Our first conference of the season is the fantastic Lean Agile London 2024!
As we round off our TalkInTen series, we have a special treat: our insightful host, Ben Maynard, steps into the spotlight for the first time as both the interviewee and the focus of his own episode. In this episode, Ben delves into the essential role of having a clear product vision and how to navigate organizational complexities to achieve it.
Ever feel like your product vision needs a pair of glasses? Join Ben for a lively session where we'll turn the blurry mess of traditional product visions into something clear, actionable, and focused. Think of it as laser eye surgery for your product strategy!
Hold up, though, it's not just a case of re-writing a canvas. To fundamentally fix the problem, we will need to dive into the murky waters of organisational complexity and dredge up the common culprits that lead to cloudy product visions and bog down brilliance. With real-world tales and a dash of humour, Ben will explore how too many cooks in the kitchen (or stakeholders in the spreadsheet) can spoil both broth and bandwidth.
Armed with Radical Product Thinking, Systems Thinking and OKR superpowers, you’ll learn to trim the fat and tighten the focus, making your product vision sharp enough to cut through even the thickest red tape.
Expect practical tools, snappy strategies, and a few "Aha!" moments as we showcase how companies just like yours have gone from chaotic to charismatic. Wrap up the session with a Q&A to grill. So, dust off your binoculars and prepare to zoom in on a product vision that’s not just good, but brilliant!
Episode Highlights:
- Radical Product Thinking: Discover how to implement radical product thinking to cut through organisational complexities and enhance your product strategy.
- Systems Thinking: Learn about the integration of systems thinking to understand and address the root causes of cloudy product visions.
- OKRs for Clarity: Understand how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to maintain a focused and measurable product vision.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODAGILITY24 for
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
Our first conference of the season is the fantastic Lean Agile London 2024!
As we round off our TalkInTen series, we have a special treat: our insightful host, Ben Maynard, steps into the spotlight for the first time as both the interviewee and the focus of his own episode. In this episode, Ben delves into the essential role of having a clear product vision and how to navigate organizational complexities to achieve it.
Ever feel like your product vision needs a pair of glasses? Join Ben for a lively session where we'll turn the blurry mess of traditional product visions into something clear, actionable, and focused. Think of it as laser eye surgery for your product strategy!
Hold up, though, it's not just a case of re-writing a canvas. To fundamentally fix the problem, we will need to dive into the murky waters of organisational complexity and dredge up the common culprits that lead to cloudy product visions and bog down brilliance. With real-world tales and a dash of humour, Ben will explore how too many cooks in the kitchen (or stakeholders in the spreadsheet) can spoil both broth and bandwidth.
Armed with Radical Product Thinking, Systems Thinking and OKR superpowers, you’ll learn to trim the fat and tighten the focus, making your product vision sharp enough to cut through even the thickest red tape.
Expect practical tools, snappy strategies, and a few "Aha!" moments as we showcase how companies just like yours have gone from chaotic to charismatic. Wrap up the session with a Q&A to grill. So, dust off your binoculars and prepare to zoom in on a product vision that’s not just good, but brilliant!
Episode Highlights:
- Radical Product Thinking: Discover how to implement radical product thinking to cut through organisational complexities and enhance your product strategy.
- Systems Thinking: Learn about the integration of systems thinking to understand and address the root causes of cloudy product visions.
