#ProductCon LDN 2022: Diversity and High Performing Teams by TIER CPO, Georgie Smallwood

0:00 foreign do you believe that we practice that thank you so much Mika what's uh an incredible incredible place to be today as we were preparing in The Green Room out the back one of the things we were talking about was you can feel really nervous coming onto these stages but there's nothing to feel nervous about because we're with our people so safe environment so here today I'm going to follow on from The Amazing presentation by Deepika

0:32 with a conversation about diversity and high performing teams first a little bit about me yes I'm the chief product officer at tier mobility and before that I was the chief product officer at n26 so scaling Global products is kind of my thing I've worked around the world I'm an Australian I promise I'll try not to swear I worked in Asia in Hong Kong I've worked in Germany I've worked in Europe and I've worked in lots of different

1:05 cultures with lots of different teams and cultures in those teams which is going to lead into a little bit what I'll talk about um I'm also an angel investor and I start I'm a startup advisor so I can't help myself right once a product person always a product person and so to kick off the presentation and maybe to give some some understanding as to why this is so important to me I want to tell you a little bit about my

1:33 journey into senior product leadership so first thing that's important to know about me is I identify as a product manager that is what I am as part of my identity and I think I'll always be a product manager I'm sure all of you have a kanban board at home there's a whiteboard tucked behind the couch somewhere Post-its are always available it's just how we think right and that's a good thing because actually product management can be applied to

2:03 everything so if you're a product manager really you're all about building products and delivering incremental value to users and that's kind of that's what I am that's what I do and that's what I love and so as you progress in your career and you move into more senior roles part of you is very satisfied by that I must be good at what I do because I'm becoming more senior but one of the things that's really interesting is it moves you

2:34 further away from the products and we all hate the senior leader that jumps into the stand-up tells you what to do thinks you know oh is it back on declaratized the right way I don't know I have been that person and I apologize to product people that are watching that have worked with me or still do I cannot help myself but I had to stop I had to remove because that wasn't my job anymore and that was a real crisis of

3:02 identity for me if I don't build products anymore what do I do and what is senior product leadership and I had to rethink what I thought about my identity and my job if we go back to who I am a product manager so let's apply the same philosophy to the current situation that I've always done and so I changed my mindset I still am a product manager my product just changed

3:33 my product is my team and I need to make sure that I build the best product for what we're trying to achieve as a senior product and business leader my role is to set the direction for the teams and also to ensure that they are enabled to succeed sounds easy depending on the environment that you work up in yeah it's not so easy all the time right setting Direction sounds great but what happens if you're pivoting all the time what happens if

4:03 you're a startup what happens if the market changes what happens if covid hits and Ben will talk a little bit about how to deal with crises as product management a bit later in the day you should definitely tune in so as a product manager now this is a massive oversimplification there are two things on the balancing scales scope and time if what you're trying to achieve is a

4:37 huge scope and success for the product is completing that scope time has to give I know I'm preaching to the choir if in fact there is a deadline and yes there are deadlines trust me going to work in Hardware product there are deadlines that you have to hit if the deadline and the time is the hard constraint scope has to give all right and these are the balancing scales that product management lives

5:07 with when you're building teams there is also a scale right and I'm not building just a team I only build High performing teams and the scales are diversity and inclusion because the more or less diversity that you want in your team depends on how much you have to do on inclusion if I want low diversity in my team inclusion is pretty easy

5:38 we all think the same we like each other we actually go to the same Pub after work like it's just a coincidence right if you want more diversity in your team you need to have more inclusion and put more time into the inclusion side of things there's always a balancing act and this is the art that is product management because no one is going to tell you where those scales need to sit and not

6:08 one time are those scales ever going to sit at the same point different product different team different company you have to figure those things out so classic definition diversity is essentially the condition of having lots of stuff put together right it's as simple as that and so we talk a lot about diversity and high performing teams but actually

6:41 diversity in relation to high performing teams is not just diversity if you have lots of people with different opinions different backgrounds different observations that is not a high performing team diversity in relation to high performing teams is wrapped in a circle of inclusion and if you can't work on the inclusion side of things do not

7:12 do the diversity side of things it's way too easy to think that you can hire a group of different people and that will work you will fail faster than you can say something inappropriate not gonna swear so then why does it matter right if it's so hard why does diversity matter because I mean really do we need it to be harder

7:45 than it is it's already really hard to build great products and putting a lot of different people a lot of different ideas into the same room trying to get them to work together all the time it's just a lot of friction right no one likes friction like just agree with me I'm right and no one wants their assumptions and biases to be challenged don't air my

