post

Footer About

Footer Contribute

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

Customer

How behavioral economics can improve product strategy

Product Roadmap

Why most product roadmaps fail: Phil Hornby (Product Leadership Coach) – ProductTank Porto

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Join us at #mtpcon London in 2025 – mark your calendars

Connecting fans to creators at Spotify (Dariusz Dziuk, Product Lead, Spotify)

Why teams often struggle with OKRs: A conversation with Jeff Gothelf

Deep dive: Crafting your product vision and mission

5 ways to invent and simplify as an AI/ML product manager

Andres is a freelance writer and digital marketer with a background in engineering and a keen interest in the latest technology advancements. He currently helps tech companies and startups tell their stories by turning their complex ideas into easy to understand material. You can reach out to him on LinkedIn

Andres Phillips

<p>In this <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/mtpengage/manchester/">MTP Engage Manchester</a> talk, <a href="http://linkedin.com/in/ozlemyuce">Ozlem Yuce</a>, Chief Product Officer at Agile at Heart gives us some insight on how we can better deal with the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) in our organizations. She explains why the HiPPO can be so damaging and what to do about it as a product person.</p>
<p>Her key points include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Damage caused by HiPPOs</li>
<li>Tactics to train your HiPPO</li>
</ul>
<p>Watch the video to see Ozlem’s talk in full. Or read on for an overview of her key points.</p>
<h2>Damage Caused by HiPPOs</h2>
<p>Ozlem begins by telling a story about her time at a market-leading Fortune 500 company when she knew their products needed updating to provide more value for their customers. The idea was to run an experiment to transform the customer experience but it needed C-level buy-in. Unfortunately, despite calculations that suggested otherwise, the HiPPO proposed an unrealistic deadline that in the end proved detrimental to the project. In her experience, HiPPOs can be responsible for forced commitment dates, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/10/26/data-driven-decision-making-beware-of-the-hippo-effect/#5f4ba2d380f9">decisions made without relevant data</a> as well as features that provide no value. However, she does offer a solution.</p>
<h2>Tactics to Train Your HiPPO</h2>
<p>To avoid costly mistakes that don’t benefit the company, Ozlem suggests a few tactics to help product managers train the HiPPO in the organization and make sure that everything goes smoothly.</p>
<ol>
<li>Make the work done, and progress being made by the team, visible. This may include doing things like calculating the cycle time to show how long it takes to ship a product. Building awareness in this way and understanding how fast or slow the development team is moving in certain tasks can help to avoid issues.</li>
<li>Practice the art of asking questions. The HiPPO in an organization usually has a good reason for wanting to trust their gut or push the boundaries of the product team. By building relationships and involving them in the process then everyone can be on the same page.</li>
<li>Use the <a href="https://medium.com/lessons-from-mckinsey/the-rule-of-3-c1cd82dbc96e">rule of three</a> to guide and inform decisions. Provide at least three possible solutions to a problem so that it’s easier to decide which method to choose by assessing the positives and negatives of each.</li>
<li>Use parallel thinking and collaborate to find solutions to problems instead of going head to head to win an argument.</li>
<li>Put a price tag on the time it takes to specific tasks so that assumptions about value and urgency can be shared. This allows you to appeal to the analytical side of the HiPPO’s brain and can help them to see what you see.</li>
</ol>
<p>The key takeaway from Ozlem’s talk is that it’s important to recognize the difficulties that the HiPPO can cause in an organization. Many of us will eventually find ourselves in this same situation in our careers so we should remember to not be hypocrites.</p>

core/freeform

Product Management Skills

How to keep your head about generative AI (when everyone is losing theirs) by Claire Woodcock

How to F.A.I.L. better in product by Marc Abraham

10 years Wiser: Lessons learned from scaling Wise by Nilan Peiris

Fighting product-market drift by Dave Wascha

Experiment like a boss by Merissa Silk

How to find out what your customers want by Janet Bumpas

All product management should be focused on growth by Partho Ghosh

Product, dance, and pockets of brilliance by Pippa Topp

A quick look at decision supervision by Lucy Spence

Identify and manage imposter syndrome by Phyllis Njoroge

How to Train Your Hippo By Ozlem Yuce

ProductTank Bangalore

ProductTank Mumbai

ProductTank Johannesburg

ProductTank Tauranga

ProductTank Bielefeld

ProductTank Auckland

ProductTank Vilnius

ProductTank Timisoara

ProductTank Stockholm

ProductTank München

ProductTank Düsseldorf

ProductTank Birmingham

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Heidelberg

ProductTank Malmö

ProductTank Amsterdam

ProductTank Barcelona

ProductTank Newcastle Upon Tyne

ProductTank London

ProductTank Curitiba

ProductTank Brisbane

ProductTank Perth

ProductTank Málaga

ProductTank Buenos Aires

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Braunschweig

ProductTank Edinburgh

ProductTank Pittsburgh

ProductTank Dubai

ProductTank Vienna

ProductTank Bristol

ProductTank Washington

ProductTank Bucharest

ProductTank Valencia

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Atlanta

ProductTank Brno

ProductTank Paris

ProductTank Orlando

ProductTank Rotterdam

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Bangkok

ProductTank San Diego

ProductTank Hong Kong

ProductTank Charlotte

ProductTank Exeter

ProductTank Manchester