The Product Experience

How to build EQ as a Product Leader - Pippa Topp (CPO, giffgaff)

Pippa Topp, Chief Product Officer at giffgaff, joins Lily and Randy to talk about emotional intelligence in product teams — what it is, how it develops, and why it matters for leadership. The conversation covers recognising defensiveness as an EQ signal, the conscious competence model, applying empathy inward as well as outward, and how to cultivate a culture of reflection across a product org. Pippa also shares her own journey from judgement to over-empathy to finding the balance, and makes the case for self-belief as the foundation of emotional resilience. Chapters 00:00 – Introduction & what is emotional intelligence? 04:39 – How low EQ shows up at work: defensiveness and reactive communication 08:28 – Extending product empathy skills to stakeholders and peers 10:33 – The conscious competence model and coaching people who don't know what they don't know 13:21 – Coaching techniques: life stories, separating facts from narrative 14:58 – Assessment tools and organisational EQ at giffgaff (Insights) 16:33 – Pippa's own EQ journey: from judgement to over-empathy to balance 22:37 – Coaching a junior PM through resistance, self-doubt, and breakthrough 28:40 – Leading through a forced decision: surfacing team emotion to move forward 32:39 – Cultivating EQ culture: group coaching, values-based behaviours, measurement 38:48 – Neurodivergence, self-awareness, and building a feedback culture 44:00 – Can AI support emotional intelligence? 47:41 – Is it okay to cry at work? 51:29 – Self-belief as the foundation of emotional resilience Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant [http://outofowls.com]. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles [https://www.cpo.social/]), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether [http://www.pita.social/]) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19 [https://outofowls.com/book]. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

The state of product in Europe - Elias Lieberich (Product Strategy Coach)

Elias Lieberich, Founder of Product Matters and formerly a PM at Google and YouTube, makes the case that the real gap between European and Silicon Valley product practice is in its culture. He identifies three recurring patterns in European companies: process obsession, a limited appetite for validation, and an underappreciation of engineering and design. Drawing on work with German Mittelstand businesses, deep tech startups, and large enterprises, Elias explains how to introduce product thinking without triggering resistance, through small, visible wins rather than wholesale transformation. Chapters 00:56 – Elias's background: Google, YouTube, and Google X 04:08 – European vs. Silicon Valley product culture 07:43 – Three gaps: process obsession, lack of validation, undervaluing engineers 12:04 – What European companies actually want — and the copy-paste trap 13:34 – Show, don't tell: finding immediate value 15:37 – Bringing the whole organisation on the journey 25:02 – Roadmaps, frameworks, and meeting companies where they are 26:35 – Building trust through small, compounding wins 29:29 – Change aversion as a bell curve 31:02 – What European companies do well — and what's worth exporting 33:13 – Working with deep tech startups in Europe 36:44 – The killer question: who is this for? 40:25 – Practical advice: start with what's within your control 42:53 – Wrap-up Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant [http://outofowls.com]. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles [https://www.cpo.social/]), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether [http://www.pita.social/]) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19 [https://outofowls.com/book]. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

How to fix broken systems - Kate Tarling (CEO, The Service Group)

Kate Tarling — consultant, trainer, and author of The Service Organization — joins Lily and Randy to discuss what it takes to deliver great services inside large, complex organizations. The conversation covers the distinction between products and services, why transformation so often stalls, how to make the business case for change using existing investment, and how product people can contribute to, and benefit from, a more service-oriented way of working. Chapters * 00:01:30 — Introduction and Kate's background * 00:04:00 — Defining services vs. products * 00:07:00 — Product organizations vs. service organizations * 00:09:00 — Why service delivery is hard * 00:11:30 — Transformation in practice: there is no magic process * 00:13:30 — Starting with one area and cutting across silos * 00:15:30 — Common mistakes organizations make * 00:19:30 — Measuring progress and making the business case * 00:22:30 — Redirecting existing investment: a UK government example * 00:25:00 — Triage functions and portfolio management * 00:26:00 — How product people can contribute in service organizations * 00:30:30 — Kate's 12 principles * 00:34:00 — Summary * 00:37:00 — Examples of good service organizations Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant [http://outofowls.com]. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles [https://www.cpo.social/]), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether [http://www.pita.social/]) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19 [https://outofowls.com/book]. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

