Scandinavian Product Podcast

My guest today is Tor Erik Skårdal and Stian Øien - two former product leaders at Easee, once one of the fastest growing tech companies in Norway and the largest platform of EV chargers for homes in the Nordics.

This is one of the most vulnerable conversations in the podcast so far.

Most people in Norway and Sweden know how difficult Easee’s journey has been.

From being one the fastest growing tech companies in Europe, to having to layoff most of its people after a sudden sales ban in a crucial market.

Tor Erik (former CPO at Easee), led Product in the company at a very challenging time.

Stian (now CPO at Futurehome and former VP at Easee), led Product at Easee from the early days and all the way to potentially even becoming a new Norwegian unicorn. Speaking of hyper scale…

So how does a crisis like this impact your leadership approach and how product teams are led? What’s the reality inside a company that is hiring several people every week versus a company that’s forced to let go most of its people?

We talked about that and much more:

* Leading teams with outcomes

* Killing ideas fast

* Lessons learned from hyper scale

* Managing hardware products vs software

* The reality for Product teams in times of extreme crisis

* And more

This episode is part of a series where I interview 20+ CPOs across Scandinavia. Subscribe for free so you don’t miss out.

This conversation was extra special in many ways, and also nostalgic (I worked with Stian when he was leading Product and with Tor Erik who was a PM in one of my teams).

Happy to be able to share this special chat with all of you.

Hope you enjoy it! :)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is Francesca Cortesi, former Chief Product Officer at Hemnet - the largest housing marketplace in Sweden.

This is a deep dive into Hemnet's journey into adopting the Product Operating Model and Francesca's product and growth leadership journey.

Francesca shared deeply insightful stories, practical advice, and her perspective on driving change while keeping teams aligned and inspired.

We talked about:

* How Hemnet moved from features to outcomes.

* Why Strategic context is the most important thing for a CPO

* Why incremental changes beat big revolutions

* The surprising power of revisiting your business model and internal incentives

* Why asking for help can be a leadership growth hack.

* Product Leadership lessons to recognize and adapt to new growth phases

* And more

This was a joy, Francesca's journey at Hemnet is a very interesting, practical, and real case and she's also a great human being.

Enjoy!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is Cecilie Skjong, Investment Manager at Skyfall Ventures - a Norwegian early-stage venture capital fund.

As a founder, nailing your pitch, thinking big and challenging yourself to be more visionary, and quickly testing your ideas to get a sense of the market pull are crucial.

And the same applies to a cross-functional team building a new product in a scale-up. The same applies to a product leader leading a new opportunity in a large organization.

After being exposed to hundreds of pitches and investing in several early-stage ventures, Cecilie shared with me:

* Characteristics of great founding teams

* The importance of drive and resilience when testing ideas and building products

* Early signs of market pull

* Thinking big and the importance of Vision

* How to craft a great pitch

* The power of Founder-led Sales

* The importance of understanding your macro trends (Waves)

* The state of the Norwegian startup scene

* And more

If you’re a founder, I recommend pairing this episode with:

* Episode 1: Testing Ideas with David Bland, co-author of the book Testing Business Ideas written together with Alex Osterwalder

* Episode 9: Understanding Jobs to be Done with Bob Moesta, co-creator of the JTBD framework together with Clayton Christensen

* Episode 19: Nailing your Positioning with April Dunford, bestselling author of one of the most well-known marketing books out there

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Today's episode is with my friend Frederik Hansen - CPO at Ignite.

Ignite is a leading sustainable procurement platform that enables companies to take control of their purchasing from suppliers, comply with regulations, and reduce costs, emissions, and risks - all in one place.

Before Ignite, Frederik was CPO at Bookis.

He is also the co-founder of Produktleder.no - the largest community for product managers in Norway - and a co-organizer of the ProductTank in Oslo. A true contributor to the product community in Norway.

In this conversation, Frederik and I discussed:

* Starting a CPO role with a 1-month grace period

* Healthy principles in strong product teams

* Cross-functional collaboration in practice

* Making time for discovery at Ignite

* Creating an environment for product teams to thrive

* Examples from Frederik’s journey on how to test ideas fast using different techniques

* What Frederik looks for in a PM (traits)

* And more

Enjoy :)

Hey there, Afonso here 👋

I've interviewed more than 30 Product leaders in Scandinavia, and this is one of those conversations. Subscribe for free so you don’t miss out on future interviews!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Today's guest is Melissa Mills, VP of Product at Ardoc, former Director of Product at Kahoot!, and former Global Product Lead at Google in San Francisco.

