The nature of product | Marty Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What are common diseases of product teams, and how do you avoid them? Why should you focus less on problem discovery and more on solution discovery? How do you maintain your product mojo? After working as a product leader for over 20 years, Marty Cagan started Silicon Valley Product Group to help product teams operate at a higher level. In this conversation, Marty shares what Steve Jobs can teach you about building product, how to structure your teams for innovation, how to improve your product culture, which trends in PM to ignore, and much more. After this, you’ll never think about building teams the same way. Join us.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-nature-of-product-marty-cagan-silicon-valley-product-group/#transcript

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Where to find Marty Cagan:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cagan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cagan/

• SVPG: https://www.svpg.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Whimsical: https://whimsical.com/lenny

• Flatfile: https://www.flatfile.com/lenny

• Modern Treasury: https://www.moderntreasury.com/

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Referenced:

• The Nature of Product: https://www.svpg.com/the-nature-of-product/

• Devolving From Good To Bad: https://www.svpg.com/devolving-from-good-to-bad/

• Shreyas Doshi: https://twitter.com/shreyas

• The Lost Interview: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Lost-Interview/dp/B01IJD1BES

• Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value by Theresa Torres: https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Discovery-Habits-Discover-Products/dp/1736633309

• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp: https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/1442397683

• Patrick Collison on User Research: https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1443215022029619200

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In this episode, we cover:

[03:46] The biggest misconceptions about what a good product team does and looks like

[07:49] The qualities that separate the best product teams

[16:20] The downfall of innovation in great product teams

[17:43] The gap between the best and the rest

[19:23] The pitfalls product teams can fall into

[27:46] The role of user research in building a great product

[35:26] What individual contributors can do to shift product culture

[41:04] How PMs can set themselves up for success when trying to change product culture

[44:06] How product management is changing

[55:33] The pitfalls Marty warns to watch out for in product management

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Production and marketing: https://penname.co/

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	People don't buy the problem, they buy your solution.
0:03.9	Obviously they don't buy it if it's not solving something they care about.
0:08.4	But there are many products that are solving what they care about.
0:12.2	The real question is, do you solve it better than
0:15.5	everybody else so that they buy you? And that's where you need to take time. So this is more
0:21.6	like the coaching I give the teams. I tell them, look, be careful. If you need to spend a little time on the problem, fine, but don't spend a lot of time because you need to save as much time as possible to come up with the winning solution.
0:37.0	What can I say about Marty Kagan that hasn't already been said?
0:44.0	He's the author of Empowered and Inspired two of the most widely read and influential books on product management.
0:50.0	He's also the founder of Silicon Valley Product Group, which he started over 20 years ago.
0:55.0	More than anyone else out there, he's been producing the most consistently great and
1:00.0	actionable advice for product managers and leaders looking to level up their product game.
1:04.3	Before getting into teaching, he is VP of product at Netscape, who is also senior VP of eBay.
1:10.0	I am humble to have Marty on this podcast. He is an absolute legend in the PM community
1:15.7	and I can't wait for you to hear this episode. And with that I bring you Marty Kagan.
1:26.4	This episode is brought to you by Wimsical. When I asked product managers and designers on Twitter what software they use most,
1:31.0	Wimsical is always one of the most mentioned products and the users are
1:35.1	fanatical. Wimsical is built for collaborative thinking combining visual
1:39.2	text and data canvases into one fluid medium. Distributed teams use whimsical for workshops, whiteboarding, wire frames,
1:47.0	userflows, and even feature specs and that includes thousands of built-in icons and a rich library of templates.
1:54.0	See why product teams at leading companies call Wimsical a game changer.
1:58.0	Visit whimsical.com slash Lenny to have my own templates added to your account when you sign up.
2:04.4	That's whimsical.com slash Lenny.
	...

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