team management Archives - The App Solutions

PODCAST #15. Engineering Leadership: How to Integrate Team Coaching & HealthTech Product Management

Posted on August 28, 2023September 20, 2023 by Pavel Tantsiura

Our 15th episode of the Caremind podcast features an engaging conversation with Ali Littman, Head of Engineering at Modern Health. If you’ve been curious about the inner workings of tech leadership, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

As a respected voice in her field, Ali regularly shares her knowledge and experience in management and leadership at various forums. She stands out for her unique approach, seamlessly combining technical expertise with empathetic leadership, serving as a lighthouse for those finding their way in tech.

But Ali’s role extends beyond her responsibilities at Modern Health. She’s also passionate about nurturing future leaders, offering coaching and mentorship that empowers individuals to set and achieve their career goals, tackle imposter syndrome, and overcome professional obstacles.

In our latest chat, we discuss the multifaceted aspects of coaching, technical product management, and engineering.

The Unconventional Road to Engineering Leadership

Ali Lid’s career path hasn’t been the typical one. It’s characterized by a deep exploration of the healthcare industry and an adept understanding of technology, which has established her as a strategic force within various organizations. This navigation through the sectors helped her accumulate a broad knowledge base, crucial for her to excel in the Technical Product Management (TPM) function and within engineering.

Her responsibilities were diverse, including the design of architecture and organizational strategies. These responsibilities not only drew on her healthcare industry insights but also on her grasp of business operations, fueling the engineering initiatives she spearheaded.

According to Ali:

I definitely have a bit of a nonstandard career path.

As time passed, she was afforded the chance to grow within her roles, gradually taking on tasks that were once the domain of an engineering director. She was entrusted with additional engineering teams, propelling her growth further.

How Technical PMs Can Tackle Career Growth Challenges in Medium & Large Companies

Ali Lid suggests that roles such as technical project managers and technical product managers can often be less defined in many companies, especially if the teams are small. This can lead to rapid early growth, but as structure is introduced into these organizations, they often remain flat, making further growth more challenging to navigate.

Additionally, if the roles are less defined, or a career ladder is introduced later than when you joined the organization, there may be a lack of alignment around the expectations for each level and what growth opportunities could look like. As such, it’s crucial to establish your growth goals early and communicate them with your manager or mentor to plan your career progression effectively.

It’s really important to as early as possible, establish what your growth goals are and communicate them with your manager or mentor, so that you can start planning for your career progression.

However, in these organizations, you might need to work extra hard to demonstrate your value and impact, especially during the startup phase. This can be even more challenging if you don’t have all the necessary tools to demonstrate your impact, such as product analytics.

Strategic Thinking for Self-Promotion: What are the Core Elements?

Ali believes self-promotion is closely tied to understanding how success is measured in terms of business impact. Aligning your work with business goals demonstrates value, and understanding how success is measured relative to your career ladder can help you have more productive conversations with management about your growth.

The way I think about self-promotion has a lot to do with really understanding how success is measured, which I think a lot of it comes down to impact and what the business is trying to do.

Once you understand these concepts, Ali recommends continually identifying instances where you’re adding value and expressing your skills, and sharing these with your managers. This is the first level of self-promotion: letting your managers know the value you’re adding to the business.

The second level of self-promotion, is at the department level. You should make it clear how your work is benefiting your sub-organization or peers, which makes your value and influence more visible to other management members and peers.

The third level of self-promotion is at the company level. Show how your work drives the company forward and seize opportunities to present this to everyone. This gives you more visibility with senior leadership and the chain of leadership that approves promotions, and it can also help you gain sponsorship and feedback to build your case for growth.

However, when it comes to communicating and influencing upper management or stakeholders, it can be challenging to cut through the day-to-day noise. Aligning your communication with company goals and speaking the language of business value that the leadership cares about can help you stand out and promote your work effectively.

