Build What’s Next: Digital Product Perspectives
The process of developing digital products and experiences can be a daunting task organizations often find themselves wondering if they are solving the right problems the right way hoping the result is what the end user needs. That’s why our team at Method has decided to launch Build What’s Next: Digital Product Perspectives.
Every week, we’ll explore ways to connect technology with humanity for a simpler digital future. Together, we’ll examine digital products and experiences, strategic design and product development strategies to help us challenge our ideas and move forward.
Build What’s Next: Digital Product Perspectives
Unlocking Creativity in Product Management: An Interview with Leslie Grandy
In this episode of 'Build What's Next', join host Jason Rome as he dives deep into the world of product management creativity with author and expert Leslie Grandy. Leslie shares her fascinating career journey, from the early days of box software to launching digital media subscription services and leading product at major tech companies. Discover the inspiration behind her upcoming book and learn invaluable techniques like inversion thinking and analogies to unlock your creative potential. We discuss how product managers can claim their creative seat at the table, overcome low creative self-efficacy, and partner with AI effectively. Whether you're an experienced product leader or just starting out, this episode will inspire you to think differently and innovate in your field. Don't miss out on practical tips for boosting your creativity and solving complex problems. Tune in now!
Jason Rome on LinkedIn: /jason-rom-275b2014
Leslie Grandy on LinkedIn: /in/leslie-grandy/
Order book here: : https://www.creative-velocity.com/
Method Website: method.com
You are listening to Method's Build what's Next Digital Product Perspectives presented by GlobalLogic. At Method, we aim to bridge the gap between technology and humanity for a more seamless digital future. Join us as we uncover insights, best practices and cutting-edge technologies with top industry leaders that can help you and your organization craft better digital products and experiences.
Speaker 2:All right, well, welcome back to another episode of Build what's Next? I'm Jason Rome, your host. I'm here today, joined by Leslie Grandy, who I'm very excited to talk to. We got introduced a couple of weeks ago through a mutual friend of ours and you were actually giving me some advice and you started sharing. You've got a book coming out and we started talking about your product background and your career, which was just fascinating and your trip through your book. But then I think you're writing about some things that are top of mind for a lot of product people right now, so I'm really excited to dive in today. So first give us a little bit about your background and your life in product.
Speaker 3:It starts way back when, in the days of box software, I was speaking to a UW class and I realized I was telling them a story that happened before they were even born. It really struck me. But when I started in software back then, product management wasn't really understood universally as a function. It was a job title and depending on what company you had, it might have different responsibilities. If you were at Microsoft, you might be a marketer with a product manager title, but at the company that I worked for, which was Vizio, it was very much the owner of the business that the product was creating and so as such, there was a role for product management in both product marketing and internal product development, which was the first time I'd actually understood that that role could even be split into two things, because that's how I learned the job was to do both internal and what was called external and internal product management at the time and in that environment, with 18 months to make a product you know to put it on the shelf in a shrink wrap box, you really have a different kind of rigor right around what you include and what you don't include, what testing you can do. That obviously all radically changed when I moved into a role that was very internet focused, I launched the first digital media video subscription service at Real Networks. That included Major League Baseball and CBS, survivor and Big Brother and CNN and ABC News, and it was the first time that I really understood sort of the role of connecting the business model to the product development cycle, not just making business and revenue from the product, but actually designing a business model as part of the product. Designing a business model as part of the product, and in doing that we actually were able to patent the experience of a client server delivering a subscription product based on entitlements that ultimately was bought by Intel. And in that world we really started looking holistically as product people at the sort of how do people acquire it, not just how do people use it, sort of how do people acquire it, not just how do people use it. And so then that really opened up my thinking around what type of role product can play in a business.
Speaker 3:From there I went to work at Apple, and in Apple's universe, product is a completely different thing. You can't be a product person unless you actually make a piece of hardware that is called a product, and so running the Apple online store. It wasn't really perceived as a product management function. It really was more of a program management function that allowed Apple to sell directly to customers, even though at the time they were opening up their retail stores and were heavily dependent on third parties to move their product. And so it was not a great experience for me career-wise or personally, even though I love the company and I'm a total Apple user.
