September 17, 2025 • 33 mins
This week I’m joined by Edward Scotcher to talk about his role, which focuses on the intersection between product management and leadership. We talk through his career journey and discuss how being interesting can be more useful than having qualifications, and the importance of good storytelling.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to Future You.
The podcast brought to youby graduate careers experts prospects.
I'm your host, Emily Slade,and in this episode I chat to Edward
Scott, Chair,about product management and leadership.
So my name is Edward Sculpture.
Everyone knows me as Ed, and these daysI'm an independent consultant
and I specialize in the intersect
(00:22):
between product management and leadership.
And I guess what that means is,is that these days, I've developed
the experience and credibilityto help ambitious organizations.
I sound like workingwith ambitious organizations
to make sure that they'redoing the right thing for the right people
at the right time,and making sure they're building
the right products, which is quite oftennot the case. Amazing.
(00:43):
And how did you get into that?
Well, it's been a journey.
And I have to say,I think that the journey is probably
the most interesting thing about it.
So if you'd like to hear about that,I'm more than happy to,
to walk you through it.Yeah. Start at the beginning.
Yeah.
Well, so I think you probably actually
goes back to when I was at school,I developed a certain mindset.
(01:06):
I really enjoyed school upto about the age I did my GCSEs,
which is 1994, and I went to a schoolwhich was very much
about encouraging peopleto be the best they could be.
And then when I went to do my A-levels,that school then turned into a school
that was all about meeting targets,and it really put me off.
(01:28):
And I
remember even at that young age,thinking to myself,
I think I'm going to strugglejust to just to follow the crowd.
And actually, when I left school,my teacher said, look at in life,
you're just going to plow your own furrowand it's going to be hard.
And actually, that's been the real truthfor the rest of my career.
(01:48):
I then went to university where I studied,what I was really interested
in at the time, which was sound recording,really interested in that.
But actually the.com boomwas happening at the time,
and I realized that very few peoplemake money out of sound recording.
So I thought,
what I'll do is I'll do a module in HTML,which was kind of all new at the time,
(02:10):
and I did that, and I learned how to buildvery, very basic websites.
I mean, in the late 90s, mid to late 90swebsites were incredibly basic.
I mean, there was no, e-commerce,no online shopping,
very little communication,no video online.
You know,it was absolutely wild West of of it.
But I ended up
from that, getting a job as a, softwareengineer, and I was rubbish at it.
(02:34):
Actually, I was terribleat being a software engineer.
I really wanted to do a good job of it.
And I was terrible at it.
And after a few yearsas working as a software engineer,
my line manager went on maternity leave
and the company I was working forat the time, the BBC, in fact, didn't
really want to pay for someone to comeand take that role over, get a new person.
(02:57):
And so I volunteered.I volunteered to the job.
But actually what I found out was,was that my strength
wasn't in software engineering,my strength was in people.
And I then developed a careerin which one of my customers
nowadays calls me a, a social workerfor tech companies.
And that's probably true,because what I do these days is I, I go in
(03:19):
and I help organizationsorganize themselves and develop
the right products, but leadthose products and develop the best teams.
And all of that has come from appreciatingthat the problem that I solve,
even though I work in the tech industry,the problem that I solve is
people problems.
Yeah. That's fantastic.
So you've really sort ofcreated your own job in a way.
(03:41):
Yeah,I, I think this is probably when I talk
to peopleabout their jobs and their careers.
I think that's probably my lesson,which is
there are patternsto what makes a good career.
There are certainly things you can dothat makes a good career.
So, for example, you can work hard,you can read a lot,
(04:04):
you can meet with otherlike minded people.
You can try things.
You can fail at things.
That's absolutely fine as long asyou learn there are interesting patterns.
But I don't think there's a very clearsort of step by step path.
Look, if you do ABCd,then your life is going to be perfect
and you're going to have a great careerand a great role.
I don't think it happens like that.
(04:24):
I think innovation starts with yourself
and, you know, innovation.
InnovationI think is such an interesting concept
because peopleI think just apply it to, to roles.
And there's a big differencebetween creativity and innovation.
Creativity is a bit like art, right?
If you if you draw a picture,you're being creative.
(04:44):
You're creating somethingthat's that's never been done before.
But if you innovate, what you really do
is you take previously existingconcepts and ideas
and you mash them together,and what comes out of it is something new.
And there's lots of examples of that.
But I could bore youwith if you're interested.
But I think your, your,
your career is always going to beabout personal innovation.
(05:08):
And personal innovation is really aboutlooking at what other people do.
It's looking at the technologythat's around
you, is looking at the meansat your disposal.
Whatever you've got,
and it's thinking about how you bringthe best things that you've seen
other people do, all the things thatyou admire, that other people have done,
and you smash them together yourselfto make something unique.
And that's how you become an interestingand unique player
(05:31):
in a marketplaceand someone that people are interested in.
Yeah, completely.
What would you say the starting point
for that is, or are there several?
Yeah, it's kind of a thirst for knowledge.
I think if you if you
if you are interestedin things around you,
the world around you, if you're interestedin what other people do,
(05:54):
I think that your unique pointthat you are in life
and your unique experiences,whoever you are,
wherever you've come from,whatever your background is,
you can look at thingsand you can say from my unique perspective
that if I take a little bitof what all of these people are doing
and mix them up, thenactually that then makes me also unique,
(06:16):
with a unique viewpointand a unique outlook on what I'm doing.
Then anyone can do thatand anyone can do that at any point.
I mean, innovation can happenabsolutely anywhere, at any time.
But the more sort of thirst for knowledge
you've got, the more you're likely to,
to to effectively
(06:37):
broaden your horizons and broadenyour understanding of what's going on.
And the more you broaden your horizons,your your understanding of what's going
on, the largerthe kind of like the pool of information
you've got to innovate from.
So I think that kind of thirstfor knowledge is absolutely critical.
What are the downfalls like?
What can go wrong on this path?
(06:58):
Well, we can think about thatfrom a couple of places.
I mean, I would say
the opposite of downfall iswhat makes people successful is humility.
So probably the downfall is hubris, right?
So people that believe their own hypeare people who think they're
absolutely amazingand that they've done it all themselves.
They're really hard to work with.
And sometimes they're really hard to like,
because the reality iswe all stand on the shoulders of others.
(07:21):
So certainly one of the things that I dowhen I look to,
employ peopleif when I'm recruiting is humility.
Humility is what are the most importantthings that I think that people can have.
So the willingness to learn, the opennessto be challenged,
and the ability to think about new thingsand embrace them.
(07:43):
I think they're the thingsthat really make people great.
The people who have that arroganceof thinking they're
somehow magically special and they've donesomething that no one else has done.
Number one, it's never true.
A number two, it's a really difficultattitude to put up with.
So I think you end upalienating a lot of people as well.