HealthTech Success: Why Technical Product Managers are Essential

Technical product managers are very important for health care because it’s a specialized, highly regulated, and rapidly changing industry. There are all these different recurring players in this complex web of relationships and integrations, and there are constantly new players, resources, and rules. Because of that, we really need people in this role to support the foundations of our systems to meet the needs of the industry and the ability for companies to work within it but also disrupt it.

This requires a lot of focus on ensuring that our systems can integrate with and scale alongside or operate meaningfully differently but still play by the rules. Technical product managers play a crucial role in that, and that’s where you end up getting that same marriage of the techno-functional side of things as well as the health care expertise needing to be well understood. They coordinate across all the different engineering teams and external partners to ensure that our systems operate in a way that scales and makes sense.

Talking about the importance of doing due diligence before going into a new company, career-wise, Ali suggests the following for immersing oneself in the business context:

The company’s financing situation
The market and strategic moment the company is in
Whether the company has achieved product-market fit
The company’s profitability
Whether the company has an opportunity or has cornered the market or is in a highly competitive space
If the company is going through hyper-growth
The state of the economy in which the company operates
2023 MARKET OVERVIEW: FEATURES, COSTS, AND BENEFITS OF HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERSRead also:

Factors that Shape Our Choices: Constraints, Values, and More

It’s essential not to overlook the financial aspect of the business you’re involved in. If you’re not familiar with the basics of finance, it’s well worth your time to get up to speed. Start by learning about the customers – who they are and how they contribute to the business’s revenue. Understand how the business earns money and what factors can affect this income.

Make sure to look into the return on investment (ROI) for different business decisions. Identify the areas that consistently bring in money (cash cows) and the ones that seem to drain resources. Get a handle on the company’s budget and runway – or how long the company can keep running at its current burn rate.

When it comes to scaling technical product management teams and engineering teams, combining technology and operations is crucial. The top three components for technology include:

Deciding what you want to be core to your business and what your team should spend time on.
Finding technological ways to make development more efficient, such as standardized assets or service templates.
Standardization across platforms, standards, and processes to ensure consistency and avoid technical debt.

On the operations side, the top three components for scale include:

Strong people management, including scaling your hiring function, onboarding, and performance management.
Communication flows to ensure that information is shared effectively as the organization grows.
Decision-making strategies that allow for distributed decision-making while still maintaining clear accountability and shared processes for cross-functional resolutions.
HOW TO CREATE PRODUCTS PEOPLE WANT: THE SECRET OF SUCCESSRead also:

How Management Principles Impact Personal Growth

The question of what to optimize for in life is indeed a profound one. It’s important to recognize that work and personal life don’t exist in isolation; they merge together to form the totality of one’s experience.

I don’t view work as entirely separate from my personal life. It’s a happy blend of the two that make up the entirety of my existence.

Through self-reflection and life coaching, you can identify the key values, objectives, and emotions that you wish to prioritize in your life. It’s beneficial to embrace emotions in the workplace, as many of our aspirations are linked to the feelings we desire to cultivate.

This approach can be applied to both professional and personal goals, aiming for specific experiences. For instance, if mentoring and fostering growth in others brings you joy, seek a job that allows you to do this regularly. Outside work, engage in activities that you love, such as rollerblading, which may also provide mentorship opportunities.

By employing the same frameworks to your work and personal life goals, you can devise an optimal plan to become the person you aspire to be.

In Brief…

Below are 3 takeaways from speaking with Ali:

Non-Traditional Career Paths and Leadership Roles: Ali advocates for the importance of defining growth goals early on, especially for roles like technical project managers and product managers where role definitions may be less clear in smaller companies.
Strategic Self-Promotion: Self-promotion should occur at three levels – with managers, at the department level, and at the company level. Effective self-promotion allows for more visibility, sponsorship, and feedback, all of which are essential for career growth.
The Importance of Technical Product Managers in HealthTech: In a specialized, regulated, and rapidly changing industry like healthcare, technical product managers play a crucial role. They support the foundations of the system, ensure it can integrate with and scale alongside others, and help the company operate within industry rules.