8:17 dirty laundry like yeah I know I've got them yeah that's unconscious but challenging assumptions and biases just creates more friction right questioning how people think why they think that and then you can get into some really chunky philosophical areas and diversity forces people to work harder it just does stuff's harder when you have to get around someone else's opinion when you have to take other things into

8:47 consideration I know where we need to go let's just go there oh but what about this no no cool that's going to take too long gonna go there I know the answer too hard why would we bother this is a question that comes up in a lot of companies it's not so overt right no one really says yeah I don't believe in diversity we should just straight through look how fast their Employee Engagement goes down so what they say is yes we

9:16 believe in diversity yes we're going to have quotas we're going to hire all these different people but what they forget is that diversity isn't the thing that creates high-performing teams inclusion does and inclusion takes work and the reason you should do this is because the challenges make us better friction forces us to think harder if you're not challenged we would still be thinking like we were when we were 18. if we didn't have to overcome things

9:46 and get those experiences whether those are that you know you're backpacking through Europe and all of a sudden you left your bag on the train okay that's a tough experience that teaches you something and you learn from it in the workplace people do that to us they challenge us they push our boundaries and I promise you you've all had a job that you hated and I promised you that you learned more in that job than you have in any other

10:14 job that you've had don't stay in it take that learning and grow from it force you to think harder how are you going to do this differently in the future the second part is that while it's difficult to have our assumptions and biases challenged assumptions and biases kill innovation group think is the enemy of startups it doesn't create Pioneer products it doesn't push the boundary it doesn't

10:46 change the way people are moving around cities in the future it doesn't change the face of banking it doesn't impact climate change and building Global products that's that need to scale across the world requires diverse thinking in the team that builds them if you think that you are going to be a 10 billion dollar company in five years time and you're going to have a SAS product that

11:17 everyone in the world is going to use but three white guys are going to build it I think you've got a problem so we all understand we've got these diversity and inclusion things but what I also want to do is give you some practical things that you can take when you're building teams now whether you're a product manager and you're not officially building the team or whether you're the head of product or whether you're the director or the CPO or the

11:47 CEO let's hope there's some of those watching how do you build High performing teams so I'm going to get really practical start with your hard skills right we're talking about diversity and inclusion we're talking about psychological safety those things don't build products right they build great products but they're not the things that you need to build the product that you need so when you're building a team you think about what are the hard skills that I

12:14 need in this team I need someone who has some understanding of product management probably a good idea I need someone who from a management perspective can understand product management and really lead the team in that side of things I need project management we all hate it right it's an essential skill in product management to know how to project management think I need someone who understands customer

12:45 Journey mapping because I'm a b2c product I need someone who understands platform architecture because we have a monolith and we need to get to microservices uh we need someone who understands agile methodologies so that we can move fast we need someone who has SQL in kotlin and I need someone who has test automation right these are hard skills that I think I need to build the product that I want to build then map the skills that you need in the

13:16 team I need someone Engineers can relate to in management I need someone that can work with that stakeholder and you all have the name in your head okay everyone has it there's always one and you need someone who can manage that person who can give them what they need you need someone with an affinity for data analytics I do because my Gap is numbers believe it or not

13:47 I need someone who naturally pulls the team together after a team meeting and says okay what's the plan guys they're also the person that generally notices when someone is a little quieter than usual and they give them a call and they say hey is everything okay I call this the glue person right if you take one thing from this make sure you have glue people in your team not everyone because if you had the whole team of people going are you okay

14:14 what's the plan we have a plan okay you need someone that always asks why you also need someone who always asks why not so now that we have these lists right put them in Excel put them on a notepad put them on a Post-It I don't care write them down and build teams with intentions right so now I've got now I have a team of things of hard

14:45 skills and I put them together because I worked out what I need and I wrote the job descriptions and I realized that actually a couple of things these things go together like product management understanding and agile Technologies great bring that person together and then you start hiring and you've got these four roles and you go okay I'm interviewing this person they applied for the product management role as I'm interviewing everyone have questions that identify what team

15:14 skills they fulfill let me tell you no one is a unicorn no one can do everything do not expect that there are not unicorn Heroes that can solve everything even if some people think they might be so I was interviewing this person fantastic I realized she's always asking why she's challenging she's pushing I was like right I have that person tick the next person I hire is uh the QA right I have a QA I wanted

