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4 Reasons Why I Still Wake Up at 4:22 A.M.

Posted on November 14, 2016 by affronti

Photo by flickr user FotoArt MB

This originally appeared on my column at Inc.com on 10/27/2016.

I love waking up when it’s still dark out. I feel the most productive when I can get several things done before most of the world is even awake. Eighteen months ago, I wrote a post about why I do that, called “Why I Wake Up at 4:22 A.M.,” and the response I received from readers all over the world was incredible.

I was talking last month to one such reader about how he could make some small changes in his morning habits to increase his productivity. The first question he asked me, however, was “Are you still waking up that early?”

A lot has changed in my personal and professional life over the last year and a half–I’m traveling more for work, my job has changed in scope as our company has grown, and I have several new responsibilities. Through all of this change, one of my most important constants is that I still wake up at 4:22 each morning.

Why?

Many people I encounter are a mixture of impressed and confused, or scared, by the fact I spring out of bed when most everyone else is still sleeping. But I actually find it pretty easy to get out of bed that early. That’s because I’ve discovered that determination and commitment to regimens are crucial–even during times of change.

1. I’ve recognized that things have changed

Since I published the piece referenced at the top of this article, Fuze has changed significantly. The company’s grown. My team has grown. I have more direct reports. The list goes on.

Throughout all that, I’ve kept my center by staying healthy, starting my day off right, and dedicating even more of my time to planning to make sure everything is as smooth as it can be.

Remember, having more or different responsibilities doesn’t mean you have to change what got you where you are.

2. I’ve embraced my constants

While a number of things have changed in my life since March 2015, there are a lot of things that haven’t. I still wake up at the same time–something I’ve been doing for more than a decade.

I find that the early morning hours are incredibly productive. Although my day-to-day roles and duties have changed, I’ve kept my early-morning hours free to devote the peaceful time to free thought. I also use my mornings to catch up on industry news and find out what our competitors are up to. I still vacuum twice a week. There’s also time for nonwork stuff, too. I’m still doing CrossFit every day at 6 a.m. and have started running on Friday mornings in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

3. I’ve learned to be adaptable

I spend my days running the product management team at Fuze here in NYC. I also spend about half the month traveling, to our headquarters in Boston as well as our various customers and sales offices around the world. During normal work hours, I don’t have time to just sit down and write anymore.

Rather than accepting that reality, I’ve chosen to be proactive in the early mornings. I use the time to write position papers, do competitive analysis, and try new products. I also do a considerable amount of planning, using Evernote to catch ideas that relate to product strategy. Once I make it to the office, I cue up what I’ve found and discuss it further with my team.

One of the biggest changes I’ve had to adapt to is the fact that I travel a lot more. Despite long flights and changes in time zones–think landing in Europe at 10 p.m. local time–I still force myself to wake up early and exercise.

You might think it’s a little obsessive to only book hotels that are within running distance to a CrossFit gym. I have found that no hack for fighting jetlag works better than taking a melatonin to get a deep sleep upon arriving, and then forcing myself to go to a 6 o’clock class the next morning. With a little bit of planning, you’re much more likely to work out and stick to your schedule. Your body remembers the pattern and starts to boot up much more quickly than if you’d given in to your jetlag and stayed in bed.

4. I know that staying healthy makes me happy

The bottom line is that no matter what comes your way or what changes in your personal or professional life, you need to take care of yourself. You need to take time for yourself and your job that allows you to plan better and become a more effective leader.

So many of us deal with changes by adjusting our whole routines. But, it turns out, sticking to some parts of your original regimen will help you adapt to the changes you face. There’s no sense in changing your entire life around just because you had a change in your life or job. Stick to what got you where you are, and chances are it’ll take you even further.

What do Tesla and Fuze Have in Common? A Look at Disruption in the Communications and Automotive Industries

Posted on October 25, 2016 by affronti

Originally posted on the Fuze blog on Tue Oct 25.

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With user experience at the center of decision making, companies reimagine what’s possible

It’s tough to deny the appeal of the Tesla brand, whether as a technology lover like me or simply because of the name it has made for itself as an innovative force in the automotive industry. From its look and feel to the fact that it’s all-electric, the entire experience is captivating. For this and many more reasons, the company has cultivated an impressive following. After recently hosting events at local dealerships to invite Tesla lovers to get to know Fuze a bit better, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between how the two brands are challenging the status quo and all that we’ve come to know about driving and communication.

