💡Product Circle ⭕ Chat - Applying Product Thinking To Your Product Transformation with John Cutler
💡Product Circle ⭕ Chat 30 with John Cutler on Applying Product Thinking To Your Product Transformation
Product Circle Chat is runs every second week as a Zoom call that anyone can join to talk all things product, product management and problem solving. Creating value for customers and the business.
“Don’t just run experiments with your product. Run experiments with how you do product!” - John Cutler
This Product Circle Chat was run on the 26 September 2024 at 12pm (Sydney Australia time) with John Cutler. Recording below👇🏼
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🎇5 Learning Gaps for Successful Transformations🎇
When thinking about how to improve learning and growth, especially in product transformations, we need to address more than just knowledge. Inspired by Julie Dirksen’s books, John Cutler explains the 5 common gaps that get in the way of change.
1. Knowledge Gap
Many assume the primary problem is knowledge.
“I was speaking to an executive, and they said, ‘Well, if we could just have some product managers who knew what they were doing, everything would be fixed here.’”
However the issue isn't always a lack of knowledge.
For instance, when discussing OKRs, John notes, “OKRs are not fundamentally a difficult thing to do. These 24-year-old new grad product managers at the company were identifying good and bad OKRs within 30 minutes.”
It’s not just about knowing the process but applying it in context.
2. Skills Gap
Sometimes it’s not just about knowing what to do but how to do it effectively in practice.
“There’s an advanced skill related to OKRs, which is when you’re sitting in front of the C-suite, and everyone’s telling you to do X, and you have to say, actually, our OKRs don’t apply to that.”
This example shows that applying frameworks like OKRs in high-pressure environments requires advanced skills that go beyond basic knowledge.
Building those skills through real-world experience is crucial.
3. Motivation Gap
Even when people know what to do and have the skills, they might not be motivated to act.
“Your average sort of cynical designer or engineer is going to look at you and say, ‘You know what, the destination doesn’t really make sense yet. I’m not really bought in at this particular moment.’”
This motivation gap is common when employees don’t see the value in a proposed change.
Closing this gap requires aligning the change with individual and team incentives, making the destination compelling and relevant to all stakeholders.
4. Habit Gap
Organizations often underestimate the power of habits.
“You see this in all sorts of companies where you’ll talk the talk. But when it comes time for annual planning, the momentum takes over, and all the old habits come back.”
Breaking deeply ingrained organisational habits requires not only new processes but also sustained effort to ensure the new behaviors stick.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, and overcoming the habit gap is about reinforcing the desired actions consistently over time.
5. Environment Gap
Finally, the environment can either support or hinder progress.
Even if the team is knowledgeable, skilled, and motivated, the system they operate in may hold them back.
“Legitimately, the architecture requires hundreds of people to work on everything. The dependency and constraint environment is non-conducive to giving coworkers agency to focus and have optionality.”
Addressing this gap means creating an environment—both technical and organisational—that enables teams to perform their best, with fewer constraints and more autonomy.
Product Circle Chat 30 - Topic
Topic: Applying Product Thinking To Your Product Transformation
Imagine if your product transformation—how you operate and how you foster your emerging product culture—were a product.
What questions might you ask?
How might that influence your approach to the challenge?
In this talk, we
applied product thinking and "sense" to the challenge of product transformation itself.
explored flywheels, experiments, frameworks, standards, and rules.
discussed how to apply the product toolkit to how you organise and work.
Our goal was to inspire your team to take a more thoughtful approach to improvement.
Product Circle Chat 30 - Video
During the chat, John referred to two books that have influenced him:
“Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change” by Julie Dirksen, and
“Design for how people learn” by Julie Dirksen
Product Circle Chat 30 - Speaker
Product Circle Chat was run on the 26 September 2024 at 12pm (Sydney Australia time) with John Cutler.
John Cutler focuses on the messy overlaps and patterns of product—The Beautiful Mess (the title of his newsletter). Until recently, John supported product teams at Toast as Senior Director, Product Enablement. Prior to Toast, he was a product evangelist and coach at Amplitude where he interacted with diverse product teams and product leaders from around the world. There are few people in the world that have this kind of exposure, and if you follow John's writing over the last couple years I'm sure you can see the influence of this perspective. He has a background in product management and UX research, including B2B SaaS companies like Zendesk, Pendo, and AppFolio, and before that B2C, ad-tech, banking, and media. John is a prolific (or some might say obsessive) writer, with almost a thousand posts spread across various newsletters, blogs,and Medium.
You can connect with John on Linkedin
John’s Miro
John presented his Miro for Product Circle.
Product Circle Chat - Q&A
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