post

Footer About

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

General

Product Unplugged Episode 3 with Pierce Healy

Product Unplugged Episode 2 with Lorilyn McCue

Product Strategy

Building Product Teams

Diversity and Inclusion

Digital Transformation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Ethics

Minimum Viable Product

Enterprise Product Management

OKRs

Customer Research

Hypothesis and Testing

Business Strategy

User Research

👩‍🚀🚀   Live now for MTP members: <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/membership/#events" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Driving Innovation AMA with Tendayi Viki</a>

Roadmaps: Break the rules without breaking the principles

Got questions about your product career?

Product roadmaps vs data – Jeremy Levy on The Product Experience

From engineering to product management at Google

Mind the Product joins Pendo

Eira is an editor for Mind the Product. She's been a business journalist, editor, and copywriter for longer than she cares to think about.

Eira Hayward

<p>In this <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/mtpcon/london/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#mtpcon London+EMEA</a> keynote Georgie Smallwood, CPO at Tier Mobility, explains why an understanding of outcomes and impacts are essential to successful product management.</p>
<h3>In brief:</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Outcomes are an important component of a successful business, along with strategy, purpose, and skills.</strong></li>
<li><strong>What we want to deliver is impact &#8211; if there’s a great roadmap, great strategy and great purpose but no impact, then you’re going nowhere.</strong></li>
<li><strong>“The way” is very important but not discussed much. It means things like context, principles and values which contribute to a successful business.</strong></li>
<li><strong>A product manager or leader should be clear on the way in order to deliver successful initiatives that have an impact on the company’s outcomes.</strong></li>
<li><strong>Anyone can be a leader, but a great leader is someone who can set a clear way of operating for the people in the organisation.</strong></li>
</ul>
<h2>Getting the outcomes you want</h2>
<p>A perfect roadmap doesn’t necessarily mean you get the outcomes you want to achieve, she says. In life, we do something to get somewhere or something, or someone, and in product we call this value which manifests as a solution &#8211; customers use a product to buy a pair of shoes, find somewhere to work and so on. Businesses build products for the same reasons &#8211; higher customer lifetime value, new target users and so on. Outcomes are created and depend on what we’re trying to achieve and how we’re trying to achieve it.</p>
<h2>What is an outcome?</h2>
<p>Outcomes are defined by indicators that are measurable by the team, says Georgie, so they are measurable for the user and measurable for the business. They’re not solution dependent and they focus on solving the problem. She says an outcome isn’t a revenue goal or a product &#8211; an outcome for a fintech would be 60% of users making 10 transactions in 35 days, and for a mobility business like Tier it might be 80% of first-time riders riding again within 72 hours.</p>
<p>Georgie then looks at the components that make up a successful business. Many companies think they will be successful with initiatives or good roadmaps, but this often results in feature teams, and a feature team is not well placed to work towards good outcomes. “But then companies realise that, to define the right initiatives, they need a strategy,” says Georgie, but purpose should be at the heart of the business. “Sometimes this is very clear in companies, but sometimes it needs a bit of work.  Either way, you need a clear purpose and it needs to be true. If the purpose is inauthentic or fake it won’t work.” You should ask if you have the skills and capabilities within the company to be successful. For more on this see Georgie&#8217;s presentation <a href="http://Product Tetris – The Ultimate Game of Leadership" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Product Tetris – The ultimate game of leadership</a>.</p>
<h2>It’s all about the impact</h2>
<p>Georgie jokes that she should rename the presentation “it’s all about the impact”. She says: “Let&#8217;s face it, that’s why we’re all in product. We want to deliver value, we want to deliver impact.”</p>
<p>What we want is impact, she says &#8211; if there’s a great roadmap, great strategy and great purpose but no impact, then you’re going nowhere.</p>
<p>But we don’t often discuss “the way” that we do things, this means things like context, principles and values, says Georgie. All of these are crucial in understanding where to start. If we skip the way we want to do things we end up with what Georgie calls “busy chaos” and not a lot of impact. It doesn’t scale, and great outcomes come from doing fewer things better.  The reason the much-imitated Spotify model works for the company is because the way is clear, and the reason it fails when imitators try to copy it is because the way &#8211; context, principles and values &#8211; isn’t clear.</p>
<p>As a product manager or leader, you should be clear on the way so that you can deliver successful initiatives that have an impact on the company’s outcomes. Anyone can be a leader, but a great leader is someone who can set a clear way of operating for the people in the organisation.</p>
<h2>Tools and tips</h2>
<p>Georgie finishes her presentation by suggesting some resources that address some important elements for the way.</p>
<ul>
<li>Company values  &#8211; <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-Way-Hewlett-Business-Essentials/dp/0060845791">The HP Way by David Packard</a></li>
<li>Clarity on who makes decisions &#8211;  6 decision-making frameworks, <a href="https://review.firstround.com/">review.firstround.com</a></li>
<li>Product or design principles &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGECYWTDfNU">Megan Murphy, VP of Product at Hotjar</a>, has created a series of videos</li>
<li>Across company prioritisation against company outcomes &#8211; Decision prioritisation frameworks by<a href="https://productschool.com/"> Productschool.com</a></li>
<li>Success metrics for each team and reporting on those metrics &#8211; <a href="https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/defining-product-success-metrics-and-goals">Defining product success metrics </a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Explore more content like this</h2>
<p>Browse even more <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/category/product-strategy/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener">product strategy</a> content or use our<a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/content-a-z/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener"> Content A-Z</a> to find specific topics of interest.</p>
<p>As a Mind the Product member, you can also check out more<a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/tag/mtpcon/" target="”_blank”" rel="”noopener” noopener"> #mtpcon video content</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="g g-21"><div class="g-single a-75"><a class="gofollow" data-track="NzUsMjEsMSw2MA==" href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/product-management-training/public-workshops/"><img decoding="async" src="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/General-Training-Level-up-FOOTER-scaled.jpg" /></a></div></div>