Though the similarities may not be immediately apparent, they embody what any brand hopes to achieve when marketintelligence meets market opportunity. When you take great pains to capitalize on the intersection of these two critical elements – and when you are passionate about putting experience at the heart of your product from concept to deployment – everybody wins.

Here’s what we stand to learn from companies that are bold enough to shake things up:

The need to anticipate market shifts.

Tesla moved the needle on the electric car industry at a time before demand was certain. In just three years, the global electric car market moved from selling just 12,000 electric cars to selling one million vehicles. Tesla tapped into a real need by betting on electric cars and getting it right. Timing is on Elon Musk’s side.

The time is also right for companies to consider the move to UCaaS. In 2015, market growth hit an all-time high, but even still UCaaS has less than 10 percent market penetration. Market share is expected to grow by a factor of almost 6x by 2020 – up to 40 percent – and forward-looking companies will want to make the move ahead of the competition to take advantage sooner. Much like Tesla sensed the market’s openness to electric cars before it became more widespread, innovative communication companies will be wise to observe shifting preferences for how teams wish to communicate in today’s modern business setting.

Putting user experience at the forefront.

In my mind, the fact that a Tesla Model S is an electric car is the least interesting part of its value. Those that have purchased the car for this attribute in particular will disagree, but what piques my interest is how it feels to sit in the driver’s seat. After taking a test drive, it’s not hard to imagine how a Tesla owner might approach travel in a completely new way. With a large touch screen panel, drivers can scan their route and quickly map out steps throughout a trip much as they would on their mobile device. All of this functionality is intuitive. They barely have to process their actions. It’s a natural extension of what they do at work or at home, blending technology preferences with driving behavior in ways never before experienced.

Likewise, messaging, video, and voice should function intuitively in the business setting. Up until recently, the experience has been clunky and required use of many different platforms – both sanctioned by IT and not. By simplifying that process, UC vendors can allow users to focus on the equivalent of hitting the road: improving collaboration and outcomes.

Steer your course with data on the dashboard.

Tesla’s dashboard takes the guesswork out of everything. If you’re going on a road trip, you can enter your destination in the center console and the car will take it from there. It can tell you where to charge up, how to optimize your route, and which sites are worth seeing along the way. Contextual information enhances the overall experience.

For workers – salespeople, in particular – contextual data can also make their journey smooth. With the right unified communications platform, they can gain insights about a prospect from previous touch points, purchase decision behavior, even social media activity, all available at their fingertips. The right application gives sales teams the right information to move along a conversation and get closer to closing a deal.

Be it transportation or communication, the confidence in knowing something just works is the Holy Grail of a positive experience. Experts will want to know how the gears turn, but most won’t be concerned with understanding how the backend supports the frontend. All that matters is that it runs well when we need it to. We build trust and confidence when it does. With the user experience at the center of innovation, all industries stand to benefit. The companies that lead the way will make their mark by changing the way people work and play.

How I Stay Productive in 8hrs of Video Meetings

Posted on July 19, 2016 by affronti

Photo by wikipedia user Raysonho

Videoconferencing is revolutionary.

It allows people in the East Village to connect with international colleagues in real time—not only hearing what they have to say, but also seeing how they gesticulate when they’re talking. Seeing as though much of human communication is nonverbal, this is nothing to take lightly.

Check out the full post on my Inc.com column.

5 Design Lessons You Can Use to Make Any Part of Your Company Beautiful (and User-Friendly)

Posted on July 5, 2016 by affronti

The appification of everything has made everyone an early adopter.

That being the case, companies cannot afford to let the user experience of their apps, services, IT admin portals, their website – or anything else for that matter – suffer as they go about building their products.

Companies that build apps and sell B2B products often get bogged down in the sale, shifting their focus to the next customer instead of understanding how they can make existing relationships even stronger.

Instead of following that path, companies would be wise to take a step back and first realize the importance of specifically focusing on the design functions of other areas of the company.

Luckily, by taking a holistic look at the user experience at every level and understanding the design process, companies can ensure each facet of their operations is fortified. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five design lessons that can take your company to the next level.

