how to uncover global growth opportunities by understanding the underlying cultural nuances and unconscious beliefs and values a market and its people hold. So the strategies I'm advising could be on products, but also could be on other aspects of their businesses, so, for example, pricing on their propositions and their branding, positioning and so on, Because to make it successful in different markets, it has to have aligned views and efforts and contributions from different teams within a market business as well.

Speaker 2:

How did you get into this as a career path? Were you always interested in this topic or did you end up in this area like product? People who always kind of like fall into our role.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's kind of like, kind of like that. So my background is actually user experience and so I've been doing that for a while. Also, before I started working for myself, I was being offered a product role in a company but I decided to turn it down to start my own business, which is what I'm doing now, and so how did I fall into this? So when I was doing user experience, merit International actually was one of the few companies at that time that was like 15 years ago that actually realized that they have to start understanding their customers and users in different markets, how they go about booking holidays and what are the things important to them when they get into the hotels and like, for example, connecting rooms are very important for middle eastern and guests and things are important for different culture and everything. So I became their international consultant, external consultant, for their global strategy. So that's how I kind of get into it.

Speaker 3:

And I started to write a book e-book I think 10 or 11 years ago on international user research to start off.

Speaker 3:

And when I talked to in conferences and run workshops and always in this topic, so I started to kind of get into that role. So I start to kind of get into that role and then once when I start working for myself and I kind of focus even more on this area, like looking into not just about understanding users in different market, like what they do and why they do what they do and the things they need, but also looking into the underlying beliefs and and culture and the values and why we're actually triggering those behaviors and the values. And it could be the historical of the countries or it could be the economy set up or it could be the infrastructure that they have because their internet is super fast that actually have influence into how they behave and so on. So it's kind of looking at the underlying unconscious beliefs that people don't normally just tell you when you talk to local people. So that becomes more strategic in that instance that I'm advising businesses.

Speaker 2:

As you kind of said, there's so much to learn and there's so much to understand when you're about to launch in a new country or when you're, you know, investigating whether you should launch in a new country or launch a new product. So where do you start? Like when you're, when a customer comes to you, when one of your customers comes to you and says, right, we've got this, this plan, this idea, um, we want to find out how, what the risks are, you know where the opportunities are. How do you start with that?

Speaker 3:

so normally the question I will ask them is to understand where they are at right. So, because our businesses could have, could be in different stages. So, like I said, mentioned very beginning, like they could be doing quite well in their home market and they want to launch in the next market or a new market. Like the questions will be where which actually market I should go into. Because normally people will say, oh, go for the language right. Like, oh, maybe they're English speaking, let's go there. Or they might say maybe we go for Spanish speaking, because once we translate into Spanish, then we cover Latin America and we cover Spain and so on. So yeah, a lot of market.

Speaker 3:

But then actually those kind of decisions is actually not too wise because there are a lot of other things to consider as well. So they could be kind of trying to understand where they want to launch and what they should do in that new market as well. Or let's say they're already in the market and they say it's not doing very well and we want to do better. But where do we even start? Or they could be doing very well, they want to go on the next market. So it's kind of like first step is to understand where they are in the stages they are in their business and what they want to achieve.

Speaker 3:

And then the second lead is always to understand what they know already or what they don't know or the assumptions they have, the hypothesis they have about the market. In this instance, I have some workshops or framework that I would use to help them to identify what are the things that they think is true is indeed the facts, what are the things? That actually is just the assumptions and the personal views about a market and stereotypes and things like that, and then kind of go through that process with them to identify what are the missing informations that they might need to find out. It doesn't always have to be research, but sometimes it could be a data that they already have that I kind of help them to kind of dig that out and see from different angle how you analyze that and to find out. So yeah, there's no specific framework as such because it's depending on where you are.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I know just reading about one of your workshops. I'd love to talk to you more about it later because I think it's a really practical, wonderful thing. But one thing I want to touch on really quickly before that. Words are really important and they mean different things to different people and you're very careful with some of the words you use. But you say you're a culturalization strategist. Most of the time that I've worked in this space or talked to other people, we talk about localization of the product to market.

Speaker 1:

What's the difference? Why is it important to not use the L word?

Speaker 3:

The first L word. And so when I started I talked to a lot of businesses and senior stakeholders and C-level and everything. And then they always say oh, um, how can you help us? And sometimes a very common question that I ask them is like what you already done, what have you already done or planning to do already? Because I need to understand the effort they already put in. So I don't want to kind of duplicate or actually do something that against what they already done.