So how
(08:04):
did you go from softwareengineer to product manager.
Yeah.
So I think one of the thingsthat you've got
to rememberabout moving into product management
is that you need to have ideasand you need to be someone, again,
who's got that interestin, sort of like problems to solve.
(08:24):
And I think in some waysI've always seen myself
as a bit of an innovatoror at least a lateral thinker.
Right.
So what I will do is I willI will find myself naturally for example,
I'll give you a stupid example ofI'll find myself standing in a queue
and I'll think to myself,it's interesting, isn't it?
I wonder how this could be done better.
(08:46):
Why do we need to be queuing here?
What what what is it?
What is the problemthat we're actually trying to solve?
Right.
And I think
that is a really great exampleof that kind of product mindset
is if you go to learn, right,it doesn't have to be a
like a natural thing you're born with.You can teach yourself this.
You find yourself in a in a situationand you can say to yourself,
(09:09):
well, what's the problemthat we're all trying to solve here?
And quite often
the problem that people are trying tosolve is quite different
from the thing that they are told to do,or the thing that they expect to do.
Now you can say, well,why does that lead to a product mindset?
It's because the product mindset,again, is all about people.
(09:29):
It's all about the customer.
If you go to an organization, quite often,
you'll walk inand an organization will say, you know,
we are building a recruitment systemthat's such a different sort
of a typical thing that you could expect.
You know, we're going to build a systemthat's going to allow HR people
to recruit people,and it's kind of like, well, fine.
(09:50):
But the problem that they've donethere is what has happened
is they've started off with the solution.
They've gone way, which is the HR
people says HR people want a system
and they want that system so that they canget people through that process.
Right. So that's what they're doing.
But that's not a product mindsetthat that's a that's a project management
(10:11):
mindset because you just being toldto do something and you're doing it.
A product mindset is something
which is much more sort of needsan inquiring mind.
And let me let me give you an exampleof what I mean by that.
So the question that you would askif you came from a product
mindset is people want to have a job.
It's a statement.People want to have a job.
(10:33):
How would you go about helping peoplewho want a job get a job,
and what you are then doing isyou are then developing
the mindset of underst standing,the problem that you've got to solve,
and then you can thinkin terms of an outcome.
So an outcome is defined as a change
in behavior that improves results.
(10:56):
Right.
So what a product manager would dowould say I want an outcome.
And the outcome in this situation is youhelp people that want a job have a job.
Whereas what a project manager would do isthey would focus on a target,
which is they would say,we want people to use a system
(11:19):
and then we want to make sure that, youknow, 95% of people are on the system.
Right?
And that's, that's, ends up with acompletely a completely different thing.
So why do I say all of this?
It's about mindset.
If you want to be successful in product,what you do is you go around thinking,
what is the problemthat I'm trying to solve?
(11:40):
What are the creative ways that I've got
to make sure that I can solve a problem?
Whereas people who come fromthat project mindset
are just trying to get a thing done,and they're probably just doing
what they've been told to do createa system, build a tool, go to a place.
Do you see what I mean?
This isthis is sort of a subtle difference in it.
(12:01):
And I can I can give you a real example,if you want, of of where
I had a really unlikely,
result of followingthat if that's of interest to you.
Yeah. Completely.
Yeah.
So I did some I did some work for anorganization once, which was one of those,
one of those companieswhere you can effectively order
ingredients, which you then cook at home.
(12:23):
Right.
And what they realized was,was that they were trialing
something in London at the time.
And near themthere were these, a couple of,
sort of like housing estates.
And in those housing estates,they were just saying, look,
we're not selling anythingto these different housing estates.
(12:43):
And someone said, well,what we need to do is we need to find out
why the people on those housing estates,
buying our product was like, well, fine.
So someone goes, well,what we need is a survey, right?
Which is pretty logical, right?
If you're going to go and ask peoplesomething you need to survey.
So immediatelywhat happened is the tech team
(13:06):
went away and started to build,
like a survey monkey like, customized,like survey monkey tool.
And they were like,
what we can do is we can get people'semail addresses
and we can sendthe email addresses out to people.
And what those people can dois they can feed back into the survey.
And then we've completed the survey.
But of course, actually, whilst
(13:28):
that might solve the problem,
it didn't really applya lot of sort of lateral thinking.
Whereas what we ended up doing iswe ended up saying, well,
why don't you just go and stand outsideof the door of that, you know,
tower block or walk around that estatebetween kind of like five, 5 p.m.
and 7 p.m.?
I just ask people and note it downin a notebook, right.
(13:51):
And get those ideas.
And it just gives youthat that understanding that
there were two ways of dealing with this.
There was going for the obvious answer,which is, let's get a tool
and build a survey.
But without any idea ofhow to contact the people.
We didn't have their email addresses
or phone numbers or whatever,or you could just take a notepad and pen
and you could go and meet peoplein which you build relationships.
(14:14):
You talk to people, you have a discussion.
You get much
deeper information and insightthan you would do by filling in a survey,
and you actually get to come back and say,look, we've met some people.
This is what they say.
This is what's going on in their lives.
And that in itself,
was really successful.
That's what we did in the end.
But the way of going outand meeting people, it was cheap.
(14:36):
It was easy. We had the people.
We got really rich informationbecause we were building relationships.
And the other thing was going to take,you know, building the survey in
and like an online tool,it was going to take time.
It was going to be expensive.
We're going to haveto put a whole team on it.
And then we weren'tsure about how to deploy it.
So we're solving the same problem,but we're solving it in different ways.
(14:57):
And the the result of how we solvedit was completely different,
one from the other.
So it just gives you an ideathat even in a tech company, again,
it's people that matter.
And going out
and meeting people and buildingthose relationships is the critical thing.
But that's all of that.
That's product mindset is thinkingthe problem that you're trying to solve
(15:18):
through thoroughly to make surethat you get the right result.
Yeah, completely.
Would you say that these, skill sets
and traits that you're essentially born
and infused with,or can they be learned and taught?
Oh, absolutely.They can be learned and taught.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, some people,
(15:39):
are betterat different aspects of this than others.
Right? So if you look across
a spectrum of
personalities,you're going to have some people
who are much more analytical
and organizedand into the data and the information,
and they're good at processing numbersand spotting patterns and all of that.
(16:00):
They make excellent product managersbecause they're really good
at getting insight from information.
And at the other end of the spectrum,you've got the creatives,
you've got people that come fromlike a user experience,
like a customer service design background.
They're usually much more creative now.
They might not spot the patternsand get the insights from numbers,
(16:20):
but quite often what they're really goodat is building relationships with people,
going out and meeting people,having conversation with people, building.
You know,I think I said building relationships
with building relationshipsand getting to know them.
All of those people have somethingthat they can bring to product management.