Ardoc is a fast-growing scale-up in Norway, recognized by Gartner as a leading Enterprise Architecture Tool.

Their Series D raise is one of the five largest private funding rounds by a Norwegian tech business.

Many enterprise companies like Carlsberg Group are choosing Ardoc, and this episode will give you an insider view of how they build their products.

Melissa and I talked about:

- Ardoc's growth and product journey

- Product management in big tech, startups, and scale-ups

- Product Managers' valuable traits according to company stage

- The importance of domain knowledge in B2B

- How Product and Sales should partner

- Onboarding product teams

- Cultural differences between doing Product in Norway versus Silicon Valley

- And so much more

_

💪 Companies I think you should know about:

UX Signals - Don’t let your busy schedule stop you from talking to users.

Automatically recruit interviews and user tests with people who are using your product. Talk to them while their user experience is still fresh in their mind.

Used by big companies like DNB Bank, Vipps MobilePay, NAV, and many more.

Tell them Afonso sent you, and get 50% off your trial!

Know more here

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Would you like to know how Norway's best mobile bank builds its products?

Today's guest is Thomas Allan Nygaard - Product Leader at Sparebank 1, one of the largest banks in Norway and named Norway's best mobile bank.

Thomas and his team are constantly trying to push their boundaries and this conversation walks you through their ongoing journey into adopting and continuously adjusting their product operating model.

We covered:

* Sparebank's journey from breaking the monolith

* How their teams approach discovery and risk reduction

* Balancing just enough discovery and risk-taking

* The power of small autonomous teams

* Why feedback from Beta users can be dangerous

* Product Strategy as problem-solving

* Using OKRs and other techniques to increase focus

* Why organizational and team focus start with each individual

* And more

Listen now: Apple | Spotify | Youtube

_

💪 Companies I think you should know about:

UX Signals - Don’t let your busy schedule stop you from talking to users.

Automatically recruit interviews and user tests with people who are using your product. Talk to them while their user experience is still fresh in their mind.

Used by big companies like DNB Bank, Vipps MobilePay, NAV, and many more.

Tell them Afonso sent you, and get 50% off your trial!

Know more here

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is Beth Stensen.

Beth is a gem in the Design world in Norway.

She was Head of Design at Ruter (the company responsible for the plan, coordination, order and market of public transport in Oslo & Akershus), she then became the CEO at Netlife (famous for their Y Oslo Conference), and now she's the Head of Design at Posten Bring - the leading post company in the Nordics.

Beth has a lot of experience with transformations and this conversation is packed with insights and advice from her journey - as well as reflections on the Product Movement and how it's impacting Design, and its future.

We covered:

* The “Product” Movement and its impact to Design

* Making room for the intangibles

* Reflections on “tension” between Design and Product

* Ruter’s transformational journey

* A practical example of what a great Product Vision looks like

* Tips to navigate transformation as a Designer and Design leader

* Insights from Beth’s journey at Posten Bring so far

* The Future of Design

* And more

I really loved talking with Beth. There’s so much wisdom here. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did :)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Today’s guest is the one and only Christina Wodtke - Professor at Stanford and author of several bestsellers, including the famous book on OKRs “Radical Focus”.

We covered:

* Foundations and misconceptions about OKRs

* Prerequisites for successfully use OKR

* Why OKRs might not be for you

* The importance of psychological safety and strategic context

* Outcome-based key results vs. output-based results

* Cross-functional team collaboration and shared objectives

* Cadences and Principles

* Exploratory OKRs

* Challenges in large organizations with complex dependencies

* And more

Christina is a legend and one of my biggest references.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

_

References:

Article: Why context and culture matter in leading with objectives

Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

I've interviewed more than 30 Product leaders in Scandinavia, and this is one of those conversations.

Subscribe for free so you don’t miss out on future conversations and related content

Today I'm talking with Marius Røstad - CPO at Aidn - and Espen Sundve - former CPO at Oda, who’s now a Senior Advisor at Schibsted.

Marius used to head up product at Ruter before joining Aidn as Chief Product Officer.