Speaker 3:

So a lot of times it's like yeah, we've done quite a lot already and we localize quite a lot of things already, and then when you kind of prompt into it a bit more, it's actually turned out they just translate the language and they just do the basic currency change. You know like language change, currency change and date format changing and so on. And that is not enough, because that is kind of misperception people always have. Like localization means translating the language. For me, localization is more very short terms and it's more about finding a way to communicate with the audience. It's mostly one-off effort, so you translate, you change the currency and so on, whereas culturalizations is a bit slightly more in a deeper connections. So it's kind of about understanding the culture and having a deeper connections with the people that you are serving, in different markets as well.

Speaker 3:

So, and it has to be a continuous learning and continuous effort to keep improving the products, because the experience is huge right, it can't be just add one features, change the design of this website, and that is that, is that? So that's why I always tend to avoid using the localization, because then they will think, oh, it's just, it's just doing that. I have to say, though, like culturalizations, you can't find it on on oxford or cambridge dictionary. It doesn't exist, but it's very self-explanatory because, as I mentioned to you for the first time, you know what that is on the high level sense as well. So, yeah, I tend to use that.

Speaker 1:

As an American who lives in the UK, I fully understand that you can see something and it's technically right but also 100% wrong. But how do we get that across to other people? How much of a difference have you seen this actually make?

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, I actually spoke in a conference about this topic just a few weeks ago, in UX Insight actually, and I kind of mentioned that and so for me it feels like really obvious. But I was so many people kind of write to me and also come to me and you can see their faces like, oh yeah, I never thought about that. So it's actually a lot of people kind of start thinking in the different ways when they think about how they design or serve just design their product and serve their customers in different countries in a different ways. Because there are so many levels in terms of how culturalizations because, like I say, like localization is very, very technical and like do this because they this is what they're familiar with and show them a website that they they kind of um used to but culturalization is another level. So in in my book as well, like a new book called Research for Global Growth, I mentioned about three levels of culturalizations, a framework that I created. So there are three levels.

Speaker 3:

The first level was about creating a respect to the local. So this is about not doing anything that might offend their local laws or legals or their customs, and this is very, very basic that you, for example, you move to a new neighborhood, for example, and you want to kind of show your respect, that you know the culture, how people actually in the neighborhood behave and so on, so you're kind of being able to get that connection. So that's what the level. The first level is is to not make mistakes that might offend the local. So, for example, I mentioned about geopolitical mistakes that a lot of companies, big brands, mcdonald's Merit is in themselves, so I'll make some mistake about mentioning in their survey or on their website or in their ads about Tibet or Macau or Taiwan and Hong Kong being a separate country, so that's kind of like a backlash, or that they have to apologize to the government, chinese government and people. So that is kind of the basic things that you don't want to offend anyone.

Speaker 3:

And then the second level is more about the localization we talk about, like currency, naming, conventions, date, address, how do you kind of make sure that you capture the right thing? So it's kind of the basic that will provide a better experience for your culture, a local experience for the locals. And then the third level is the, the deeper sense like the, the enhancement of the experience. It's not just the basic but, if you want to stand out in the market, then you have to make sure that you actually provide something that is more relevant and more um adapt to the local culture and local needs within their ecosystem and within their um environment, because that is the one that's going to make your, your products, more relevant to them and when, like when I hear you say that, it slightly terrifies me In what way as a you know, as a person who kind of manages a few, well, one kind of main product and I have quite a small team, you know, the thought of, I mean, the thought of localization is also, it's that quite a big task.

Speaker 2:

But then considering and there's lots of tools for localization is also. It's that quite a big task, but then considering and there's lots of tools for localization aren't there and there's lots of kind of ways in which you can make that easier or like quicker and from an operational point of view, but for for the kind of experience, enhancements and tailoring your experiences, my head is just kind of slightly exploding. So is this, is this something that you would normally just do with much bigger organizations that can afford to have teams of people looking into this and like experimenting with it and designing those new experiences for those new markets, or it's something that you would expect a smaller business to be able to do, maybe on a more accessible scale?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, it completely. I work with small companies as well, or startups, not startups, more mature startups where they actually already moved into the new market. So it's complete, because the thing about so the first two layers, like as you say, is more manageable, would you agree with that? Yeah, so you were saying that the first two layers, they have some tools and you actually can do desk research and, you know, ask local network about anything. So that was easier. The third layer is the one that there's no ending to it, because they are always there way to kind of enhance the experience and so on. So you don't actually have to say I want to go full on and providing the best experience. It's just based on as much as you can do as a step and small step at each time, because every single step you do it will help you to move your business and your product toward the local users closely, one step closer to them. So it doesn't have to be overwhelming and as such. So, for example, if we think about subscriptions models like, for example, like to basically understand a bit more about how people in different countries so, for example, if you want to, if you have a standard subscription model monthly subscriptions, for example, and if you say, okay, in one of the markets they're actually seeing quite low in subscriptions, the subs are quite low and what actually you need to do about that. So you could actually have a data point that you can look into in your internal data and what you can see. But also sometimes kind of understanding. You can talk to a few users locally, understand where the insights that we have so, for example, subscriptions could be. You understand the markets.

