Jodi McDermott: [00:00:00] Well, it comes down to what's good revenue, right? So even if, so, you know, somebody put on the table at that time, well, what if we keep building it and we just have a dedicated development team that does the work and we just carve it off and set it over here? Okay, well, but it's never, it's never gonna grow to be a 10 million, $20 million product.

Jodi McDermott: So you're never gonna get that enterprise value multiple off of it. It's this one thing over here. So is it "good revenue?" That's not really good revenue. 

Trisha Price: If you build software or lead people who do, then you're in the right place. This is Hard Calls, real decisions, real leaders, real outcomes. Hi everyone, I am Trisha Price, and welcome back to another episode of Hard Calls. The podcast where we bring on the best product leaders from across the globe to talk about those moments, the decisions that matter, the Hard Calls.

Trisha Price: On today's show, I am thrilled to welcome Jodi McDermott, a three-time Chief Product Officer who is now serving as a board member, [00:01:00] as well as advising and coaching c-suite on how, how to help drive business outcomes and build great products. She is greatly respected because of her track record of delivering exceptional returns and her passion for building authentic relationships that foster business outcomes.

Trisha Price: Welcome to Hard Calls, Jodi.

Jodi McDermott: Thank you.

Trisha Price: I'm so excited for you to be here and for this conversation. Jodi and I have known each other for a while and I'm just so excited for her to share her experience today with all of you. So, Jodi, today, this is called Hard Calls. Our podcast is Hard Calls, and so we always like to start with a hard call you've had to make.

Trisha Price: So tell us, looking back over your career, or even just the past year, whatever, share a hard call that you've had to make. What made it so challenging and what did you learn from it? 

Jodi McDermott: Well, I think as a Chief Product Officer, you have a lot of Hard Calls that you have to make. I mean, the buck stops with you, right?

Jodi McDermott: I mean, you this [00:02:00] role, Trisha as well, we've talked about it. And it usually comes down to people, products, and sometimes customers too, if trying to make those Hard Calls. So, when I was thinking about our conversation for today and what two Hard Calls, that I could think of that popped to my mind over the last several years of my career.

Jodi McDermott: And I can't say that it didn't happen, not more than once 'cause it, they come all the time. They usually come down to people and obviously, and what you're doing around products, right? So let's start with people. At the end of the day, people are what make businesses tick. And when you are a leader and you have people on your team, especially 'cause your team gets larger.

Jodi McDermott: You have people that you trust that bring great experience and expertise. And then you also have people who have been on the journey with the company for a long time who might be cheerleaders and loyalists, and they are, they've contributed [00:03:00] so much, but maybe something about the company's really changed.

Jodi McDermott: And it's time for new leadership. And so I think those hard calls every executive faces and I can think of a couple of hard calls particularly that have fallen into both of those categories with people. If you've ever had somebody in your organization that maybe was a really high performer, but they weren't a cultural fit.

Trisha Price: Yes. 

Jodi McDermott: And maybe they ruffled a lot of feathers and it wasn't one time, but it was continuous. There's been times I've had to make a really hard call to move a high performer out because I knew it was pulling down the rest of the team. And sometimes it's hard to even see it's happening. And because people are afraid to say something and you have to be watching out for that to be able to protect, the totality of the team, right?

Jodi McDermott: And other hard calls have included when you have somebody who's a performer that they're a wonderful person. They're a wonderful human being, and you know they are gonna [00:04:00] crush it in a different role, but the role they're that they're in is not what you need for your actual team, right? To get you where you're gonna go.

Trisha Price: I love that, Jodi. It's so hard. At nCino where I worked prior to coming to Pendo Pierre, our CEO, had this quadrant, and he would call it the competent jerk was the exactly what you were just talking about, and the lovable fool. And he kind of had this quadrant of exactly what you're talking about.

Trisha Price: And I love the conversation about when people are in the wrong role, even though you know they're not just an amazing cultural fit, but they have value to add, but just not in the role they're in. I think the hardest part of that call is when they don't see it, when they love the job and you're like, oh my gosh, I know your career's gonna explode if we can give you access and opportunity somewhere else, but they don't wanna take it.

Trisha Price: That is probably the toughest scenario.

