There's Always Going to be Someone Smarter
Liam Oliver might be the only product manager who moonlights as a professional hockey referee.
He’s certainly the first person I’ve heard use refereeing as analogy for validated learning:
“The ref that you start as on day one of the league is not going to be the ref you are on day 10,” says Oliver. “You’re going to constantly have to refine yourself and pivot to become a good official. It’s that humbling experience that you get from making mistakes that eventually makes you a better official to a point where you can be invisible.”
In product, invisibility tends to mean things are working. All your tinkering in the background has paid off in the form of seamless experience and consistent value for the end user.
But how do you take your product from experiment to invisibility?
How do you know what to focus on when?
We sat down with Liam inside his favorite new hideout — the beautiful public library in Manhattan Beach to answer these questions and more.
Some of the highlights from our discussion include:
- Taking the intrapreneurial path to product management success
- Why product managers are always surrounded by smarter people and why that’s ok
- How to practically move your product through different phases of growth, and
- What it means to get comfortable with ambiguity
You know, a big thing about being a product manager is being able to represent everyone that isn’t in the room. Liam Oliver
This episode has got great advice for anybody debating whether to take the path of specialist or generalist and some wise words for how to get started as product manager when you have no experience.
You can learn more about Liam Oliver and Total Loyalty Solutions here — https://totalloyalty.com/
In this episode:
- Where do startups go wrong with implementing OKRs
- Can OKRs really scale for enterprise?
- What are pipelines and how do they change the way we think about product roadmaps?
In this episode:
- From retail to product management
- Why relationship building is the number one required skill a product manager could have
- The value of having confidence with humility
In this episode:
- Establishing a clear vision of your career path
- Using metrics to answer burning product questions
- What product managers can learn from biology
