The Product Experience

Product pitfalls: how to avoid them - David Pereira (CEO, CPO, omoqo GmbH)

Mind the Product

What are the common pitfalls that product teams face? Join us this week on the podcast for a discussion with David Pereira, CEO and CPO of omoqo GmbH, as he shares his unique insights into building an effective product strategy and avoiding common traps that product-led organisations face.

Featured Links: Follow David on LinkedIn | David's website | Buy David's book 'Untrapping Product Teams' | Omoqo

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:

Lily, it's such a shame that we're doing shorter intros now.

Speaker 2:

I'm afraid to ask why that is Randy.

Speaker 1:

Well, we have a really great guest this week. We've got David Pereira. He's the CEO and Chief Product Officer at Omoco and you know he's written a really useful new book.

Speaker 2:

Ah yes, Untrapping Product Teams. That is an excellent topic and a great chat, but why is it a shame?

Speaker 1:

Well, you know, if we were going longer I could give you my Elvis impression. You know, we're caught in a trap.

Speaker 2:

Oh, no, no, no, quick, let's get to the chat. 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.

Speaker 1:

David, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing? Thanks for inviting me. I'm doing great. Oh, if you don't mind, just let's start with a quick introduction. Tell us what are you doing today and how did you get into product stuff in the first place?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a good question. So today I'm leading OnLocal. I'm there as the CEO and CPO. We're a small startup creating products for the maritime industry, which is quite new to me, but I like it very much.

Speaker 3:

How I got into product? It's because I asked too many questions. So at some point I wanted to improve my English and I didn't have enough money to travel abroad, so I paid for an immersion course. Back then I was a soft engineer and I decided to present what I was working on during the last day of the course to show how I evolved with the English skill. And someone told me hey, I like how you talk. You make complex things sound simple and I could understand what you were talking. I have something for you. I didn't know that guy was a CEO in Sao Paulo and he said I have something they call as a product manager. I want you to be this guy. I said cool, but I have no idea what a product manager is. And he said yeah, but you ask a lot of questions. That's what you need to do, excellent.

Speaker 1:

And you've obviously been stayed really interested in the topic because you got to the point where you've written a book about this, about untrapping product teams. So let's start with the very beginning of this. You know I think we've all been here, but I want to hear it from your mouth what kind of traps do product teams get stuck in and how can we recognize them?

Speaker 3:

stuck in. And how can we recognize them? There are many traps. Some are just in some disguise and we think we're doing what is necessary and what we should be doing. The most traditional one is what I call the bloated backlog. So we go, we talk to stakeholders, we talk to everyone and say, hey, let's put into the backlog, let's put into the backlog. And sooner or later we realize actually we are not a product manager anymore, we become a backlog manager.

Speaker 3:

Another one, combined with these they have some correlation is how do you deal with stakeholders? Are you partnering with them or pleasing them? Sometimes you start trying to please everyone and they say yes to everything and you don't dare to say no. So there are other traps that, for example, instead of using evidence to prioritize, you start using opinions and then you transform your opinion into reality and you start doing things and investing very much into something because you believe your opinion is right, instead of confronting that against reality and say should we be doing that in the first place? So these are just a few traps. And how do we recognize? The thing is, we need to step back and sometimes we need to recognize that we are the problem. It's not always the environment is a problem. I was a problem. I was a problem sometimes because I simply didn't know what to do right, so for sure I did something wrong. And stepping back and being humble to say I might be doing something that is not the best, then it helps you.

Speaker 2:

This is really interesting, david. So I had a conversation with one of my product managers earlier today and she was talking about a presentation that she's putting together and she said to me so can I put it together with telling the story that I want to tell, with the outcome that I want to happen, or should I put it together thinking about the CEO and what he wants and keeping him pleased? And I was like, well, there's probably a third option, which is can I just have a really objective, balanced view of the insights that you found and then what your opinion is and how you would like to move forward? And so I'm recognizing some of the things that you're saying. Is it something that we just innately do generally as part of our human nature, or is it something that we learn through other you know, through other work or through growing up? Where are these practices coming from that mean that we're getting trapped?