Speaker 3:

Actually they don't pay in monthly payment because their salaries sometimes they are being paid weekly or bi-weekly and so on. So in that instance paying for a whole month could be a struggle because there's a whole lump sum at the beginning and then they can't pay for the rest of the month as well. In that instance you might say, okay, how do we actually test small? Can we actually have different plans where actually allow people to pay for smaller chunks, like per week or per month or sorry, per week or even per day, that allows them to be able to kind of pay as they be able to do, or even pay as you go, format like prepaid that they can pay when they want to use? So there are small things that you can actually think about how you can kind of capture them in a smaller way to do that.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, I think every single detail that you actually get or learn from your users or your market in that context or the market as a whole, is always worthwhile to kind of step back and say what does that mean to them using our products?

Speaker 3:

Because there's a lot of times that you can see all these small snippets I call them cultural snippets inside that actually will help you to inform certain things that you can make a decision and you don't actually have to have full launch on you know new product. You can actually say actually we identify this. Having, let's say, for example, the example earlier, let's say having a weekly subscription or pay as you go, is a potential way to kind of get into that market, so that is more appealing to them. Then you can look into how much effort internally that you need to build that features or is that worthwhile to kind of put it in quietly and kind of test it out. You can even do some painted door testing or you know A-B testing that you kind of choose a small group of users and then put it out there and see whether they actually buy, pay for it or actually draw off. So it's always there's a way to do that in a smaller size and then smaller ways as well.

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Speaker 1:

Learn more today at pendoio slash podcast. I'm curious what's the secret to learning about a new market? Do you need to be there? Do you have to have boots on the ground? Do you need a local person as a guide?

Speaker 3:

How do you approach that? Yeah, so there are different ways. Again, it's different depending on your budget as well, right, like budget or timing, and where you are with the market. Where you are in the market, like, do you have local teams or things? So local team is always one way to learn from it. But at the same time, I'm always also cautious always mention to anyone I talk to like cautious about what you get from your local teams, because a lot of them have smaller sales teams or marketing teams out there, not products or design or operation teams, because even though they actually have insights that you have in a locally, they still sometimes still have inherent bias because it's their views on how they see their market, how they see their people as well.

Speaker 3:

But it's always a good starting point for you to learn about the high level insights from a country. So you can start off with that and then, talking, like I mentioned a few times, about the data that you have, you might be able to look into that. Sometimes you do a bit of desk research and kind of look into what are actually out there. But be careful as well, because not everything on internet is accurate as we know. So cross-check it.

Speaker 3:

You can ask AI, but then you're still at the starting point, but you still have to dig deeper into that. But the best thing to do is, of course, is to talk to the local audiences. To talk to the local audiences, you could do that remotely to keep the cost down, because it's better to talk to them rather than you have no insights into that. If you have a bit of budget, it's always good to be on the ground, just to be out there to kind of experience it yourself and see how the world is going, how they functions as a community, as a society, and then you get to talk to them. It doesn't always have to be expensive, expensive, but there's a way to keep it down as well have you actually asked ai if you made that part of your research now?

Speaker 3:

I actually interestingly like I because every everyone is talking about. So I have been I'm looking into it at the moment on, because a lot of people use research to use the tool, ai tool to say, oh, can we use that to as a users? You know that we don't have to interview users. We use AI to kind of create personas and everything, or we use AI to kind of analyze data or insights that we get from that. So what I'm doing now actually is I'm identifying in different layers. So one is like I'm identifying whether AI is good in if you give them the insights from the users like interviews that you have or data you have, are they good in coming back with the cultural elements, picking up the cultural elements for different countries. So that's one layer.

Speaker 3:

I'm doing some tests and prompt tests and things like that. And then the other thing that I'm doing as well is on prompt tests on the capabilities of Western LLMs like ChaiGBT, gemini and Copilot and so on, versus some local and regional AI's like China Baidu. They have that, and then you have JICE Like China Baidu they have that, and then you have Jais GBT in Saudi Arabia and Arabic version. So I was doing some prompting and testing to see how much and compare their output to see how much they actually can provide. The detail of it, the accuracy of it, or actually they are very high level. They get very standard. Talk to the local teams and you're like, outsource this or actually think about the religions is very high level. So I'm doing that testing to see how much actually can use.