Aidn is one of the coolest healthcare scaleups in Norway, aiming to disrupt healthcare.

Espen has also held product leadership roles before joining Oda as its CPO, where he thrived for 7 years.

Oda is Norway’s leading online grocery store.

How does Oda build products and organize itself? What are some of the principles behind their success?

And how is Aidn doing that today, one of the most interesting tech scaleups in Norway in the healthcare space?

You'll find out soon, as well as learn both Marius and Espen's perspectives on being more strategic, their views and approach to product strategy, team topologies, the importance of speed, how to foster alignment when you’re scaling fast - and so much more.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Today’s episode is particularly special.

A 2-hour masterclass on discovery that every designer, product manager, founder, and product leader should hear

With bestselling authors Teresa Torres (Product Discovery Habits) and Petra Wille (Strong Product People) - two of my biggest references.

My god, this was fun...!

Is it the first long-format episode on discovery with 2 industry legends? Possibly...

Will there be advanced lessons, golden practical nuggets, and plenty of spicy takes?

Oh yes...

The only thing I can say is: you're in for a treat :)

Petra, Teresa, and I covered:

* How to get support from your leadership to do great discovery

* Main mistakes to avoid when doing discovery and what to do instead

* How to frame business and product outcomes

* How to set great strategic context and close the loop between discovery and strategy

* Why user research is not the same as product discovery

* The danger with the double diamond

* How to translate discovery into a story CEOs want to hear

* Beyond discovering products: business modeling

* How to use KPI trees

* Deep dive into Opportunity Solution Trees and main pitfalls

* And so so much more

_

Show notes

* Teresa's book: Continuous Discovery Habits

* Teresa's blog and website

* Teresa’s LinkedIn profile

* Petra’s LinkedIn profile

* Petra’s website

* Petra's books

* Strong Product People

* Strong Product Communities

* Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy – mentioned by Teresa in the context of defining strategy and diagnosing market conditions.

* Seven Powers, the foundation of Business strategy

* Petra's article on KPI trees

* Clayton Christensen’s Deliberate vs. Emergent Strategy

* Bob Moesta’s Jobs to Be Done and interview methods

* Gino Wickman’s book Traction

* Rich Mironov's blog Product Bytes

* Carlo Mahfouz episode and website

* Moment Prisons article, recommended to me by John Cutler a while back

_

💪 Companies I think you should know about:

UX Signals - Don’t let your busy schedule stop you from talking to users.

Automatically recruit interviews and user tests with people who are using your product. Talk to them while their user experience is still fresh in their mind.

Used by big companies like DNB Bank, Vipps MobilePay, NAV, and many more.

Tell them Afonso sent you, and get 50% off your trial.

Know more here

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is the globally renowned marketing expert April Dunford.

April has probably advised more B2B tech companies on positioning than anyone in the world.

April's book Obviously Awesome is one of the biggest best-selling marketing books out there - and I'm so happy we had time to dig into everything you need to know to nail Product Positioning so that customers get it, buy it, and love it.

Every founder, marketing, sales, and product person should listen to this episode!

We discussed:

* Why companies fail with positioning

* Why positioning is a team sport

* April's step-by-step process to nail product positioning

* How to find your ICP (ideal customer profile)

* Common pitfalls when defining positioning

* Messaging vs branding vs positioning

* How to align Product, Marketing, Sales, and Executive leadership on positioning and why it's important

* How to translate your positioning to a killing Sales pitch

—

Afonso’s profile

April’s profile and website

April’s books:

* Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It

* Sales Pitch: How to craft a story to stand out and win

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guests today are Itamar Gilad and Bruce McCarthy.

Itamar is a former product leader for Gmail, Youtube, and Microsoft - and is the author of the bestselling book Evidence Guided.

Itamar’s latest book is about creating high-impact products in the face of uncertainty, and he also has some strong views on roadmaps, roadmapping, common traps to avoid, and what to consider instead.

But so does Bruce!

Bruce is the author of the book Product Roadmaps Relaunched and, most recently, the book Aligned - a deep dive into stakeholder management for product leaders.

The question is: do Itamar and Bruce agree on what a great roadmap looks like? Whether we need them at all?

You’ll have to listen to find out

All I can say is: this was such a beautiful conversation, with two giants discussing their points of view and talking highly of each other’s work. Loved it, and I’m sure you will too.