Speaker 3:

What I learned is product management digital one. Digital product management is something quite new, so we're still trying to figure out what is the right thing to do and we don't have all the answers. And my interpretation is the following as humans, we want to feel in control, we want to feel safe, and some things we do will make us feel safe. Loading the backlog will make us feel we have everything there we can go, and then we just check what is the request and then we work.

Speaker 3:

We don't like being in the dark, and one of the things of product management is we need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. It's kind of we simply don't know what we don't know. So how fast can we hit reality and uncover our unknowns and start adapting according to that? This is not natural to us, so creating digital products requires us stepping outside our comfort zone, so we need to force ourselves and if we don't do that mindfully, it's very easy to fall into a fixed mindset where we try putting everything in control and in place and so on, establishing processes. So it's an orientation. What is the process? How are we going to get there? And I say actually, let's just start doing it, and then we learn from reality and then we figure out the process later. But the first thing we need to do is to confront reality.

Speaker 2:

And in your book that you've written, you talk about using the right ingredients for product teams. So there must be some ingredient or magic set of criteria. That means that you're setting your product team up for success.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So one of the things I say in the book is like I am not going to give you the perfect recipe for success because I don't have it, but there are some things. If you bring to the game, you have better chance of creating value faster. And when I talk about the ingredients, one of the aspects I look at the product management fundamentals. So we start with the product strategy. What is product strategy? It's simple. It is about simplifying decision making. Because we have many choices, we need to figure out how we are going to filter out all the distractions. So this is what strategy is going to enable us to do. Which game are we playing? Are we playing the retention game? The growth game? Go to market? Let's start with the game we are playing. Then we know the game game the growth game? Go-to-market. Let's start with the game we are playing, then we know the game we are not playing, and then it comes to discovery.

Speaker 3:

Discovery is all about uncovering opportunities worth pursuing, problems worth solving. It is uncovering what drives value. To find the opportunities. And then comes to product delivery, which is about building what creates value. But it is not about creating these as step.

Speaker 3:

First set the strategy and then you do the discovery and then delivery. It's how do you combine them, that one feedback to the other, because your strategy the very first one I'm sorry but it's wrong, because once you hit reality, you're going to learn something that you didn't know. Then you have the chance of adapting that Product discovery is going to help you with that. The same is going to happen with delivery, and some people think that delivery it is about maximizing, making things perfect and so on.

Speaker 3:

I would say that a good principle behind product delivery is first we build to learn, then to scale, and sometimes I see the teams figuring out how do they avoid technical debt from day one. So the solution is scalable. But in this case what happens is we will be resistant to remove the features that create no value because we invested too much time into them. So these are the right ingredients and the way of making them successful is by having good principles behind how we apply the process we use for price strategy. Discovery and the others are, I would say, of less relevant, but the mindset where we play the game. This is the most important mindset where we play the game.

Speaker 1:

This is the most important, david. That all sounds very sensible for someone who's a CEO, who comes out of a product background, but I'm sure you've been in this situation, like the rest of us, where building to learn than to grow. The question you get asked is why didn't you just build it right in the first place? Or, you know, why can't we just grow what we've got? Kind of that whole approach. How do you get other people focused on the same game? How do you take this approach and ensure that you're in an environment where you're not trapped by other people's perceptions of the team?

Speaker 3:

Sure, the very first thing you need to do is not what I did in the beginning when I was a product manager. Don't try lecturing people. People hate being lectured. I try telling them everything you need to know. So let's start with outcome-oriented roadmaps, because then we can make all the decisions. They would be sleeping and they would be ignoring everything I said, so don't try doing that.