So I don't think anyone is excluded at allfrom getting into product management.
(16:42):
I think what we have to do,though, is as an industry,
I think we probably have tostop kind of saying, look,
if you've got certain qualifications,if you've passed certain tests,
if you've done certain stuff,only you can be a product manager,
because actually, what we're doingis we're representing
humans, and humansdon't all fit into one category.
(17:02):
And therefore product managers shouldn'tall come from one category as well.
And I think that's probablyone of my criticisms of where
the industry has gone isI think people have tried to,
sort of paint it into a corner and say,look,
product managershave to come from a certain mindset.
They have to have certain experienceand they have to want certain things.
(17:23):
I think that's nonsense.
So I think I think productmanagers are good when they come from
a really varied background.
And, you know, and when we talk aboutdiversity, as in diversity and inclusion,
diversityis as much about diversity of experience
and diversity of thought as it isabout any other form of diversity.
And I think people forget that,which is really, really sad.
(17:46):
No, that's a really good point.
So can you take us through a typical dayin the life of your role?
Well, of course, these days I,I work for myself, so, it sort of depends.
It depends on what you'd liketo look like.
So, I couldI could walk through what it's like
when I go and workwith some of my customers, for example.
Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.
(18:07):
So as an independent consultant,
what happensis, is people get in touch with me because
they know that something's wrong, right?
They've got a feelingthat they're looking at their product team
or their engineering team or their datascience team or whatever it is.
(18:27):
And what they're doingis they are, kind of going, look,
I think something's wrong,and I don't get what's wrong.
Can we get someone inwho can just give a bit of experience?
And generally speaking,what I will do is when when I get asked
to go into an organization,I spend my time meeting people,
I will I will ask for a huge cross-sectionof people to meet,
(18:51):
and I willmeet those people, not just talk to them.
You know what's good?What's bad? Was it different?
What's going on? What's not goingon? What do you like? What you don't?
What do you not like?
And I capture all of that information.
And from that information I spot patterns.
And I look at those patterns.
And from those patterns,I ultimately make recommendations
(19:11):
about whatthe organization can do differently.
And I think from that,
there's, there's a lotwhich actually comes up frequently.
And I think the things that come upfrequently are,
number one, quite often in a business,there's a lack of product vision,
and people aren't really thinkingabout where the product is going
(19:34):
or who the customers are.
They've got to a stage where they'refocusing more on what the business wants
or what they're want up to uptheir CEO or whatever's
asked them to do,rather than solving the problem.
And that's what are the what'swhat are the main things.
I think another thing is,
I think quite a lot of organizationsjust have too many product.
(19:55):
They're called product people,but they're not really doing product work.
They sort of become projectcoordinate eaters.
And what they're doing is they're spendinga lot of time writing requirements
or user stories or going to, you know,
reviews or retrospectives or helping,you know, organize the backlog.
What they're not doingenough of is actually getting out, meeting
(20:18):
customers, understanding thethe need that the customers have got,
the pain points the customers have gotand the pains they want solved.
And they're not really thinking
about creative and innovative waysto solve those products.
They've just ended up being, in somecases, like glorified admin assistants.
And one of the things that I do there isI help organizations
(20:40):
just think differentlyabout how to how to deal with that.
And I thinkit's one of the great sadnesses.
As you know, my career and I are havingdone product work, you know, the 25
plus year career, I've doneproduct management for 20 years of it,
and I think that was a real interestingpoint
where product managerswere needed massively
(21:04):
to sort of sitbetween the executive of an organization
and the tech teamto make sure only sensible ideas
were going down to the tech team,for the tech team to build.
And now it feelsthat that's got watered down.
And instead of thinking,
you know, having product managersthat are spending their time,
you know, working to help the organizationbuild the right thing
(21:25):
for the right people, be creative,come up with really innovative good ideas.
I think a lot of product managementhas ended up
being morelike the project management of the past,
and I think that attitude has got to sucha critical mass that a lot of people
have actually just forgotten what productmanagement is really altogether.
(21:45):
And a lot of product managers, I mean, arevery sadly just project managers.
They fall back into that.That old way of thinking.
And that's what I help organizationsbreak out of right is, is to say, look,
you know, stop, stopbeing project managers
and get back to being product managersthat represent the needs of the business
and the needs of the, the needsof the organization that you serve.
(22:08):
You know? Fantastic.
So what advice would you give tosomebody who's feeling a bit stuck
in their career at the moment?
And they've got ambitionand they do want to make a change.
But what would their next steps be?
Yeah,I mean that's such a powerful question.
And you know what? We've all been there.
I think we all want more.
And I think especially, you know,you can be at a stage of your life,
(22:30):
where, you know, you've got to do thingsthat maybe you want to start
a family or,you know, buy a house or whatever it is.
Right?
And you think, well, I want to do more,but maybe just a bit bored.
Right.
And you're kind of thinking,oh, I don't want to be stuck here
for the next sort of 25 yearsdoing whatever I'm doing.
Yeah.
And I, I never really feel thatbecause I definitely went through,
(22:50):
what Douglas Adams used tocall the long, dark tea time of the soul.
Yeah. For sure. I went through that.
And what would what would my advice be?
Let me tell you a story. So,
a couple of years ago, 2 or 3 years ago,
I'd been invited to ato speak at a conference,
and the keynote speaker,
(23:13):
who was meant to be starting at 9:30,didn't turn up.
And it got to about, I don't know, 9:25.
And they're like, right.
You know, the guy who's the keynote hasn'tturned up, what were you going to do?
And someone who knowsme and knows me relatively
well just went, do you know what I reckonEd could do a keynote.
Right.
So they asked me, could you stand up onstage, just do a keynote?
(23:36):
And I was like, great when?And they're like, in about four minutes.
Time was like,it's a bit of an ask, right?
But we're going to do it anyway.
So I stood up and I just kind of,
I sort of told a storyI can't really remember about what, but
there was there's 11. of it which came up,which I will always remember.
And it is this it's everything is made up
(24:01):
is such ais such an interesting insight, isn't it?
But I through my careerI've come to believe this.
Everything is made upand the reason that we do
things is only because it ends upbeing convention.
Right?
So, you know, the fact that we,you know, in the UK, anyway, the fact
that we drive on the left or the factthat we use money to buy things or the,
(24:23):
you know, the fact that, you know, we,we drink,
you know, hot tea out of a cupas opposed to a glass or whatever it is.
All of these conventions are just stuffthat's been made up.
And if you think about it,
something becomes
part of your culturebecause enough people now do and accept
this made up thingthat it just becomes normal.
(24:46):
And because it's normal, it just,you know, because it's normal, it becomes
normal.
It is normal, you know what I meanis it's kind of the way it is.
But what you have to remember
is if you just go through life
conforming to what everybody else doesall the time.