The most important lesson to learn from design is the power of clearly defining your audience.

Fuze went on a mission to focus on who used our products and which ones they used. At the highest level, we validated that our users work in several disciplines (sales, marketing, support) at medium and large companies. But we needed to dig deeper and find out more about our audience. What is a day in the life of the average user like? Why, specifically, will they be using our products? Why do they use our apps instead of our competitors or consumer apps?

The more thoroughly you answer these questions, the easier it will be for you to solve your customers’ problems effectively.

Make Sure That Your Entire Team Is On the Same Page

It’s certainly not difficult to get caught up in over-designing a solution to technology problems. But whether it’s revamping internal IT systems for billing and auditing or recreating a new feature, you need to be listening to the people who interface with use it directly. They’re the ones who understand best how the product works and how it can be improved through your design.

At Fuze, we recently looked at ways to build more self-service into our new customer onboarding process. Our product team spent several days watching over the shoulders of the engineers that work directly on the onboarding process, given us a much deeper understanding of their pain points and what opportunities there are to improve the process.

Use Metrics That Will Actually Tell You How Your Customers Are Using the Product

It is critical to track KPIs to determine precisely how engaged your users are. This data can help you determine, among other things, whether your users are coming back—and if not, why.

Consumer apps do this in every part of their app. Top-tier consumer apps like Instagram and Facebook meticulously study their engagement funnels and onboarding. Instagram tries to think about the way users actually use the app and where they get delight. You can apply these concepts to every type of product at your company. For example, at Fuze we track metrics like “Total messages sent and received”, “Total phone vs. video calls”, “Time to start a meeting”, and many others.

Similarly, you can use a net promoter score (NPS) during your users flows to determine how well, on a scale of 1 to 10, an interaction went. You can combine this with engagement data from Mixpanel to gauge whether people are happy with your product. Those who aren’t will go somewhere else to find a better experience. You need to understand why.

Get all Employees Involved

When we went through the rebrand of ThinkingPhones to Fuze, our design team built an internal website to allow anyone in the company to understand and interact with the new corporate language and logo. This site also went into detail as to why the rebrand was occurring in the first place.

The end result? Employees felt as though they were involved in the rebranding process and that their opinions and ideas mattered.

Craft a Personality

In the world of enterprise software, we often don’t think about the voice of the product.

Building a product personality allows people to interact with it. To determine the voice of your product, ask yourself what the application does and what kind of tools it uses.

Because voice comes from language, tone, and personality, everything from billing invoices to the language in your mobile app updates are opportunities to drive up emotional engagement with your users. In Fuze’s case, we build and test things like the audio conferencing tone people hear when waiting to join a Fuze meeting. This enables us to provide a better, more wholesome experience that drives user engagement and delight with our products.

Takeaway

At Fuze, the fundamental principles of design impact everything we do as a company across all of our business units. It’s no longer just about designing a good product anymore. Everything your company designs—from internal tools to websites and everything in between—needs to be exceptional, too.

Check out the full post on my Inc.com column.

How to Smoothly Transition from Project to Product Management

Posted on May 11, 2016 by affronti

Screenshot 2016-05-11 14.59.16

The Fuze Product Management team has grown a lot in the last year. I recently shared a slide at our weekly all-hands meeting that showed our team’s growth mapped out over the last 14 months. It was really cool to see the mix of people that joined via hiring, networking, acquisitions, and internal transitions.

Over those last 14 months, several of our Product Managers transitioned over from the Technical Product Ownership role we have in our engineering teams. Now, they are all amazing PM’s because of their deep technical knowledge and keen understanding of our engineering teams. More importantly, all of them transitioned over after having “lived the PM life” in addition to their TPO responsibilities. In almost every case this dual-role happened because of the lack of a Product Manager in their area combined with their own desires to interact with customers and create solutions for them.

If you’re working in project management or technical product ownership, making the switch to a product management role might seem overwhelming due to the various differences. While change can be difficult, it doesn’t have to be completely jarring. The most effective way to make the transition is to experience the key aspects of product management in your current job.

You may already be dealing with some product management responsibilities in your current role. If you are, then you’re already a step towards gaining fluency. If you’re not familiar with any product management behaviors, then you’ll need to gain as much experience as possible.