Speaker 3:

What you need to do is to collaborate and you need to help the others see what you are seeing. There are different ways of that. You can create, for example, a feature report. Look at the features we created over the last 6 to 12 months and then you do a mindful analysis how often are they used? How much value do they bring to customers and to us? And then you look at the report. There's a big chance that 50% of the features are not used. Then you can ask a tricky question Is that the way we want to continue to work Creating features nobody uses? And then you can have a conversation. That's one approach. Another approach I like doing is what if we just do things and then we let results talk instead of trying to ask for permission?

Speaker 3:

Many teams that are trapped on all of this situation. There's one thing you can do. If you receive, let's say, a feature roadmap, instead of implementing everything up front, take one feature and say what are we assuming to happen here? Maybe we are assuming that customers are going to pay for that. How can we get evidence that they are going to pay for that without building? You can explore that, you can do something. So try running some experiments and then you show results to the CEO, to the other people. Hey, this is what I learned here. I test this with customers and they are just not willing to pay. I talked to several customers. Watch the interviews here. I want guidance from you. What should we do? Should we continue on this? I doubt it's the right thing for us to do. So. It's more like collaborative Help them see what you're seeing. That's what I have learned and I recommend people to do.

Speaker 2:

If you tend to avoid conflict or you tend to shy away from difficult conversations. You know collaborating in this way can be quite daunting and quite challenging. Ideally you have a supportive manager or team member who can advocate and kind of be your ally in those conversations. But do you have any other tips or techniques for even just practicing these conversations? Because I think you know, again, to echo what Randy said it all sounds very sensible, but when you're under duress and people want results and you have very challenging stakeholders, keeping your cool and, you know, remembering the data and being able to tell the right story can be very difficult.

Speaker 3:

It is a very hard job to do. It's, from my experience, almost impossible to avoid conflicts, but we can do something else that helps the conversation, because what we need to do is to move from coordination to collaboration. That's what we want to achieve. There are many ways of doing that. One of the things that helps for people who want to avoid conflict show vulnerability. Say that you care so much about the product and you are afraid of creating something that missed the mark. Say like, hey, I'm really worried that we are going to deliver on the business result expected here. I am lacking the evidence that this is going to drive us where we want. So I want to share my concerns with you. I'm afraid we are going to fail. Be honest, be vulnerable and then have a conversation about this. If you really care about something and you are honest about trying to make it different and help people are generally going to listen to you.

Speaker 3:

I had a situation where most all stakeholders were pressuring me to do everything and I didn't know how to deal with this. You know what I did. I got everyone in the room and I said I'm afraid I'm gonna fail my job here, and the reason is I don't know how to handle all of the requests you have. You asked me to focus on increase sign-up rate and you asked me to focus on reducing friction, on retention, and you asked me to take care of operations and you asked me to change the invoice. I cannot say what is more important, because each one of you come to me saying that is highly important. I would like your help to figure out how do we align here and go together.

Speaker 3:

The moment I said that, two of the stakeholders said I can park my request, given what you said you have in your plate. Some things are clearly more important than what I asked. You and the others start exchanging with them what we want to achieve and they start collaborating. There were some conflicts there among themselves and I was trying to figure out, but then together we found something. And then I remember when we achieved what I wanted, everyone was nodding. That was alignment. So stakeholders were aligned with each other and then we could move on. I didn't go into conflict. I said I simply don't know how to deal with that. Can you help me?

Speaker 2:

It's interesting. I remember one of the Mind the Product conferences. There was a real strong theme of product management isn't about managing products, it's about managing people, and getting the right people in the right room to have the right conversations is so powerful and it's so satisfying when that happens.

Speaker 3:

It's totally true, and one thing I wrote in the book is I have been reflecting a lot. What is the real challenge of product management? In the beginning of my career, I thought it was about choosing the right tools to use, the right frameworks to use it. Because there are so many in the market, I simply didn't know in the beginning. How do I set roadmaps? There are different ways. There are different schools of roadmaps. There are different ways. There are different schools of roadmaps. There are different ways of setting strategy. But today what I see is the following it is all about people and collaboration, and the magic happens when, out of all of this collaboration, you figure out how to create value, and there is no single place that's going to be the same.

