No Idea is Worthwhile on a Whiteboard
Michael Sparks relocated to New York City from Silicon Valley to be closer to his fiance. That he ended up working as Product Manager at The Knot - the world's leading online wedding planner - is just happy coincidence.
The Knot is one of several "life's moments" products owned by XO Group - a decades old company currently enjoying growth and an incredible culture of product mindset (much of it attributable to the leadership contribution of Brent Tworetzky, who recently left the company to join InVision).
Michael is an avid disciple of "User Science," that unique blend of qualitative and quantitative research that provides product managers with a practical framework for consistently gathering and analyzing user feedback.
Sparks tells me this from XO's 25th floor office, as we enjoy sweeping views of Manhattan in winter. We joke that the weather isn't actually that much worse than the unpredictable precipitation of San Francisco. Together we contemplate the misnomer that is "minimum viable product," and a clever reframing of the idea called "minimum viable experiments."
We exchange favorite product management sound bites and talk about how to avoid getting stuck in project manager tasks, organizing teams around problems (not products), and advice for mastering quantitative inquiry.
Hit play below to hear the full conversation and meet Michael Sparks.
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