Speaker 3:As a functional role it wasn't very fulfilling for me and so I left and went to T-Mobile and in product management there my responsibility was making the Android phone the first Android device acquirable and running on the T-Mobile network. And so while we didn't define the product per se it was a Google product it was up to make it a product that T-Mobile customers could use and buy, and from that standpoint, to do that we had to break a whole lot of things around how carriers worked, how the Internet worked on a carrier network and so forth. So we again kind of took a role of product. But really, looking at the product lifecycle of, ok, you've designed this product, but for it to run on our network it needs functionality that you hadn't thought about. It needs to be able to deliver things that a carrier customer would expect, and so that was another version of product that I'd had not conceiving of the product, but actually making it a product a customer could use and buy.
Speaker 3:And from there I went on into e-commerce and ran the mobile and machine learning and apps for Best Buy, and that's where I met the friend we have in common, and it was our responsibility there to really bring the product function to life in a classic product operating model, and that was probably one of the first times I'd really had the opportunity to do that, because we built that office from scratch and we were able to create a model for product management that looks very much like where product management is today in terms of the product operating model, and so that's been really important Throughout that whole journey.
Speaker 3:The confusion of product management has also confused people about what's expected of their contribution, and so through that process, that's really where I got the idea for the book, which is how do we make product have a seat at the table in the creative process of defining, designing and building a product, including what might be the acquisition of that product and the business model that supports it, and so that really is a bigger job and a bigger role for product management, and a lot of people who maybe entered product management did so from a program background and maybe didn't realize they had that expectation that could have that expectation that they could actually contribute creatively, and so that really was the spawn of the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that a lot and I think it hits on a key theme that I'm looking forward to discussing today that I've seen with a lot of my clients, you know, especially with the advent of safe and like a more systematic approach to agile.
Speaker 2:With the advent of safe and like a more systematic approach to agile, right when you know it's just they've taken a product manager and they sliced them into five pieces, right when you've got one person that owns the strategy, one person that owns discovery and features and requirements, one person that owns kind of the story writing and UAT, maybe one person, another team owns the actual data analytics and like reviewing if it worked, and, oh, someone else is doing the program management and the budget. And so you've taken what product people used to own, a lot of it and you've kind of split it amongst five folks. And so I love the way that you told that story because I think you know, for better or for worse, I don't know if we're any closer to finding one definition of what a product person does today necessarily at companies.
Speaker 2:And so let's talk a little bit more about the book, Because I think you know, when you shared the story with me, where you started with the book and where you finished weren't necessarily the exact same place, but you know we don't have to go through the whole process, but I think it was fascinating how you kind of had an MVP of your book that you shared and got feedback on. But tell us a little bit more about kind of the genesis of the book.
Speaker 3:When I started the journey, I had this idea that this was a a gap for a lot of people that I've managed and had a coach in how to consider themselves to be creative enough to solve problems in innovative ways or to ideate uh solutions that are uh effective and novel, right, that are valuable and meaningful but at the same time, uh novel enough to get attention and to differentiate their business. And I wanted to sort of think about whether that was a curriculum or whether it was a book. I wasn't really sure, and so I started just like I would. Any other product is put something out there on paper for people to react to, and in the process of doing that, I was also looking for the reason not to do it, and I think sometimes people are looking to confirm a reason to do something because they want it so bad or they're so in love with the idea they have that they're just looking for the proof points to get the job done that they want to do. I was exactly the opposite. I mean, if there wasn't a book to be made or nobody was interested in reading it, I didn't want to put the effort into writing it. So for me, I really was looking for the hard truth, the tough love that people would give me. And so I didn't actually give the book to people who I thought would say what I wanted to hear. I gave it to university professors. I gave it to people who themselves had authored successful books. I gave it to a lot of people who, instead of telling me, hey, that's a good blog post, but it's not a, a book, or I don't really understand who the audience is they just kept making it better. They just say, kept saying what about this or what about that? And as I thought about them, my initial reaction moved from being defensive of my idea to being inclusive of the input. And by the end of six months it was 13 pages long. And it was it. It was complete. I mean, it felt like it was ready to go.
Speaker 3:But I had told a friend of mine who'd written a book hey, I'm gonna. He asked me. I said would you read it? And he said, yeah, I'll read it, but I'll give you the tough love. I hope you're okay. I said that's exactly what I want, because you were the last person in the row and I knew you would be the hardest on it. And he said to me. You know, how are you going to sell this book? How are you going to, you know, produce a book? And I said, well, I figured I'd send it to a bunch of publishers. And he said that's just never going to get the job done. If it's good, you need a warm introduction to an editor.
