Product at Heart 2023: Key learnings and takeaways
The first edition of Product at Heart took place on June 30, 2023 in Hamburg, Germany. We gathered 750 curious product people at Kampnagel and invited them to put their daily tasks on pause (which is hard work for those in product!) and expand their perspectives through a series of talks, panel discussions, and spontaneous conversations. Whether you were there and want to relive the magic or you’re simply hoping to get a sense of what you missed, we’ll share a few of the highlights here. You can also watch the video recap here and find all the photos from the event in the Flickr stream.
1. Embrace your curiosity
Product at Heart co-hosts Petra Wille and Arne Kittler kicked off the conference by asking us to embrace our curiosity. “We both believe that one of the most important traits for product people is to be curious,” said Arne. This involves embracing curiosity about your users, other perspectives (like developers, designers, data scientists, and customer-facing teams), permanent changes in the intersections of technology and society, and about each other as a community. And hopefully the rest of this recap will pique your curiosity to learn more about at least one or two of these topics!
2. Take your first (or next) steps toward continuous discovery
Teresa Torres presented us with three scenarios: feature factory, the messy middle, and returning to old habits. No matter where you are on your discovery journey, you can probably relate to one of them. But don’t use this as an excuse. Teresa shared the golden rule of organizational change: Meet people where they are. You can take steps like mapping your assumptions (and testing them, if you can), automating recruiting for customer interviews, conducting your customer interviews along with your engineering and design peers, and showing your work to stakeholders. “Organizations don’t change,” said Teresa. “People change. You can be the change you want to see in your organization.” Just pick one habit and get started today.
3. Build better habits
Continuing the theme of habits, John Cutler’s keynote focused on essential habits for product teams. You can start by looking at your calendar, which tells a clear story about what you value and prioritize. See anything that feels like a zombie habit where you’re going through the motions without knowing why? If so, replace it with something more meaningful, like connecting with customers, capturing the mental model of your work, and celebrating your progress—even the small wins. John emphasized that good habits are small but powerful actions: “The success of your team boils down to small things you do every day.”
4. Start thinking of yourself as a futurist
Don’t think of yourself as a futurist? Congratulations, says Alicia Shao—you already are one! But the key to embracing your inner futurist is to explore more of what this term actually means. And the word “explore” is key here. “The explorative angle assumes the future is not an automatic continuation of the past, and focuses on what could happen in the future,” said Alicia. As a curious product person, you’re actually already in a good position to take this approach, because it simply means relying on some of your existing skills like problem-finding and asking questions.
5. Provide directional clarity
Our first set of morning themed sessions led by Emily Tate, Francesca Cortesi, and Simon Cross, explored different ways leaders can provide directional clarity for our teams. A few points for you to ponder:
How clear is everyone on your team about your company goals? (Probably not as clear as you’d hope… so it’s worth investigating this a bit more!)
How clear is everyone on your team about what to prioritize? Hint: If your backlog is extremely long or your OKRs don’t provide guidance in prioritization, you probably have work to do here.
How clearly are you (and your team members) communicating? This might manifest itself in seemingly small details like the way you present data (percentages vs. percentage points and charts that don’t provide any frame of reference in the form of “goal lines”). Whenever you have the chance to be extremely clear, take it!
6. Learn from your peers
The second set of morning themed sessions, led by Lily Smith, Dr. Nesrine Changuel, and Janet Bumpas, focused on knowledge exchange for product managers and how to learn from others. A few ideas to consider:
In addition to consuming information in the form of podcasts, blogs, and books, where do you create space for “practice” in your product practice?
How can you balance all your daily tasks with encouraging communities of practice in your workplace?
How can you ask better questions that reveal more than just facts, but actually lead you to uncover underlying feelings and hopes as well?
7. Commit to thinking clearly
In the afternoon themed sessions, Megan Murphy, Dominique Jost, and Shaun Russell invited us to think clearly (which is often easier said than done!). Here are a few prompts to pursue:
How can you carve space for deep thinking? (This might involve clearing your calendar, limiting notifications, and creating guidelines for prioritization.)
What are you afraid of? Overcoming that fear may be the key to unblocking yourself.
Can you change unconstructive attention (negative thoughts like “I’m not good at this”) to constructive attention (focusing on outcomes like “my stakeholders are informed”)?
8. Recognize the role of product operations in your success
In the second set of afternoon themed sessions, Antonia Landi, Sarah Reeves, and Chris Compston shared their tips and tricks for establishing or enhancing product operations in your organization. Some key questions to ask yourself:
How do you define product operations? (How do you explain its value, define its boundaries, and make it successful?)
How do you create balance between addressing individual product manager pain points and organizational context?
How do you decide which operational challenges to tackle and in which order?
9. Explore the role that AI might have in your future
In the afternoon keynote, Karin Schoefegger addressed a topic that’s weighing heavily on everyone’s minds—AI. As a product manager, you may be feeling pressure (whether it’s coming from your company, the outside world, or yourself) to embrace this technology. If you’re afraid that a lack of technical know-how is holding you back, Karin had some words of encouragement: “You will need some technical knowledge, but not a lot.” You can trust your PM skills and techniques to gain knowledge over time. Karin recommends you begin by exploring the topic and running small experiments before you formalize anything.
10. When in doubt, return to outcomes
To close out the day, Jeff Gothelf reminded us that success is not defined in the same way in organizations as it is by users. If you ask someone why they love their iPhone, their answer won’t be “because it was delivered on time.” We need to remember that our products need to meet a need or create delight. And in order to achieve this, we need to redefine our roadmaps with outcomes instead of outputs. The first step toward achieving this is to change the questions we’re asking. We need to replace the old question: “What will we build?” with a new one: “What will people be doing differently if we succeed?”
Bonus: Attendees share their highlights and learnings
Product at Heart isn’t just what happens on stage—we’re equally excited to hear what ideas and inspiration it sparked for attendees and the speakers themselves. Here are a few of the highlights and learnings they shared on social media.
“I'm heading home reinvigorated about how curious product people can help their customers and their organizations and excited to try some new things.” – Aaron Legge
“What a fantastic day full of inspiring talks, great conversations with like-minded product folks, hugs and joyful moments with old friends.” – Heike Funk
“Product at Heart was a huge energy and inspiration boost! The quality of the speakers was through the roof and the subjects they brought to the stages mirrored the wide spectrum of product personalities and professional focus.” – Inês Liberato
“Product at Heart 2023 has come to an end, and I'm still buzzing from connecting with old and new product friends! Beyond the incredible talks, it's the small interactions throughout the conference that left an impression on me.” – Dominique Jost
“Can’t believe it’s over already - it was a wonderful day meeting many new faces and some good old friends ♥️” – Antonia Landi
And if you’re looking for even more detail, check out these blog recaps from attendees:
Kai Stevens on 5 product leadership takeaways
Francesca Cortesi - 3 lessons I take with me from Product at heart
Of course, this post only scratches the surface of all the inspiring content from Product at Heart 2023. If you’d like to dig into any of these topics in more detail (and we highly encourage you to do so!), we’ll be sharing more detailed recaps of each session along with video recordings on our blog and in the video archive in the coming months. Watch this space or follow us on social media for more updates!