Now, I'm not suggestingyou become an extremist, right?
But if you just go through lifejust following,
(25:08):
doing what everybody else tells youto do all the time,
then you end up lacking that creativityand you end up lacking the ability
to think differently,which is, as we said earlier,
the podcast is the thingthat you need to develop.
So I find myself at the end of thiskeynote saying, look,
just everything is made up.
(25:30):
So if you are stuck and you're feeling
a bit disillusioned with your careerand you're wondering what to do next,
well,
understanding that everything is made updoes for you is it
removes the barrier to doingwhatever else it is that you want to do.
Right?
Because people saying, especiallyin the tech industry, that you have
(25:54):
to have certain qualificationsor you have to have certain experience,
to go and do somethingis largely just a mindset.
And if you understandthat everything is made up, therefore,
if everyone has made everything elseup, you can make things up too.
That brings the spirit of innovation.
(26:14):
Now why does that matter?
Well, let's play forward this question.
You're disillusioned with your job.
You now understand that things are made upand you can do things differently.
Basically, you can make up things
yourself, is what I'm saying,and it's perfectly valid to do so.
But you then find yourselfin an interview situation.
So what do I seeas interesting people in interviews?
(26:35):
Well, when it comes to product managers,some of the most boring product managers
I've ever met are the peoplewho've got a PhD in product management,
or the people have got every certificatein product management,
or they know everything about agile,or they know everything about data,
and they just sort of
want to come across as this kindof intellectual polymath, right?
(26:57):
You can say, well, I've got all theI've got all the certifications and I've,
you know, I've,I've just know everything about X,
I've got a PhD and you're like, I've gotoh my goodness.
You're just like, that's so boringcompared to
the peoplewho've just got great stories to tell you.
And some of the great stories to tell,some of the best stories I've ever heard
in an interview, all the ones where it'sbeen an absolute disaster.
(27:20):
You're right.
Where people you asked him a question,you go, well, give me an example.
You know, give me an example ofwhen something went wrong and they just,
what they dois they sit back and they laugh.
Right.
You kind of like,go on, just just tell me, right.
And they tell you a story about how
they thought something was going to worka certain way.
They sold it to the exacthe exact got behind it.
(27:41):
They did this thing.
None of it worked out the way they thoughtit was going to work out. And,
and, andthen, you know, something happened.
And usually the most fascinating bit is,is like, right, mate?
So everything went wrong.
How did you deal with it? Right.
And it's that momentwhere people have had something go wrong
(28:02):
and how they deal with itis then absolutely fascinating to me.
Right.
Because what comes out of itis your character comes out of it.
Your ability to be patientand calm comes out of it.
Your ability to have humilityand say, look, it was me, I failed.
I got it wrong.
That all comes out of it.
(28:22):
That's where I see people be interesting.
All right.
So so let's justtry and put those two things together.
Because what I've said is, is number one,
everything is made up.
Let's just take just take thatthrough your life with you. Right.
Because it's been a huge learningpoint for me what everything being made up
means is there is credibility in youmaking stuff up.
(28:44):
So anyone who's ever been an inventoror an innovator has made stuff up.
People don't look at James Dyson,for example, or people don't look
at someone like Steve Jobs and they go,oh, they were just making stuff up.
They were such failures.
They look at them and they go, gosh,they made stuff up.
And it worked really well.
That's amazing. Right?So let's have more people like that.
A number two, all of those people,especially both those two people
(29:07):
that I've mentioned, got so much stuffwrong along the way.
And they have the humility
to make sure they were learningfrom those things and take it forwards.
And what makes them
interesting is they were like,Steve Jobs was an interesting person.
JamesDyson is an interesting person, right?
Because they've got so much wrongand because they've learned from it
(29:28):
and what they've been able to dois they've been able to overcome
the the difficulties that they've had.
But no one was ever able to tellthem, don't stop,
don't, don't stop making stuff up.
Let me give you an example.Right. So when I was a kid,
I once went around to someone's houseand they had a wheelbarrow
(29:49):
and in the wheelbarrow,
instead of having a wheelat the front of it,
had a bright orange ballat the front of it.
So where the wheel would be,there was just a bright orange ball.
And that was one of the first Dysonproducts that I ever came across.
And everyone forgets about the JamesDyson wheelbarrow.
But the problem that he was trying tosolve is,
is that people quite oftenpush wheelbarrows through wet gardens,
(30:10):
and it leaves this big kind of light linewhere the wheel goes.
But if you put a ball there, number one,it helps you maneuver the wheelbarrow
better.
But number two, it doesn't createa big line in your pristine lawn.
Right? So all the time he was trying to,
find a problem to solve.
Everyone forgets about the James Dysonwashing machine,
which is probably one of the bestwashing machines that you could buy.
(30:33):
Everyone forgets it. It was too expensive.
It never caught on,but it was an amazing piece of kit.
And, you know, it's a bit.
I feel sad I didn't buy one,at the time they discontinued it.
But if you look at Dyson,there's loads of, there's loads of,
failures that he's got.
But what he's done, he'sconstantly learned from it.
He's constantlytried to do different things.
It was the same with Apple.
(30:53):
It's the same with loadsof successful organizations.
And so that's why it matters.
So everything's made up.
Have the humility to fail,tell the story, just have stories to tell.
Right?
If you go and you go to an interview,or you get to talk to people about what
you do have stories to tell, because it'sthe stories that make you interesting.
And, you know, again, you can getall the qualifications that you like,
(31:17):
but qualificationsespecially like internal tech
industry qualifications,they're not going to make you interesting.
And and personally, from my perspective,I've always struggled in organizations
where people have said,
oh, you've got to havethese qualifications before you come in.
And I'm like, but why?
(31:38):
There's so much more to meas an individual than a qualification
that I might have got.
Yeah.
So, so I would,I would say that's a really that for me
is, is solid advice for meabout how to how to approach
getting out of the disillusionmentyou might be feeling in your career.
Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you so much.
(31:58):
Any closing thoughts.
Yeah.
I mean I just thinkI think product management is
just a really fascinating place to be.
And it doesn't matter.
Again it doesn't matteryour background or experience.
There is a place for you.
It might be hard sometimes findingthe right organizational personality
for you to fit into.
So organizations are personalities at all.
(32:20):
But just go for it.
There's loads of advice.
People are always free to contact me,by the way,
through LinkedIn to to ask me questions.
Always happy to talk to people.
I mentor lots of peoplethrough, through their careers.
I'm just like, go for it, go for itand have fun, right?
You've got nothing to lose.
That's brilliant.
Thank you so much for your time today.
I. Well, yes.
(32:41):
Honestly,I'm so grateful for you having me.
Thanks for inviting me.I've enjoyed myself a lot.
Thanks again to Edward for their time.For more information
on product management,you can check out the show notes below.