We covered:

* The purpose of roadmaps

* The dangers of output-based roadmaps and practical tips to avoid them

* When to have dates on roadmaps

* How to craft an outcome-based roadmap

* Techniques to use instead of roadmaps

* How to use OKRs and roadmaps

* Deep dive on Itamar’s framework GIST

* And so much more

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is Melissa Perri.

Melissa is the author of the bestselling book "Escaping the Build Trap" and recently co-authored “Product Operations: How successful companies build better products at scale”.

She runs a successful CPO Accelerator, is a former professor at Harvard Business School, serves on several Boards, and is the Founder of Product Institute.

In this conversation, we explore:

* The role of Product Ops

* The main misconceptions with Product Ops

* The 3 key pillars of Product Ops

* How do you get started and how to scale the team

* How Product Ops support Product Teams and Product Leaders

* Product Ops as an enabling teams and how to measure its success

* The most important skills in a CPO

* What most CPOs struggle with and why

* And more!

—

Where to find Melissa Perri:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissajeanperri/

• Product Institute Website—💪 Companies I think you should know about:

UX Signals - Don’t let your busy schedule stop you from talking to users.

Automatically recruit interviews and user tests with people who are using your product. Talk to them while their user experience is still fresh in their mind.

Used by big companies like DNB Bank, Vipps MobilePay, NAV, and many more.

Tell them Afonso sent you, and get 50% off your trial.

Know more here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Stay tuned by subscribing for free: https://afonsofranco.substack.com/

My guest today is Ryan Singer.

Ryan is the author of Shape Up, an excellent guide to help teams and companies work in a better way to ship work that matters - consistently over time.

Ryan's work is incredibly important to understand. Whether you adopt Shape Up or not, there are so many golden nuggets in how Ryan sees the world of how teams should work.

In our conversation, we covered:

* Why do Scrum and other agile frameworks often fail to shape valuable work

* Why framing the work before shaping it is key

* Who should shape the work

* How to use time constraints and its importance

* How to navigate building something new while maintaining

* The Future of Product Management

* And much more!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is Janna Bastow.

Janna is the Co-founder of Mind the Product - the world’s largest product community - Founder & CEO at ProdPad, and the inventor of the widely adopted roadmap framework “Now, Next, Later”

There’s so much Janna and I could have talked about but we focused on what great roadmaps look like, and the future of product management.

We discussed:

* The story behind how Now Next Later was invented, from idea to widely spread roadmap framework

* Different ways to frame your roadmap based on your context

* Using roadmaps, written narratives, and OKRs together

* Roadmapping experiments

* Designing roadmaps in ways that enable you to revisit what you've done and measure your outcomes

* Roadmaps best practices

* Why all companies will eventually die and what we can do about it

* The Future of Product Management

* How will AI impact both the role of Product and the products we build

* And more

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

Subscribe for free: https://afonsofranco.substack.com/

My guest today is Daniel Elizalde.

Daniel has trained more than 1500 people in product management, including folks from top tech companies like Tesla, Microsoft, and more.

He's been working in Product for over 25 years, in so many different industries - and is the author of the book The B2B Innovators Map.

This conversation was a deep dive into Product Management applied to B2B products, covering:

* The importance of mapping out your industry in B2B

* Why your first 10 customers in B2B equals product market fit

* How to find your first 10 paying customers in B2B

* Building a discovery network with potential customers

* Experiment roadmaps vs product roadmaps

* Relevant experiments and discovery techniques in B2B

* Understanding why customers should be prioritized over users in most B2B cases

* The importance of understanding how big the problem you're solving is and how it's related to willingness to pay

* Testing viability in B2B

* Main mistakes people make when transitioning from B2C to B2B

.

.

Daniel is currently teaching a new course: Mastering B2B Product Innovation.

Whether you are building new enterprise software or B2B IoT solutions, this course may be what you’re looking for to know you are leading your team in the right direction. Make sure you check it out!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is someone special to me: Bruce McCarthy.

Bruce has probably seen and helped more companies with product roadmaps than anyone in the world.

He's the author of the best-selling book "Product Roadmaps Relaunched" and has just launched his new book Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders.

Bruce and I met in Madrid a couple of years ago. Our first 1:1 was over breakfast, where we talked about different things - including the new book he was writing at the time.

