Andy Polaine: Hello, welcome to Power of Ten, a show about design operating
at many levels of Zoom from thoughtful detail through to transformation in
organization, society, and the world.
My name is Andy Polaine.
I'm a design leadership coach, designer, educator, and writer.
My guest today is Francesca Cortesi, a passionate product leader with over
a decade of experience in scaling digital products that users love
and that drive sustainable growth.
Has worked with Europe's fastest growing companies, from startups to
IPOs, delivering tangible results.
Her most recent role was as Chief product officer at Sweden's leading
property platform, Hemnet, and just started her own consultancy.
Francesca, welcome to Power of 10.
Francesca Cortesi: Hello, and thank you for having me.
Andy Polaine: It's a pleasure.
Now, we met over a sort of comment exchange or or post you wrote on
LinkedIn, and I comment, we're gonna get to it in a minute.
Um, I would like to just hear a little bit more about how you gotta, where
you're now, what's been your journey.
Francesca Cortesi: I'm gonna give you the elevator pitch of my past 15 years maybe.
Uh, that's when pretty much I started in a product.
It's, that's when I moved to Sweden.
I'm originally from Italy and in my.
Previous life as I call it.
Uh, I was not working digital at all.
I was working in the fashion world in Milan.
And maybe, you know, if you watch the Devil's Worst Prada
or this kind of things, uh, you know, that that is not digital.
It's like you want to be there, you want to be at the show, you want to touch
the things, you wanna see the catwalks.
Uh, that's what I was doing, uh, in my twenties.
Uh, until I decided to, uh, move to Stockholm, Sweden.
Uh, and there basically I accidentally start working with digital and as
accidentally I stumbled into product.
Uh, my background, uh, it's in philosophy, but what I was doing, uh, actually
is doing, you can call it project management because all those shows
and fashion shows and stuff mm-hmm.
Um, it's basically a project.
You have like a deadline, you have a time, you have people, you
have to invite all the things.
Uh, and I started to do that in Sweden, just digitally.
And then I realized that I wanted a little bit more, uh, I wanted to, uh,
understand why we were doing things.
And that's when I, uh, stumbled into product.
And back then, uh, this is when you understand, and I'm really old.
Back then, uh, there was nothing, I mean, there was not such a thing
of, oh, you'd be a product manager.
I mean, there was not.
That.
Kind of wording for it.
Uh, a lot of, um, concept that we use today that, uh, will be like, uh, product
led growth, uh, growth hacking, uh mm-hmm.
Product management or all these kind of things.
I mean, we were doing them, uh, but we weren't calling them like that.
Uh, so I started, uh, I was working in a game, uh, company and a community,
and I started to be responsible for engagement and retention.
So what you were called.
Product led growth today.
Uh, I did that.
Um.
And then, uh, worked for an e-commerce, uh, where I was
their second product manager.
Uh, and I built up, uh, together with my colleagues, the old product function.
Uh, I did my own thing for a while, uh, creating my own little startup.
Uh, that did not work.
Uh, so I learned a lot what it means to have product market fit
and how you should think about that.
Uh, and then I ended up.
Uh, as you said at Hamnet, uh, which is, um, Sweden's biggest property portal or
where you go to buy and sell properties.
It's also one of the most apps, uh, the most used apps, uh, in the country.
Um, and, uh, I've been there for six years.
Uh, going through their, uh, building up their product development there
as well, IPOing the company until I realized that, uh, we were really
good for each other for a long time.
Maybe that was like the end of a really nice story.
Uh, and I, uh, starting now, uh, my own, uh, my own gig, uh, with
the idea of helping companies in, uh, growth stages because that's,
uh, that's what I'm good at.
Andy Polaine: Great.
Alright, we'll get to that in a minute.
So we met, as it were, you wrote a post on LinkedIn and it was about this
idea that PMs are not just there for to, you know, you said, we initially
said, do you believe that a PM's job is to protect the team and then help
them focus on execution and the product management should own the what and why.
And, you know, being the expert around the customer and the business
and leaving the how to the team.
And you said, you know, I used to think that way, but I realized
it kind of blocked innovation and you kind of had a shift for that.
And um, maybe you could tell say a bit more about it and then
I'll talk about what my response was and how we then kind of met.
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah, we go to the juy stuff here.
Yeah.
But uh, as I said, I mean, I had the realization, uh, kind of, um.
In the past months in my career, uh, like understanding, I mean, what, what's
my role, what I want, and where should we go, which made me reflect a lot.
And from those reflection, uh, I said like when I started there was not
really boundaries for product managers, uh, or product management in general.
But I would say that even today, the discipline, it's a bit misunderstood.
And, uh, I believe, uh, personal belief, uh, is that, um, you don't have an output
at the end of the day of your work.
You don't have a design, you don't have a prototype, you don't have a line of code.
So it becomes this like rule that is a bit fluffy and it's not well defined.
Uh, and it, it creates some frictions, right?