Jodi McDermott: It really is. It's hard because I love people. I'm a people [00:05:00] person and it's hard when you have to sit down and have a really hard conversation with somebody. Because you just want them, you know they're gonna be better on the other side, at the end of the day, if you can be kind, and clear on what needs to happen. But another hard call that I wanted to share with you is that there was a product hard call that I think took me a while to make. And I had, it was, we had acquired a company that had a product that they were building for one customer. So it was a, a product that they had contracted to build this product.

Jodi McDermott: And everybody felt like they were close to the finish line, close to the finish line. And every quarter that would go by. We just needed one more quarter. One more quarter. And I had a few executives on, my peers that were going, what are we doing over here? Why are we spending money on this? But, when you especially when you acquire a company, you have a new customer coming in.

Jodi McDermott: You're trying to be a promise keeper, right? Like product, you're trying to be promise [00:06:00] keeper as much as you possibly can. And that was one that was a really hard call that we finally made the decision that we were gonna go negotiate to get out of this agreement, and that we had to say, no, we had to stop because we didn't see profitability down the line.

Jodi McDermott: At one point we did, and then it just kept dwindling and dwindling. And especially when you are working in private equity and you have a timeline for how you're spending those R&D dollars. You just can't be deploying it where you're not gonna get the return. And that was a really, really hard call.

Jodi McDermott: And I would say that was probably one that I was, it was definitely influenced on, it was there, it was discussion with my CEO, and my CFO, and others and how we were gonna manage the customer. But that was a hard one. As a product officer of having to go and tell a customer, "No, we can't keep going and we can't keep doing this."

Trisha Price: That I'm so glad you shared that because sunsetting products or disappointing a particular customer is probably one of the hardest things we [00:07:00] do as CPOs. You and I both know, even if you finished the product. Products are never finished, right? 

Jodi McDermott: No. 

Trisha Price: And so it's like even if you met the needs of that particular customer and got live there would've been asks for forever for that.

Trisha Price: And making that difficult decision not to do a one-off for a customer, but to try to invest those R&D dollars where you can get. A multiple where everybody's using it is obviously always the right choice, but that doesn't mean it's the easy choice. 

Jodi McDermott: Well, it comes down to what's good revenue, right?

Jodi McDermott: Somebody put on the table at that time, "Well, what if we keep building it and we just have a dedicated development team that does the work and we just carve it off and set it over here?" Okay, but it's never gonna grow to be a 10 million, $20 million product, right?

Jodi McDermott: So you're never gonna get that enterprise value multiple off of it. It's this one thing over here. So, is it good revenue? It's [00:08:00] not good revenue. Yeah. So, those are the hard ones when, and then you have people on the other line that you have friendships with and, or at least relationships with.

Trisha Price: Yeah. Trust. 

Jodi McDermott: And having to go and have that conversation's really tough. 

Trisha Price: It's so hard. And you mentioned, the fact that it was private AI equity-backed, and when you're in PE that pressure, that pressure to get a return from your R&D. And how do you, when you're a CPO or in the C-suite at a private equity company where there is tremendous pressure to deliver value, how do you balance that rapid value creation that need for good revenue quickly with the need for long-term product innovation?

Jodi McDermott: I think a lot of it has to do with getting telemetry around your R&D spend. Yeah. Where are you spending the dollars? Right? When I usually walk in the door at any company, [00:09:00] the first thing I wanna know is where are the people? Where are the dollars associated with those people? How are they deployed against the product architecture?

Jodi McDermott: What's the ARR? What are the bookings? What were the bookings last year? What are the bookings this year? Or what's the potential for the bookings? And what is that percentage allocation against, those baseline numbers, and are we deploying it in a way that's optimized? Are we spending everything trying to get outta tech debt or are we just grow, grow, grow, and we're mounting tech debt on the other side?

Jodi McDermott: The goal is to have a good, healthy balance in there. And getting it carved out where you have those growth dollars carved out at a really healthy percentage and then stack rank or organizing it in a myopic way of, okay, what are we gonna invest in? Right? Where's that cut line? We can't do everything.

Jodi McDermott: Yep. What? What are all the opportunities that we can go after? And then it's a lot of financial discipline. Yeah, so I encourage [00:10:00] CPOs bring your FP&A team in and get them really close to you. Right? I always wanted. My FP&A analyst, who is my, who is mine, I know who is my FP&A analyst. 

