ZoCo Product Invitational: Initial Reactions

We just wrapped our most recent Product Invitational event where we brought together a select group of senior product leaders to discuss, collaborate, and workshop practical solutions to some of the hairiest challenges they face today. 

No scripts. No pre-determined themes. Instead, we let the participants shape the agenda in real-time. They came together and drove some really insightful conversations around two timely topics that are impacting the product community:

• Measuring Impact–How do we measure the impact of product work and sell it up to business stakeholders, creating buy-in and energy outside of the product team?
• AI & Product Future–What are product leader’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions with generative AI, and what role is it playing on our teams today?

We've jotted down our initial thoughts on each topic but in the upcoming weeks, we'll go over our notes in detail and create a comprehensive insights report for you.

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Measuring impact

• Nearly everyone agrees there is room for improvement when it comes to measuring the impact of product work. Especially in organizations that are not “product-led”. 
• What are the metrics to measure? It can depend on the size and state of the organization (and product), but “revenue”, “sales”, and “profitability” was a common thread. 
• It starts at the top. If the organization’s mission is clear, it’s much easier to determine the right metrics to track and to get team buy-in.
• Personal power & opinion can creep in when there is a lack of clarity.
• If you’re not putting your visions forward (or upward), you don’t have a leg to stand on when you need to fight back against budget cuts, reprioritization, etc.
• Product teams have lacked tools to capture meaningful data in the past, but they are more readily available today.
• Having a voice or champion for product at the C-suite level is so valuable. 

AI & Product Future

• Participants had varying thoughts on AI, ranging from all-in to skeptic/lukewarm.
• AI is a topic in nearly every organization. And those conversations can vary from “How can we utilize it?” to “It’s off-limits.” 
• Organizations are talking about it, but are missing definitive policies around its use.
• Privacy and security concerns are the biggest blockers for integration.
• Another interesting blocker that came up was the idea of human bias. For example, if the use of AI in certain industries could make a positive impact for the majority of consumers, but would shrink profit margins for the organization(s), it’s likely going to get nixed.
• It’s trendy and buzz-worthy, but is it being pushed for that reason alone? It should be approached strategically, considering how can it support/solve current problems.
• To get buy-in, or to even start the conversation in some cases, it has to start with gaining trust.
• Consumer vs. organizational uses–AI has become easily accessible to the public and companies are considering use cases for their users, but are we overlooking how we can use it internally?

Just scratching the surface

Stay tuned as we continue to dig deeper into these topics and share the thoughts and ideas of some of the brightest minds in the industry. 

To see the takeaways from our Product Invitational from earlier this year, you can download the full report here.