So when I thought about, when I stepped into product
management like 13, 14 years ago.
Basically what people told me, it was this one-liner you have to own,
uh, the why, uh, and then the, the what and the how will be to the team.
So that's your job.
That's the expectation of you.
That's what you have to do.
Uh, and that's.
What I try to do, basically like being the person that we're collecting all
the inputs and try to navigate it and then translate it to the team.
That will come in only in the very last step.
And this is still, I mean, it's a little bit connected to the
CEO of the product narrative.
It's about, you know, being this person that is.
In charge and is the one that is supposed to aggregate information, collect
information, process information, and then come with an answer to a team.
Uh, that's something that I was fed.
Uh, and that's something that I still see around a lot.
Uh, but when thinking about it.
When working.
I mean, that's not reality.
I mean, that's not reality for me because that, what that did is that I brought
in a lot of competence really late.
Like my designer, uh, lead or designer counterpart that could really work
with, um, how user interaction, usability, how do that going into
the user journey or even the tech feasibility that will become already in.
I mean, they will come in when we add already the solution kind of decided,
you know, we were going for something.
But I realized that they had a lot of great inputs in the earlier
phases when we were shaping which kind of answer we should take.
Right?
So that's the old shift.
I mean, don't be the one that tries to collect everything, but bring people
along with you as early as possible.
There is also a threshold in this because while I was, uh, testing in my career,
this you cannot bring everyone along.
At the same time because otherwise you will be extremely slow.
And, uh, in Sweden especially, there is this culture of which is good for
many, many ways, but a culture of include including a lot of people,
uh, and everyone has to have a saying, uh, which is really good in
theory, but slows you down a lot.
So when, uh, time to market, of time to values of the essence you have.
To find something in between which I found basically, uh, yeah, finding
one representative from product one, from engineering, one from
design, what many people call the product trio, uh, to work together.
And also, uh, make it really clear that you, you are in it together.
You might have your own competence.
You, there's like the designer that should have the last word on usability, but I
mean, you, the three of you should be.
One unit.
Right.
Uh, so that's like, that was my post was all about.
And there were a lot of discussions about it.
Andy Polaine: There were a lot of discussions about it.
And my response was, was probably like kind of, you know, 500 word emoji shrug,
you know, of like how I, on a second.
Hasn't that always been the case?
And so I was kinda surprised to read it, right?
'cause from, from someone who's been been design and digital for a very
long time, I've kind, well this is.
Obviously this is kind of how, how you should work, but obviously
as a, as a coach, I have, and I'm coaching design leaders, I'm usually.
I have a very biased sample.
'cause often people come to coaching 'cause they're having a problem with
the, um, some other stakeholders.
And one of those is commonly, um, the product leadership.
It's not always, I mean, have a lot of coachee who have really good relationships
with their product leadership too.
And one of the things that goes on with the way you describe that kind
of form thing of like, I'm responsible for owning the why and the what.
It obviously, it kind of completely robs the agency from everyone
else who's further downstream.
Which is one of the kind of things I think I've seen go on.
And you know, you've seen it also.
Play out in all the layoffs where a lot of, uh, senior designers have
been fired and it's just kind of left a, a bunch of kind of junior.
I'm gonna be rude again to those people.
But, so, Figma jock is people who are executors of those things, doing
delivery work, and then, you know, the, the, they don't really have any input
into the how, if anyone can hear a kind of squeaking, it's my dog dreaming.
And so, you know what that's turned out?
I mean, the worst case scenario is kind of feature factory, right?
Where people are just literally, it's like they're kind of just designing
widgets coming down the, um, the assembly line and, and there's, there's not much.
Thought behind it.
Uh, they're just being told what to do and it can become very frustrating,
but it's very frustrating, obviously, if you're more senior, because you've
been used to, you know, contributing to being part of the research,
contributing to kind of the the why.
Discovering the why, uh, of it, as well as, you know, thinking about
the what and all those things.
So that was my sort of long response and we had kind of exchange about it.
But one of the things that came up in the comments a lot was, was
people, and there was often PMs saying, yes, but then who owns this?
How do things get done if nobody owns this?
And if no one's, you know, keeping track of it.
What, what other things did you see in there?
Because I've got some thoughts about that, but I, I want to say here.
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah, I mean, I think like what you're describing, I mean,
in a way, the people that have been working this way have the same reaction
that you have as like Yeah, obviously.
Yeah.
Uh, because if you've been working in that way, then you
see the impact that it makes.
Yeah.
I mean, when we say, I say a lot, uh, product development is a team sport and
not only in the team, I mean, you have.
A broader team, like including stakeholders, sales, marketing.
I mean, if you have, you don't have distribution from the beginning,
then you have an amazing product that is not gonna go anywhere.
So, I mean, there is a lot of this, uh, but I think that
product management is still such a young discipline, uh, and also.
I mean, one core fact, uh, to this is that product managers do the
really different jobs depending on the companies where they are.