Trisha Price: Jodi, I was at the Pendo headquarters last week in Raleigh, and I saw the FP&A analyst who I worked so tightly with my first couple of years at Pendo and I was like, Matthew! Matthew! And we built so many spreadsheets together when I first came into Pendo, just specifically for me and how I needed to look at things. And I am so with you. Those numbers matter so much. 

Jodi McDermott: Mine with Allister, you're out there. Allister, he, Allister was amazing and just, was a strategic thought partner of, okay, well, if we deploy R&D resources in this region, what's the cost? Well, wait. With the talent over here in this region, so how much is it gonna cost? And how quickly could we build something versus can we do a slow roll on it? Do we swarm on it? [00:11:00] And all the different scenarios around that. Which goes back to how quickly do we have to go to market, right?

Jodi McDermott: How quickly do we need to launch something in private equity you don't have years to build a product to eventually get it out there. You have maybe a quarter or two, to put you put a stake in the ground and then you've gotta iterate it off of it quickly and start building that snowball of ARR.

Trisha Price: Yeah. 

Jodi McDermott: Yeah. 

Trisha Price: And so, when you're doing that and you're pulling together numbers, do you have standard percentages that are in your head that like if they're not spending on sort of tech debt and modernization, it's a red flag? Or if they're not spending in growth, that it's a red flag?

Trisha Price: Or is it more nuanced than that? 

Jodi McDermott: I think it depends on the stage of the company. I mean, what 20-year-old SaaS company doesn't have a mound of tech debt, right? It's kind of rare these days.

Trisha Price: Maybe 10 years, right?

Jodi McDermott: Even 10 years. Yeah. I think, startups nowadays, they're going out there and they don't have that [00:12:00] tech debt, and so a lot of times they're getting products out to market really, really quickly, but then they hit a scalability issue and they have to re-architect their foundation, et cetera.

Jodi McDermott: You're gonna hit at some point that you're gonna hit some level of a distribution. I always like to start with a distribution of what I call, maintain, sustain, and grow. 30%, 30%, 40%. Now, that is not true for all products. It is not true for all companies. I mean, it's just a starting point to say, okay, where are you?

Jodi McDermott: And then of course there's always a big, huge debate over well, what goes into retention, what goes into maintenance. I have never joined any company where there has not been a religious discussion around that topic. But I think that's a good starting point. And then knowing, here's the main thing.

Jodi McDermott: If you walk into a company and it's 50% retention work in 50% maintenance, and you're not doing anything to grow the business, well, you got a red flag right there. Right, right. So there's no perfect [00:13:00] number. It's more so of, where are you against the baseline of, are you high or low or medium? And where do you think you need to be to actually hit the numbers of what's in your financial plan.

Jodi McDermott: And what can you do creatively to challenge your engineering team for what they need to be doing on the technical side or challenging your product managers? Hey, what I like to say, don't be in the hamster wheel of just doing like feature, feature, feature, feature. What are we doing to really grow and build muscle in the business?

Trisha Price: So you mentioned earlier that when you are trying to do new features or new products that have intentional growth or ARR goals, you don't have years, you don't have two and three years to do that. In this atmosphere, you have a quarter or a couple of months, maybe two quarters. How do you manage that?

Trisha Price: How do you manage getting a quality product out there for people and driving those business outcomes at the same time? 

Jodi McDermott: I think it depends what it is, right? It's it you always have your build by partner [00:14:00] scenario. Yep. And so if you've got a core baseline of a product and you can iterate quickly to get a new module built onto it, or you can stratify from, a bronze, silver, gold into a platinum version of that product and hit a new segment or TAM of the market.

Jodi McDermott: Those are opportunities. I think that's all of the work that you're constantly doing of, okay, how long will it take for us to stretch in this press, part of our ICP to expand out if we do these X, Y, Z things, right? Who can we go buy that's already built a company that we can integrate in that would be a good partner for us, right?

Jodi McDermott: Yeah. And it always takes two to tango. They may not wanna sell even though you wanna buy. Right? And then there's always a partner route too. Partner routes can have pros and cons of partnering. Because you can get stuck with a partner where you don't have enough control over what you wanna do et cetera.