Speaker 3:So he was kind enough to read it, decided to introduce me to his editor. She was interested enough in the topic because it crossed a lot of themes that they were looking for that they felt were really current right now in business. And within a week they bought the proposal and I owed them 65,000 words in 10 months and everybody said don't write the book, write the proposal, because the proposal is hard enough to get right and to make sure that it's adaptable. And that was the right advice that I took. And I look back on it and I thought I wouldn't have known any other way to do it Because at my heart, as a product person, you know you got to test, market what you have and see who your audience is and whether there's value that you're creating by what you want to produce. And I was prepared for there to be no value and for people to say, nah, it's not going to work.
Speaker 2:I think, a great story, especially for aspiring authors out there, and that's some of the advice that you've been giving me. You know with where the book landed. You know what can I guess, who is the audience and what can people look forward to in the book. You know this podcast goes out to a lot of product folks and engineering folks, designers like who, and then we'll make sure to include a link in the show notes as well. Tell us a little bit more about it. And then I want to dive deep into some of the themes that you've shared with me and what I've seen on it.
Speaker 3:So the book is kind of constructed in three parts. Each chapter has an analysis of a creative technique that people can use to solve problems that are effective problem solving methods, and then there's an interview with an accomplished innovator, somebody who has affected my career, inspired me, influenced me, and then there's a set of exercises to practice the technique. And each of these techniques can be used independently and can be used to solve different stages of the product lifecycle. So if you're in a mode where you're ideating, you want to be more of an abstract thinker and an improviser and a storyteller. But if you're in the mode of implementing and looking at sustainability and scale, you need to really understand opposite thinking and paradoxical thinking and inversion thinking, which really helps you understand what's the worst that could happen in order to make your idea stronger. And so the techniques kind of align beautifully to the product operating life cycle, like from conception to scale and sustainability, and it allows, I think, whether you're a product manager or a business owner who's really stuck in a competitive space or having trouble differentiating the why of their business, this really gives people tools to expand their mind and look at the problem from different perspectives. And what I found by giving out the manuscript.
Speaker 3:I actually sent out the manuscript for endorsement.
Speaker 3:You know you have to get those blurbs on the back of the cover, and what people told me back was they actually thought it was more of a book for life hacking, for really solving any kind of problem, although I might have personally seen it as a business or product-focused book.
Speaker 3:Several people said that this is a book that really might help them get over challenges in their personal life or in areas where they really just haven't opened their mind to new options for how to get things done, and so I was really intrigued by that, and so, the more I've talked to people, I think it really is about what problem are you trying to solve and where are you in that solution design. And then if you have that moment where you think, how do I go from here to that next step, the book might be able to unlock some ideas for you, and with the exercises you'll get more familiar with them and you'll build sort of the muscle where they'll become more natural to use. But I think one of the things that people make a mistake and one of the reasons why I really wrote the book was personally I was one of those people who just thought I wasn't going to be creative because I didn't have talent.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I always thought that creative was a trait and a talent and, based on my childhood attempts at piano lessons and drama school and art classes, I got no talent. There's nothing there, and it really was a disabling thing for me for a while to imagine that I would have to be more of a left brain person that was analytical and oriented towards that logical, linear thinking. But in point of fact I recognize I had the power. It was really just more about my activating it, nurturing it, expanding it and then using it and knowing how to use it. And so there's a lot of times where I think people just dismiss their creative capacity altogether. They have very low creative self-confidence. They see themselves or identify as someone who's more action-oriented and logical or data-driven and therefore they leave the creative stuff to other people and in product teams. That's really disappointing, because if you're really delegating all of that to your engineers and your designers and all you're doing is taking tickets, then you're really not servicing the product management function effectively.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of really good things there. You know, I think you use the word muscle, which is one I've used a lot in the past and when I used to give talks on design thinking and innovation right, because I grew up in a digital area where, you know, sprint came out and design sprints and design thinking was all the rage and I used to give a talk called the art of impossible, why design thinking fails, and, and I think one of the key things is people treat it as a muscle. I mean, people treat it as an exercise and not as a muscle. And I always said, like you know, you don't, you know, when you're trying to get in shape, you don't go to the gym and say I'm done. And I think that's a lot of times.