So there is no common view, yeah.
Of what product management is or what product management does.
Uh, there is a lot of context that needs to be applied, and in
that contents comes expectations.
So I believe that, uh, you come to the product management line of work if
you are like a certain type of person.
I mean, you want to make an impact.
Uh, you are really driven, and I mean, you want to excel the expectation
and it isn't yourself, right?
So if the expectation is not calibrated.
Then that's what becomes like maybe the company, I mean, different perspective.
The one that you were describing, that designer that get, uh, get handled
only the very last piece of designing the last thing might feel that he
or she is in a feature factory.
Yeah.
While I, as a PM in that company that I feel like I'm going and talking and
putting together, I feel really empowered.
So it becomes like this shift of different perspectives.
Uh, and I think there is also like the narrative that you were pointing
at, oh, if I don't have one person accountable, nothing will get done.
But is it really,
Andy Polaine: not really right, because people have been making
stuff for ages and stuff gets done.
Right.
Francesca Cortesi: Also, my experience is that if, let's say
that you and I work in the same team.
Yeah.
Uh, and I mean, we work together as a team.
Yeah.
Uh, we still divide.
Tasks you'll still have maybe like, oh, you and they go and do some
usability test or whatever might be feasible in exactly that moment.
Right?
Oh, we have to un we need to understand if this, uh, users will use this
product, uh, or this kind of things.
You will be the person to go to.
Yeah.
Like you are responsible for that part.
While if I will be talking with, uh, I dunno, our.
Pricing function or business development to understand how to put, you know,
what, what should be the pricing of this product or which kind of,
uh, what is our ICP or whatever.
I mean, I will be the go-to person for those questions.
Yeah.
So even if like there is a team, you could still appoint responsibilities.
So that, I mean that narrative, I'm, I don't really get it to be honest.
Andy Polaine: I mean, there's a lot wrapped up in there.
I think one of the things that's different, and it, the two sort of ways
of thinking that you're looking at is, is the shift from, you know, ownership.
Is it, you know, you talked about empowerment, but often empowerment can
mean taking power off of other people.
Mm-hmm.
And it's very kind of focused around that one person and, and it's a bit colonial
actually, in the sense of, well, I'm just gonna kind of take this and do this.
I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna do that without much sort of regard
for whoever else was already there doing that stuff in the past.
You know, and this always happens with disciplines, you know, I mean,
design is, is just as bad at this.
I think there's the difference between that and this idea of ownership
versus governance and you know, in governance you have that sense
of here's how we deal with making decisions, here's how we go about it.
Here's who's maybe ultimately responsible for making the call on stuff.
Or here's the forums within which we discuss these things, here's
how we discuss those things.
And it feels to me that's a very different kind of thing.
And she's sort of more mature thing than just this idea of, you know, I own this.
I dunno if you've got any.
Thoughts on that?
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah, I think it's like, also this is really contextual
to the different companies, right?
Mm-hmm.
And I mean, how big the companies are, uh, in governance and, um, decision.
I mean, in governance there's a lot of, uh, decision making, for example.
Yeah.
How do we take decision?
And I mean, if we disagree, who will be the last.
To make the call.
Uh, I see this from two perspectives.
Uh, one, it gives like, it's more of a psychological, maybe philosophical one.
I mean, it gives you this perception that if things do not go right,
there's gonna be one person.
But I mean, in reality, you don't get there often.
It's more like you prepare from the beginning to the worst case and
maybe you optimize for the worst case when the worst case doesn't.
I mean, it can happen, but that's not what happens normally.
Uh, the other part I think it's also connected to ego, you know,
is like I am a back to the CEO of the product or whatever.
Like, oh, I am the la the one having the last word.
I am the one like putting down the feet.
People should come to me because I know better.
Uh, and there is a lot of, I mean, I've seen this in
product management, obviously.
I've seen it like.
Beyond product management in companies.
Uh, and this is a little bit of like Yeah.
The factory kind of mindset.
Mm-hmm.
There is like, there are steps and there are linear, and this
should go in a certain way.
And I mean, there's people like kind of like approving things.
Mm-hmm.
Product development and digital development is not, if there's
something I've learned, it's not linear.
No.
I mean, you, you don't go linear, uh, never.
I've never seen that happening and like trying to fit that in, in
linear process or linear governance because someone is used to that
and has some ego attached to it.
I think it's the wrong angle to things.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
And I, I, I gave a talk.
I know you've just come back from product at heart up in Hamburg.
Yep.
Uh, with our friends and, um, I gave a talk a little while ago about the
language is about mind, your product language actually, and it's like, for
me, the thing that drives me nuts, and it's partly 'cause of the service
design thing around that language of, of even just calling it product, right?
My brother is an industrial designer, or by trade, you know,
originally by training and all those.
People who consider themselves actual product designers, um, but also this,
you know, this idea of, of shipping stuff or delivering, you don't, right?