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Speaker 1:

Learn more today at pendoio slash podcast. Come to the conclusion that everything we do, every tool, every framework, every everything there's only two things that come out of it two useful things that come out of it. There's only two things that come out of it two useful things that come out of it. It's either we're having better conversations or we're making better decisions, and better conversations lead to better decisions. Everything is yeah. All my focus these days is how do I get people to have better conversations as often as possible. That's it possible.

Speaker 2:

That's it. One of the things you mentioned in that story was around competing priorities on the objective, which maybe is kind of easier to solve when you have different people in different roles competing.

Speaker 2:

But when you have one person who's your CEO, or maybe hopefully it's not a CPO, hopefully give them a bit more helpful. But if you have a CEO or chief commercial officer or whatever it is, who's telling you these are the metrics that are really critical, and is giving you a few metrics rather than one, how do you have those conversations? And I think for me, in my experience working with early stage founders, this has come up lots of times where we're like, okay, do we want to grow or do we want to focus on profit or do we want to focus on retention? Um, so yeah, there's. I'm interested to know how you would approach trying to get someone to prioritize, um, working on the right metric.

Speaker 3:

I tried several things already. Um, there was one that helped me, but uh, I tried, for example, having a chat about the difference between parallelizing and serializing, trying to align that. We prioritize one thing, achieve one goal. It didn't lead anywhere. It was we need to achieve all of that. And I was being electoral, we are starved up, we need to do everything. So I would hear these things and I was feeling powerless.

Speaker 3:

Then, once I came up with an exercise, I saw once I don't remember where, and I thought it's very stupid, but maybe maybe it works. So I went to the CEO. I said do you have five minutes to have a coffee with me and do a very, very stupid exercise? You are going to kill me how stupid it is. And you say I wasted your time, but if you bear with me, maybe you understand what I mean. And the CEO said five minutes, one cough, that's it. And I said, okay, let's go for that.

Speaker 3:

So I took a paper, a4, and a pen and I said I'm going to do something. It's stupid, don't challenge, just do it, I know. So I said what I want you to do like do the following the first line you will write from 1 to 10. The second line from 10 to 1. Directly 1, 2, 3, and then 10, 9, 8, 7. And then I'm gonna time it. So I did that. So now I want you to do the following First line and then second line, alternating 1, 10, 2, 9, and so on, and then I time and then look, there was already some difference. So now I'm gonna add something here. So let's put some letters. So you do the same from 1 to 10, now from 10 to 1, and from A to J. And then the CO did that very fast. I said now it's time to alternate. And then it started getting very fun Because the the CEO, started writing and I remember like some scratch, oh what is.

Speaker 3:

And Then I I said you know what happened. The second exercise you were 53% is lower. Apart from the mistakes you did there and I'm looking at this, it's a very simple exercise. Anyone who knows how to write can do it. And you are asking me to change my art all the time.

Speaker 3:

With people writing complex code, how do you think it works on their brains? The CEO looked at me and said Do you think I'm killing productivity? I said Well, you know what you're doing. You are the CEO, you can decide. And the CEO said the next time I tell you to parallelize something and I try to interrupt in the sprint because I say something needs to be done in parallel you tell me do you want another coffee? Let's go and have it. So that's what happened, and then from that moment, we could focus on one goal at a time. So what we decided was how much time we want to invest on something, and then we get the best result out of this time and we decide if we want to make another bet. So we started treating things as bets.

Speaker 2:

I can't imagine doing it with my CEO at all. I'm not sure how well it would go down.

Speaker 3:

Maybe it's a good test of character to see if they can take the message. I was going to say that actually this CEO was a quite strong character. He was from MIT, quite direct, quite keen on what he wanted, but I think what helped was saying I have a very stupid idea and they were going to kill me and we're going to say that I wasted your time. But it's just five minutes, Just stay with me five minutes that helped, so he went there in a good mood.