Speaker 2:What product organizations have tried to do? They try to take discovery and they put it as a step in the PDLC and they think they can kind of time box creativity and they're done with the creativity. But I always try to tell people it's not about the process, it's about a way of looking at the world differently and how you interact with data, and so it's a muscle that you strengthen over time. And I used to say like, hey, I'd rather, instead of 20 people for two days solving a problem, I'd rather have two people for 20 days because they're learning, they're interacting, they're testing prototypes, they're learning iteratively over time, and I think that was one of the struggles that people have of trying to really time box their creativity over time, and I think that was one of the struggles that people have of trying to like really time box their creativity.
Speaker 3:I do want to, just because you mentioned all of the techniques, could you give an example of one of your favorite techniques that that's in the book, or kind of call one out? I do, yeah, I'm a big fan of inversion thinking. I do love the what's the worst that can happen mentality. That isn't to ruminate on the possibility of failure as much as to plan for an unexpected challenge and not let it just completely disable your forward motion. I think that one's one of the great examples that the book really brings to life is that it's okay to think about failure, but you think about failure as a case for success.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right as a use case that you want to address for success. I think that one's great. I have to say, analogies are my favorite personal thing and anybody who's reported to me on a team knows this, because I'm filled with analogy. I think Jerry Seinfeld had an interview where he called himself the analogy kid because he used analogies all the time. In the series Seinfeld, they use analogies all the time. They also, by the way, use opposite thinking. There was a whole episode on George thinking you know everything he thought was wrong and so thinking all about the opposite things in order to make changes in his life. But analogies are great because what they do is they make you step away from your current circumstance and the current set of parameters and to look at the core components of what you're dealing with and find solutions in other domains and other industries that might be serviceable here.
Speaker 2:But on analogies, you know I really love reading across a lot of variety of fields. Actually, before I got the product, I was looking at going back to school for behavioral economics or psychology. But I find economics and like economics case studies and like business strategy case studies and the way economists design natural experiments, like really good behavioral economists you know Kahneman and all them there's so much richness of like understanding human behavior and like getting to underlying root causes. You know, outside of some of the controversy that that space has had, obviously, but I think so much you know. Just you know the free economics guys and looking for natural experiments and data, like I've always used that as an example.
Speaker 2:People bemoan their lack of data or their you know how they have tons of locations that do things differently. I'm like that's richness in your data is you know the number of times I've gone and done user research and I go do three different location visits and like one of the vocations doing really well and it's like, okay, well, what can we learn from them? What can we figure out? And then to your point, you know a lot of times, especially for me coming in from the outside, people always want to know like, what have you done within my industry? But I'm always looking at it as, hey, you should be asking what have I done outside of your industry? That's potentially adjacent to this especially. You know we're here in Charlotte, so a lot of financial services, but financial health and personal health and wellness in the healthcare sector, both of those groups trying to really think about personalization and the impact on AI and like the relationships there. There's just so many analogies that those groups can learn from each other because they have the privacy considerations and not feeling creative.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned how much you've been a mentor to others as well. When you're going into an organization and you're meeting folks who might not be embracing the creative act. I'd love to hear how much of that root cause is a they don't have permission versus they don't have time versus. Is it a skill set gap or is it a mindset gap? What are you finding in product organizations? Or, I think to your point earlier, they've potentially given that job away to the design and engineering team. But, like, what's your root cause? Analysis of like why there's a potential creativity gap for product folks today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's such a great question because I think there are two common things I see. One is a low self-confidence in their creative capacity. I haven't been perceived that way. I can't think of anything original, I'm generally not the ideator in the room, so I probably am not creative right. So I think there's a low self-confidence, what's called creative self-efficacy, where people just don't believe in their faith, they don't believe they have the skills, they don't have the faith that they can solve any kind of problem, and I think that's a really common thing. But the second problem I do believe that people think their jobs don't give them permission and that they somehow need that type of permission.
Speaker 3:And some of the most creative people I've worked with as I was mentioning about the digital media subscription service that I worked on with people at Real Networks, we had some of the most creative lawyers and finance people, because there was no subscription model for consuming media on your digital devices before and there was no, therefore, any licensing agreement that made sense for doing that, for any licensing agreement that made sense for doing that and so to bring those people into the room and allow them to create within their space something that would, in fact, impact how the customer experienced the product was essential. But we had people who didn't think they were limited in that ability to do that. We had people who couldn't wait to jump in the pool. And I think when you have that kind of broader team whether it's a logistics person or a finance person who's willing to reinvent something because it actually could create a larger opportunity than the way we've always done it, I think that status quo bias is what you find in a lot of people who have jobs that think they aren't allowed to be creative.
