In this episode, Collin shares a case about a leadership team building a hardware and software product.

We dig into this case because it highlights familiar product dynamics—great, passionate people, working to tight deadlines, but stuck in semi-siloed patterns and not really operating as one team. Each group pushes its own goals but isn’t fully aligned on the end game. And when the product leaders aren’t working effectively as a team, it has a real impact on outcomes and the ability to deliver at pace.

We chose this topic to give product leaders footholds and practical ideas for starting similar conversations in your own organisation. We often call ourselves a team—but are we, as product leaders, really operating as a team? What do we really mean when we use the word “team”?

In this session, Collin describes how he asked the leadership group that he was working with this simple, but powerful question: “Are you working as a team?” To their credit, they took the time to work with Collin and reflect on this question, as a collective.

One area of the case that I found interesting was when Collin unpacks the complexity of “owning” requirements as new information emerges or thinking shifts about a particular problem. It is this inherent complexity of digital product development that makes siloed, and even semi-siloed, ways of working so dangerous.

Collin also highlights a deeper systemic issue: senior and executive leaders often don’t grasp the importance of ways of working in digital product development. Instead, they simply push the silos to deliver faster. I personally feel that this level of naivety at the top is a serious competitive problem.

I hope you find this case useful. We welcome recommendations and comments—and we’re looking forward to getting a few more episodes out, sooner rather than later.

At the end of the podcast, I refer to the work of Nonaka & Takeuchi and said I would include a link: 1) The New New Product Development Game and 2) The Knowledge Creating Company are probably their most well known work. But there is a wealth of other material that is also worth exploring.

In Episode 10, Collin and I dive into a question I was asked during an interview:

“We do an offsite with our leadership team, and it’s a great couple of days… but once we’re back in the day-to-day, it all sort of disappears. As a coach, how do you help with that?”

The question has lingered with me for quite some time, and I thought it would be an interesting topic to unpack with Collin.

In this episode, we explore:

• How coaches can help “hold” a team’s desire to change, providing structure and accountability without getting pulled into the daily fires
• Why working with digital leadership teams means going beyond agile frameworks into the messier world of team dynamics and organizational complexity
• The importance of examining your own unconscious beliefs about leadership
• Three common offsite mistakes we often see—and how to avoid them:
  • Senior leaders facilitating instead of participating
  • Agendas so full there’s no space for reflection
  • Avoiding the hard conversations that matter most

We share personal experiences to keep the conversation actionable and grounded in the day-to-day realities of organisational life.

I hope you find Episode 10 useful.

Thanks to everyone who’s been following the podcast and leaving kind reviews—it means a lot.

What if you could measure what really matters to your customer?

In our latest episode of Talking Product, Collin and I chat with Alex Hidalgo—author of the O’Reilly book Implementing Service Level Objectives. Alex shares how Service Level Objectives (SLOs) can help teams zero in on customer priorities and bring people across the organisation together to define what really matters.

SLOs are powerful, but they can also be tricky to implement. I’ve struggled with them myself, so it was great to have the chance to explore this topic in depth with Alex and learn from his expertise.

In this session, we cover:

• Practical steps to get started with Service Level Indicators (SLIs), the foundation of SLOs.
• How to start small and iterate as you refine your SLOs over time.
• The cultural challenges of implementing SLOs—and how to navigate them.

If you’re just starting out or looking to improve your approach, I hope you find this episode full of insights to help you on your SLO journey.

Alex’s book is an excellent resource for making SLOs meaningful and achievable in your organisation. I highly recommend it.

I hope you enjoy listening to this session as much as we enjoyed recording it.

If you liked the episode, please give us a rating—or go all out and write us a nice review. It makes a big difference!

A huge thank you to Alex for making the time to share his insights with us.