Speaker 3:

So I just said it. It's a stupid idea. I didn't promise much, so expectations were very low yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

And another question on the metric side of things. So quite often I find product managers or product teams have to think about lagging metrics or quite big metrics like revenue and churn, for example. Do you have a recommended approach for breaking these down into something that's much more usable for product teams?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I like when we start the conversation with a metric, so that's already good. So if we have a churn or revenue or what it is, that's a good start because we're talking about desired outcome. So I ask a question what would lead to this? When we're talking about churn, if we look at the customer experience, what would lead to a customer churn? And then we start looking at the experience and saying like, oh, it would lead to churn, for example, if we promised to do A and then we do B. So how do we measure this? How do we start measuring the experience points that would lead to that? So we can kind of predict what is going to influence on this metric and work backwards. And one thing I like doing is implementing then the CES, customer Effort Score. So everything that we do in the experience, we start putting how easy it was to do this, how was it for you to achieve that? So we continuously measure the experience and within that, if we find where customers are struggling, then we can improve that. If we look at the leading metrics, that would lead to the laggard metrics, then we can do something about it. And then I like a combination. You know it is about what are the metrics? We have influence and the metrics we have control. So what am I talking about here?

Speaker 3:

In one of the places I worked, we were trying to sell wine and we wanted to ensure that our search would give good results. The problem was people were searching for labels that we didn't have and we were showing all the time no results. So what would we do? The first thing we were trying to influence them, and we realized that we didn't really have control on what people search. But we could have control on what we decide to present. So we decided first to take the wines that have the same grapes and the high runners and present them first. So as we did that and we improved our search score, that helped the users convert to the search. So that is one example figuring, separating what we have influence and what we have control. Start on what you have control, because that is easier for you than on the ones that you can only influence.

Speaker 1:

David, so far we've talked about identifying when you're in a trap and getting out of the trap, and we heard some great stories and great techniques and getting out of the trap. And we heard some great stories and great techniques about getting out of a trap. But it's not that easy sometimes, is it? Sometimes you get out of the trap and you just slide back in inadvertently. How do you stay out once you are out?

Speaker 3:

That's an amazing question, and when I was writing the the book, I said what do I want to convert here? So I said I want to start with reality. Either we like it or not, we will be trapped somehow Sometimes. We just don't know. So the very beginning of the book is facing the traps and then overcoming them and then lately remaining untrapped. And one of the aspects I see that helps us remain untrapped is by having solid product principles. So what do we believe in? Let's start with the principles, because if we follow these principles there's a chance we'll remain out of the trap. And the principles you can make them funny.

Speaker 3:

I remember in one of the places we used this principle I shared with you first build to learn and then to scale. And whenever we would go within a discussion that we would start building correctly from day one, then a soft engineer would just raise a card and say, hey, you said that we have a principle, let's step back here. What should we do? So we would raise a card with the principle we were breaking and then we would just have a chat about it. So that is one thing Deploy principles which you agree with the team, what you believe in, and then you leave that. Make them alive. Another thing is every now and then, generally I would say around three months do some health checks. Look at your practices. What does good and bad look like and where are we?

Speaker 3:

So I say about product strategy, health check, product delivery, product discovery, and then we say what is something we don't like? We want to do differently. And what I tell many teams is like creating products is dynamic. Things are going to change, people change, customers change, there are new variants and we need to be familiar with a continuous change. But it is anything but a sprint, it is a marathon. So the good thing is let's step back, understand our scenario and pick one thing at a time, not everything. You don't need to change everything. Don't try doing that, because then you're overwhelmed. Look at something and say, hey, this is not good. Let's try adapting this one and then, step by step, you adapt the others. So that's what I say Step back, have a different perspective into reality, like just analyzing as a team. Also, how do you perceive it? Get this health check with leadership, with your team, with everyone. Then you say what do we want to do different?

Speaker 1:

I was just going to go into that. You say as a team, but there's multiple teams involved here. There's the product team level and there's the leadership team level. What kind of principles or what kind of metrics health metrics or behaviors are you looking for to say at the leadership team level to say let's make sure we keep doing this, because it's very easy to be tempted back into sales-led and things like that when it may not be the most expedient thing in the long term.

