Meetup Senior PM on How Collaboration Can Lead to a Win
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Main takeaways: - Product Managers need to be strong collaborators to win - Who to collaborate with, why, how and when - What impactful collaboration looks like
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Meetup Senior PM on How Collaboration Can Lead to a Win
- 1. www.productschool.com Meetup Senior PM on How Collaboration Can Lead to a Win
- 2. FREE INVITE Join 30,000+ Product Managers on
- 3. COURSES Product Management Learn the skills you need to land a product manager job
- 4. COURSES Coding for Managers Build a website and gain the technical knowledge to lead software engineers
- 5. COURSES Data Analytics for Managers Learn the skills to understand web analytics, SQL and machine learning concepts
- 6. COURSES Digital Marketing for Managers Learn how to acquire more users and convert them into clients
- 7. COURSES UX Design for Managers Gain a deeper understanding of your users and deliver an exceptional end-to-end experience
- 8. COURSES Product Leadership for Managers For experienced Product Managers looking to gain strategic skills needed for top leadership roles
- 9. COURSES Corporate Training Level up your team’s product management skills
- 12. Takeaways ● Why collaborating is critical for product managers ● Who to collaborate with, why, how and when ● What impactful collaboration looks like
- 13. Meetup Mission Empower personal growth through real human connections
- 14. Meetup - A two-sided marketplace Organizers Members
- 16. Framing a Problem Executing a Solution
- 18. Problem Statement “Being a Meetup organizer is too difficult and I lose motivation”
- 19. “Sometimes I get busy and I don’t have time or motivation to run the group” Organizer Problem “I joined a group and I want to participate more but I don’t know how” Member Problem
- 20. Opportunity: Make it easier for organizers to crowdsource help and for members to raise their hand to participate in the group.
- 21. The team Kaley UX Research Chris Content Strategy Alex Business Strategy John Design
- 22. Research Project Objectives 1. Confirm the business opportunity 1. Confirm the real user problem 1. Identify insights to frame product design
- 24. Quantitative Insights Positive correlation between number of organizers in a group & average number of successful events
- 26. Qualitative Insights “More organizers = more outings and more variety” Group Organizer Unpacking correlation vs causation
- 27. Opportunity 60% of groups don’t have a co- lead
- 28. The Boss The Team Builder open to sharing the vision / work The Delegator open to sharing some work Why are some organizers doing it alone?
- 32. John Design
- 33. Surface “Regulars” Prompt Org to contact a “Regular” Provide templated message
- 34. We changed the company’s perspective on the problem and opportunity
- 35. Who product managers collaborate with to win Sylvan Boucard Senior Product Manager @ Meetup
- 36. www.productschool.com Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, UX Design and Product Leadership courses in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Orange County, Seattle, Bellevue, Washington DC, Toronto, London and Online
Editor's Notes
- I want to share a little about my background first I’m not a complete fraud I also know many of you might be interested in shifting career
- First, for context let me do a quick overview of what Meetup is Meetup mission We’re building communities in the world 40+m users 320k groups Been around for 17+ years We are in 187 countries
- We’re a two sided marketplace for communities - groups and events Organizers create groups and host events Members join groups and attend events Our service is to help members find groups/events that will help them achieve goals, and help organizers get members to their events Think about Airbnb - but instead of traveler and host... We make money from subscriptions organizers pay to create these groups and events
- My team is organizer success Goal is to create more value for organizers to improve retention From a mission standpoint - more communities, personal growth and human connections From a business standpoint - more money This is what the lead team asks you - then up to you to come up with roadmap / approach
- Product management is multidisciplinary / multi skill role Of course, execution is critical But one important aspect that differentiates a PM from, say, a project manager is… Framing a problem, telling a narrative and designing solutions that address the problem I will tell you a real story of how we collaborated to frame a problem to make better solution decisions
- To identify opportunities to improve retention, I met with Darya Community experience is team that experiences customer issues and requests on a day to day Darya is not “just” customer service Darya is representing the voice of the customer! Critical in representing customers when thinking through an opportunity / solution Critical in coordinating a feature release with customers and providing feedback Great sounding board for product ideas
- Darya helped me better understand why some organizers cancel their subscription Darya shared with me that one of the top reasons an organizer cancels their Meetup subscription is “lack of time / motivation” That was a great start But I was left with a big problem statement to resolve
- Through intuition / anecdotal evidence - I wrote down some user hypotheses Organizer problem Member problem
- I came up with an opportunity to explore Opportunity The context here: Groups can have more than 1 organizers (co-organizers) Hypothesis Increase retention (less work) Create more events Potential solution (at that stage) Prompt all groups to get a co-org I realized There was a lot of unkown I needed a few smart brains and variety of skills to unpack this problem I assembled a team to do a side project (alongside execution)
- These are some of the people I work the most closely with There are more! I’m going to describe how we worked together on this project Every organization and every PM does it differently Goal: Understanding who they are, what they do and how they work with PM will help you understand what it’s like to be a PM
- To confirm if there is a potential opportunity, we looked to Alex Business strategy team provides quantitative insights and analysis to make informed product decisions Alex is not “just” pulling data on demand Alex is critical in thinking through an opportunity and impact Reflects both business and user perspectives
- Alex constructed a quantitative analysis This is one example of an insight She found out that the number of organizers for a group was correlated with the number of successful events I thought this was it - proof that if a group has more organizers, they will be more successful Alex told me it was correlation, not causation We had an argument She told me we need to find another way to determine causation Graph: The graph shows that as the number of members on the lead team increases to about 20 members, the average number of successful events (or events with at least 3 RSVPs) per group increases. Data: groups that hosted from 5/9 to 8/7. Takeaway: Groups with 1 co-lead host 1.7x more successful events (or events with at least 3 RSVPs) than groups without a co-lead (for groups that hosted in a 90d period, source).
