Product Operations & Strategy to Value Flow with Victoria Sheer - Productized 24 TalkInTen

We’re excited to bring you more exclusive content from Productized 2024, our third conference of the year! This series continues our TalkInTen format, where we deliver concise, impactful conversations with industry leaders driving innovation in product and business agility. Each episode is packed with fresh insights, actionable strategies, and real-world examples to help teams and organizations succeed.

In this episode, we’re joined by Victoria Sheer, an expert in product operations and strategy. Victoria shares her approach to optimizing product operations by focusing on seamless value flow from strategy to delivery. She explains how product managers can rethink organizational structures, align with business KPIs, and implement effective OKRs to move beyond daily tasks and create value-driven strategies that stick.

Victoria on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-sheer

Here is the synopsis of Victoria’s workshop: In this workshop, Victoria guides product managers through the process of connecting product operations with business strategy, using key metrics and actionable OKRs. Her focus is on creating a value-driven flow that ensures teams are not just delivering, but delivering on what truly matters.

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Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to a very special series of episodes of the Product Agility Podcast, broadcasting for two days, direct from Lisbon Portugal and product ties 2024. This year, we're bringing you more exclusive bite-sized wisdom with our Talks in 10 format, where we're going to be diving into actionable insights from some of the best and brightest minds in product leadership. And attendees this year are being spoiled with talks and workshops from the likes of Radakadat, creator of radical product thinking and Rich Morinov, author of the art of product management. Having us all find some joy in what we do, but it would be a pretty shitty conference if it was just two people. There are so many more people here and they're going to be getting as many of them as possible on here to share their talks in 10. Now before we begin, a huge thank you to our sponsor, Sheev Limited. Sheev is the company which has bankrupted this podcast pretty much since day one. I want to take an opportunity just to share with you and make you aware we do some awesome stuff. Whether it's training your product teams or coaching your product teams with clarity and alignment, or you know just a simple thing of actually making OKRs work in organisations, these are all things that we are very good at. So do head over to www.sheev.co.uk, see what we do and get in contact with us. Also check out the show notes for a tasty little discount code over any of our courses. Grab a notebook because the next 10 minutes are going to be packed with actual tips from the best in the business. And here begins a talk in 10. What month was the Grand day London? I think it was June. June. So in June, I was at the Grand day London, a brilliant conference, amazing organisers. I gave us so much support. My mum is there, I met Victoria. We spoke about OKRs and strategic alignment I think and you had a great graphic with us which we put on socials. It was really, really lovely. And then I think maybe after we started the call, when we finished recording, made the realisation that, oh shit, we're going to see each other again in Lisbon. And here you are. It's so nice to have you back on the podcast. There are not many people who have ever done two talks in 10. So it's nice to have you back for a second time. Wow. No, I'm special. OK. There's no pressure or anything. No pressure. OK. No, there's never any pressure. You don't have this much Victoria. You're the most experienced talking 10 guests in the world. OK. Yeah. I will try my best today not to let myself down. Yes. You won't let anybody down. That'd be great. And you were here today at Productise, running a workshop. What was the workshop about? So my favourite topic is product operations, but from the strategic view. Because working with different companies, I see that, of course, you can have the best delivery ever if your strategy doesn't work, if your alignment position doesn't work, you're optimising for time to market, not time for money. And what we all want is money. I mean, especially for course companies who are and then need to make profit. And what I am striving for is to connect this profit company makes to product. And I know sometimes it sounds like common sense, but the largest organisation is, then more often this connection is not there. And product owner just feels like what you said, like delivery, they're just delivering things, right? Without any bigger purpose. And I don't think it's the best use of their resource, right? So today I was also focusing on product strategy. A lot on KPIs, business KPIs, product KPIs, how it all connects, and how I see your care is the glue to connect different levels. So you've mentioned KPIs. And I can honestly say that in all the episodes are recorded, which is getting close to 250 now, I think. KPIs are rarely ever mentioned. And it's refreshing that they are being mentioned because they are a reality for probably most of the people that are listening, whether they are in a modern organisation or a more older organisation or using OKRs or whatever it might be. There's probably be some KPIs there. And it intrigues me then, that you were covering that today. Could you give us a bit more information on exactly what you covered in your workshop around KPIs? That's funny that you're saying it's refreshing because I think the term KPIs is much older than I am. But yeah, I think, so I see on everything I do, so product operations as well, from common sense angle, from being practical, doing things for the sake of delivering value, not for the sake of some framework. It's easier. It's just the metric, or the structure of those metrics you're optimising for. And there are different levels, or different levels of those KPIs. For example, we call it business KPIs, something more financially driven. So I would say that these are the KPIs which help business to make decisions and to actually allocate budgets. But then of course, there are always some low level KPIs like product KPIs, which product manager is optimising for. And what I was looking at in my workshop is how to connect them. And in the end, if you understand KPIs, you kind of understand most of the work of a product manager, because in the end, your goal is to optimize value. But what is value? Value is certain KPIs, which you define for yourself for the next period. And the difference between Ochars is that Ochars, you define regularly. And KPIs, you might set as an understanding, like these are my important KPIs, but they might not change. What changes is your focus? So have you got a concrete example? Of KPIs? Yeah, KPIs and then how they can link to OKRs. Of course. So in the end, as I said, KPIs is something which is most stable, and you just need to understand the connection. So the example I always give at my workshops, because I think it's the easiest one, is let's talk about a commerce business model. So in the end, you sell things, what you're optimising