15:49 to test automation I wanted this infrastructure I don't want to be testing I actually want to move away from quality assurance and make sure that the engineers and the product managers are responsible for the quality of our product so I hire someone who can enable that to happen as I hired this person I recognized that they seemed to be the person that would always ask why not and challenge back then I hired a data analyst right yes

16:16 okay they had SQL skills but coincidentally my that stakeholder might have been someone who needed to understand data analytics in a business sense otherwise she keeps pushing I don't understand explain it to me yeah and so I ticked the box of someone who can manage that stakeholder and give them what they need to have confidence in the product team they also coincidentally the data analyst has an affinity for deep data

16:46 analytics and the last person that I hired was the engineering manager and this is someone that the engineers can relate to they are very affable they have a great career history and the engineers would be inspired to be led by this person brilliant awesome I've hired my team great oh no I missed one and you'll never feel everything right but you need to recognize that you've just built a team of high-performing individuals who are going to challenge

17:17 someone's going to ask why someone's going to ask why not right they're all individuals they're going to push each other it's probably going to build amazing things but there's no glue person so when the hits the fan someone needs to fill that Gap and whether someone becomes that person or you feel that role you need to be aware that you don't have it because it's essential to build High performing teams to have that person so

17:48 essentially what I'm trying to say is diversity does not make a high performing team right you can build great teams you can build great products without diversity for sure should you no can you yes does it scale no do you build great Global products that are going to be 10 billion dollar companies absolutely not right diversity without inclusion is just a hot mess so the three things in following on more

18:20 a bit more practically from the great Foundation that Deepika set was that there are three things that need to be in your inclusion Circle the first is environment right you need open and honest leadership that's on you whether you're the product manager head of product director take that role set that standard right leadership matters and demonstrating how you do that leadership is essential for how you want the rest of the team to behave you need a sense of familiarity

18:48 this can be different in different teams you might have some teams that attend each each other's children's birthday parties right they hang out on the weekend amazing but you also might have other teams that just need to play cards on a Thursday afternoon in the office and that's the level of familiarity that they need to be a high performing team there's no judgment right you just need to understand and you also need a learning mindset right so challenging safe environment

19:15 psychological safety the second that you need to give the team to create the inclusion circle is expectations people like to know what success looks like they want to run in a direction and if you hire ambitious driven amazing people they want to know how they win so you need to tell them and you need to tell them all the same thing so that they're all running in the same direction the classic Spotify example of

19:46 autonomy without alignment is you hire great people you don't set them in the same direction and like they're all over the place the other part is Clear Vision and direction or the why and the other part is they have to be all in everyone has to be in at the same to the same extent at school I was a rower I was a stroke side rower so my side ran out this way the other side of

20:12 the boat had the oars out this way in product teams if you build a team that has all the stroke side rowers who are driven ambitious wanna like succeed at all costs love going to increase evaluation of the company going to do this Gonna Change the World and you have some people in the team who are happy to work nine to five and really want to prioritize work-life balance for themselves which is fine but as a person who is building the team

20:42 you need to understand the balance right because if you have this on this side and this on this side the boat's going in a circle you're not going anywhere it's about balance and the third is relationships you need respect and partnership and as the person that is building this you should set out with intention to make this happen the second time is time to build don't think you can just hire these people you ticked all the boxes you even have the

21:12 glue person maybe awesome two weeks in as the person who's building the team if you're building you're making sure that you have the time to build them I see it all the time the most high achieving managers like I've got this great onboarding plan for my team I've got a 20-minute meeting with everyone that they need to meet oh my God how do you build a relationship in a one 20-minute meeting pick the three or four people that they

21:39 need to have a strong relationship with and book half an hour every week for the first six weeks because I'd promise you at some point they're going to need to rely on that person again it's going to be crisis the incident channel is going to blow up and there's not going to be any hey how are you kids nice to see you it's going to be what the hell is going on if you don't have a relationship to rely on

22:01 there's no way that's going to work no way in hell make sure that you build and you put the time in to build those relationships and in that time understand each other's preferred Style so do you like my take a screenshot not yet now so a team full of diversity does not make a high performing team the inclusion circle of environment

22:32 expectations and relationships are the things that you as the person that is building this product need to make sure that you put in place the scope of the product is important and it's not just about hard skills it's also about soft skills and it's also about team skills but you as the product manager need to make sure that you pull all of those things together so diversity and inclusion is an outcome that is essential to high

23:03 performing teams thank you [Applause] [Music]