You don't, you don't ship.
No one ships code anymore.
No one even sent, you know, not really.
Nobody really sends stuff out on CDs anymore, uh, and all of that stuff.
But it's very industrial language and I think it does make you set up a
mental model that it's a linear process and it does set up that thing that's
like a factory and, and in classically in the factory, it's very class.
It's classically in the factory you have the blue collar workers who, who, you
know, supposedly unskilled labor, right?
And just do what they're told and do, do the same repetitive task
over and over again, you know, and the white collar labor sitting in
the glass box, looking down at the factory, kind of in the office.
Who are the brains?
I think there's still that kinda hangover of that, and I think it's
really important to become, to be very, very conscious of those dynamics and
the sort of, I guess what I'm saying is actually the kinda history of
companies and organizations and how they.
How they operate.
And yet we've had this very, very dominant narrative of, from Silicon Valley,
mostly around product and about tech.
And as you said, a lot of that stuff has come and ways of working and thinking
have come from startups and scaling up.
It's very different to be in a, an existing enterprise or you know, in a
government service or doing those things and, and trying to sort of operate that
way often it doesn't really kind of work.
Yeah.
How big was Hemnet?
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah, Hamnet, when I started Hamnet, uh, was 60 people.
And then when I left a month, uh, a couple of months ago, it was like 180.
Andy Polaine: Okay.
Alright.
So it's not, but it wasn't like several thousand.
Yeah.
Okay.
And
Francesca Cortesi: I also, full disclaimer, I have never worked for
such big enterprises so far by choice.
Uh, mm-hmm.
But I've been coaching, uh, people that work, um, with enterprises,
like thousands of people.
Uh, and I think you are completely right.
Uh, there is this, um, idea.
I mean, one, one, when the company gets bigger, obviously governance gets bigger.
Hmm.
Because that, that's like, that's just how life works.
Uh, I mean, you cannot, you cannot go and talk with your colleagues.
I mean, you need to have an overall structure about it.
Uh, but then it could become that slippery slope that this overall structure is like.
We are the thinkers and they are the makers.
And if you put on top of that, that maybe some people working in the company have
been working that way for many years.
And I've seen that specific ways of thinking and working, like going well.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, like that shift in mindset is not trivial.
And, uh, especially also become, it depends a little bit on
your, uh, personal background.
I, uh, told about my background didn't come from digital at the beginning, and
I mean, you have to adjust quite a while to understand how it is to do digital.
How would it is to do, in my case, uh, project management in digital, but digital
sales from analog sales is different.
Digital marketing from analog marketing is different.
You, you talk about your brother, you know, like developing a physical
product, it's another story than developing a digital product.
So it's like, it's a lot about, um, ideas and preconceptions and maybe unlearning
what's served as well, uh, that get and.
Kind of having the humility of understanding like what is
our role in all of this, uh, that comes into play and it's.
It's hard for every single person.
I mean, it's hard.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
So, you know, one of the things that is different really with, I mean, I would say
services, I would say almost all of the digital products are actually services.
Um, 'cause they have multiple kind of touchpoint and they have an ecosystem.
But one, the difference between those things that they're
never finished right either.
And I think with a, with a physical product.
Once it really has come off the assembly line or has been created,
it, it, it, obviously, it ages and things, but it doesn't change.
It, doesn't it?
You, you buy a thing or you market a thing and sell it and then that thing
doesn't change and there's not really an ongoing relationship unless it's to sell
that person more or something goes wrong.
Um, whereas software and services, they're just constantly in flux all the time.
There's no real sort of end point of it either.
I think that's probably one of the bigger difficulties to get your head
around if you, if you had that sort of industrial mindset in the past.
Francesca Cortesi: Exactly.
And I mean if you couple that with one of the, I mean for me at least, it's
one of the most recurring questions is like deadlines one, is this done?
Mm.
You know, one is like, that is the same mindset.
I mean, obviously you need to be able to grasp and have an idea, but that
cannot be the first thing you do.
Yeah.
Because you have no idea of the.
You haven't test with user.
You have no idea on the complexity of the code.
You have no idea when you start, you know, the architecture and these kind
of things are maybe the less visible.
Yet the one that impact, that creates the most friction, because that's
another mindset, you know, to build a cup or whatever you're building.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, it's like, okay, I know exactly what I have to do, and it's
kind of the same thing all over.
That's not the same with software.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
Particularly in a new area.
I does try an opinion on you.
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah.
Andy Polaine: And I, I'm not sure, I mean, you know, it might be unpopular,
but, um, I think there's a, a relative amount of truth behind it.
But, um.
One bit of it, uh, could also be a bit offensive.
And it's this, you know, I, I think, you know, there's been a boom and, and
products has had this kinda massive boom in the last mission in the last 10 years.
It became, you know, the, often the highest paid role in, in the organization.