core/freeform

Product Unplugged Episode 1 with Thor Mitchell

It’s all about the outcome by Georgie Smallwood

Self-care and stress management for product leaders by Dominique Jost

Empowered Teams and Decision Agility

Hacking Confidence by Janice Fraser

Scaling Product Teams: In Defense of Process by Spectra (Adaora) Asala

Great User Research (for Non-Researchers) by Steve Portigal

You Don’t Own the Voice of the Customer by Tricia Wang

ProductTank Columbus

ProductTank Tauranga

ProductTank Edinburgh

Prioritised Member AMA - Perfecting product roadmaps

ProductTank San Diego

Navigating difficult relationships panel

ProductTank Philadelphia

ProductTank Bucharest

ProductTank NoVa

Remote Training Workshops

ProductTank London

ProductTank Birmingham

ProductTank Oslo

ProductTank Astana

ProductTank NoVA

ProductTank Bratislava

ProductTank New York

ProductTank Kansas City

ProductTank Orlando

ProductTank Dallas

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Belgrade

ProductTank Madrid

ProductTank Leeds

ProductTank Zürich

ProductTank Perth

ProductTank Chicago

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Richmond

ProductTank Charlotte

ProductTank Reston

ProductTank Washington

ProductTank Sofia

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Ljubljana

ProductTank Kraków

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Dublin

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Bogotá

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Madison

ProductTank Singapore

ProductTank Portland

ProductTank Budapest

ProductTank Porto

ProductTank Austin

ProductTank Los Angeles

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Des Moines

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Helsinki

ProductTank Reading

ProductTank Brighton

ProductTank Valencia

ProductTank Bielefeld

ProductTank Malmö

ProductTank Canberra

ProductTank Manchester

#mtpcon SF+Americas 2022 Conference

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Leadership Forum

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Workshops

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Conference

#mtpcon London+EMEA 2022 Conference