If you enjoyed the episode, feel freeto leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
Thank you, as always, for listeningand good luck on your journey to future.
Hello and welcome back to Future You.
The podcast brought to youby graduate careers experts prospects.
I'm your host, Emily Slade,and in this episode I chat to Edward
Scott, Chair,about product management and leadership.
So my name is Edward Sculpture.
Everyone knows me as Ed, and these daysI'm an independent consultant
and I specialize in the intersect
(00:22):
between product management and leadership.
And I guess what that means is,is that these days, I've developed
the experience and credibilityto help ambitious organizations.
I sound like workingwith ambitious organizations
to make sure that they'redoing the right thing for the right people
at the right time,and making sure they're building
the right products, which is quite oftennot the case. Amazing.
(00:43):
And how did you get into that?
Well, it's been a journey.
And I have to say,I think that the journey is probably
the most interesting thing about it.
So if you'd like to hear about that,I'm more than happy to,
to walk you through it.Yeah. Start at the beginning.
Yeah.
Well, so I think you probably actually
goes back to when I was at school,I developed a certain mindset.
(01:06):
I really enjoyed school upto about the age I did my GCSEs,
which is 1994, and I went to a schoolwhich was very much
about encouraging peopleto be the best they could be.
And then when I went to do my A-levels,that school then turned into a school
that was all about meeting targets,and it really put me off.
(01:28):
And I
remember even at that young age,thinking to myself,
I think I'm going to strugglejust to just to follow the crowd.
And actually, when I left school,my teacher said, look at in life,
you're just going to plow your own furrowand it's going to be hard.
And actually, that's been the real truthfor the rest of my career.
(01:48):
I then went to university where I studied,what I was really interested
in at the time, which was sound recording,really interested in that.
But actually the.com boomwas happening at the time,
and I realized that very few peoplemake money out of sound recording.
So I thought,
what I'll do is I'll do a module in HTML,which was kind of all new at the time,
(02:10):
and I did that, and I learned how to buildvery, very basic websites.
I mean, in the late 90s, mid to late 90swebsites were incredibly basic.
I mean, there was no, e-commerce,no online shopping,
very little communication,no video online.
You know,it was absolutely wild West of of it.
But I ended up
from that, getting a job as a, softwareengineer, and I was rubbish at it.
(02:34):
Actually, I was terribleat being a software engineer.
I really wanted to do a good job of it.
And I was terrible at it.
And after a few yearsas working as a software engineer,
my line manager went on maternity leave
and the company I was working forat the time, the BBC, in fact, didn't
really want to pay for someone to comeand take that role over, get a new person.
(02:57):
And so I volunteered.I volunteered to the job.
But actually what I found out was,was that my strength
wasn't in software engineering,my strength was in people.
And I then developed a careerin which one of my customers
nowadays calls me a, a social workerfor tech companies.
And that's probably true,because what I do these days is I, I go in
(03:19):
and I help organizationsorganize themselves and develop
the right products, but leadthose products and develop the best teams.
And all of that has come from appreciatingthat the problem that I solve,
even though I work in the tech industry,the problem that I solve is
people problems.
Yeah. That's fantastic.
So you've really sort ofcreated your own job in a way.
(03:41):
Yeah,I, I think this is probably when I talk
to peopleabout their jobs and their careers.
I think that's probably my lesson,which is
there are patternsto what makes a good career.
There are certainly things you can dothat makes a good career.
So, for example, you can work hard,you can read a lot,
(04:04):
you can meet with otherlike minded people.
You can try things.
You can fail at things.
That's absolutely fine as long asyou learn there are interesting patterns.
But I don't think there's a very clearsort of step by step path.
Look, if you do ABCd,then your life is going to be perfect
and you're going to have a great careerand a great role.
I don't think it happens like that.
(04:24):
I think innovation starts with yourself
and, you know, innovation.
InnovationI think is such an interesting concept
because peopleI think just apply it to, to roles.
And there's a big differencebetween creativity and innovation.
Creativity is a bit like art, right?
If you if you draw a picture,you're being creative.
(04:44):
You're creating somethingthat's that's never been done before.
But if you innovate, what you really do
is you take previously existingconcepts and ideas
and you mash them together,and what comes out of it is something new.
And there's lots of examples of that.
But I could bore youwith if you're interested.
But I think your, your,
your career is always going to beabout personal innovation.
(05:08):
And personal innovation is really aboutlooking at what other people do.
It's looking at the technologythat's around
you, is looking at the meansat your disposal.
Whatever you've got,
and it's thinking about how you bringthe best things that you've seen
other people do, all the things thatyou admire, that other people have done,
and you smash them together yourselfto make something unique.
And that's how you become an interestingand unique player
(05:31):
in a marketplaceand someone that people are interested in.
Yeah, completely.
What would you say the starting point
for that is, or are there several?
Yeah, it's kind of a thirst for knowledge.
I think if you if you
if you are interestedin things around you,
the world around you, if you're interestedin what other people do,
(05:54):
I think that your unique pointthat you are in life
and your unique experiences,whoever you are,
wherever you've come from,whatever your background is,
you can look at thingsand you can say from my unique perspective
that if I take a little bitof what all of these people are doing
and mix them up, thenactually that then makes me also unique,
(06:16):
with a unique viewpointand a unique outlook on what I'm doing.
Then anyone can do thatand anyone can do that at any point.
I mean, innovation can happenabsolutely anywhere, at any time.
But the more sort of thirst for knowledge
you've got, the more you're likely to,
to to effectively
(06:37):
broaden your horizons and broadenyour understanding of what's going on.
And the more you broaden your horizons,your your understanding of what's going
on, the largerthe kind of like the pool of information
you've got to innovate from.
So I think that kind of thirstfor knowledge is absolutely critical.
What are the downfalls like?
What can go wrong on this path?
(06:58):
Well, we can think about thatfrom a couple of places.
I mean, I would say
the opposite of downfall iswhat makes people successful is humility.
So probably the downfall is hubris, right?
So people that believe their own hypeare people who think they're
absolutely amazingand that they've done it all themselves.
They're really hard to work with.
And sometimes they're really hard to like,
because the reality iswe all stand on the shoulders of others.
(07:21):
So certainly one of the things that I dowhen I look to,
employ peopleif when I'm recruiting is humility.
Humility is what are the most importantthings that I think that people can have.
So the willingness to learn, the opennessto be challenged,
and the ability to think about new thingsand embrace them.
(07:43):
I think they're the thingsthat really make people great.
The people who have that arroganceof thinking they're
somehow magically special and they've donesomething that no one else has done.
Number one, it's never true.
A number two, it's a really difficultattitude to put up with.
So I think you end upalienating a lot of people as well.
So how
(08:04):
did you go from softwareengineer to product manager.
Yeah.