- OKRs for Clarity: Understand how to use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to maintain a focused and measurable product vision.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODAGILITY24 for
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
I'll do the closing down for you. Hello and welcome to the ProRat Agility podcast. This is one of the, and I need to think about this sentence, one of the Talks in 10 from Lean Agile London 2024, but this is the penultimate Talk in 10 that we'll be recording. And this recording is happening after the event because there was just lots of people to talk to and not a lot of time. However, this is an episode with a difference because I am on the receiving end. of the questions today because we are joined by Henriette and Shelby whose episode I'm sure you have listened to on VUKAR which is like a pirate, like a west country bumpkin for those of you from the UK. Now it's a great episode where I ask these two wonderful people the questions and they're going to be asking me the questions so I will shut up and say Shelby and Henriette. Feel free to interview me for my talk in 10. Thanks, Ben. Thanks Ben. This is very weird because you've interviewed me now a couple of times. So it's weird to be on the other side, but let's give it a shot. So you did a talk at Lean Agile London. You stepped in and you gave a really good talk on about blurry to brilliant, simplifying your product vision for the organization. So just tell me a bit about that. Why have you decided that was the track and the talk that you would speak to? Well, I reflected and thought maybe I should have simplified the title because there was too many words in it. That was my first thought. But then why was it a topic that I was really interested in? Because of two books, two books and a person. The first book I read was Radical Product Thinking by Radhika Dutt. Amazing book, amazing person, which it helped me with my startup, really focus on less, in a way. And then I read a book called Radical Focus. There's a theme here about the word radical, which taught me a lot about OKRs. And the person that put my radical focus was Jeff Gotthelf. And so what I, where I'd got to was I just began to realize all of a sudden, like a light bulb moment for me is all the years I've been teaching about large scale scrum and simplicity and change the organizational structures and reduce the number of backlogs and reduce the number of product owners. Actually, I think some of the missing link in all my experience with the case studies I've done is having that real radical focus on the product visions and the OKRs, which was impossible because of the complexity of your organization. And so I just saw this link I hadn't quite seen before, which is if you don't have a clear, simple structure to your organization, which is aligned to its true purpose, then any product vision you have, and I would argue most OKRs you're going to have are just going to be a bit shit. And so I made this talk because I thought that this was an interesting perspective that maybe people hadn't really thought of before. Thank you, Ben. What I liked about your talk, I mean, we both were present at Lineage London when you gave your talk. And what I really liked is that you came up with a lot of messages where you said, this is what I thought and this is what it wasn't like when I was on my path finding out about this. So can you give us a little bit of that? Because you were giving some examples where you were saying, like, and this is how I thought it should be. And then I realized, not at all. yeah, it's interesting. I love that feedback because I felt the talk went well in so much that it just kind of came out of me when it was and it just it felt right and I loved every single second of doing it and those moments where I began to share how clever I thought I was before realising that actually I wasn't very clever. I I didn't realize that, I didn't realize what I was saying almost. Like I'd put them in as the slides, but I never practiced a presentation before I give it. So that was the first time I'd ever run it through. And so as I was saying, I was like, wow, okay, yeah. Like when I used to say that visions are for visionaries and I thought product visions didn't work because they weren't, the people who were creating them just weren't capable of having that vision. They're not Steve Jobs, they're not Bill Gates to pick out some obvious examples. I thought that was a reason. And it was only when I began to look at the ties between organizational complexity and the effectiveness of a product vision that I thought, actually, I was wrong with that. And so then I just wanted to almost give people my thought process. I wanted people to help me hear me think out loud about your vision. really good to hear when you were giving it, because you were going with the slides and you would put in the first statement and then the next slide would be wrong. And then I came up with this idea and then you would again delete the text and put it differently. So what struck me most as well, it was just this process on the one hand and then as well, you had already slides where you go like, this I have to take a photo of. I can't see this because I took it with my iPhone. I want to make sure it was a panelist as well to have... from all the speakers like relevant slides already on my phone right after. So I took this photo and like, yeah, you don't have to be a visionary. You just have to care. I'm like, yeah, very good, very good, very good. And the next slide which comes up is, you just delete everything. Okay. And I like, okay, this was not the right photo I took. Actually tying that back in, because actually I think whilst you've just described like your thought process and then whatever you think that Henrietta said, the one thing that you did do was radically take it back to simplicity. There was nothing like, you know, I don't know whether your train of thought was, well, okay, let's just, I've read all these great books, been a bit radical about it, but simplicity is key. I mean, and we've talked lots about simplicity, but you basically said