I mean, obviously that attracts a lot of people and my experience has been, you
know, that certainly what, a bit like in the.com boom, actually in the sort
of late nineties, early two thousands, you end up getting quite a lot of sort
of low grade people coming in, certainly on the sort of bottom third or even half
of a discipline, uh, because of that.
'cause it's, you know, it's a gold rush and that starts to degrade the practice.
Right.
And you were sort of talking about this, it's a, it's a new practice, so
there's not that much, you know, there is obviously, you know, leading lights out
there talking about how to do it well.
And there's obviously a lot of people doing it well, but there's
also a whole kind, a bunch of people just going, well, you know, I,
nothing, I could just Reba myself.
One of the things about this, and this may be the offensive thing, is if you know,
you make a thing, so if you're a coder and you're kind of, and you're writing
code or if you are a, a designer and you are, you're making design artifacts.
You can kind of tell whether someone, there's, there's a sort of an artifact
there that is the signal of whether this person's any good or not.
Mm-hmm.
You've got a thing to look at that you can say, well, this,
this, this design's awful.
You know, you can point to the typography and the hierarchy or
whatever, and the code could be sort of messy and hacky and so forth.
I wonder whether with product management, whether there's a thing
there where, because you don't have that.
Whether it's sort of easy for that bottom third that I was talking about
to sort of get away with it and could have not be shown up as not being very
good, or whether that is offensive and unfair to product management.
Francesca Cortesi: I think, uh, I mean, first I love the provocative
question and uh, I agree.
Uh, there is a lot of.
Mediocracy, mediocrity.
What you say?
Mediocrity.
Yeah.
Uh, in, um, I've seen a lot.
I mean, I'm famous for taking forever to recruit, uh, because I've seen, I mean,
I really have to go through many people.
To understand, okay, what are do they actually do?
This is partially because the role of product is different, different companies.
So maybe what I might need is not what you're used to despite you
have that, uh, that title, but there's also a lot of rebranding.
Exactly.
As you were, were saying.
Uh, I would say that there is a way of like seeing, uh, if you are a good
product manager and that way is that the product that you help shipping.
Uh, create, uh, business impact, uh, because it's not only, I mean, unless
you are a charity or an organization that doesn't have to make money, uh, then your
job is actually to create business impact.
Are you able to solve a problem and are, uh, your clients or
users, uh, willing to pay for it?
Uh, and do you impact the top line or bottom line, or
do you make it some kind of.
You know, difference, uh, in the company ecosystem, uh, that is the,
the way of measuring a product manager.
Uh, and the problem, uh, many times, uh, is that if we think about those product
manager that are there again to, you know, okay, my job is to, uh, make a
backlog, one to 10, and then we ship this, and then when it's shipped, it's done.
Then you obviously can hide.
I mean, if you come back to me handy and say, okay, but this Francesca,
this thing, I mean we put uh, x many engineerings hours and we spend
this amount of time and it's out.
But I mean, we're not making any penny if something we're losing
because we invest all that money and we are not seeing any result.
And I say, yeah, well my job was to ship it and I shipped it.
You know, you are bad because you pick the wrong idea.
Then I mean, there is basically your hide.
Uh, but I mean, if you, if you do real product management, according
to me, uh, you have to take responsibility for the impact you need.
You, you really have to, that's your way of like measuring the same
way that, you know, uh, a designer will be measured like, oh, how
is this, uh, usable in our app?
Or like, uh, engineer will be measured, or is this making, you know, our code?
Fasters lower is like connecting with the architecture and et
cetera in all needs to go together.
Uh, but definitely there's way, especially in as company grow.
And as company maybe see the role of product in different ways.
There's definitely a way of hiding.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
I wonder if there's an inherent tension there.
Actually, going back to what we were talking about at the beginning, where
if you know, if the thing that you are measured on, the criteria by which you
say you know you are a good product leader and versus a not very good
one is the impact on the business.
And yet we're also saying, but it's a collaborative, you know, process, right?
Where everyone is involved in that.
So actually.
You know, it's everyone who has been responsible for the impact on the
business for sure, and the tension there being as a product leader in order for
me to kind of prove my case for myself.
I have to kind of basically state the claim that it was me who had
that impact on the business and not the kind of collaborative group.
And I wonder if that is part of that tension that we're talking about, where
you're talking about sort of the ego thing where the sort of systemically it's
kinda set up for that dynamic to happen.
Francesca Cortesi: I think it's like a lot of this boils down to mindset.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, when you realize, and I came to that realization myself, I will not
be able to have that impact by myself.
So I cannot claim that I made the impact by myself because if I,
yes, there is like two scenarios, or two parallel word, right?
One word where I do it by myself.
So I go and talk to sales, and talk to marketing, and talk to finance and
shape an idea and then task someone to talk to users in the best of case.
And then they come back with some result, and then I make a
choice, and then we build it.
Right then I take a lot of burden on my shoulders.
Mm. Because I feel that I have to do it, and I kind of like take in
people on and off during this process.