Granted, there’s a lot to know about product management. So here are a few things that might help you learn before deciding to make the career switch.

Always Learn from Customers

One of the best ways to prepare yourself for a product management job is work towards becoming a consumer advocate. To do this, you’ll need to get out of the office and interact with customers. Having informal discussions with customers will give you insight that you could never gain from your coworkers.

During these talks, you’ll get a good idea of what your customers are like and what they need. Pay special attention to their challenges in order to find solutions that could benefit them. Being able to deliver on customers’ needs will make you invaluable in product management.

Get In-Depth Knowledge

Before you switch jobs, take the time to get extensive knowledge about the product you’re working on. Immerse yourself in the market (including the competition) whenever you get a free moment. To get a really good feel for the product, participate in a teardown to get an invaluable look at what you’re working with.

Knowing everything about the product is important, but so is learning about the shelves. Learn about how the products are packaged and the prices.

Learn from Others

A smart method to gain some knowledge about product management while still working your current job is to sit in on an interview. A product management interviewer might be happy to let you join an interview and see what sort of questions are asked of candidates.

At some point, ask the manager for a mock interview to see how your fluency is coming along.

Try What You’ve Learned

Don’t be afraid to test yourself in everything that you’ve learned, try to create something practical. Design something based on your customer conversations, interviews, and personal research. This can be anything from new features to minor enhancements that could make the product better.

Once you fully enter the field you’ll have more time to participate in this process, but for now it’s a great exercise to see what you’ve learned. Simply sketching or spec’ing these changes is useful. Even if none of these preliminary ideas are likely to make the final cut, you’ll be glad that you started thinking creatively.

Tying it all Together

It’ll take some time and a willingness to learn in order to make a smooth transition into product management, but the results will be worth it.

If transitioning to a product management role, you want to be able to hit the ground running in your new position. To do that, you’ll need to wrap your head around some of these concepts and strategies while working your existing job. It’s certainly not easy, but with a little creativity and effort it can be done.

#UCExpo Series: A Q&A with Michael Affronti

Posted on April 20, 2016 by affronti

This was originally posted on the Fuze corporate blog on Tue Apr 19.

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We sat down with Michael Affronti, VP of Product for Fuze, to dig deeper into the “appification” of the enterprise ahead of his upcoming session at the UC Expo in London.

Attending the show? Click here to check out Michael’s conference session.

How have you seen the industry shift to address more user-centric technology? What have companies gotten wrong when it comes to applying this thinking to new innovation?

Several years ago the phrase “Consumerization of IT” caught on as early-adopters inside of companies were pushing IT to adopt new products and services. It then became “Consumerization of the Enterprise” as it extended beyond the IT function and into the everyday apps and services used by every information worker (IW). IWs spend nearly 65 percent of their time at work communicating and only a fraction of that time (20 percent) creating and editing content.

Smart companies embrace a BYOD philosophy, while picking the right tools for core collaboration scenarios. It is great to allow your teams to bring their own mobile phones to work, but having their work communication scattered across a smattering of consumer tools is both inefficient and dangerous. The smartest companies look at what and why their employees are doing with consumer apps and then bring in the right enterprise-grade tools to be used in place of them.

Fuze recently conducted research in Europe, indicating that two-thirds of those surveyed thought workplace technology needed to catch up with personal technology. What can businesses learn from user preferences outside of work?

The “appification” of consumer services has now fully bled over to the enterprise. The pattern that a user employs at home is what they expect to happen at work: if their work tools don’t provide the right functionality, they will just find an app in the app store that does the job. It used to be the case that only a handful of companies, usually small/medium-sized businesses, allowed for users to bring their own devices and use their own apps. We’re now seeing financial firms and healthcare companies moving services to the cloud and allowing for their teams to use more and more modern apps. This is often in conjunction with a mobile device management strategy.

This sounds like a BYOD issue. What should employers keep in mind when navigating unsanctioned app usage in the modern workforce?

Having a clear and enforceable BYOD strategy is important. Even more critical is deploying apps and services that your employees actually want to use. If you roll out poorly designed apps, your users will vote with their feet and find a way to use the apps they love (even if they’re consumer-based and insecure). I’ve even seen users rubber-band two iPhones back to back – one locked down too tightly by their company, the other a personal device where they use WhatsApp to talk to their co-workers!