simplicity. I think your quote was simplicity is the ultimate. sophistication or satisfaction. So explain that to me. Why do you think simplicity is now key then, Ben? Because I don't think we've tried it. So. in organizations, I don't think people actually understand simplicity. I don't think people challenge themselves on simplicity. I think every person that I speak to, every client I walk into, that no one ever says that things are simple. Everyone always says that things are complicated or complex. And there was something that I said to somebody in the audience, which was, if the answers to your questions were obvious, if your solutions to the challenges you face were obvious, you'd already be doing them. So you have to accept that the things you need to try aren't the obvious things, they're non -obvious. And then you have to appreciate that the way you've been working and the way that you're structured isn't generating non-obvious solutions. So in order to find non -obvious solutions, you have to do things in a different way. And I think this is where people are stuck. I think we made great strides in the products and agile community, but I still think that no one really truly understands simplicity. And I think for me, and Henry, you spoke about that. thought process I was explaining, you know, that the conclusion that I came to, which for me is just so simple. And when I say it sounds so obvious, is that we don't create product groups or organizations that actually provide the context for people to really care about the end person they're affecting. And I think if you can do that, and you can create that context and allow people to actually care for the customers or the users or whoever it is you're really trying to affect their world, improve their lives in some way. then I think we can do much better things that we're capable of. But you're not going to create that context of care unless you really go for that some real radical simplicity. I think that, you know, touching on that, that we have organisations, not just the organisations I've worked in and Henrietta works in, but I think the three of us can pull on many examples of that. We create complexities. I think organisations are set up with complexity in mind. And you did say at one point, and I laugh, and I did laugh, nobody gives a shit. And you said that, and I just kind of like said, isn't that a bit... I go use your words is a bit radical for somebody to stand up and give a talk and say, I don't give a shit. Cause like we act so professional when we're out on the circuit and talk, but actually a customer doesn't give a shit about our vision because they don't see it. All they see is our product, right? So actually simplicity does work in that favor, but then inside what is the customer saying? Cause I'm a customer of the organization I work in, business to business department to department. but we have created layering and complexity within inside the organization. So what, so given all of that, what would be the one thing you would, if you were to walk into any organization today, where would you start with that? How would you say to the very senior people and the people then on the shop floor, like, don't give a shit, let's make it simple, but be radical in that thinking. But you know what, the one question I always pose to people and probably more senior in the organization is more, the more effective the question is, I just want to say, tell me what the single most important thing everyone should be working on right now and whose world is it directly impacting and tell me how it's going. And most senior people can't answer that question, not because they're stupid and not because they've been given information, but they're not set up to have focus. We start too much and we have too much in progress. And I don't think that people, I think people want to be able to answer that question, but I don't think people can. And I think that, you know, we overcomplicate things when we have the product visions, which explicitly try and serve too many people. And I think this is where we just really hone it all down and see if we can just create a much better golden thread from the actual real beneficiary through to everybody that's working at the ground level. I actually love those three questions because actually that just will give you the context. So where are we? What's your biggest problem? Right. They're very simple questions that you ask somebody what's, you know, how does it impact people? That's going to give people the context to be able to work in the system that we work in. So. I adore that. Theoretically though, walking into a million pound organisation and just saying that those who are very senior executive will cause us some hassle. So what do you do then if you get all of that resistance and people do give a shit? I love that Ben, you've caused a smile. And what a great smile you have Ben, what a great smile you have. well, yeah, check out the YouTube video. Check out my smile. No, I think it's a difficult one. Now, I don't say that it's easy and then maybe I wouldn't go in with that straight off. But for example, one client I worked with, and it's the longest client I've had since I've had my own business, my own consultancy firm. And it was I was working predominantly with the product team. And I worked with, in fact, I'm still working with them. I won't mention any names, but when I started with them, I spent... six to eight weeks getting to know everyone. We know we call it discovery work, but I was doing discovery work, but I spoke to as many people as I could. And I treat each conversation like a conversation where I wanted them to leave something new. I wanted them to leave it enriched, but me to leave it information that I required. So the moment I got them in a room, all together for a workshop value stream apping type exercise. And I was able to turn around to the senior people in this organization from the whole organization and say that one of your biggest problems is. You can't have the hard conversations with your leadership team. 100 % know, and, and, and it was a risk and they took it, but because they