WATCH ALSO:

PODCAST #14. HOW TO EXCEL IN STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR EFFECTIVE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: TIPS FROM AN INDUSTRY EXPERT & OKRS

PODCAST #13. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: UNLOCKING HUMAN INSIGHTS & OKRS

PODCAST #12. THE PRODUCT MANAGER’S PATH TO HAELTH TECH INNOVATION: PRODUCT STRATEGY, LEADERSHIP & OKRS

PODCAST #11. THE SKEPTICAL IDEALIST: HOW PRODUCT MANAGERS NAVIGATE HEALTH TECH CHALLENGES

PODCAST #10. WEB 3.0 AND HEALTHCARE: OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH AND COLLABORATION

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The APP Solutions launched a podcast, CareMinds, where you can hear from respected experts in healthcare and Health Tech.

Who is a successful product manager in the healthcare domain? Which skills and qualities are crucial? How important is this role in moving a successful business to new achievements? Responsibilities and KPIs?

Please find out about all this and more in our podcast. Stay tuned for updates and subscribe to channels.

Listen to our podcast to get some useful tips on your next startup.

PODCAST #13. The Psychology of Product Management: Unlocking Human Insights

Posted on June 6, 2023September 20, 2023 by Pavel Tantsiura

In this latest episode of CareMind’s podcast, we delve into the fascinating intersection of psychology and product management. We had the privilege of interviewing Shane Blackman, the Director of Growth at Noom, who brings a unique perspective to the field thanks to his Ph.D. in psychology and social policy.

Shane’s background allows him to provide deeper insights into human relationships in product development and management. Join us as we uncover valuable tips and actionable advice that you can apply to your own career, and learn how understanding the human element can lead to more successful products.

From Psychology to Product Management: Shane Blackman’s Unique Journey

Shane’s path into product management began unexpectedly after getting his Ph.D. in 2014. A colleague from grad school introduced him to the world of user research at Priceline.com, where he eventually started running experiments on the website using his psychology background. Working with designers and developers, Shane found his passion for product management, despite not knowing much about it initially.

Every product manager has a unique story, emphasizing that there is no one-size-fits-all path into the field. Shane’s experience in investigating people’s perception of objectivity, beliefs, opinions, and decision-making within social groups aligns well with the day-to-day responsibilities of a product manager. By chance, during his time at Priceline.com, Shane transitioned from a product manager to the head of product analytics, leveraging his expertise in analytics.

The Importance of Growth Opportunities in Product Management

According to Shane, he began working on opaque hotel booking products, focusing on the front-end user experience. He ran experiments to improve the booking process and achieved success in this area. Shane attributes his accomplishments to his background in statistics and experiment methodology, which allowed him to understand the components of a good experiment and how to interpret the data.

I believe there’s a big opportunity for product managers to apply psychological concepts to their organizational practices, including recruitment, structure, feedback methods, leadership representation, and more.

Shane admits that by embracing opportunities and leveraging his expertise in his passionate area, he discovered the challenges and limitations of the A/B testing infrastructure. This piqued his interest in addressing the problem of determining what was actually good or bad when testing, and how much data was enough to make quick decisions. An opportunity arose to rebuild the core A/B testing infrastructure, which led to collaboration with Booking.com and learning from their advanced experimentation approach.

As more data-oriented opportunities emerged, Shane found his path eventually led to the role of Head of Product Analytics. In this position, he oversaw the A/B testing program, system, and a team of analysts generating insights from product data. He believes the core themes of his journey include curiosity, willingness to leverage strengths, and openness to new opportunities.

Shane emphasizes the importance of amplifying one’s own strengths within the organization and saying yes to opportunities, which allowed for diversified experiences and growth within the product management field. He admits that his focus on data analysis provided valuable insights for decision-making and overall success.

Is Data Necessary for Balancing Objectivity and Ambiguity in Product Management?

Determining good data for a particular outcome involves following the scientific method, starting with a clear hypothesis and then designing experiments to test that hypothesis rigorously.