How can companies support the modern worker to be more collaborative by using technology?

Listen to your workers! Ask them about their favorite apps and find out why they’re using them. This will directly impact your rollout plan for introducing new apps and help you communicate it in a way that will be receptive to teams. Next, find out what line of business apps they want linked into their new apps. A critical part of rolling out new collaboration tools is having them connected into the important systems they use on a daily basis.

If you’re heading to UC Expo, come visit us at stand H805 and learn more about our presence here.

What to Look for When Hiring a Product Manager

Posted on February 10, 2016 by affronti

Screenshot 2016-02-10 08.05.23

Product managers can make or break organizations, which is why hiring managers must spend time landing the most talented PMs. Great hires help their companies level-up.

So, what exactly should you look for in a PM?

When I’m hiring, I look for candidates who are what I call “smart chameleons.”

These people immediately impact a particular product. They adapt quickly and efficiently whenever new ideas or initiatives emerge.

To this end, a candidate’s experience—alongside examples that demonstrate his or her ability to adapt—are the key qualifications that I explore during the interview process.

No One is Born a PM

A master blacksmith teaches an apprentice how to shape metals. Similarly, PMs need to get their hands dirty while on the job to learn their craft.

At Fuze, we typically hire PMs with at least three years of experience. It’s great when that experience comes from places known for producing great PMs, like big software companies that have established PM disciplines and training programs. Amazing PMs can also come from medium-sized tech firms and often have very cool and interesting backgrounds that led them to Product Management.

Some of the best Product Managers I’ve worked with have the most amazingly diverse backgrounds: an art history major, a finance manager, and once even an astrophysicist. You can also often find great PMs inside of Sales and Sales Engineering teams; they often have amazing customer empathy given the amount of interactions they have with them.

I also seek candidates with relevant domain experience to our industry and technology. It simplifies the onboarding process when new hires have a basic understanding of our tech, B2B sales, and enterprise platforms from the beginning.

Adaptability

Anyone who’s worked in the startup world knows how quickly things change. PMs need to be versatile enough to keep pace with those changes.

During the hiring process, I ask candidates to provide examples about how they’ve shipped their products. More specifically, I ask candidates to describe times when they had to get creative to ship something. Maybe they had to deal with missing information. Maybe there was no existing process. Maybe they were competing for resources.

Whatever the case may be, the more creative the candidate’s response, the more likely we are to proceed to the next round of interviews.

Great PMs Empathize with Customers

Those who know me have heard me talk about how important customer empathy is for a PM. Let’s reiterate.

When I’m hiring, I look for candidates who have extensive experience talking to customers. I seek out people who can provide examples of turning those interactions into products and feature improvements.

Empathy is one of the most important skills for anyone in any industry. Candidates who can place themselves in their customers’ shoes and see problems (and solutions) from their perspectives tend to succeed in PM roles.

Communication Skills are Critical

If candidates can’t communicate effectively, how can you expect them to ship on time?

One part of our Fuze interview process involves homework. We give candidates an assignment and ask them to present their response to us. Topics change periodically, but they always focus on a real business challenge that we’re facing.

Forcing candidates to prepare presentations in a relatively short period of time is a great way to ascertain how well they think on their feet and whether they can communicate content clearly and concisely.

Thanks to this component of our interview process, we can gauge whether candidates have the communication skills that are necessary to thrive.

Although different candidates appeal to different companies, strong PMs will be experienced and quick on their feet. They are empathetic and communicative. Keep this in mind and with luck you’ll make amazing new hires.

For more on the topic, check out Steven Sinofsky’s post on hiring your first PM.

Why Face-to-Face Meetings Are Essential For Distributed Teams

Posted on January 4, 2016 by affronti

Image by Flickr user heisenbergmedia

It’s easy (but wrong) to avoid in-person meetings.

It’s especially easy if you work in remote teams and don’t have all of your coworkers or peers nearby. While it’s expensive and logistically difficult to bring distributed teams together, you need to.

There are serious benefits to in-person communication. I believe it’s the only way to align your team with your business’ strategic objectives. It’s also the best way for your team members to feel connected with one another.