Speaker 3:But if they were able to exercise that creative muscle they might find a legal workaround that was acceptable to all parties, or they might invent a new way of handling income around the subscription product that hadn't existed before.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, test the waters to see how far they could push the limits around what's possible. But people have to want to do that. There has to be sort of an innate intention to activate that muscle and to think that they have the power to look for a solution. So to me, the first problem really often is creative self-confidence. But then the follow-on confidence related to that is whether or not permission needs to be granted for you to think creatively in any job you have, and I do think there are people who are biased against making waves, and that status quo bias is really the biggest hindrance to creative velocity, to really being able to access and repeatedly access your creative skills, and so that's one of the things I really hope to champion with the book is that you can do it personally, you can do it professionally, you can do it in any job. It really, though, has to be intrinsic motivation that makes you want to access and learn how to develop those muscles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting too because I look at the intersection there of what you're talking about, of this creative self-efficacy which I love that term as well as permission from the organization. It's almost this creative psychological safety that you're touching on within an organization is like creating the ability for someone to. You know, because I know the big buzzword right now is empowerment obviously right, but kind of what you're getting at gets at like a very distinct element of an empowerment, because I think empowerment can mean a lot of things to a lot of different organizations sometimes. But, like this is a very targeted thing of do your people have permission to be creative and have you coached them and mentored them to give them the creative self-confidence? So I think that's a.
Speaker 2:You know, I talked to a lot of leaders around. You know, hey, give me feedback on on what I can do with my teams better. Um, and and I I walk into a lot of rooms that you know, even if it's not an organization where they, you know they fire people or it's a cutthroat organization, there's still an underlying fear of pushing back on what came down from on high of you know, because it's, you know, somebody's baby, that project, that that kind of they've received, or the idea and like being able to kind of express that creativity. So I really like that. You know as a, as a challenge statement for people of you know, do you have that creative self-efficacy? And then you know, when you're coaching somebody up, you know how much of that is coachable. I guess of like repairing the confidence, getting the intrinsic motivation, versus how much of that is just showing someone like, hey, what's a like, let's talk like what's the problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's a couple of myths you have to bust to break through to get someone to be open to the idea. One of them is a lot of people think that creativity equals originality, and I'm here to say that, from 1790 to 2010, 77% of patents that were issued had two technology codes in them. Original is not the goal here. Right, it doesn't have to be original. Solving a problem that no one's solved before might come up with a novel solution. That's original. But that isn't the only definition of being creative, right, it's trying to. It's. When you see an obstacle, what are the ways to go around it? How do you figure out how to deal with it? Right, those are everyday versions of creative expression.
Speaker 2:One of the things on my team we talk about leaning into ambiguity and mastering the gray space and just not being afraid of it and being able to lean into it.
Speaker 2:And when I talk to designers and coach designers, sometimes you know the hardest design is the first wireframe.
Speaker 2:A lot of times I find and you know what I, and whether it's product or design, I tell people that you know sometimes if you're less worried about getting to yes and you're just you know, getting to the first couple of no's can be really valuable. I think, especially you know, in on the consulting side of things, you know we have to learn someone's business very quickly and I tell my clients, you know, the sooner that our insights from learning from your users intersect with your beliefs, that's when the real magic happens. So we're not going to give you a big research report at the end of it, but if I can put some wireframes and you can tell me what's wrong about them, like we can start bringing this thing to life together. And so you know, I think you know what's helped me most in my career is being able to recognize patterns, but then also just being wrong a lot, and also being able to take a no if you get it, but being able to ask the question and not anticipate the no right.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of times it's easy to write things off that you think are impossible, but they may be possible in ways you weren't open to originally. And I think that's the other part of this right. Is that the commitment to figuring something out in a way that maybe isn't immediately obvious to you and therefore it's worth a few minutes to go make that call. That's probably going to give you a no, but maybe it'll spawn some other idea that you had.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so that's the the part of it too, is I'm never afraid of the no. In fact, I look expecting that somebody at some point I'll hit the no, but if I don't ask then I'll definitely miss the yes. I'll definitely miss the solution.
