Giff is a phenomenal product thinker who’s done a ton to advance the discipline. As a founder, executive, professor and author, Giff’s established and shared best practices that have helped shape the work we all do as PMs. In this fireside chat with Meetup Fmr CPO Giff Constable, he discusses his career and biggest learnings, and shares takes on hot topics in Product including AI, methodologies, and anything else you want to discuss.
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Show Notes:
- Listen to different stakeholders like customer success, support, and engineering to detect underlying business issues.
- Create a strategic roadmap to address lack of direction and build trust between teams.
- Prioritize strategic goals and decision-making principles to provide clear product priorities.
- Consider how revenue models impact customer and team behaviors.
- Explicitly connect strategic elements to business goals when presenting strategies.
- Address team issues directly while clarifying your message and intentions.
- Acknowledge difficult situations rather than pretending everything is fine.
- Improve team communication and clarify why changes are happening.
- Consider fundamental business model and incentive issues that could stall growth.
- Ask indirect questions of different stakeholders to understand struggles and opportunities.
- Build diverse customer research beyond focus groups to gain deeper insights.
- Prioritize a small number of key questions in customer interviews.
- Ask many follow up questions in interviews to dig deeper.
- Build long term relationships and trust with customers.
- Consider CEO and executive concerns based on past experiences.
- Teach financial fluency to help product leaders overcome barriers.
- Share insights through channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, and teaching classes.
- Embrace the humanity in managing change and collaboration.
- Challenge assumptions, especially as a new leader.
- Lead through influence as CPO rather than direct control.
About the speaker
Giff was the Chief Product Officer at Meetup, CEO of the innovation consulting company Neo, and has held product executive roles at both startup and growth stage companies. He currently teaches several product leadership classes on Maven. He is the author of Talking to Humans and Testing with Humans, both used as core curriculum for entrepreneurship and product classes at universities and accelerator programs around the world.
About the host
I'm a product leader focused on delivering exceptional client value by building quality software and engaged teams. I love talking to users about their problems and working with new PMs to grow their careers. I live in Brooklyn, NY with my spouse. Outside of work I love traveling, cooking, and following Philadelphia sports.