Speaker 3:

That is context-related, so I put in the book some that I believe to help. So it's where we start. But, for example, as overall, when it comes to leadership, how do we prioritize? Do we start with the output or do we start with the outcome? Very important, very important question when do we start? And the other question when do we involve the product teams? Do we involve them through the fence and say just do it, or do we get them saying what did you learn? What are the opportunities we have? This is what we want to achieve. Is it something collaborative or collaborative? So let's look at this, how we are working together. So these are kind of aspects. And then I want to see the extremes. You know Output, outcome, collaborative, co-ordinative, prioritization inside the team, outside the team, and then we decide what we want to do different, this kind of principle.

Speaker 3:

One thing that I always look at companies is what they do when things go wrong. What is the question they are going to ask? Teams are going to fail. Hopefully they are going to fail small, so it's digestible, but sometimes they will fail big. But what is the question? Sometimes the question is how do we avoid that? As a result, we make the process more rigid, killing innovation by chance. The other question could be what did we learn from it? So what can we do different next time? How can we benefit from this? So these are the aspects that I look like and have an open conversation with leadership.

Speaker 2:

So, david, you're CEO and CPO, so, and you clearly know what you're talking about, my assumption is that your business operates in a perfect way. Have you fallen into any of the traps that you describe, and how do you make sure that you don't do that?

Speaker 3:

Sure I have fallen and sure it's not perfect. So one of the things I mentioned in the book is I believe that no place is going to be perfect. There's always opportunity to change and so on and to make it better. One of the traps I felt there is in the beginning I wanted to ensure everyone had clarity on the goals we want to achieve and I deployed OKRs too early. We were just two teams in the very beginning there and I put OKR and I realized that we were stretching ourselves too thin, like dividing and conquering, and the teams were not collaborating as a team. We had a micro team and then I had to step back and say it is not working.

Speaker 3:

Okrs here and it was my idea, and nobody would actually tell me I did a poor decision or poor implementation of OKR. What helped us there was let's teach OKR and let's start with quarterly goals Saying what do we want to achieve by the end of this quarter? What does success look like? And then, looking at the team, how do we get there? Let's start working to get to this goal. So we started with one goal per quarter instead of having an OKR. That these are the objectives for this year and then coming up with key results, because I actually contributed to loads of coordination and I reduced collaboration. So it's a learning. It was not perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. I make still many.

Speaker 1:

David, I think we've got time for one last question, so let's stay on the theme of making mistakes, or avoiding making mistakes actually. So if you're someone who's interviewing with a company and you're looking for the job, how do you know, how can you tell what are the signs that a company is in one of these traps? How do you avoid joining a company like that in the first place, if possible?

Speaker 3:

How do you avoid joining a company like that in the first place, if possible. You can have a conversation about roadmaps so you can ask a few questions how does your roadmap look like? Who is involved in crafting your product roadmap? How often do you change the roadmap, how often do you set the roadmap, and so on, and you can say what does success look like? And you're going to hear things so you may realize the roadmap is a set of features.

Speaker 3:

Then you know the challenge you're signing up for. So you need probably to combat fitter factory or you need to accept that. You can accept maybe that's okay for you and you can realize maybe it's outcome-oriented, but the product team is not involved. They are informed. So you know that this is the kind of challenge you need to invest. But if you realize that roadmaps are crafted together, leadership sets a direction and then product teams figure out what should be in the roadmap and that is maybe a quarterly roadmap that evolves according to the strategy and so on and so on, then you have a higher chance of being, let's say, state of the art, as close as possible to a product team where you want to be. So that will give you good hints. I would say I like starting with the roadmap.

Speaker 1:

It's a great answer. I love that. It's definitely a good way to do it. David, thank you so much for the book. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been great, thank you.

Speaker 3:

I really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, David. 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.

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

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