To Innovate or not to Innovate That's the Question

Second episode after our long break, still keeping people on the wait for our new official format. It's coming. It's coming. We have the first recordings in our pockets. But make sure to join us if you have any topics that you would want to discuss with us, so that you can be maybe one of the first to launch. And with that, let's jump to a different topic. Two weeks ago, we were having dinner in Berlin. Thai, there was a really good pad thai. And I remember there was this one conversation that we had, and I wanted to pick it up in one of the episodes. So I think today is probably a good one. And it was mostly like the conversation around innovation. How companies are innovating, what the understanding of innovation is, depending on like the different fields, and how to actually innovate. Well, and you know, partially my opinion on that. And I think we should definitely discuss how companies are not innovating, and what they should not do if they believe they are innovating, but they are not innovating. I mean, don't have an innovation team. That's probably the number one. And you know what people saying, you know what I was, I was having a conversation with a guy who was working at an innovation lab. And I was just like, I was a little dizzy, I had some drinks, I said, Hey, you know what? Fuck innovation. You should never have an innovation lab. And the first thing he said was, you can't believe me, we have done some good stuff. And this is what every person in the vision lab says. But I agree that it should come from the inside. I mean, I think obviously, if you have like a dedicated team, they can only think about innovation sooner or later, hopefully something good comes out of it, right. But it doesn't mean that innovation needs to be an exercise for everyone in their organization, for everyone who has specific knowledge, the main knowledge, who interacts with the product with the people and so on and so forth, right. And I think this, this already gets us a little bit into the direction of how to do innovation. And maybe we can start with that before we go deep into the mistakes. Totally. And I would also go maybe one step back and ask the question, what is innovation? Right? I mean, what we're talking about is at the end of the day, as a company, as a service, as a product, what are we doing? We're solving customers problems, right? So innovation means that we find new, better, enhanced ways to solve a certain problem. And this is something in the classic definition of product management and product design, this is what our job is, right? So an innovation manager is a product manager, fucking hell, or should be at least, right? I was about to say should be, most of the time isn't, but that's like four stories of what can go wrong. But yeah, I think it's spot on, right? It's something new, a new approach to make someone's life easier, right? Needs to solve a problem, needs to be something that people actually want to use. So it's not just like the CEO's idea that you execute and launch because the person up in his chair thinks it's the great, innovative, new idea. So yeah, it's something where I think at the very beginning, you need to understand your users, you need to understand the problems of your customers, you need to understand what they're doing, what workarounds they have, what they struggle with, how they do things. Only then you can start thinking, and this is also where then we can link the episode to design thinking and Double Diamond and all these processes, but only then you can try to apply creative processes to solve these problems. All these processes are very helpful once you understood what problems you want to solve. And I was just recently writing about it in one of my latest blog articles, is we don't need to talk about defining a product vision or a product strategy or product roadmap or introducing Scrum or whatever the hell you want to do if you don't know what problems you want to solve. And that involves, in my opinion, two very important parts. One is understanding the customer, which is defining product market fit. And secondly, and that is kind of related to this, is understanding what your competition is doing. If that's not in place, what else do we want to do? And this is where innovation starts, understanding what problems you want to solve. In our previous episode, we just talked about thinking too much about the solution. And this is exactly what you don't want, because thinking about the solution is usually great, but it's not solving always the problem. But that's the thing that, unfortunately, the way a lot of businesses think about innovation, and I mean, I've been there, right, like I've been working as a consultant, strategy consulting, and we were on innovation projects, right, where oftentimes the outcome was clear before we even started working with the client and understood the problem, right. And the way it often works is, you mentioned earlier, you need to understand what your competition is doing. But this is where many people in many companies make the mistakes. They start with like these very broad analysis of the competitive landscape. What does everyone do? What are the different features? And what I've seen far too often is that when you look at those reports, you see like all these gaps that you have to your competition. And then innovation suddenly turns into a catch up game. And you try to close all these gaps, because otherwise the others are ahead of you. Now, the problem is, do you know if the others are actually successful with it? Do you know if it's working? Are they? Maybe there is a reason why there is a gap. Yeah, maybe there's a reason why there is a gap. Is it really solving a problem? So it's really not just like about filling these gaps, making sure to catch up. It's about staying in your niche, looking at your product, knowing what you do best, knowing what your customers want, and then innovate within that. And that's also why I truly believe that you cannot have these outsourced