How You Learn & Improve With Feedback

It was a long summer break, and I'm happy to record again with you, Alex. Good to see you. Stronki, good to see you. So you look a little bit different today. What's going on? Life hit me. Life hit me really, really hard. So you're retiring? I didn't manage to see a barber in like five weeks. Damn. No, probably five months. I think last time we talked was when I went to a barber's, I'm pretty, yeah, don't mind my green worker's hat, because I'm also still out of town. I'm currently in beautiful Milan, Italy, with a heavy thunderstorm outside. So well, it's a slightly unusual place to record. So that's why I'm also here with my tiny little micro. Well, at least, yeah, thank you. I mean, you still sound very happy. And even though the circumstances are different, a bit with a cold, so my language is, my voice is also different today. The language too, because you're retiring. Yes, as you can see, I completely lost my English. So yeah, I think we should maybe do a little catch up, because last episode, we said there is a new format coming. And this is still the case. We are heavily working on the application process. So if you are interested in a coaching call with us, recorded on the podcast, feel free to let us know anytime. We have the contact details in the podcast description. And if you're not sure if you really want to be recorded, we can definitely do it anonymized. So no worries, there is a solution for every problem. But for today, I think, Alex, we had a couple of conversations in the past regarding educational budget, feedback, learning, personal growth, and all that kind of stuff. So you prepared something today that actually caught me right when you started introducing it. And I'm like, I can't make it even bigger. So maybe you take over and share your thoughts on. I mean, prepared is a big word. It's basically just some thoughts that I had. Also, because we're now picking up the podcast again, because we're going to soon launch also the first episodes in the new format. The thing is, I think a lot of professionals, especially in our field, listen to podcasts. That's why we exist. Obviously. We can read news articles, watch videos, talk to peers, go to conferences, right? So I think there is a lot of exchange. And still, every job and every company people work for in their nature is very different from the other, right? So I think the question is always like, okay, how do you learn? And how do you develop when you listen to a podcast, when you read an article and so on, right? And I think I'm a little bit like in this thing. Do you remember when Spotify shared publicly, like how they structured their company? And suddenly all the different companies started like organizing their R&D teams or engineering teams according to the Spotify way? I remember terribly. Yeah. Yeah. We've been there. I said, we've both been there, right? We've been there together. But the thing is like that, that made me think, right, like, how can you read these things? And how can you read about the way someone improved their processes or mistakes they made on a project or how they delivered this amazing new product strategy and so on? How can you read or listen to that and then translate it to your word? Because I think it's like really, the second you hear it, and you start applying it directly to you or your learning is directly there, it's probably already like too narrow. And I think you really need to, every time you hear something or you read something, go back at the beginning and start with a bunch of different questions, right? Thinking of like, okay, how did they get there? What was their initial approach to figuring out what their problems are? How can I figure out what the problems in my organization or in my work are? So that you really find like this, the questions that then help you improve. And I think more than that, right, like you can also apply this in your day to day job, right? So imagine, again, our beautiful triad or duo, let's take the duo of the PM and the product designer. The designer delivers something and the product manager gives feedback of, hey, you actually missed X, Y, Z in the process. I mean, let's take the example of card payments, because we used that a couple of times. And let's say we work on the actual card transaction and the designer ships, okay, this is like how the reader should look like and what it shows and so on. And the PM says like, okay, hey, I think you forgot to include the max stripe transaction. If someone's chip is broken, they need to do the max stripe. Now as a designer, what's your learning? I fucked up. I'm worthless. I should quit my job. That's radical. I mean, I would say as a designer, he or she definitely learned that there are more edge cases that need to be considered. That's the thing, right? But you're already like on the right side of like, okay, thinking about it before. But the solution itself, or what the PM gave the designer was like, okay, you need to think about the clients with max stripes. So I'm sure in the future, the designer will try to think about the max stripe again. But because like, if you only think about that use case, because the use case is what you learned, you can't apply it to everywhere, right? So your thinking needs to go, okay, how did the PM now figure out that I forgot the max stripe? What's the problem that I missed, right? I mean, the thing is not that the designer missed the max stripe, it's the edge case itself that hasn't been considered. And I think this is where you need to look at and also where you gain your learning from by thinking broader in the process, not thinking about the one particular thing you've identified. And it's like, how can I get to these edge cases? That needs to be the question. How can I have more context when designing to not miss the edge cases? Who do I need to involve, right? Those are all better answers than, oh, I need to think about max stripe. And it sounds super obvious in this example, but it's the same with, Spotify didn't give everyone the answer of, you need to build chapters and stripes and whatever. Yeah, I would like to dig