How to communicate the value of product work - Rich Mironov (CPO Coach)

Rich Mironov has spent decades watching product teams lose the room because they were speaking the wrong language. In his new book Money Stories, he makes the case that product managers need a second vocabulary: one built around revenue, retention, and return.  In this conversation, he walks through the core framework, why order-of-magnitude estimates beat false precision, how to build a roadmap that holds its ground against sales pressure, and what the AI moment has in common with the early days of mobile.  Chapters * 02:03 — What are money stories, and why do executives need them? * 03:59 — How accurate do you actually need to be? The case for order-of-magnitude thinking * 05:52 — Using money stories as a sorting mechanism — and how to handle the "close this deal now" pressure * 10:54 — Tagging roadmaps with revenue ranges and the "or principle" * 15:58 — Does every PM need this, or just senior leaders? * 21:46 — The two flavors of ROI: earning your keep vs. feature-level returns * 26:57 — Why feature-level ROI almost never works — and why product leaders need to push back * 30:33 — The story archetypes: upsell stories explained * 38:02 — The retention/churn story archetype * 41:32 — Why product people get this wrong: fear of commitment and the need to be understood * 44:52 — How AI changes (and doesn't change) the money story framework * 48:58 — How to build financial literacy as a product manager Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant [http://outofowls.com]. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles [https://www.cpo.social/]), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether [http://www.pita.social/]) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19 [https://outofowls.com/book]. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Lessons from Games, Big Tech, & Hollywood - Laura Teclemariam (LinkedIn, Netflix, Warner Bros. Entertainment)

Laura Teclemariam has had one of the most varied careers in product — from mobile gaming economies at EA to building Netflix's animation studio from the ground up, to owning LinkedIn's core identity products. In this episode, she joins Lily and Randy to trace the through-line of her "jungle gym" path, unpack what gaming taught her about retention, why entertainment sharpens your product instincts in ways big tech can't, and how she's now teaching the next generation of PMs at UC Berkeley — with AI at the centre of everything. Chapters 00:00 — Intro: The feedback you didn't see coming at LinkedIn 02:00 — Laura's background: engineer, founder, consultant, PM 03:50 — Why a nonlinear career is more coherent than it looks 06:00 — Gaming as the most honest product environment 07:20 — Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, mods, and retention crisis 09:00 — How gaming metrics (DAU, retention) predicted big tech's future 12:10 — Data ends debates in tech; taste ends them in entertainment 13:05 — Netflix Animation: building a studio's product function from scratch 15:15 — Storyboards as prototypes, animatics as MVPs 19:40 — Tool consolidation: going from 400 to 130 tools across productions 22:05 — Build vs. buy decisions when the budget is a feature film 26:40 — What it takes to hire PMs for entertainment vs. general tech 28:20 — STAR interviews and evaluating stakeholder chops 29:20 — Why LinkedIn came next: curiosity about social network retention 31:50 — The weight of building for 1B+ users and LinkedIn's trust-first culture 35:50 — Profile, Messaging, Groups: LinkedIn's original value proposition 37:00 — Teaching advanced product management at UC Berkeley 38:10 — The course thesis: AI for everything, and the "great convergence" 42:00 — Does the PM/design/engineering triad collapse with AI? 45:30 — What Laura's students taught her about curiosity and safe-to-fail environments Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant [http://outofowls.com]. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles [https://www.cpo.social/]), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether [http://www.pita.social/]) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19 [https://outofowls.com/book]. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.