Speaker 3:

But what I can see so far is LLMs actually can be valuable input as a starting point in terms of where you can use it, and then you kind of have to use that to validate further, either kind of validate with the research or validate with your internal teams or so on. But it's a good starting point. But it shouldn't be a final words. You shouldn't use that and say, oh, they behave like this and then just let's make a decision out of that. It might be in the future, when there are more data and local data and more insight is actually being used to train the LLMs. In the future, then might be more precise. But at the moment, as I tested so far, it hasn't done yet. But I'm still doing that. I'm at the second stage of my testing at the moment, so I might publish a paper or something like that.

Speaker 2:

Nice. It's great to experiment with these things, isn't it? You've been doing this for like 10 years or something now, so I'm really curious to know. You must have some great stories of what's worked and what hasn't worked. What's worked and what hasn't worked has anything in your time of kind of working on launching internationally, has anything really surprised you when you've been working on these projects?

Speaker 3:

Um, surprising, I think I have. Yeah, I think surprising sometimes is kind of oh yeah, that's interesting. But I think, because I'm always open-minded about this, I wasn't like, oh, something I never think about. The interesting thing was Saudi Arabia was one of them. So I just came back in the last year like December. We wanted to kind of understand.

Speaker 3:

Actually it's for an audio streaming company. Actually they are very rich. You know, you have a lot of high net worth individuals in that country. Money is not an issue. They spend money on you wouldn't believe like gold. And you ask them about the last thing they bought that they're considering whether I should buy or not. It was like gold jewellery. The reason they were considering wasn't because of the price, but it was because they already have something similar and things like that. So it's very different. But they actually don't have a high willingness to pay for music.

Speaker 3:

So, for example, or streaming services or certain things, and you always think about why is why? Why is that? So we are trying to understand the reason behind that. It was interesting in that instance because we understand a few things about the, the culture, because of the religion and so on, and what surprised us is like a lot of things. They say it and you say, oh, okay, that makes sense, and then you kind of lead you to make certain conclusions, but certain conclusions, but then at the same time there are other elements comes into, actually contradicts to how they behave as well, and they're just like oh, why, why is that?

Speaker 3:

Again there's other elements of the religions comes in. For example, they like to have the status about. You know, like I have the status. It's very important in the social context as well. But the same thing, like it's the same time, that they don't like bragging about it too much, because there's a humbleness in their religions as well, like you shouldn't do that. So there's a lot of contradicts.

Speaker 3:

From our point of view as a researcher, it feels like there's a contradiction on that. That makes it a bit harder to kind of see. It makes it a bit harder to kind of dig deeper. It's like why? Why you're saying this thing, but actually, again, this is contradicts, and but it makes it even more interesting because then you will have to dig deeper into why they say certain things and then.

Speaker 3:

But then they behave in a certain different ways and there are certain things they can tell you because they actually don't feel like that is the reason they behave that. And then you have to go and dig deeper into why, why they do certain ways and because a lot of time people, um, a lot of time like research will be saying like oh, talk to the users, they will be able to tell you why they do certain things. But then when you come to the cultural elements of that, sometimes it's not that they not willing to tell you why they behave in certain ways, but that is because they don't even know what triggered their behaviors as well yeah, so it'd be really difficult to to dig into as a researcher yeah, because, like, for example, we live in the UK for a long time and then we do certain things in certain ways.

Speaker 3:

Like people say, why do you behave certain ways? It's like I don't know, but actually there's a certain elements within the context of in the past or whatever that actually drive us to that element. But it's very important to understand the why behind, yeah, what triggering all these and all these behaviors and so on. Because because that will be helping us and helping businesses and product people to kind of understand why they behave, so you can make decisions not just presenting what they say they want, but actually you can go deeper into the things that they don't say, they don't even know they need or they want. So that becomes very important.

Speaker 1:

True, true, I think we probably have time for just one more question, and we have a lot more questions, so hopefully we'll be able to have you back to talk about some of the real practical elements of this. But there's something you mentioned earlier that I think is going to be really useful for people. You talked about one of the workshops that you do to get information out of people and steer them in the right direction or get them in the right headspace and to all work together, and there was one that I saw in your book called the four bucket exercise. Can you talk to us a bit about that? I really loved it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so four bucket exercise. I should come up with a smarter name, but I just like four bucket. It is what it is it's four bucket. So you have full bucket. So why? Why do we do this?

