What do you do when a customer asks for a feature that isn’t on your roadmap? In this episode of Hard Calls, Trisha Price and Mark Mitchell, Chief Product Officer at Morgan Stanley at Work, share personal, candid stories of the hardest calls Mark has made - starting with knowing when to walk away from a big prospect that just isn’t the right fit.
Mark breaks down how he weighs effort, impact, and adoption when deciding which product investments to make and why “massive size, small impact” requests are the real landmines.
Balancing strategy, execution and priorities is always challenging for product leaders, but Mark shares his 90-day-9-month-9-year time-horizon framework, and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to manage.
They go deep on user adoption as the north-star KPI, the “whole product” motions that actually drive it, and the customer focus that keeps product, sales, marketing, and education aligned.
What makes for a great product organization? “For us, it starts with us making sure that we understand the needs of the customer. Understand the needs of the problem and the problem that we're trying to solve, and spend a lot of time understanding the front side of discovery and planning and all the things that go into building a great product.”
Finally, Mark shares how a highly regulated financial services enterprise, such as Morgan Stanley at Work, is embracing AI—from code assistance to internal copilots—and why he believes AI will soon be a prerequisite input for product decisions.
Whether you're navigating short-term pressures or long-term strategy, new to product or a seasoned leader, this episode will add to your knowledge base to help you make smarter product bets and deliver value at scale.
Love the episode? Download and listen to Hard Calls every two weeks in your favorite podcast app, drop us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, and share this episode with a teammate who’s staring down their own hard call today. Every subscription and review helps more product leaders find the show—let’s build better products together!
Presented by Pendo.
Explore more insights at pendo.io or connect with Trisha Price on LinkedIn.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.