So I think one of the thingsthat you've got
to rememberabout moving into product management
is that you need to have ideasand you need to be someone, again,
who's got that interestin, sort of like problems to solve.
(08:24):
And I think in some waysI've always seen myself
as a bit of an innovatoror at least a lateral thinker.
Right.
So what I will do is I willI will find myself naturally for example,
I'll give you a stupid example ofI'll find myself standing in a queue
and I'll think to myself,it's interesting, isn't it?
I wonder how this could be done better.
(08:46):
Why do we need to be queuing here?
What what what is it?
What is the problemthat we're actually trying to solve?
Right.
And I think
that is a really great exampleof that kind of product mindset
is if you go to learn, right,it doesn't have to be a
like a natural thing you're born with.You can teach yourself this.
You find yourself in a in a situationand you can say to yourself,
(09:09):
well, what's the problemthat we're all trying to solve here?
And quite often
the problem that people are trying tosolve is quite different
from the thing that they are told to do,or the thing that they expect to do.
Now you can say, well,why does that lead to a product mindset?
It's because the product mindset,again, is all about people.
(09:29):
It's all about the customer.
If you go to an organization, quite often,
you'll walk inand an organization will say, you know,
we are building a recruitment systemthat's such a different sort
of a typical thing that you could expect.
You know, we're going to build a systemthat's going to allow HR people
to recruit people,and it's kind of like, well, fine.
(09:50):
But the problem that they've donethere is what has happened
is they've started off with the solution.
They've gone way, which is the HR
people says HR people want a system
and they want that system so that they canget people through that process.
Right. So that's what they're doing.
But that's not a product mindsetthat that's a that's a project management
(10:11):
mindset because you just being toldto do something and you're doing it.
A product mindset is something
which is much more sort of needsan inquiring mind.
And let me let me give you an exampleof what I mean by that.
So the question that you would askif you came from a product
mindset is people want to have a job.
It's a statement.People want to have a job.
(10:33):
How would you go about helping peoplewho want a job get a job,
and what you are then doing isyou are then developing
the mindset of underst standing,the problem that you've got to solve,
and then you can thinkin terms of an outcome.
So an outcome is defined as a change
in behavior that improves results.
(10:56):
Right.
So what a product manager would dowould say I want an outcome.
And the outcome in this situation is youhelp people that want a job have a job.
Whereas what a project manager would do isthey would focus on a target,
which is they would say,we want people to use a system
(11:19):
and then we want to make sure that, youknow, 95% of people are on the system.
Right?
And that's, that's, ends up with acompletely a completely different thing.
So why do I say all of this?
It's about mindset.
If you want to be successful in product,what you do is you go around thinking,
what is the problemthat I'm trying to solve?
(11:40):
What are the creative ways that I've got
to make sure that I can solve a problem?
Whereas people who come fromthat project mindset
are just trying to get a thing done,and they're probably just doing
what they've been told to do createa system, build a tool, go to a place.
Do you see what I mean?
This isthis is sort of a subtle difference in it.
(12:01):
And I can I can give you a real example,if you want, of of where
I had a really unlikely,
result of followingthat if that's of interest to you.
Yeah. Completely.
Yeah.
So I did some I did some work for anorganization once, which was one of those,
one of those companieswhere you can effectively order
ingredients, which you then cook at home.
(12:23):
Right.
And what they realized was,was that they were trialing
something in London at the time.
And near themthere were these, a couple of,
sort of like housing estates.
And in those housing estates,they were just saying, look,
we're not selling anythingto these different housing estates.
(12:43):
And someone said, well,what we need to do is we need to find out
why the people on those housing estates,
buying our product was like, well, fine.
So someone goes, well,what we need is a survey, right?
Which is pretty logical, right?
If you're going to go and ask peoplesomething you need to survey.
So immediatelywhat happened is the tech team
(13:06):
went away and started to build,
like a survey monkey like, customized,like survey monkey tool.
And they were like,
what we can do is we can get people'semail addresses
and we can sendthe email addresses out to people.
And what those people can dois they can feed back into the survey.
And then we've completed the survey.
But of course, actually, whilst
(13:28):
that might solve the problem,
it didn't really applya lot of sort of lateral thinking.
Whereas what we ended up doing iswe ended up saying, well,
why don't you just go and stand outsideof the door of that, you know,
tower block or walk around that estatebetween kind of like five, 5 p.m.
and 7 p.m.?
I just ask people and note it downin a notebook, right.
(13:51):
And get those ideas.
And it just gives youthat that understanding that
there were two ways of dealing with this.
There was going for the obvious answer,which is, let's get a tool
and build a survey.
But without any idea ofhow to contact the people.
We didn't have their email addresses
or phone numbers or whatever,or you could just take a notepad and pen
and you could go and meet peoplein which you build relationships.
(14:14):
You talk to people, you have a discussion.
You get much
deeper information and insightthan you would do by filling in a survey,
and you actually get to come back and say,look, we've met some people.
This is what they say.
This is what's going on in their lives.
And that in itself,
was really successful.
That's what we did in the end.
But the way of going outand meeting people, it was cheap.
(14:36):
It was easy. We had the people.
We got really rich informationbecause we were building relationships.
And the other thing was going to take,you know, building the survey in
and like an online tool,it was going to take time.
It was going to be expensive.
We're going to haveto put a whole team on it.
And then we weren'tsure about how to deploy it.
So we're solving the same problem,but we're solving it in different ways.
(14:57):
And the the result of how we solvedit was completely different,
one from the other.
So it just gives you an ideathat even in a tech company, again,
it's people that matter.
And going out
and meeting people and buildingthose relationships is the critical thing.
But that's all of that.
That's product mindset is thinkingthe problem that you're trying to solve
(15:18):
through thoroughly to make surethat you get the right result.
Yeah, completely.
Would you say that these, skill sets
and traits that you're essentially born
and infused with,or can they be learned and taught?
Oh, absolutely.They can be learned and taught.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, some people,
(15:39):
are betterat different aspects of this than others.
Right? So if you look across
a spectrum of
personalities,you're going to have some people
who are much more analytical
and organizedand into the data and the information,
and they're good at processing numbersand spotting patterns and all of that.
(16:00):
They make excellent product managersbecause they're really good
at getting insight from information.
And at the other end of the spectrum,you've got the creatives,
you've got people that come fromlike a user experience,
like a customer service design background.
They're usually much more creative now.
They might not spot the patternsand get the insights from numbers,
(16:20):
but quite often what they're really goodat is building relationships with people,
going out and meeting people,having conversation with people, building.
You know,I think I said building relationships
with building relationshipsand getting to know them.
All of those people have somethingthat they can bring to product management.
So I don't think anyone is excluded at allfrom getting into product management.
