Podcast: Execs Don’t Always Know What Users Need

Jay Stansell has been on a European podcast tour: meeting and recording product leaders in Cardiff, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Munich and Zurich — partly to raise funds supporting bushfire restoration in Australia after their massive fires.  Jay generously let me join remotely from San Francisco.

A recording of the podcast is here.  We had a freewheeling conversation that included some challenging talk about understanding C-level attitudes:

• 03:03 London quiz
• 08:35 Typical day of the life of the execs
• 12:13 Priorities and the way of thinking of execs
• 15:26 Should execs know users needs?
• 18:22 Why do some execs believe that they know what users want, in detail?
• 25:37 What do you need to do to convince execs that you know the users needs
• 29:51 Product people around the big kids table
• 31:38 How to change approach for the exec to understand users’ needs
• 36:10 Product managers and VPs stepping into Board position
• 37:23 What to let go and what to hang on to