Speaker 2:It's one of the things for product people too, because a lot of product folks they want to get on the phone with the business and ask them for their requirements, ask them what their needs are. And I always tell people like hey, there's a danger in asking someone a question they don't know the answer to, because they're going to feel pressured to give you an answer and now you're potentially locked in. But you don't know how confident or how passionate they were about that a lot of times. And especially with how fast technology is changing and AI is changing, you know the business is looking more and more for product to bring them ways to automate things, add intelligence, digitally, re-engineer things, you know, bring business process re-engineering.
Speaker 2:So really for me it was, you know, looking at the original Agile manifesto, which I think is still on, like the original GeoCities like website that was first launched on.
Speaker 2:But you know, just getting back to the basics of you know, agile was really about kind of discovery through sharing code with the business, frequently at its genesis.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes we've gotten away from you know, we've gotten into the BRD and the PRD and the product brief and the PRFAQ and our epics, features and stories and our wireframes and designs and I think sometimes we end up with so much artifacts that we lose a little of the ability to just get something in code, and it's okay to be a little bit wrong, but like bring it to life together as a team and using that as part of the creative act. And so, as you were talking through that, it kind of reminded me of like just getting back to the roots and the basics. Why would we remit you know because I know this is part of the book as well AI and product managers and creativity? Specifically Talk to me about how these things start to intersect and how that plays a role in the book, as well as with kind of the mentoring and what you're seeing from product teams right now.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. One of the things that works really well with AI are structured frameworks right and structured techniques, and the nice thing about the things that I cover in the book is there are many examples of when you could take one of these structured techniques and co-create with AI. So if you're not really yourself able to ideate, but you have an understanding of these techniques, then it actually puts the right type of frame around the conversation with AI, because without it, sometimes the way that AI might respond could be so expansive. It's hard to focus that are random and potentially less valuable, the same as other ones that are on point, and so you have to spend a lot of time parsing through what's useful out of the output, and so one of the things I recommend in the book and I provide in the book are structured tips, frameworks for people to practice these techniques before they even try them themselves, by working with generative AI, to actually understand what could emerge when you use them, what are the ways that you might see, and when I wrote the book and I did some of the exercises at the end of the chapters I would put them into AI to see how AI would tackle them. What would AI do, and it was interesting because it still required a lot of discernment on my part, even using a structured framework, because there really isn't a good sense of relevance or meaning in the answers that AI generates, and so there's some nonsense that comes out, and there's some habits that AI has where it deems certain information as trivial and decides to ignore it, even if it's part of what the prompt included. And so it's so important that you don't outsource that creativity to generative AI, but that you partner, that it's a collaboration, that you look back and say why did you think that I don't see that point or you're missing this fact?
Speaker 3:I created a logic puzzle in one of the chapters where it lists like 15 facts and then the question is like who lives in the red house? You know, after all of that, you have to do all this inference and things, and the first time it came back with an answer it ignored for no reason, it could explain three facts, three facts completely and came up with the wrong answer. And I asked like why did you ignore those facts? Why did you do that? Can you rerun the problem? And you're like oh, I'm sorry, you're right, it ran it again and ignored two different facts. I don't know why it picked what it picked and I don't know why it did it, but both times it came up with a different answer than I did. Since I wrote the puzzle, I knew what the answer was and I said why can't the so-and-so live in the red house? Why isn't that the case?
Speaker 3:And it ran through it and said oh my gosh you're absolutely right, and then it used each fact to express the point was proven, but in the first two tries it ignored facts randomly, and so, while it's helpful to partner for ideation, you have to bring a certain amount of discernment, both in terms of relevance and meaning, but also in terms of source, material and biases, right.
Speaker 3:In that case it had a cognitive bias to treat all facts as unequal. I don't know why, but it did, and so I think in the practice of these things, you have to keep your relationship with AI on a level playing field. It can't be the authority that provides you output that you run with. It has to be the prompt comes back to you to think of something else right, to iterate on that idea, to ask a different question, or to ask the question in a different way to see if the answer still holds, and so you can't just sort of outsource that process just because you have a structured framework. You have to engage in it, but the framework gives you sort of a lesson plan, if you will, for how to navigate through the discussion and to stay focused on the key elements that are most important. So there's a number of those techniques in the book synecdochs, scamper, things like that that can really help people navigate the unknown, with the bandwidth and authority aside, with just different resources bringing ideas to the table.
Speaker 2:I think what you laid out there is really interesting because it's using AI in different modes, right when I think sometimes with business people are looking at AI for automation potentially replacing roles. I think the second one a lot of looking at AI for automation potentially replacing roles. I think the second one a lot of people use is AI as an assistant. That's kind of that chatbot use case and I call it. It's a thin layer on Google. They're saving themselves 20 or 30 Google searches to kind of draft something, and also because you can post the form.