- To better understand what’s going on, we looked to Kaley User research team represents the voice of the customer Kaley is not “just” a usability facilitator Kaley helps us understand behaviors and motivations (qualitative insights) to make informed product decisions Critical in thinking through an opportunity / solution from a user experience perspective Great sounding board for product ideas
- Kaley conducted interviews with organizers who have many co-organizers (10+) We were uncovering potential mechanisms underlying this correlation Having co-leads means you have more people to: schedule more events. “diversify your programming portfolio,” The variety was a new insights we hadn’t really thought of! Additional impact I told Kaley this was proof and updated the deck We had an argument Kaley and I crafted our summary carefully
- Alex on the business strategy side then looked at the potential opportunity 60% of groups don’t have a co-lead There’s definitely an opportunity But why are people not getting a co-lead?
- Kaley conducted more interviews - this time with organizers who don’t have co-organizers Find a co-lead is a high stake decision Each and every organizer we interviewed has a clear vision for the group The “Boss” and “Delegator” personas are not interested in sharing the vision of the group. The “Team Builder” is interested in a co-organizer, but feels the need to establish momentum for the group and find just the right person for the job.
- How did organizers with large lead teams overcome these barriers? In fact, organizers with large lead teams feel the same risks as solo organizers when it comes to bringing co-organizers The key difference is that organizers with large lead teams are aware of and leveraging the Event Organizer role New insight for the team We felt we had a lot of insights to start crafting a proposed solution - there’s an opportunity, and we have an idea on how to approach it
- To start framing the solution, we leaned on Chris Content strategy is not “just” a copywriter Content strategy is Right time, right way to surface flows / prompts People imagine the concept we put forward Setting right expectations I work with Chris Critical in thinking through an opportunity / solution from a user experience perspective Great sounding board for product ideas
- We worked together to frame the solution principles In this case: ...
- John took the lead on crafting a proposed solution Designer is my partner in crime and I think about John as a ‘co-founder’ Not a mock / UI machine - strategic partner in identifying opportunities and crafting a solution + working with squad to deliver Critical in thinking through an opportunity / solution from a user experience perspective - reflect best UX/UI patterns John was a key contributor throughout this process thus far
- This is a conceptual flow we started playing with Need to be a member they know - surface regular Need to be contextualized and give permission - prompt and templates Need to feel low barrier - surface event organizer role
- Presentation to lead team Nervous But equipped with valuable insights and proposed a solution addressing a problem framed accurately Confirmed customer problem Identified signals of causality Identified product design opportunity Sized opportunity Solution Number of events -> incl. Diverse events Co-org -> event org Target everyone -> focus on tenured + delegator/team builder General prompt -> surface regular members
- Will walk through an example of a discover project to: Illustrate how I collaborated with my partners to get actionable insights Provide an example of what a PM work on (research project)
- Now I’m spending a lot of time with Lori Engineering lead is another PM’s partner in crime - think “co-founder” along with design lead Not a tech project manager who is given product requirements Critical in thinking through an opportunity / solution from an engineering perspective - think through “cheap” and best in class solutions Critical in delivering a feature
- These are some of the people I work the most closely with There are more! I’m going to describe how we worked together on this project Every organization and every PM does it differently Goal: Understanding who they are, what they do and how they work with PM will help you understand what it’s like to be a PM
- Darya helped me better understand why some organizers cancel their subscription This is a very simplified view of an organizer journey Discovering Meetup, starting a group, growing a community Funnel Darya shared with me that one of the top reasons an organizer cancels their Meetup subscription is “lack of time / motivation”