trusted me and they respected me. And I'm not saying that I had not given this to anyone saying that anyone should go and do this. But I think that, you know, you get a good feel for things over the years. And if you've got some of the experience behind you, I think you can get away with pushing things a bit more. So you come back a little bit about caring, but that means you create the context, you create a connectivity to the context so that you can care and they care and trust as well. And that makes it possible to do then the work we have to do and to focus on, to be able to speak out loud, to be able to talk about the elephant in the room basically and start trying to find the solutions for whatever it is at stake at the moment. Right. yeah. And I think. I think with you, sorry, Ben, to cut over you, but I think then to something else you had said on one of your slides, and I did take a screenshot of it and I remember looking at it and going, well, actually, so he said simplicity, he talks about being radical. We've just now had a conversation about people being able to trust you and connecting to you. Providing data and measurement goes to the slide that you said about clarity, measurement and accountability. And I think... your point you just said, they trust me because I have experience and I can talk to it, I've got that knowledge, you can go in. There has to be some clarity, measurement and accountability with you doing your role in then as a consultant. So how do you best do that for yourself? And I'm not asking you to obviously, you know, we're all coaches here, we all do whatever we need to do, but you then uniquely Ben in your day job, you seek clarity, you seek measurement, you seek accountability. How would you go about that? I'd like to know a little bit more about how Ben's style works with his clients. I'll keep it brief and maybe we can catch up about this in another episode. But I think that like my path to where I am today wasn't straightforward. And I've always been a bit of a... blagger. I suppose, avoid, I've always tried to avoid, I had to find ways to kind of get by. And one of the skills I developed early on was the ability to get along with people and to empathize. And they really put myself in their shoes. And the most successful engagements I've had is when I can walk into a room and I can put myself in their shoes, or I can put myself in their customer shoes and I can speak honestly about that. And the advice that I give is advice from empathy. Cause I create my own internal context to care. to pick up on Henrietta's point. So when I was working with a particular client, working on some OKRs, not a domain that I had direct experience in, right? But I understood the market, I understood kind of the economics of it, and I understood the pain that a particular customer was going through. So for me to be able to help them come up with something, which is the case of me, empathizing my socks off, you know, and... yeah. they wouldn't know why is it valuable? Because at the end everyone was like, fantastic. Yeah. And they want me back. And I think that it's about different value there and then. And that's what I try to do every time. And on the other hand, you could say like, could everyone just walk in and like connect to people, be like, you know, talking with them and that's enough and they trust you and that's how you do it. Or is there another basis to it as well? I mean, yes, it's right. This is after all what you have to do. And I think, but also it is something they also have to trust you that you can do it. If it comes to like the content that you're selling sort of right here, the expertise. And I think there's one thing that I can, I feel when I speak to great people like yourselves, both of you, that, and even when you say it, part of your thing you said it's because I care. And I think those people that have that empathy and they care, that just shines and people feel comfortable with that. So they trust it. And I think if you, that's how you build your trust with inside your client or the organization you work with, you will obviously get. that empathy, that trust build, and then you can be radical and you can talk simplistically. You can talk about, you know, the ambiguity that's inside them and ask them those really clear, simple questions to ask them where they are with all of their work. I think that came beautifully across in your slides and what you're saying and even just talking to you now. I think I can see that resonate out of you and why people then are drawn. having those conversations with you Ben and that's not just me giving you kudos because I feel like that when I talk to you anyhow but even with Henry you know even when I speak to you with Henry and Henrietta you know again she gives off that there's like a buzz about it and there's I think certain people can can do that and go into organizations where other people and this is another conversation for another day. As I said, we're saying to you, when you're on, we'll take a two day course and think they can walk into an organization and tell a CEO how to run their organization and their product and not actually sit down and connect to that human being from a empathy care perspective. was me. That was me. And then I went on my own and started a business and actually understood. And then started another business and then, and then try to, yeah. And then, yeah. And then, and then, you know, try to launch it. Well, I'm launching a software product and have another business. You know, you've got to put the graft in. And if I, if I was going to write a book, I think today, you had to force me to think of a title. I'd probably call it radical simplicity. Wow, it's a breaking news people. we go, it's not gonna be a book. Someone steal it and just give me a credit at the front. But I think when we do, because when we think about simplicity, you know, what I'm saying, how we show up and the talk that I gave will grow and it will expand. And I'm intending on, I've booked in a few different meetups and who knows, we'll do it a few different conferences. If you're listening to this podcast and you want me to give