Hello friends,

I’ve been thinking about the little ways we can help each other, both in our product organizations and in our families and communities. How can we help make the lives of the people we support even a little bit better? Might they need a little extra face time for reassurance? Can we nudge them to some healthy behavior and ways of coping? Can we make their day to day work feel more connected?

Whether thinking about my coworkers, customers, or communities, I am trying to be service-centric. I want to make the biggest impact with focused, intentional acts that are within my sphere of influence. Below are some interviews and articles that I thought you might enjoy along these lines.

What have you found helpful in these times?

Warmly,
Holly

Holly Hester-Reilly: Building a customer-centric team and product culture (Enliven Podcast #16)

Andrew Skotzko

I had such a fantastic time in this deep and long-ranging interview with Andrew Skotzko for his Enliven podcast. We talked about how to set up your organization to be truly customer-centric, how to develop your continuous discovery practice by following the Product Science Success Path, and even how my past as a competitive figure skater made me comfortable being uncomfortable.

Adapt or Die

ProdUX Labs

In this article Melissa Perri talks about the differences she is seeing in how companies are responding to the COVID-19 crisis and why great product leadership will be even more important. “As budgets are being clawed back, and money becomes tight, you need to be able to place your bets wisely.”

Spotify vs Fitbit

SVPG

In this recent article, Marty Cagan talks about the differences between the scaled agile models used at Spotify and Fitbit. He argues that “what they got right at Spotify was much more important than what they got wrong.” This piece reiterates the value of focusing on the most impactful decisions.

Don’t Follow Your Gut (and What to Do Instead)

Nir and Far

I enjoyed this interview with behavioral scientist Dr. Gleb Tsipursky where he goes into detail on why we should not follow our gut reactions, saying that “Gut reactions cause us to behave in ways that feel comfortable, but are often very dangerous.”

Announcing Beta Membership Community for Product Science Practitioners

With everything going on, we’ve decided now is a good time to reopen our membership community. It’s a place for us to come together and help each other upskill our rapid, remote product discovery. It includes an online course, The Product Science Success Path, a private Slack community, new content weekly from my team and our favorite guest experts, and live sessions for us all to connect. After talking with many of you about current budgets, we’ve decided to make this pay-what-you-wish for now. So let us know if you’re interested!

Learn more about the Product Science Salon

Podcasts from the Archive

We’ve wrapped up season 2 and are on break between seasons. Check out these favorite episodes from season 2:

• The Kate Rutter Hypothesis: Things Can Seem Simple and Still Be Very Hard
• The Ben Foster Hypothesis: High-Growth Product Leaders Set a Clear Vision and Push Authority Down to the Teams
• The Heather Browning Hypothesis: Great Product Design Can Make Healthy Behaviors Easier

Brought to you by H2R Product Science

Our team at H2R Product Science partners with startup founders and product leaders to share The Product Science Principles and the accompanying framework, the Product Science Method, which I’ve developed over my time in tech startups. Through our coaching and consulting work, we help our clients figure out which product growth opportunities they should pursue and build the product management skill to deliver on their goals.

Reach out if you’d like to explore working together.

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