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Coffee with Tamara


Oct 3, 2017

Felicia Anderson is the senior director of the product management council and launch management at Pitney Bowes. She leads a company-wide initiative to increase product managers’ positive impact on business results. She talks with me on Inside LaunchStreet about how to create a culture of innovation, why watching, not just listening, to customer behavior is the key to great insights and driving bottom line results from your team.

 

Key Takeaways:

[1:29] Listen in and get introduced to Felicia and find out how she launches successful products.

[2:03] Pitney Bowes is a story of transformation over the last decade. Innovation has had to be in their DNA. A lot of transformation has evolved over the last one hundred years. Felicia discusses where the company started and where they are today.

[4:36] Felicia defines a product manager as one that leads a cross functional team to create, develop, deliver, and launch products. It’s one of the most cross-functional disciplines in business.

[7:06] How does innovation fit into the objectives of the product management council? Listen in to discover what four words make up the culture of Pitney Bowes. Find out why collaboration is so important to the process.

[9:14] Felicia discusses how the team knows that collaboration is working. The right people will be in the right place, at the right table, at the right time. Each person has the ball at their venue. The players all know where their piece fits into the puzzle.

[10:11] How do you align and encourage a culture where disagreement happens?

[11:55] The foundation of a successful product launch is to deeply understand the customer.

[14:25] BEST practices include sharing deep meaningful information. It’s more than just sharing data. Setting a goal for monthly or quarterly meetings to integrate knowledge is essential. You must be having open-ended conversations with your customers. Find out what their problems are.

[18:00] Tamara challenges leaders to set aside time to gather insights and make this a priority. Gathering customer insights is not a one-time event. It needs to be ongoing.

Observing customer behavior is different than talking to them. Watching them tells you the what. Follow-up will tell you the why.

[22:48] Felicia shares how to take innovation and put it into practice.

[26:08] Tamara suggests that the process should provide flexibility for the team and be a baseline for BEST practices. Felicia inputs that the process shouldn’t strangle creativity but be a repeatable, consistent process.

[28:31] Felicia stresses the importance of looking at both parties of the product council.  The product management community are the folks working to implement the process.  The Product leadership team communicates within and helps to gather open communication and overcome challenges.

[30:44] Tamara shares that alignment at leadership helps everyone in the chain below them.

[31:13] Connect with Felicia on Linked in.

 

If you are ready to:

■ get buy-in from key decision makers on your next big idea

■ be a high-impact, high-value member that ignites change

■ foster a culture of innovation where everyone on your team is bringing innovative ideas that tackle challenges and seize opportunities...

Join us on LaunchStreet — gotolaunchstreet.com

 

Mentioned in This Episode:

Pitney Bowes Homepage

Felicia Anderson Linked in