it a new organization, then just... email me ben at benmaynard .uk and I'll happily arrange to come in and do a talk on it. But you know the extension to it will be one, you know, first and foremost and forget the stuff I'm going to put in around kind of maybe some lean UX and that kind of thing but actually it's stripping it down as if we're going to be radically simplify everything, we just simplify how we show up. All right, remember that human element and just and work on building trust and respect and if you can't do that, in that room of those people, and you don't feel like you can ever do that in that room with those people, then find yourself a different room of people to be in. Because if you want to have some real radical impact, you really need to kind of connect to that human level in some way. And that doesn't mean being nice, and it doesn't mean necessarily being polite. It doesn't mean being holding their hands and rubbing their back and say it's all going to be OK. It means being a bit of an asshole sometimes. But that's what it takes. Yeah. but I think that's, that's something our industry does really badly. I think we, I mean, again, not blowing my own trumpet here, but last year I talked about consultancy firms and some of them out there that are really great. Like Ben, you are in that space. And then there's other consultancy firms we know that drop in and not simple. They make things complex. They add to the complexity, you know, to the point me and Henrietta make, they add all of the VUCA to the, to the system that we work in. But I also think coaches don't do themselves some favors either mind. I think we go in and think, right, I've been taught this framework. I've got to go in and tell you how to run your product, do this. You've got to do A, B and C. And I'm telling you, because I'm the agile coach that has that knowledge of that framework. But what we haven't done is on the business acumen side gone, Hey, I've got a CEO here. I might never get to speak to him, but when I do speak to him, the first thing I'm not going to say to him is, my God, you have to go and do scrum because... I'm a scram agile coaching you, and that's what I'm telling you you need to do. The first thing you should do is tie it back to what you just said. Connect to them, care, show them empathy, ask them simple questions. But have you said? goes both ways, right? What you were saying with the context and with the caring, it is like you have to care for them and they care for you. If they see that you really take it up with their problems and really their problems, not just saying like, I know better than you and you know, how stupid can you be that you couldn't solve them until now when I came in? So of course, if you go in that way, wouldn't work. But if you go in and you show them, I'm with you, I am with you and your problems, I solve them with you together, we find ways. iteratively, step by step, not because we have to go buy some sort of books, but because we care and because we want to solve them. And then it works both ways. yeah, it does. But I'll just keep it on the time we've got here. We've been talking 20. So maybe we'll start to wrap it up. But I am, my father -in -law, and I want to give everyone this bit of advice because it's a great piece of advice that I am trying to really imbue in what I do. And it's something my father -in -law said to me, who's, I don't know if my wife listens to the podcasts, maybe my children will at some point about it. And I've realized this is a granddad I'm talking about, but he was involved in agricultural. world in selling feed actually and he was successful he was really successful but he said that he had a boss and the early in his career and he thought to himself right how do i impress the boss and what he decided was he wanted to figure out what the three questions the ceo is going to ask himself every morning when he wakes up about work what are the first three things that pop up to his head and he found and he spoke to him and he found out what they were yeah and it was one agriculture type thing, the other one was revenue and the other one was like number of clients they've lost or something. So he made it his job to make sure that he was helping out with those things and that he had answers to those things. And he succeeded because of that. And I don't think that, I think that product coaches, because they often have a lot more experience in doing a greater tuning into that. And they know what those three questions might be. I think in the agile coaching world, I think there's a handful of agile coaches out there that maybe do. I think there's a lot that maybe wouldn't have a clue where to start. But by you mentioned start, I'm now going to mention end. Henrietta and Shelby, thank you so much for interviewing me. I've really enjoyed it. It turns out I like talking about myself. Ben, we should do it more often. I love talking to you. I love listening to you and talking to you. I could ask you a thousand and one questions and I'm assuming, given that me and Henrietta can speak for our respective countries, as they say, we could probably ask you a million and one questions. But it's been a delight and it was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, one in one. We'd be here all year. Your talk was amazing. I definitely want to see it. evolve and I definitely would like to see it on the other side. I am going to steal your idea of radical simplicity and I will give you a forward in the book when I get around to writing it in my crazy time and definitely look forward to more talks and getting to work with you at some point. Henrietta. Let's start connect and care. yes. Okay, well thank you very much for interviewing me and thank you everyone for listening. This is, yes, in the penultimate Talk in 10. There'll be one more coming out. So thank you for tuning in and do let us know what you think of the Talks in 10 series on LinkedIn. It's the best place to find us or TikTok. Send us an abusive comment or two. We get a few of those every now and again. Thank you for listening. I've been Ben Maynard and this is the Product Agility Podcast. Bye.