innovation projects or these innovation labs, where then suddenly it's being isolated, right? Because you don't have the contact to the rest of the organization, you're not working with like the products and the nitty gritty details of each individual feature, right? But I need to raise one but here. It is possible that you hire an innovation lab that will do a better job than you by understanding what problems your customers really have. Yes. And now, I love that, you're going in a direction where I wanted to go. Because I think... Thank you, later. I think that the difficult part is, how can teams innovate when they have all their business as usual tasks, when they do all the maintenance, or when they do try to fill some of these feature gaps that have been passed on to them? Absolutely. And this is really the crucial part, right? Because I think you will often have companies and organizations that don't understand necessarily the role of PM, the role of the product designer, the role of the research team. And where then innovation and these roadmaps and these ideas and what needs to be built is being formulated in some other rounds. And that triples down onto the team, where they then start executing on it. And they lose completely their innovation or the time to innovate, right? So this is also the important thing then also for teams to learn. How do I bring this in? How can I do the research that I need to actually have these learnings, have these insights to go back to the organization and show them what the real innovation is? And I think this is the really challenging part, right? And this is also the shout out to the product managers and product designers tuning in, product marketing managers too. So no matter how much you're forced, pushed, executing the gaps, you need to make time. And with make time, I'm really talking about make time no matter what in your calendar to think and to understand what the problems are, right? One problem that I was faced many times was I was so busy with working with teams, doing all that kind of stuff that I haven't had time to think about the problems. It is reality, but there was a little life hack, a little life hack that I've learned that was super helpful for me. And actually it wasn't even my idea, it was the idea of a customer support manager. So she came to me and said, Christian, if you like, I can set up in a time slot once a week meeting, so calls with you and our customers, and they can just tell you what problems they have. And I was like, brilliant. It's a brilliant idea. And we started setting up those calls. I put a blocker into my calendar for two hours, and I had partially just 15 minute calls with the clients who had bugs and stuff like this. So the customer support team was directly redirecting them to me, to my laptop, and I was sitting at my desk and having a call with the customer. It was amazing, but I was so much more connected and I got directly confronted with the problems. So it is crucial in any kind of way to make time to think about this. This is just my solution and what helped me. If you have a different organization, different structure and ways to interact with your customers, do whatever's best for you, but do it. So this is all we can say, right? Talking to your target group, to your clients, to your customers, to your users is key in product. If you're not doing it, you're not doing product. And it is your responsibility at the end to do these things, right? You can't just use the excuses of, oh, the organization doesn't apply the right processes. Innovation is happening somewhere behind a closed door, and it's actually not the right thing. Yes, unfortunately, companies are most of the time dysfunctional. That's the reality. True. But it's up to you individually to figure out these processes, to start to influence the people, to teach them, right? Most of the time, it's not because someone in the company has bad intentions. I feel like everyone usually wants to be successful. And especially those people who have these great innovation ideas that might not have the background or might not follow the processes that someone working in product would actually understand or do, they also want to be successful, right? And it's up to you to help them make the company more successful. And that will more and more bring the right processes into the company and give you more time and give you the time back to actually focus on this. But you need to fight for it. And what we're discussing is actually applicable for all levels, whether it's mid-level, individual contributor level, or even leadership level, right? I mean, if you are a product lead and you're complaining that the company is not too product mindset driven, stuff like this, same thing here. I mean, you are a leader, right? And you have many employees under your hood. So I mean, how are you judging, evaluating, and measuring performance, right? It's based on the outcomes. So if I'm working with a product manager as a CPO, and I see this person is not 100% getting slash matching slash finding solutions to problems, we have a problem, literally, right? So therefore, I mean, on one hand, there are certain battles that you cannot fight as an employee. If, for example, engineering processes do not work out, the quality that gets delivered is shitty because of technical issues and stuff like this. This is out of your hand, right? And this needs to be escalated to where it belongs to, and you need to pray that a solution will be found. But understanding customer problems, 100% on your side. Yeah, absolutely. And there's one more thing that is on your side, which is pressing the follow button. Product Bakery podcast, the number one podcast to go when it comes to product management. Yes. Am I overselling it or? No, no. I mean, it's still their decision what they do, right? Exactly. I mean, they are responsible, right? I mean, if you're not pressing the button right now, it's your decision. It's your responsibility. Yes. And if you did press the button, then we'll see you next week.