So they feel that they pitch in, but they never have enough skin in the game.
Because again, they can say, oh, I deliver those user user interview, or I deliver
this design, I deliver this, uh, idea.
But.
This doesn't make a product successful.
Yeah.
Uh, and at the end of the day, that also happens like in different phases.
Like in my realization, first I was too close, you know?
First it was myself, then I was close to my team, and that is like
cutting off, almost like taking in only on demand, uh, distribution.
And marketing.
Yeah, and I mean that didn't work either because we had this
product, we were super proud.
We put like hours and sweat and tears and blood and everything.
We want to make it work, but no attachment from sales.
How did you think that went?
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
So I mean, it is like you cannot, your role.
I always say, I mean, I don't like the CEO of the product kind of thing.
I like to think that my role is facilitating.
And then my role facilitating in product can be on different levels.
It can be like, if you are A CPO, then your role is like to align everyone
on a product strategy, meaning making this really, really hard thing of
choosing one bet instead of the other.
Or like one thing is instead of the other, because you're always constantly
gonna go back and be opportunistic.
Mm-hmm.
How do you balance long-term with like more opportunistic thing?
So that's your job and your job like as you go down until the PM is
like, make sure that when you have a problem space to work, you bring
in everybody and it's everybody that succeeds or everybody that fails.
And obviously everyone has a different.
Role depending on the, on the specific moment in time when you shape the product.
But I mean, you cannot claim that you're by yourself and you can show the impact
and that impact would've not been creating without you being good at facilitating.
So in that way, you really need, you see the difference.
If you've been in those teams, you really see the difference of like the product
person can make in that perspective.
But I mean, you're not.
You cannot do it by yourself.
And again, it's like a lot of mindset.
If you think like, oh, my worth is man, I value and the value is
created by me, then you are like.
Slippery slope.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
It's a very difficult thing, isn't it, to know when you hire
someones, how collaborative they have been in their past place.
'cause you know, you can speak to people, but it depends on the
reasons why someone has left.
Uh, it's also equally hard and the other way around when you are interviewing
or when you, you know, you're being the, the candidate and you want to
know how collaborative is this culture.
'cause it's very difficult.
You, you often don't know that until you really get there.
I think it's one of the kind of toughest things.
It's kind of very hidden.
So what you just told me actually was sort of the answer to the
next question that was gonna ask.
'cause you said before, well that's a product management or product leadership,
according to me, and you just sort of gave your, your outline of it.
You are just starting or you've started your own advisory consultancy.
So what are you aiming to help clients with and what experience
will be drawing upon to help them?
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah.
Uh, that's like my, um, exciting thing that I'm doing,
uh, that I'm doing this year.
Uh, and you probably, uh, realize that I'm really passionate about, uh, collaboration
and how we can do, and how we can work together to, uh, make an impact.
And I've been noticing that product in this lately, as you were describing,
became really an hot discipline, but also became a little bit, um.
Empty in the inside.
Uh, I have like, which creates a lot of frustration.
Uh, you have like business people who think that, uh, product people only think
about users and not how we make money.
And then you have like, uh, engineers and designer who thinks that
product only, you know, are, uh, want to decide a bunch of things.
So you're like, and you are like those individuals that in
product that try to do their best.
Uh, and they're like.
Many times burned out and in between and don't really know
where to bang their head.
Uh, so I, um, with my consultancy, I really want to go in and help,
uh, and try to, uh, to lead, uh, or help these teams and individual, uh,
to, uh, create better product, but also feel more fulfilled themselves.
I specialized in, uh, scale-ups.
Uh, so that's what I'm, uh, I'm good at.
That's where my experience comes from.
So post-market fit, when there is an all new set of things, that's when
collaboration becomes important.
That's when like how we take decisions and when distribution that all
users and business comes together.
Uh, that's that.
My, uh, space where, where I'm really good at and that's what I'm wanna, uh,
help companies either like coming in, uh, fractionally, uh, and helping them
for period, or for some days, a weeks.
Or, uh, another thing that I'm really passionate is we always
say that is lonely at the top.
Which it is.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, let's be honest.
But I also think in my years as at the top myself, I was like,
does it have to be that way?
Uh, I think we can, uh, kind of like it.
Brush, uh, ourselves, like a bit of ego out, uh, our CPOs and think we
don't have to have it all figured out and we can use some people to bounce
ideas and people who have been there.
So that's my other thing, like coaching, uh, product leaders and product
teams, uh, to accelerate their time to value and really make it normal.
You don't have to have it all figured out.
Nobody has.
Uh, and if you put that expectation on yourself, you're not gonna end well.
I was really close myself, like to put it all together, it doesn't work.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, there's a bit of a culture I noticed, you know, also at
conference and stuff, a scene of amongst kind of product leadership of, you know,
busyness of kind of crushing it and smashing it and we do everything, you
know, and all of that sort of stuff.