(16:42):
I think what we have to do,though, is as an industry,
I think we probably have tostop kind of saying, look,
if you've got certain qualifications,if you've passed certain tests,
if you've done certain stuff,only you can be a product manager,
because actually, what we're doingis we're representing
humans, and humansdon't all fit into one category.
(17:02):
And therefore product managers shouldn'tall come from one category as well.
And I think that's probablyone of my criticisms of where
the industry has gone isI think people have tried to,
sort of paint it into a corner and say,look,
product managershave to come from a certain mindset.
They have to have certain experienceand they have to want certain things.
(17:23):
I think that's nonsense.
So I think I think productmanagers are good when they come from
a really varied background.
And, you know, and when we talk aboutdiversity, as in diversity and inclusion,
diversityis as much about diversity of experience
and diversity of thought as it isabout any other form of diversity.
And I think people forget that,which is really, really sad.
(17:46):
No, that's a really good point.
So can you take us through a typical dayin the life of your role?
Well, of course, these days I,I work for myself, so, it sort of depends.
It depends on what you'd liketo look like.
So, I couldI could walk through what it's like
when I go and workwith some of my customers, for example.
Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah.
(18:07):
So as an independent consultant,
what happensis, is people get in touch with me because
they know that something's wrong, right?
They've got a feelingthat they're looking at their product team
or their engineering team or their datascience team or whatever it is.
(18:27):
And what they're doingis they are, kind of going, look,
I think something's wrong,and I don't get what's wrong.
Can we get someone inwho can just give a bit of experience?
And generally speaking,what I will do is when when I get asked
to go into an organization,I spend my time meeting people,
I will I will ask for a huge cross-sectionof people to meet,
(18:51):
and I willmeet those people, not just talk to them.
You know what's good?What's bad? Was it different?
What's going on? What's not goingon? What do you like? What you don't?
What do you not like?
And I capture all of that information.
And from that information I spot patterns.
And I look at those patterns.
And from those patterns,I ultimately make recommendations
(19:11):
about whatthe organization can do differently.
And I think from that,
there's, there's a lotwhich actually comes up frequently.
And I think the things that come upfrequently are,
number one, quite often in a business,there's a lack of product vision,
and people aren't really thinkingabout where the product is going
(19:34):
or who the customers are.
They've got to a stage where they'refocusing more on what the business wants
or what they're want up to uptheir CEO or whatever's
asked them to do,rather than solving the problem.
And that's what are the what'swhat are the main things.
I think another thing is,
I think quite a lot of organizationsjust have too many product.
(19:55):
They're called product people,but they're not really doing product work.
They sort of become projectcoordinate eaters.
And what they're doing is they're spendinga lot of time writing requirements
or user stories or going to, you know,
reviews or retrospectives or helping,you know, organize the backlog.
What they're not doingenough of is actually getting out, meeting
(20:18):
customers, understanding thethe need that the customers have got,
the pain points the customers have gotand the pains they want solved.
And they're not really thinking
about creative and innovative waysto solve those products.
They've just ended up being, in somecases, like glorified admin assistants.
And one of the things that I do there isI help organizations
(20:40):
just think differentlyabout how to how to deal with that.
And I thinkit's one of the great sadnesses.
As you know, my career and I are havingdone product work, you know, the 25
plus year career, I've doneproduct management for 20 years of it,
and I think that was a real interestingpoint
where product managerswere needed massively
(21:04):
to sort of sitbetween the executive of an organization
and the tech teamto make sure only sensible ideas
were going down to the tech team,for the tech team to build.
And now it feelsthat that's got watered down.
And instead of thinking,
you know, having product managersthat are spending their time,
you know, working to help the organizationbuild the right thing
(21:25):
for the right people, be creative,come up with really innovative good ideas.
I think a lot of product managementhas ended up
being morelike the project management of the past,
and I think that attitude has got to sucha critical mass that a lot of people
have actually just forgotten what productmanagement is really altogether.
(21:45):
And a lot of product managers, I mean, arevery sadly just project managers.
They fall back into that.That old way of thinking.
And that's what I help organizationsbreak out of right is, is to say, look,
you know, stop, stopbeing project managers
and get back to being product managersthat represent the needs of the business
and the needs of the, the needsof the organization that you serve.
(22:08):
You know? Fantastic.
So what advice would you give tosomebody who's feeling a bit stuck
in their career at the moment?
And they've got ambitionand they do want to make a change.
But what would their next steps be?
Yeah,I mean that's such a powerful question.
And you know what? We've all been there.
I think we all want more.
And I think especially, you know,you can be at a stage of your life,
(22:30):
where, you know, you've got to do thingsthat maybe you want to start
a family or,you know, buy a house or whatever it is.
Right?
And you think, well, I want to do more,but maybe just a bit bored.
Right.
And you're kind of thinking,oh, I don't want to be stuck here
for the next sort of 25 yearsdoing whatever I'm doing.
Yeah.
And I, I never really feel thatbecause I definitely went through,
(22:50):
what Douglas Adams used tocall the long, dark tea time of the soul.
Yeah. For sure. I went through that.
And what would what would my advice be?
Let me tell you a story. So,
a couple of years ago, 2 or 3 years ago,
I'd been invited to ato speak at a conference,
and the keynote speaker,
(23:13):
who was meant to be starting at 9:30,didn't turn up.
And it got to about, I don't know, 9:25.
And they're like, right.
You know, the guy who's the keynote hasn'tturned up, what were you going to do?
And someone who knowsme and knows me relatively
well just went, do you know what I reckonEd could do a keynote.
Right.
So they asked me, could you stand up onstage, just do a keynote?
(23:36):
And I was like, great when?And they're like, in about four minutes.
Time was like,it's a bit of an ask, right?
But we're going to do it anyway.
So I stood up and I just kind of,
I sort of told a storyI can't really remember about what, but
there was there's 11. of it which came up,which I will always remember.
And it is this it's everything is made up
(24:01):
is such ais such an interesting insight, isn't it?
But I through my careerI've come to believe this.
Everything is made upand the reason that we do
things is only because it ends upbeing convention.
Right?
So, you know, the fact that we,you know, in the UK, anyway, the fact
that we drive on the left or the factthat we use money to buy things or the,
(24:23):
you know, the fact that, you know, we,we drink,
you know, hot tea out of a cupas opposed to a glass or whatever it is.
All of these conventions are just stuffthat's been made up.
And if you think about it,
something becomes
part of your culturebecause enough people now do and accept
this made up thingthat it just becomes normal.
(24:46):
And because it's normal, it just,you know, because it's normal, it becomes
normal.
It is normal, you know what I meanis it's kind of the way it is.
But what you have to remember
is if you just go through life
conforming to what everybody else doesall the time.
Now, I'm not suggestingyou become an extremist, right?
