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Top Tier: Product Podcast

Top Tier: Product Podcast

By Daniil Pavliuchkov

Top Tier is a series of interviews with product people. Product managers, designers, researchers, and other passionate builders tell a story about how they developed their own individual work style, what they find the most important in their profession, and of course, share their secrets and best practices to build a product hit.
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10. Unlocking your PM growth with soft skills, with Katerina Suchkova (Product Coach for PM Career & Craft)

Top Tier: Product PodcastJun 22, 2021

00:00
37:33
10. Unlocking your PM growth with soft skills, with Katerina Suchkova (Product Coach for PM Career & Craft)

10. Unlocking your PM growth with soft skills, with Katerina Suchkova (Product Coach for PM Career & Craft)

Katerina Suchkova works as a Product Coach for PM Career & Craft and helps companies to build their first product competencies matrix and career progression framework. During the last few years, Katia guided many PMs through a path to rediscover and craft their career journey, and of course, saw a lot of patterns in how people progress and what unlocks their growth.

Katerina and I talked about 2 career paths for product managers - expert track and people manager track. Why you should focus on soft skills, how to find time for your growth when you have 10 meetings each day, why you should let go to start growing, and what eastern philosophy or behavioural psychology has to do with becoming a better PM.

Katia is super happy to connect with you online, just drop her a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katerinasuchkova/. Be sure to check her personal website for a free ebook on Design Sprints.

Tell me what you think! As a product person myself, I need data & user feedback. Please fill a 2-min feedback form to help me out! And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

Jun 22, 202137:33
09. Writing a diverse and inclusive UX Copy, with Katrin Sütterlin (Senior UX Writer at Sapera)

09. Writing a diverse and inclusive UX Copy, with Katrin Sütterlin (Senior UX Writer at Sapera)

Katrin Sütterlin writes a bi-lingual UX copy for the last 4 years, and her broad background extends into Marketing, PR, and even teaching German. Currently a Senior UX Writer at Sapera Consultancy in Berlin, Katrin works fully remote from roughly 400 miles away from the German capital. She is especially passionate about ethical design, inclusive copywriting, and recently neurodiversity. It is such an admirable and noble mission, and Katrin really means it.

A diverse copy stands out, anyone can understand it, and it simplifies the user interaction. This is especially tricky if you are not a user of the product. And a variety of neurodiverse users add even more complexity to the picture. And of course, you have SEO requirements and stakeholder needs. All that seems overwhelming, so Katrin shared how she approaches this topic and what you could do if your company doesn't have a dedicated UX Writer.

In this episode, Katrin mentioned an enormous amount of resources about UX Writing, here is the full list.

Podcast Episodes:

Books:

UX Writer Conference:

UX Writing auf Deutsch Meetup:

Training:

Katrin is super happy to connect with you online, just drop her a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-suetterlin/. Be sure to check her Medium blog as well!

Tell me what you think! As a product person myself, I need data & user feedback. Please fill a 2-min feedback form to help me out! And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

Jun 08, 202139:22
08. Co-designing a strong company culture, with John Cutler (Head of Product Education at Amplitude)

08. Co-designing a strong company culture, with John Cutler (Head of Product Education at Amplitude)

John Cutler leads product education at Amplitude, and he regularly meets hundreds of companies of various stage and scale from different industries and continents. His observations led him to a few insightful moments about product culture. Successful companies have all different flavours of culture, while the rest struggle in a similar way. Building a culture takes time, requires masterful empathy, and you can't blindly copy Netflix, Amazon, or Spotify. John shared his key learnings on how to co-design a culture in an inviting way. Because imposing it will not work.

John is super happy to connect with you online, just drop him a note on Twitter @johncutlefish or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnpcutler. Be sure to check his Medium blog as well!

Tell me what you think!
As a product person myself, I need data & user feedback. Please fill a 2-min feedback form to help me out! And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

May 25, 202141:29
07 - Building an immersive gamified experience, with Jan Josten (Head of Product at Bigpoint)

07 - Building an immersive gamified experience, with Jan Josten (Head of Product at Bigpoint)

Jan Josten attracted more than 50M players into the complex and immersive game world of Seafight. He crafted a journey that carefully leads new joiners to their first purchase, and of course to the next one. Jan also explained how to gamify a product and why people with interesting lives create the most engaging gamification experience.

Jan is happy to connect with you online, just drop him a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-josten-14241a24/ or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jan.josten.505.

Tell me what you think!
As a product person myself, I need data & user feedback. Please fill a 2-min feedback form to help me out! And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

May 14, 202135:40
06. Making the research voice heard, with Nina Schacht (Female Founder & CEO at NIDOS Academy, ex eBay, ex TIER)

06. Making the research voice heard, with Nina Schacht (Female Founder & CEO at NIDOS Academy, ex eBay, ex TIER)

Nina Schacht has built or led several well-performing teams at TIER and inside eBay Classifieds Group, and in her previous life - supported the largest FMCG players worldwide. Nowadays, she gladly helps others on that journey at the NIDOS Academy that she founded - a space to find answers to your most pressing research questions and to improve as a research professional.