Speaker 3:Your prompt can get so much more effective response than it can if you put that same thing into a search box.
Speaker 2:Exactly 100%, but you're kind of hitting on a third one, which is, you know, using AI as almost a coach to structure, help structure your thinking and challenge your thinking. And there's an interesting study. Philip Tetlock, who wrote Super Forecasters, had kind of said hey, can you know, ai can't beat humans at forecasting, but what it can is help train people how to forecast better by structuring their thinking. And you're kind of describing the same thing here, which is, you know, as a product person, think about using some of these prompts and some of these templates to, just again, we're strengthening that muscle. And if you look at going to your job as playing in the game, this is a chance to practice. But it's a chance to look at things different.
Speaker 2:I know I've used it to do competitive analysis, come up with potential features, come up with naming conventions for those features, write sample PRFAQs for product ideas, product briefs, and use it for a lot of these different use cases just to shape my thinking.
Speaker 2:Again, it's never a final deliverable for me, it's always kind of an interim thing, but it gives me different vantage points and looking at a problem that I might not. And then also, you know when you're. You know, product people are nothing if not busy, I think, even doing some of that work that you wouldn't normally be able to do very quickly, even if it's not perfect, it's better than nothing and it's, you know, like having it's previewing a conversation with a group and it's just sharpening your thinking, as long as you use it right. And I think I go back to the favorite exercises of inversion thinking, and even the story you told in the beginning of how you wrote this book is don't just use it to kind of confirm and follow the path that you're always on Like, use it to to explore the paths not taken potentially and get some of those counterfactuals and analogs and some of the things you might not do. So I really liked that as an example, yeah.
Speaker 3:And also one other thing that it really helps me do when I use it is you know I have a we all do. We all have a lot of cognitive biases. I have no problem making a fast decision, but a fast decision might also bypass a lot of inputs, right, and so some of the biases that we've built are there to help us get through the day, but they also may shortcut our thinking on a problem, and so when I put the problem set into AI or describe the problem, I'm really careful what words I use too, so that I don't define the answer I want in the question I'm asking.
Speaker 2:You know, if you could give them one or two examples of like something that in a normal product manager's day job they might be experiencing right now, that they could go try tomorrow for a problem they might be facing, outside of some of the stuff, the awesome advice you've already offered, what would you point them towards and recommend?
Speaker 3:Well, one of the first things that I recommend that people do who are really looking to expand their creative capacity is to understand their personal triggers. What are the things they do that inspire them? What are the things they do that get them into a flow state? Because if you know those things, you can more intentionally use them to activate your creative capacity. Maybe it's a long walk in the woods or a good run. In my case, sometimes a hot shower is all I need to really shake up my mind and open it to new possibilities. Whatever that is that you do that makes you feel most inspired is the thing you want to replicate when you're facing a problem. You want to actually call upon those techniques that create a state of flow and allow you to bring things from your subconscious mind to your conscious mind. That maybe makes it easier for you to connect the dots. Just fine, that maybe makes it easier for you to connect the dots.
Speaker 3:The next thing I would suggest is that people take the time to be naturally curious. Go on adventures, read books you wouldn't normally read. Go talk to people with experiences that are different than yours. The more you can be naturally curious, the more you learn and the more data that you have to apply to problems and challenges that you face. Finally, I would suggest that you practice emotional regulation, otherwise known as equanimity. If you do that, you become less attached to your first solution and less emotional about criticism of it. You're more likely to have psychological distance allowing you to look in unusual places for novel solutions. When you can control your emotions, you're more likely to be open to new solutions and possibilities that you hadn't considered before, and less likely to defend ground you hold dear.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, that is our episode of Build. What's Next? We appreciate you joining us today. Leslie Really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation. I really appreciate it, Jason.
Speaker 2:I think a lot that's actionable for product folks out there, especially knowing that you know Gen AI. You know might not be writing all your user stories or taking your job anytime soon, but it can be something that can help with your creative self-efficacy and take you forward. So thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Build what's Next Digital Product Perspectives. If you would like to know more about how Method can partner with you and your organization, you can find more information at methodcom. Also, don't forget to follow us on social and be sure to check out our monthly tech talks. You can find those on our website. And finally, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. We'll see you next time you.