There's a sort of pride in that, but I can imagine there's quite
a lot of burnout in that too.
Francesca Cortesi: Guilty.
Like, you know what you are by design at the, especially like in
this scale up and growth phases.
Mm-hmm.
By design, like really.
At the interception of so many things, uh, you have like strategy that is
like five years, and then you have at some point I had like investors
or like quarterly report, and then you have teams, and the teams grows.
Then you need to understand what it is, you know, that is the fire that like a PM
tells you in a one-on-one or what is the.
Structural problem that you have to address, and then you have your
own ego, and then you have like the expectation that others or especially
yourself put on you recipe for disaster.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, I've often, uh, said with design, I think there
is a, a mix of, uh, humility and ego that you have to have, right?
You have to have enough ego to be someone who says, well, I think things
could be like this, and I'm gonna make a thing and put it in the world, and,
you know, fight for those things and support them and say, you know, this
should be the thing we should do.
At the same time, obviously having the humility to work with other
people and, and, and be wrong, you know, and I don't think you ever kind
of perfectly get the balance right.
It's that kind of balancing on a. On a chair or something where
you're always kind of wiggling around a little bit and go from one
side to the other and sometimes, you know, sometimes you fall off.
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah.
And also I think it's like we all are, uh, personally inclined
on one side or the other.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, but what can be, I think, uh, really important is to have someone to.
You know, to bounce ideas with that can show you like that, then call you
on that side, oh, now you're tipping too much on this side, but now you're
tipping too much on the other side.
Have you considered this?
Uh, and it's a all other thing is, is a person that I've been in that seat
because it can kind of understand what you're, uh, going through.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
But my coaching's really similar as well.
You know, I have the, the loneliness thing is a really real thing.
I mean, it's, it's.
I dunno if it's as, you know, the same, you know, one of the things that happens
when designers become into leadership role is all their peers or other people who
have got much more of a shared business background than they have, um, often, I
dunno if this is true, maybe for product people too, but it's definitely, um,
loneliness, but it's also a bit of a self-imposed loneliness because people.
You know, for all obvious reasons, but the culture of work isn't usually a
place where you can go, sorry, I don't really understand what we're doing here.
Or, I'm, I'm really feeling a bit lost at the moment.
'cause you're supposed to be at the top and, and know all the answers.
But I mean, all of those people are often like that.
I think it's really, uh, important then.
To have that space where you can kind of give people that.
And then the other thing is, you know, I think it's, it's important
to create that safe space, but also to be slightly annoying, right?
And to kind of ask people, the, the pointy questions go well,
you know, who cares about that?
And, and for them to have the moment of really thinking that through, uh, in a
way that, you know, they maybe don't give time for in their, in their day daily
work, you know, where they're supposed to all have the answers off the cuff.
And, and often I think, wow, some really big decisions just got made.
It's just completely sort of in the spur of the moment then, and everyone
just nodded and kind of went on.
But, uh, rather than taking the time to kind of work them through
and think, think them through.
Francesca Cortesi: But that happens quite a lot because when
you're in the midst of things
Andy Polaine: Yeah,
Francesca Cortesi: at certain point people, I mean, you're so, there are
so many things and you work towards something that, I mean, you get
frustrated and you just want to move on.
And some things are exactly as you said, decide quite quickly.
Uh, yeah, like, you know, while other, it takes forever, but I mean,
the impact of the two is many time unbalanced, and that's when it requires
someone, I mean, external or like with the fresh eyes on the question.
Uh, that can be really beneficial.
I mean, I'm guilty of that myself.
I, we spend so much time, like upstream sometimes, uh, and made like
a super quick decision downstream that, I mean, the two things.
Just looking at it in a more, uh, detached way.
You, I would've done completely the opposite.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
So the person they can do that with is you?
Francesca Cortesi: Yeah.
Or you, or depending, like, uh, yeah, but I think it's like the idea of, uh, yeah.
If you like, are looking for how can we, uh, in our team elevate.
Generally like our ways of working, uh, I could be a person to talk with, or
even if you're looking for a product bouncing board as I call it, uh, that
could be also a product to talk to.
Andy Polaine: Yeah, and I think, you know, with the scale up thing, there are kind
of inflection points aren't there as, as.
You get to certain sizes and things change and the the
social dynamic changes as well.
Obviously, um, you start to, at some point you kind think you knew, so I found you
get to around 80 people and you start not to know everyone in the company mm-hmm.
Anymore and that kind of changes everything again.
'cause you're just some annoying stakeholder on the
other end of an email rather.
Or Slack rather than, you know, a person I know and all of those things.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And that's what I
Francesca Cortesi: find, find, uh, fascinating because scaling is like,
as product doesn't have an end.
It doesn't have a ceiling.
It's just that you have to handle like all the different
scale phases in different ways.
Andy Polaine: I wish it did though.
I, I think the, the conversation about how big is big enough doesn't happen enough
actually, you know, particularly in the kind of state of the planet today as well.