I knew immediately that it would be a very relevant book for many folks...  

And as Lenny Rachitsky puts it now in his review, this book is "Your guide to building exceptional stakeholder relationships".

This episode is a mini-masterclass on how to manage stakeholders and how to foster alignment in your organization.

We discussed:

* Why OKRs and Roadmaps are great tools to drive alignment - and how to do them well

* Real case examples and lessons learned on how to align stakeholders

* The importance of having collective outcomes and cross-functional collaboration

* Practical tips and habits for succeeding with stakeholder management

* Mental models, frameworks, and practices for effective decision making

* Why org charts tell us very little about who makes decisions

* And more!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is one of my favorite product people out there: Petra Wille

Petra is the author of one the best books for product leaders you can find "Strong Product People", she's the founder of an amazing product conference "Product at Heart", and one of the few product coaches featured in Marty Cagan's new book Transformed.

Petra is such a great human being, and I am a big fan of her work.

We covered a lot and, even though I am clearly biased, every product leader and manager should listen to this.

We discussed:

* Common struggles of product leaders and how to address them

* Why many product leaders struggle with time management and understanding their role

* Why product leaders need a framework tailored to their context and that works for them, to develop their people

* What you need to know to get started with developing strong product people

* The benefits of coaching and tools product leaders can use to help their people grow

* Why reading good books and contextualizing their lessons is important

* Navigating the "Instagramification" of the product industry (as John Cutler is putting it)

* Building strong Communities of Practice and their benefits

We even have a little surprise for you: we did some role-playing of a coaching conversation, so you can actually hear Petra in action and what great coaching is all about! Quite unique :)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is Manuel Pais.

Manuel is the co-author of the masterpiece book "Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow".

He's recognized by TechBeacon as a DevOps thought leader, and is today an independent consultant and trainer, focused on team interactions, delivery practices and accelerating flow.

We covered a lot, including some questions and comments from Lyse and Shibsted (read the full case here):

* Different types of teams and interaction modes, and why it's important to define them in your org

* Differences between "streams" and "products", and the importance of having stream-aligned teams able to discover and deliver as independently as possible

* Why team topologies should be seen as an ongoing model, with a mindset of experimentation, sensing, and responding (avoiding the "big reorg" antipattern)

* Conway's law and why it matters

* Navigating infrastructure changes and team topologies

* How to identify your streams using independence service heuristics

* How Shibsted organized itself in independent verticals and why value-stream thinking is important to achieve faster flow

* Product Ops teams as Enabling Teams

* Implementing and scaling enabling teams (with an example of data science teams)

* Common antipatterns when adopting team topologies

I love Manuel and Mathew's work, and see it as one of the most important contributions to the tech industry in the past few years.

I strongly recommend checking out the Shibsted case in combination with this episode, available at the Scandinavian Product Newsletter.

I had the pleasure to sit down with Jostein and Hatice and hear more in detail about their use of Team Topologies and how it shaped their ongoing transformation as well as many of their lessons learned.

Relevant links from the episode:

Main website: http://teamtopologies.com/

Tools & templates (includes ISH mentioned in the episode): https://github.com/teamtopologiesAcademy (where you can find the Effective Enabling Teams course mentioned in the episode): https://academy.teamtopologies.com/

Teamperature (a breakthrough product for assessing and managing team cognitive load): http://teamperature.com/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com

My guest today is one of my favorite product thinkers: John Cutler

John is an absolute legend in the product community, and one thing I love about John is his dedication to sharing the messiness and contextual nuances in the world of building products.

John has worked in Product with some of the most exciting tech companies around the globe and is the author of one of the most-read Product newsletters in the world: The Beautiful Mess.

Everyone wants to work like the "best" product organizations. But what does "best" even mean? The "best" according to what, precisely? And how important is it to contextualize this advice? What role does culture play in subscribing to these principles, and implementing them?

As I expected, John went deep on some of these things:

* What does it mean to work in the "best" organizations

* The nuances of categorizing an organization as the "best" and the importance of context

* Reflections on implementing the principles of the product operating model and how messy it can get given different contexts

* The importance of start starting, and being good at continuous improvement

* Some patterns and antipatterns of high-performing teams and organizations

* Foundational steps and reflections on prioritization

* Approaching setting Strategy from scratch

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afonsofranco.substack.com