Our Product and Engineering organizations at ThinkingPhones is spread across four different cities. Here’s how, when, and why we bake physical meetings into our team’s schedule.

Start with Video

To bridge the physical gap with our coworkers, we use video conferencing. It’s the only acceptable alternative to meeting face-to-face.

Video makes remote working way more efficient than just using texting or a conference call. Effective, to us, is a measurable reduction of time in meetings and increased engagement in the actual meeting content. Video helps us do both those things.

We use Fuze, a video collaboration product of ours. I use it for 90% of my remote meetings.

If your teams are spread out, make video meetings a requirement.

Get on the Calendar

Put scheduled meetings into a calendar so all participants don’t miss or forget anything. It sounds simple, but it makes a difference.

My directors and I get together every four weeks for a leadership meeting. We do it in-person and rotate which office hosts the meeting. Besides getting together, we also prepare. We keep a rolling agenda in a Google Doc. If we have something new to brainstorm, we add it.

By sharing an ever-evolving agenda, we get important items out of our email and in front of our team. It’s reduced my stress levels a lot.

Now, we’re experimenting with something new: Breather spaces. Vacating the office lets us physically and emotionally leave our day-to-day issues behind to focus on the tasks at hand.

Kickoff New Products in Person

Whenever we’re about to start a new product development effort, I ask myself a question: is it worth it to get together all the key stakeholders? For the big projects, definitely.

Two days of working on a whiteboard side-by-side will replace weeks of struggle. It’s a lot easier to align on design principles and key technical decisions when you can hash out minute details with your colleagues in the room.

Meet Customers

When I travel to our different offices, I try to squeeze in one or two customer house calls. It might cost me an extra day, but meeting with them is far too important. Catching up on the phone won’t substitute.

Budget for It

We’ve already walked through why it’s necessary to get together. You need to plan if you want those meetings to happen. Flights, hotels, and Uber rides cost money. It adds up quickly. Figure out how much money you’ll need, set it aside, and maximize those trips.

If you don’t budget these costs, you’ll never have the opportunity to meet with your colleagues in the flesh.

Face-to-face meetings allow your distributed teams to really connect. If you care about business results or team chemistry, then you must plan for it.

Morphing Your Management Style To Drive A Growing Product Team

Posted on December 7, 2015 by affronti

Screenshot 2015-12-05 16.19.22

Image by DeviantArt user JR19759

A great outcome of any hiring strategy is when it works. You’re pulling in amazing people and they’re growing and supporting each other to build a great product organization.

That’s the world I’ve been living in over the last several months. Our product team at ThinkingPhones has literally tripled in size over the last year.

Given all we’ve learned during this hyper-growth period, I thought it would be helpful to share some of the best practices and processes we’ve implemented during that time.

So let’s start with the most important step:

The “Gravity Hire”

I use what I call the “gravity hire” methodology to build product teams quickly. This means that my early hires are product rockstars that will be able to attract other amazing PMs. And then I have them spend 50% of their time hiring other rockstars.

As the team forms – and then grows – it becomes critical to open up new internal and external communication processes to keep everyone marching in the same direction.

Here are some of the specific methods we’ve used successfully…

Product “All Hands” With An Open Mic

When you’re hiring so many talented people in a short period of time, it can be challenging to make sure all of them feel like they own a mission-critical part of the product portfolio.

Enter the Product “All Hands” meeting.

It’s held for 30 minutes once a week. Everyone in the Product Team joins and we have just two agenda items:

I share info about the company as a whole and take questions.
There’s an Open Mic portion where anyone can “virtually” stand up and share information or ideas.

The meeting puts my team on the same page regarding:

Exactly what is going on in the company
What deadlines are pending
Roles and goals across the team
How the team can help each other achieve or exceed those goals

Cross Team Lunch And Learns

We do frequent “Lunch and Learns” at ThinkingPhones, so my team and other teams can show each other what they have achieved in an informal environment.

For instance, our international sales leadership recently gave an update on our business outside of the US over sandwiches and soda. This was great for my team because it provided additional context for upcoming product roadmapping and prioritization decisions.

These sessions help my team, and other teams within the company, feel more connected with the mothership – and also ensure everyone sees how their work is impacting other areas of the company.