into that because, I mean, the one example you gave with the designer is a very interactive one, right? So I'm working with a person, I'm getting direct feedback, and then the question is, what am I taking out of this? So this is one case. So let's talk about Spotify because we're talking about, let's say, a big blog article that has been launched on, hey, this is how we do it, or eventually a short video, and people start applying what they did. And this is actually a problem that I see because, as you said at the beginning, there are many questions in this process of something new is coming out that many companies and leaders are not considering, which is, first of all, which problems need to be solved, right? And then additionally on that, you need to take a look at, even though there are certain challenges that Spotify might have that we have too as a company that are getting fixed by this new model, they don't necessarily need to be applicable to our situation. And I think this is the point where the brains of many people stop working because they chase a solution, and there is also a pain that needs to be fixed fast, but unfortunately, you pay a lot in the long run. But that's the thing, right? You should never look at the solution. Maybe a solution can also just be applied, but it won't help you learn. It won't help you come up with the same thing or with an even better thing the next time you're in front of a similar exercise, right? So it's important to sit down and try to understand the process, the why behind it, the approach on how to get to the answers for your specific case, right? Yeah, but what I would do first is, first of all, I would try to understand my own fucking processes and why they are not working, right? And this is usually a step that's also getting skipped. But when you get there, I'm really only looking at the learning process. I hear the Spotify story, right? Because you're also already in the solution of, oh, I need to look at the process. If I read the Spotify case, I have to think, okay, what did they do to get there? And only when I understand what they did to get there, which was looking at their processes, looking at the inefficiencies, looking at the people that they have, looking at where the inefficiencies are. So only when I understand, okay, how did they get to the solution, to coming up to the solution, I understand how I can apply this to my processes and how I can. And that's then where the learning happens. Because once you understand that, and once you see where people are coming from, and you try to apply that in your work, then you can really learn from the smart minds out there and from how other people are doing it. Yeah. Totally agreed. I mean, it's the same thing with reading books and stuff like that, right? I mean, you can... And I think that's where you read a lot of them. Yeah, exactly. But maybe you remember also how I did it back then, because I was reading a lot of books. I mean, there were months where I was, or years actually, where I was reading one book per week. I never understood how you did that. And neither did I, but I still managed to survive somehow. And I would say I'm not in a bad position. But here's the thing. I mean, it sounds always nice if people are reading a lot, but to me, it was always important to read something, to summarize it in written form, I mean, this is also the reason why I'm having a product management blog newsletter and all that kind of stuff, and then also applying it in my day-to-day business. So to test it, right? I mean, one example is, there was this great, great book that I read back then, it was great now, things have changed a little bit, but The Coaching Habit. It's a great book with six simple coaching questions that you can ask your team members. So I read the book, I summarized it for myself, and the week after I scheduled one-on-ones and I was going through the questions and exploring how it works, right? So this is, to me, an effective way of learning, applying, and also having the state of what's working and what's not working. So instead of just reading something and trying to apply it without any conscious thoughts behind it, right? And whether it's now The Coaching Habit or Lean Startup or whatever you can read these days or Marty Kagan's books, you have to do it on a conscious level and you need to figure out what's working for yourself and within your organization. It's not like just blindly applying templates or whatever kind of things to make it work, right? You have to put some thoughts behind it and adapt. And that's very important. It's also what you said, right? This is, if you don't understand what, for example, Spotify did and how they did it and how they got there, you're never ever going to succeed with what they have done. So there's a lot of conscious work behind that should be applied in my opinion. And I tried worse and better back in the days and still these days to follow these steps of reminding myself, what is the problem? What is the process? What can I take out from smart minds? Because we can be grateful that we're living in a century where we have access to so many information, right? So yeah. You don't need to read Marty Kagan necessarily to learn something, right? I think we're all surrounded by different people that all work differently. And then it comes down to figuring out every time someone is one step ahead or someone does something better than me, trying to understand how they did it. And that's where the whole learning process kicks in. 100%. Learning from and with peers is great. Love it. Yeah. I mean, that's the reason the two of us still talk on a regular basis. Yeah. Even though we worked together four years ago, three years, four, four, five, long time ago, long time. But still together. See? So the Romans still exist. It's great. And to our audience, if you feel the Romans to the Product Bakery podcast, you should still, don't forget to follow the, to press the follow button, to follow the press button and stay connected with us on the social media platforms of your choice. And before we get too emotional, let's wrap it up. Bye everyone. Bye-bye.