Speaker 3:

Um, when do I normally do this workshop with clients? This is when they we, before we actually decide what to do, um, what we should do. Should we even do a research? If we're doing research or collecting data, what do we actually need to look into as well, because you need to be focused as well, and sometimes research might not be necessary, even because they already know a lot about the market. So normally what I do is I gather them together, either remotely or kind of in person, and then what we are going to put in a few things in this workshop. So we are going to have four buckets.

Speaker 3:

The first bucket is called facts. So facts bucket, so everything is actually proven and you have something to actually back it up, to say we know this for sure is definitely the truth about the market or the people. So that is the first bucket. And then the second bucket I call it strong hypothesis bucket. So it's something that you know quite well, but you still need a bit of insight to kind of turn them into facts so that you actually very completely understand and can use that to drive your strategy already.

Speaker 3:

And then the third bucket I call it weak hypothesis. So these are more like subjective views of people that thinking, oh, it must do it that way and I went to that country before and I see them behave this way or assumptions or people or things that they heard from other people as well, but they will need a lot of things to kind of validate or invalidate them. And then the last bucket is called unknown bucket. So it's something that they don't, we don't really know. A lot of questions Like it could be, as it could be as high level as we just don't know how, in the nations, higher risk, higher people, just very high level on that instance.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you've told us about the known facts, the strong hypothesis, the weak hypothesis and the unknowns buckets. What do you actually do with them? How do you actually run the exercise once you've got them up there? It seems self-explanatory, but I'm sure there's a little bit of nuance.

Speaker 3:

So there are a lot of reasons we run this workshop right Like. So, first of all, is to kind of like collecting all the information that everyone's all the stakeholders, that everyone's all the stakeholders think they have, all the companies, all the information or details that they have done in the past, research and so on. So to put them together in one, in one session, so that we have all information. And then the other reason as well is to actually make sure everyone is aligned on what we're going to kind of look into what we know already, what we don't know, and challenge each other's assumptions and beliefs as well, um, so that we can actually have a clear view and a clear directions and aligned directions. So one thing I just want to mention as well is like, um, when, whenever people actually put on this bucket, they always put it in fact.

Speaker 3:

So you need to make sure that whatever they put in facts, they need to be backed up by something really like because I have this reference and otherwise everything will be in facts.

Speaker 3:

And that was very dangerous, because everything in the facts bucket, it means that you can just use them to make decisions. You don't have to test it anymore, you don't have to find, do more research or cover it in your research questions and so on. So you need to make sure that everything in your research questions and so on, so you need to make sure that everything in the facts is indeed facts. So, having this session so you will have all the information, to know actually how much information you have in the strong hypothesis bucket and the weak hypothesis in unknown, and then with that you need to find whether they actually overlap Is that how you actually go about finding out and validate and finding out the answers for all these questions as well? So it might be the case that actually we found out that we can do that via just launching and then collect new data in the future, so we can actually, within three months, we actually have all this information to validate what we have.

Speaker 1:

So what happens? Everyone says as you said, they start putting their stuff in the fax bucket, you start challenging them. Yeah, do they stay in.

Speaker 3:

No, that was one of the things I kind of find I still find very interesting is that I saw them put a lot in the facts bucket and I said now I'm going to go to each of them, each of the post-its, and say, whoever who put it, like, let's discuss how you find the information, where do you find the reference and how do you share that? It's a fact. Um, as I talking to in one of the sessions I was running with 15 people and as I was talking, asking one person about one specific facts or post-it, I can slowly see a lot of post-it in that facts bucket slowly move to the strong hypothesis bucket or the weak hypothesis, because they don't have the information to back it up. So, yeah, that is a very, very important exercise to do, because then you start challenging a lot of senior stakeholders who always believe they are right to kind of rethink actually, is that? Indeed that is the case.

Speaker 1:

I love this. This is just a great exercise, regardless of whether you're doing it for the purpose of international research or not. It just I can see how this would work really well with strong personalities.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think it was a good thing, and then after that you can use that to make decisions on what you want to do with the information. Right, but at least you actually have the view of everyone on the same page. Everyone knows what they're lacking and what they should look into as well.

Speaker 1:

Chui Chui, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us from beautiful Spain, not your home your second home for today.

Speaker 3:

Yes, that is indeed Thank you for having me. Yeah, it has been great to kind of discuss all these topics as well. Thanks, Chweetie.

Speaker 2:

The Product Experience hosts are me, Lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day.

Speaker 1:

And me Randy Silver also host by night, and I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work.

Speaker 2:

Luran Pratt is our producer and Luke Smith is our editor.

Speaker 1:

And our theme music is from product community legend Arnie Kittler's band Pow. Thanks to them for letting us use their track.