1-on-1

All of the directors in my organization have weekly 1:1’s with their team, and I personally do skip-level 1:1s every other week with individual product managers. They are an incredible management and motivation tool if used properly (Ben Horowitz’s post on 1:1’s has some excellent tips on the subject).

Regardless of how you run your 1:1’s make sure you use it as a forum for the employee to say what they want or need to say. It is not a meeting to pass judgement or evaluate performance.

Managers get to know the more junior employees and the areas they work in, find out what’s working and what’s not in the company, and learn how to do their own job better.

Employees and junior managers have a chance to voice any concerns or worries, they get to know the senior managers, and feel valued as a result.

Measure PM / Customer Contact

In a rapidly growing product team, individual contributor PMs often get buried in the details of building and shipping. And this leaves them little time to engage with customers.

So consider measuring each of your Product Managers on how much in-person time they’re spending with customers on a weekly or monthly basis.

The feedback they’ll take back into the organization from those touch points will be pure gold for your product team and for the rest of your company.

Connecting is Key

The more informed your PMs are about what their colleagues and customers are doing, the better product you’ll build. It really is that simple.

How are you managing your product teams to scale up as your company grows?

Let me know your best practices in the comments below.

How Teaching Tech Can Make You a Better Innovator and Leader

Posted on October 26, 2015 by affronti

*https://www.flickr.com/photos/ryantylersmith/

This past summer I decided to teach a part-time course at General Assembly.

I love mentoring and coaching others, and public speaking, so I wasn’t surprised to realize how rewarding and fun teaching can be.

But what I didn’t expect was how much this new experience would teach me about leadership and innovation.

Being Prepared Really Helps

When I first started teaching, I thought I could quickly throw together my lesson plans the day before class.

Boy, was I wrong.

I needed three to four hours to prepare for each class, even though I already knew the content. I had to develop the primary lesson content, supporting personal stories, plus extra alternative points in case the other content didn’t land well.

Takeaway: This preparation style is equally useful for training and teaching your team outside the classroom.

Now when I prepare a meeting or workshop with my team, I think about:

weaving a story that team members can connect and relate to
knowing alternative paths ahead of time
having facts and personal stories on hand as examples

My favorite feedback from my students was when they told me: “Michael seems so well prepared to help us understand each lesson.”

You should strive to have your team feel that way about you as a leader.

Check for Understanding to Avoid Mistakes

You can give hours of lectures with supporting examples, but there is no guarantee that your listeners have understood and absorbed the information given to them.

The students at General Assembly had to comprehend each topic if they were going to have a shot at completing their projects.

I learned to check for that comprehension.

The best way to do this was to frequently ask questions during my lectures, get students to verbally fill in the blanks, and just outright ask if anyone needs further clarification on a topic.

Takeaway: To effectively and efficiently convey information when training or instructing your team, you have to make sure your team members understand what you are asking them to do by actively confirming that understanding.

When I’m training my team, here’s what I do:

regularly ask questions to see whether what I’m saying makes sense to them
use prepared alternative points to back up and reinforce content if there is a lack of understanding
make sure they get the nuances of the topic

Investing this time up front will save you more time and avoid mistakes in the long run.

Teaching by Example: Clarify Expectations

One way I teach students is through the “I Do, We Do, You Do” framework.

The idea is:

You (the teacher) show the students how to perform a specific task
You perform that same task with the students’ participation
You ask the students to perform the task on their own

I’ve found this method works brilliantly for both simple and complex topics in the classroom – like our lesson on calculating the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer.

Takeaway: This is an effective way to teach new concepts, processes, or frameworks to your team. It ensures team members know exactly what you expect of them.

To make this model work at ThinkingPhones, I encourage all of the managers on my team, myself included, to routinely “get into the trenches” and do the work our product managers do – build a competitive deck, write PRDs, or do market analysis.

This gives all our managers the tools and skills to use the I, We, You model, so we can train and get new product managers up to speed.

How This Applies to Innovation

Overall, teaching reinforces the importance of communicating effectively to your team through:

being more prepared than you think you need to be
actively checking to make sure your team members understand what they need to do
demonstrating tasks so your team members know what is expected of them

Do this well and less time will be spend on re-explaining concepts, or rectifying problems.

Then, when your team is performing their jobs efficiently, and without mistakes, you’ll have more room and time for innovation.