Good data is data that helps you make a decision and understand whether your hypothesis is true or not.

Avoiding confirmation bias is crucial; be open-minded and willing to change your hypotheses based on the data. Collaboration with stakeholders such as engineers, designers, and data scientists is essential for collecting the right data and interpreting it accurately.

Having a clear and specific core hypothesis protects against inferential muddiness or noisiness that can occur when looking at a set of data. If results outside the core hypothesis emerge, consider discounting, replicating, or generalizing them in new situations.

The key to using data effectively is to establish protections, guardrails, and norms when examining data for the first time and deciding what actions to take based on that data. This approach ensures a more holistic understanding of the problem and better decision-making.

The Product Manager’s Role in Clarifying Hypotheses

It’s important to have a very clear hypothesis and to be clear about what you’re trying to learn from the data, and then to design your experiments, design your tests in a way that will give you the data that you need to make that decision.

Product managers, often seen as the CEOs of their products, are ultimately responsible for various aspects of the product, including setting hypotheses and driving experimentation processes. However, this responsibility doesn’t mean they should work alone. Collaboration with teammates in user research, design, and data science can help refine hypotheses and improve the overall approach.

One of the hardest things to do in product management is identifying the fundamental assumption in a product that must be tested.

To maximize the product’s success, product managers must be open to iterating and learning as they go. Creating a culture of experimentation and learning within the team is also vital. Product managers should facilitate discussions, encourage team members to contribute ideas, and develop ways to test these ideas systematically and rigorously.

Understanding the user’s emotional journey and the psychology behind their experience can significantly improve product development. For instance, when asking for sensitive information from customers, product managers must ensure they can provide an emotional outlet that reassures users about the security and necessity of the information. Additionally, dividing the process into smaller, manageable steps, starting with the easiest, can help build user comfort and commitment.

During a period of rapid growth, product managers may also need to scale agile teams to handle increased workloads and maintain efficiency. By leveraging their skills and working closely with their teams, product managers can effectively navigate the challenges and opportunities that arise in product development.

How Can Product Managers Help Scale Agile Teams?

Scaling a team at high velocity can be a challenging yet exciting time in one’s career. To ensure a successful transformation, you should have clear counterparts in engineering and design, and to empower these team leaders to make decisions independently. Also establishing strong communication and collaboration between team members can help temas grow.

Another thing is maintaining sprint retrospectives even under deadline pressure so that emerging issues can be timely spotted, ensuring that the team continues learning and adapting. Quarterly meetings, such as “persevere versus pivot” sessions, can help teams evaluate their performance, goals, and strategies, and decide whether to continue, pivot, or spin down a team.

The collective experience of team members is invaluable in making informed decisions about the direction and opportunities available to a team. In the context of a health-focused company like Noom, leveraging behavioral science can empower people to take control of their health and manage conditions like stress, anxiety, diabetes, and hypertension through weight management programs.

Managing Team Perspectives During Product Development

Shane’s research suggests that people are predisposed to attribute bias to others who disagree with them, even in subjective domains. This holds true in product management organizations as well. When presenting experiment results and interpreting data, it’s important to be aware of our own biases and how they might affect our reactions to conflicting hypotheses. To counteract this, organizations should cultivate a culture that encourages open discussion, acknowledges biases, and fosters an understanding of how biases can influence decision-making.

Final Thoughts

Integrating psychology and product management can lead to a deeper understanding of human behavior and collaboration, ultimately resulting in more effective and successful products. Key takeaways for product managers include:

Embracing growth opportunities and leveraging one’s strengths in areas of passion allows for diversified experiences and career growth within the product management field.
Good data is crucial for product managers to balance objectivity and ambiguity; collaboration with stakeholders ensures accurate data collection and interpretation.
Product managers must be open to iterating and learning, fostering a culture of experimentation and collaboration within their teams to maximize product success.
During periods of rapid growth, product managers should focus on clear communication, collaboration, and decision-making processes to effectively scale agile teams and manage challenges