Unfortunately, many tech companies still work without a research team. Nina shared how to get a budget for your first research hire, how to make their voice heard, what pitfalls to avoid to not lose the research credibility and reputation.

Nina is happy to connect with you online, just drop her a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-schacht-84b94259/ or follow her on Medium https://medium.com/@n.schacht. Be sure to check her awesome courses at NIDOS Academy https://www.nidos-academy.org/ as well.

Tell me what you think!
As a product person myself, I need data & user feedback. Please fill a 2-min feedback form to help me out! And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

Apr 21, 202133:46
05. Similarities of consulting and startup ways, with Siddharth Jaiswal (Lead of Automative Practice at Netscribes)

05. Similarities of consulting and startup ways, with Siddharth Jaiswal (Lead of Automative Practice at Netscribes)

Siddharth Jaiswal witnessed a unique transformation of the auto industry. The traditional business model was disrupted by technological companies left and right: electric cars, self-driving cars, micro-mobility, shared economy; all that happened within a decade of time. Now Siddharth has to help his clients innovate and grow in a new landscape with a lot of uncertainty. Just like startups and scaleups do, except automotive has a lot of legacy and culture. Today, he will share if an MBA is a good background for startups, how he approaches retention projects, and what companies could do now to have fewer problems with innovation and growth in the future.

Siddharth is happy to connect with you online, just drop him a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharth-jaiswal-90070237/

Tell me what you think!
As a product person myself, I need data & user feedback. Please fill a 2-min feedback form to help me out! And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

Apr 06, 202131:52
04. Bringing context to your product team, with Lucie McLean (Director of Product at Zalando)

04. Bringing context to your product team, with Lucie McLean (Director of Product at Zalando)

Lucie McLean believes that the right context at the right time is what brings a product organization to the next level. Equipped with a master's degree in journalism and 15-years of product experience in multibillion giants, she is an absolute pro at bringing news and snippets of relevant information to the team. Today, she will share how 10 years at BBC shaped her product leadership style, what you can do now to start sharing context, and how to close the context loop with your team and stakeholders.

Lucie is happy to connect with you online, just drop her a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/luciemclean/

Tell me what you think! As a product person myself, I really want to know what you think about the show, so please share your feedback with me. And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

Mar 23, 202138:26
03. Demystifying AI and ML products, with Deepak Paramanand (Product Lead at Hitachi)

03. Demystifying AI and ML products, with Deepak Paramanand (Product Lead at Hitachi)

Deepak Paramanand is a veteran AI & ML product leader who brings more than 15 years of experience with data to our conversation. He has been working on the SwiftKey keyboard after the famous $250M acquisition deal led by Microsoft in 2016. Now building AI products with Hitachi, Depak demystifies AI products and explains how A/B testing works there, how to apply Jobs To Be Done, and what AI products have instead of UI/UX that you can tap and click. I also couldn't help myself and asked if he knows a good AI product that can predict stock market changes (no) and if I should worry that AI will replace my job in the future (also no). 

Deepak is happy to connect with listeners online, just drop him a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepakparamanand/.

Tell me what you think! As a product person myself, I really want to know what you think about the show, so please share your feedback with me. And if you like the show, please subscribe and leave a review.

Feb 16, 202133:26
02. Thought leadership and proactive research, with Shaahin Shariat (Senior Researcher at TIER)

02. Thought leadership and proactive research, with Shaahin Shariat (Senior Researcher at TIER)

Shaahin Shariat is an experienced researcher who focuses on thought leadership at TIER, a micro-mobility startup that offers electric scooters and mopeds for share. For him, research is not just asking questions and doing interviews. He works at the forefront of product management and talks with a lot of users before anything is built, not even an MVP. He scouts and discovers the most promising idea and paves the path for other teams to develop this idea into a full product. In this interview, he shares how to become an ally to your users, stakeholders, and even external partners through proactive research and thought leadership.

He is happy to connect with listeners online, just drop him a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaahin-shariat-phd-b756335/.

Leave a review!
As a product person myself, I really want to know what you think about the show, so please share your feedback with me.

Jan 05, 202132:34
01. Servant leadership of product, design, and research teams, with Victoria Busse (VP of Product at TIER)

01. Servant leadership of product, design, and research teams, with Victoria Busse (VP of Product at TIER)

Victoria Busse is currently leading 25 product, design, and research people at TIER, a micro-mobility startup that offers electric scooters and mopeds for share. The market is especially challenging during lockdown periods, and it's not an easy task to develop a product strategy that is both anti-crisis as well as competitive. During this interview, Victoria shares what is a perfect customer journey, how she developed a "servant leadership" management style, and how to inspire teams remotely in our challenging times.

She is happy to connect with listeners online, just drop her a note on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriasarabusse/.

As a product person myself, I really want to know what you think about the show. So please leave a review and share your feedback.

Dec 13, 202021:47