for depends on the e-commerce per se, but in groceries, you're optimising for recurring revenue per month, because you want people not just to buy from you, but they want to buy from you several times a month. So this would be a very typical regular business KPI, because it has money. Inside, it does, in the impact, our health of our company, and this is what we want to improve. And then you say, OK, I want to improve my recurring revenue per month. How do I do it? Well, I need to have customers, more customers. I need to use these customers to come more often, and I need them to buy more, so the basket size. So it would be the next level of your KPIs. Like, how do you break down revenue into three things? And then you say, OK, customers, how do I break it down? I can have new customers. I can have recurring customers, like customers who bought from your last ones. Then you might break it out geographically, wherever. So it already depends on your goals. And then at some point, you make this break to product KPIs. OK, I want to optimize for customers. What does it mean for me for the product? For example, I want to actually get, so I want to attract customers. So I want customers to do this first purchase, because whose customer, the one who buys at least one thing. So how which product metrics show me and can optimize for a person buying something on a product? So basically conversion rate on different stages of this. I said, where would OKR's fit, that's right. Well, KPIs is something which gives you understanding, the big picture. This is how it all works. It's like instruction. It's really like instruction for your team, for your business, how it all works. It might change, but it doesn't change so much if you don't deliver very big new features, because the journey of the customer stays the same. And OKR's is your strategy, meaning I have all those KPIs, right? Which one do I want to optimize next? What is my strategy? What's important to me? Recurring customers or new customers? This geography or this geography, this part of the product or this part of the product. This is a conscious decision. You are making to optimize certain things, and then you put them into objectives and curiosaits. So your KPIs are effectively like a sensor network, giving you data to say, OK, well, giving you options as to the way you can focus, the way you want to make those radical improvements in how you can direct your focus. So then building on that, that's a good way in which OKRs can be used. We mentioned before we started recording about OKR suitability, and that was something that you covered in your workshops. So where would you say, well, have you found that OKRs are not so suitable? Yes, so this would be maybe a bit already different discussion than KPIs, right? Because I think KPIs are, sorry, one second, just like I think they're very loud, right? If I don't cancel out, you're all good. Yeah, sorry. So yeah, talking about OKRs suitability, as I said in the beginning, I am all for practical choices. And I think it's not easy to write an OKR, right? It's not easy to find the right metric, it's not easy to align it, it's spent hours and writing a line and then also tracking it monthly, right? Or weekly, how you do it? The question is, is it worse, writing OKRs for everything and spending all those times? And I think no. And there are different reasons why and there are different, also examples of the things where you should not write OKRs. So I would recommend not to. For example, for sure, you should not cover is OKRs, everything you do. Only strategic activities. So I would also, in workshop, I differentiate between strategy, tactics and operations. Definitely not operations unless you want to really optimize how you deliver, like you would deliver much faster than you usually do or something. So operations for sure are not tactics. You can think, so tactics means smaller changes, smaller requests, which can be actually very diverse. It's sometimes even hard to put them all in one OKR because there are so many different things and it might be hard. So the question is, you might or you might not. It depends on the situation. So but the key is to use OKRs mostly for the strategic big bets. So that's one point where what I would say that OKRs are not for everything. The other one, what we also discussed in the workshop, would you write OKRs for something which is not life yet? And sometimes it takes one year to go life as something in some company. So this is the question where you need to really think it does bring you value. So some people in the workshop said yes, it brings them value and some people were like not really sure. And I said that don't mix up OKRs and regular product work. You still can have some metrics and you still can have some goals without having a proper OKRs. You still have delivery and discovery, right? So the question is, do you want to really make it more complex? And we don't, right? No, not ideally. I mean, this is one thing I always say when I'm supporting organisations of OKRs. I don't even care if you use OKRs. I don't care if we go through all of this and the result is you're more focused and you get more shit done. Perfect. I don't care how well written your OKRs are or how well you're using them. If it's having the right effect, who cares how we've got there? The fact is we're getting there and that's the most valuable thing. But our time is up, Victoria. Is there anything else that you would like to share? Because actually, well, we'd backtrack a little bit. You did mention this strategy one pager, which we're going to put out on socials. The strategy one pager, something you said is used to then create OKRs from, is that right? So what I want to say is that just writing OKRs without anything, with any understanding of a company strategy is impossible or should not be done. And I always thought, what should be the best format? First of all, overall, you don't have to have OKRs to have strategy one pager. First of all, no. But if you do OKRs, you need to bring something to your OKR workshop. And this one pager also can be something which you bring. So I just advocate for doing this for one pager in any case. But if you do OKRs, you need to do it 100%. I mean, how often is strategy some amorphous thing that's kind of the leadership thing up and it's never grounded in reality? So being able to force you to get it on one page, I think it's just a really valuable exercise for many organisations anyway. So I look forward to sharing that. We'll get it out on socials. If people do want to find out more about you, LinkedIn is the place to go. Sure. Sure. If there are any questions to OKRs, KPI, at the G1 page, I'm happy to help. Thanks. It's been so lovely to have you back on. Maybe we'll make it a third time. Maybe another conference next year. So time is a charm this thing. Exactly. Yeah. I don't think the first time has been pretty good. Thank you so much for coming on. Everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you've liked this episode, what's that mean? If you've liked this episode, show us that you've liked it. Post on socials, a little snippet of quite whatever you like because your feedback means a ball to us. So again, Victoria, thank you for coming on. Everyone, thank you for listening. We'll be back again soon. Thank you.