Yes.
Of, you know, what size are, are we comfortable with getting to rather than
just this sort of endless growth thing.
Uh, we're coming up to time.
The show is named after this Ray Charles Eames film called Powers of
10, and it's all about the relative size of things in the universe.
People should go and Google it.
It's, uh, it's very interesting.
And so I have one small question at the end, which is called one
small thing, which is what, one small thing is either overlooked or
could be redesigned that would have an outsized effect on the world.
Francesca Cortesi: You call it small thing.
But I mean, I think this is an extremely difficult question.
Uh, I had to think really hard about it.
Uh, and that's one thing that, uh, two things actually that pop to my head.
Uh, but the one I will, uh, bring up is, uh, I think we could
redesign the always on culture.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and I mean, it might be a little bit, uh, philosophical, but I mean there
is this, uh, if we like scope it to the workspace, uh, there's so much email,
slack and now with ai, like a lot of, like bombarding and uh, a lot of things
which create a lot of pressure and expectation of like being always like.
On top of things, especially if you work with people that are all over the globe
that, I mean, you're, you're never done.
And that's not healthy because that's not where you create your head space
and where you can do your best work.
So one thing that, I mean, just generally speaking, I mean just like
fantasizing, uh, it could be good for example, uh, to what, what will happen
if in Slack we are defaulted by offline.
Instead of having to opt in as like, I agree, you know, offline or like
not available, whatever that is.
Uh, or like another thing could be, do notification need
to be in like instantaneous?
What if like, I could decide, okay, now it's my focus time.
I get no notifications.
Like I don't have to, what I do is like I close down everything, but I still
have this idea things are happening.
Right.
It's
Andy Polaine: piling up in the background.
Yeah, but I mean,
Francesca Cortesi: what if like there will come in batches.
For example.
I mean, I think it, I mean having those kind of, um, it's a new approach.
Uh, if I stretch it, I mean I could even have it with products
like, you know this, why do we have to ping people all the time?
Wouldn't be like nice if they would come to our product because it's
so valuable for them that we don't have to nudge them all the time.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean this idea of like rethinking the always on will be my,
Andy Polaine: yeah.
I, it's funny 'cause there's also an old thing thing.
Uh, you know, I I, when people used to get actual mail post, you know,
people would often have their sort of correspondence tray and they would kind
of batch it and then they would kind of go, okay, I, I'd sit down and one of the
things was I knew someone who said, I, I asked, I answered my correspondence.
She said, um, she was my babysitter as a kid.
She was already quite old.
Then I answer my correspondence strictly, you know, chronologically,
you know, whoever mm-hmm.
Comes, comes in.
I answer that one next and go through that way.
And she would sort of batch it out.
And people used to do that.
And I think, you know, in the early days of email, certainly in in Europe
and in America, it's slightly different 'cause of the way phone calls work.
But in Europe where you were paying always for the amount of
time you were, you were online.
You used to write your emails, go online, send them all, and then go
offline again in the days of dial up.
And you didn't have that, uh, always on culture either.
And I know there's a few email kind of programs that started to do that.
Again, it's funny to see that stuff come
Francesca Cortesi: back around.
Yeah.
In circle.
And I think it's like this always on all, I mean obviously like the problem
for mental health, but it also like.
We're not putting the time on the most important things because there's so much
to be handled all the time that, again, we're not making the, the right impact.
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
So can we,
Francesca Cortesi: I mean, can we do something about it?
Andy Polaine: Yeah.
There's not much differentiation.
Sometimes I, I call that sort of busy work thing, the junk food of work, right?
Where it's like you're sort of snacking on all this stuff, but it's not.
None of it's really nutritious.
Yeah.
You know, it's not like a you, we need this junk food, you know,
the, the slow food, you know, the Italian slow food movement.
Francesca Cortesi: Exactly.
Andy Polaine: Uh, with work.
Um, where can people find you online?
Francesca Cortesi: Uh, they can find me on LinkedIn.
That will be like the easiest, uh, way of finding me.
It's Francesca Cortes.
Or my website, uh, which is my name, francesca cortes.com.
Andy Polaine: Wonderful.
You say your name so much better than I just mangled it at the beginning.
Francesca, thank you so much for being on Power of 10.
Francesca Cortesi: Thank you, Andy, for having me.
Andy Polaine: You've been watching and listening to Power of 10.
You can find more about the show on pela.com where you can also check out
my leadership coaching practice online courses, as well as sign up for my
very irregular newsletter, Doctor's Note, if you've got any thoughts, put
them in the comments or get in touch.
You'll find me as andypolaine on Blueskey, you'll find me
on LinkedIn and on my website.
I'm no longer on Twitter anymore.
I deleted my account the other day, but it'd been frozen for a very long time, but
I finally decided to just get rid of it.
All the links will be in the show notes.
Thanks for listening and watching, and I'll see you now.
Time.