But if you just go through lifejust following,
(25:08):
doing what everybody else tells youto do all the time,
then you end up lacking that creativityand you end up lacking the ability
to think differently,which is, as we said earlier,
the podcast is the thingthat you need to develop.
So I find myself at the end of thiskeynote saying, look,
just everything is made up.
(25:30):
So if you are stuck and you're feeling
a bit disillusioned with your careerand you're wondering what to do next,
well,
understanding that everything is made updoes for you is it
removes the barrier to doingwhatever else it is that you want to do.
Right?
Because people saying, especiallyin the tech industry, that you have
(25:54):
to have certain qualificationsor you have to have certain experience,
to go and do somethingis largely just a mindset.
And if you understandthat everything is made up, therefore,
if everyone has made everything elseup, you can make things up too.
That brings the spirit of innovation.
(26:14):
Now why does that matter?
Well, let's play forward this question.
You're disillusioned with your job.
You now understand that things are made upand you can do things differently.
Basically, you can make up things
yourself, is what I'm saying,and it's perfectly valid to do so.
But you then find yourselfin an interview situation.
So what do I seeas interesting people in interviews?
(26:35):
Well, when it comes to product managers,some of the most boring product managers
I've ever met are the peoplewho've got a PhD in product management,
or the people have got every certificatein product management,
or they know everything about agile,or they know everything about data,
and they just sort of
want to come across as this kindof intellectual polymath, right?
(26:57):
You can say, well, I've got all theI've got all the certifications and I've,
you know, I've,I've just know everything about X,
I've got a PhD and you're like, I've gotoh my goodness.
You're just like, that's so boringcompared to
the peoplewho've just got great stories to tell you.
And some of the great stories to tell,some of the best stories I've ever heard
in an interview, all the ones where it'sbeen an absolute disaster.
(27:20):
You're right.
Where people you asked him a question,you go, well, give me an example.
You know, give me an example ofwhen something went wrong and they just,
what they dois they sit back and they laugh.
Right.
You kind of like,go on, just just tell me, right.
And they tell you a story about how
they thought something was going to worka certain way.
They sold it to the exacthe exact got behind it.
(27:41):
They did this thing.
None of it worked out the way they thoughtit was going to work out. And,
and, andthen, you know, something happened.
And usually the most fascinating bit is,is like, right, mate?
So everything went wrong.
How did you deal with it? Right.
And it's that momentwhere people have had something go wrong
(28:02):
and how they deal with itis then absolutely fascinating to me.
Right.
Because what comes out of itis your character comes out of it.
Your ability to be patientand calm comes out of it.
Your ability to have humilityand say, look, it was me, I failed.
I got it wrong.
That all comes out of it.
(28:22):
That's where I see people be interesting.
All right.
So so let's justtry and put those two things together.
Because what I've said is, is number one,
everything is made up.
Let's just take just take thatthrough your life with you. Right.
Because it's been a huge learningpoint for me what everything being made up
means is there is credibility in youmaking stuff up.
(28:44):
So anyone who's ever been an inventoror an innovator has made stuff up.
People don't look at James Dyson,for example, or people don't look
at someone like Steve Jobs and they go,oh, they were just making stuff up.
They were such failures.
They look at them and they go, gosh,they made stuff up.
And it worked really well.
That's amazing. Right?So let's have more people like that.
A number two, all of those people,especially both those two people
(29:07):
that I've mentioned, got so much stuffwrong along the way.
And they have the humility
to make sure they were learningfrom those things and take it forwards.
And what makes them
interesting is they were like,Steve Jobs was an interesting person.
JamesDyson is an interesting person, right?
Because they've got so much wrongand because they've learned from it
(29:28):
and what they've been able to dois they've been able to overcome
the the difficulties that they've had.
But no one was ever able to tellthem, don't stop,
don't, don't stop making stuff up.
Let me give you an example.Right. So when I was a kid,
I once went around to someone's houseand they had a wheelbarrow
(29:49):
and in the wheelbarrow,
instead of having a wheelat the front of it,
had a bright orange ballat the front of it.
So where the wheel would be,there was just a bright orange ball.
And that was one of the first Dysonproducts that I ever came across.
And everyone forgets about the JamesDyson wheelbarrow.
But the problem that he was trying tosolve is,
is that people quite oftenpush wheelbarrows through wet gardens,
(30:10):
and it leaves this big kind of light linewhere the wheel goes.
But if you put a ball there, number one,it helps you maneuver the wheelbarrow
better.
But number two, it doesn't createa big line in your pristine lawn.
Right? So all the time he was trying to,
find a problem to solve.
Everyone forgets about the James Dysonwashing machine,
which is probably one of the bestwashing machines that you could buy.
(30:33):
Everyone forgets it. It was too expensive.
It never caught on,but it was an amazing piece of kit.
And, you know, it's a bit.
I feel sad I didn't buy one,at the time they discontinued it.
But if you look at Dyson,there's loads of, there's loads of,
failures that he's got.
But what he's done, he'sconstantly learned from it.
He's constantlytried to do different things.
It was the same with Apple.
(30:53):
It's the same with loadsof successful organizations.
And so that's why it matters.
So everything's made up.
Have the humility to fail,tell the story, just have stories to tell.
Right?
If you go and you go to an interview,or you get to talk to people about what
you do have stories to tell, because it'sthe stories that make you interesting.
And, you know, again, you can getall the qualifications that you like,
(31:17):
but qualificationsespecially like internal tech
industry qualifications,they're not going to make you interesting.
And and personally, from my perspective,I've always struggled in organizations
where people have said,
oh, you've got to havethese qualifications before you come in.
And I'm like, but why?
(31:38):
There's so much more to meas an individual than a qualification
that I might have got.
Yeah.
So, so I would,I would say that's a really that for me
is, is solid advice for meabout how to how to approach
getting out of the disillusionmentyou might be feeling in your career.
Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you so much.
(31:58):
Any closing thoughts.
Yeah.
I mean I just thinkI think product management is
just a really fascinating place to be.
And it doesn't matter.
Again it doesn't matteryour background or experience.
There is a place for you.
It might be hard sometimes findingthe right organizational personality
for you to fit into.
So organizations are personalities at all.
(32:20):
But just go for it.
There's loads of advice.
People are always free to contact me,by the way,
through LinkedIn to to ask me questions.
Always happy to talk to people.
I mentor lots of peoplethrough, through their careers.
I'm just like, go for it, go for itand have fun, right?
You've got nothing to lose.
That's brilliant.
Thank you so much for your time today.
I. Well, yes.
(32:41):
Honestly,I'm so grateful for you having me.
Thanks for inviting me.I've enjoyed myself a lot.
Thanks again to Edward for their time.For more information
on product management,you can check out the show notes below.
If you enjoyed the episode, feel freeto leave us a review on Apple or Spotify.
Thank you, as always, for listeningand good luck on your journey to future.
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