Jodi McDermott: And so I think it's, it's getting your product team to always be [00:15:00] thinking about what can we do to be building off of the base that we already have, and then what are those opportunities usually in an M&A standpoint, especially in private equity because of the timeline to go build and integrate and pull something new in that we can cross sell into our customers.

Trisha Price: That makes a lot of sense. So when you think about the processes of building products, maintaining products in private equity, and honestly in these days, for all of us, operational efficiency is just critical, right? Margin profitability is so important. Are there particular processes or structures that you have been able to change or unlock that have really helped you see significant gains?

Jodi McDermott: Oh, Trisha, you're gonna love my answer. 

Trisha Price: Oh, boy! 

Jodi McDermott: You know what I'm gonna say, don't you?

Trisha Price: I hope so. 

Jodi McDermott: Product operations is near and dear to my [00:16:00] heart. 

Trisha Price: Product operations. I love it. And we did not plan to talk about product operations.

Jodi McDermott: I know, but like, isn't that what Pendo is famous for is essentially, is it?

Jodi McDermott: You sit right in that core function. Yeah. I'm a huge fan of product operations. I think it's a really critical function in a product organization. It literally can give leverage to a CPO if they know how to really use that function. It can, it's just an extension of them getting everything done from an executive, an administrative standpoint that you need to get done to support a strategic operating cadence.

Jodi McDermott: And so, I'm a big believer that if you can build out a strong operating model and there's lots of operating models out there, pick one. It like, there's no perfect operating model. I think we all have had exposure to operating models and we make it our own, but whether it's that cadence of making sure that your team is, touching certain aspects of their product [00:17:00] development lifecycle on a regular cadence and showing their work, whether it's bringing in the right tooling and nowadays a lot of the AI tooling that's coming into place, right?

Jodi McDermott: So, it's implementing things like Pendo and actually using the data and getting the telemetry to optimize what users are doing and how they're using the product. So, I think product operations is a really great place to start of just getting standards in place across the board for, for product managers that let them do their job and give them the freedom to really explore and spend time with customers and users.

Trisha Price: I love that. Yeah, I totally agree with you, Jodi. In terms of product operations, for me, what I love about it is it can help us always baseline our product conversations in a business outcome, right? What were we trying to achieve last quarter or last month? What are we trying to achieve and why? And are we, and it's okay when we're not.[00:18:00] 

Trisha Price: Let's not just keep doing the same thing. If we're not, but being able to have that measurement of what the outcome is. And sometimes it's usage, like you talked about Pendo, sometimes it's ARR, right? Sometimes it's support tickets we're trying to reduce in a particular product, kind of to your point, depending on the product's maturity.

Trisha Price: But I love how product operations can really help us look at each product, look at each initiative, where we are in the product development life cycle, and help bring that rigor of measurement to the table for our conversations. 

Jodi McDermott: Yeah, and it opens up at the end of the day too, if you have that operating model in place, you start to find where you're spending dollars that you shouldn't.

Jodi McDermott: Or where it's time to stop investing in a product and let it ride for a little while and get it ready to be sunset. A good product operations leader is watching that entire cycle, and really helping to optimize it.

Trisha Price: I love [00:19:00] that. So true. So switching gears a little bit and coming back to your other, your first hard call, which was around people. I know that as a leader, you are a great product leader. You know how to do things like make decisions based on data and investment data and product operations, but you also know the how to hire and put together a great team.

Trisha Price: And I know you emphasize servant leadership. And trust-based vulnerability. How do you create that kind of special culture where the right people want to come work on your team, but at the same time. There, the pressure to deliver results doesn't go away. Right? Like, just because we have a great culture, just because we, are a people-first and care about people, doesn't mean that we don't have pressure and results.

Trisha Price: So tell me how you balance those. 

Jodi McDermott: Oh, you know the last team, my last team. I think we did a really great job of [00:20:00] of building that. You do have to make sure that you get your team together, you get them offsite, you spend time doing things outside of the office, if you will, and you get them knowing each other.

Jodi McDermott: And one of, I think the best examples was my last CTO partner, he and I were really great partners of bringing our product leadership team together and engineering leadership team together. 

Trisha Price: Love that!

Jodi McDermott: They needed to really build that vulnerability-based trust. And we had multiple cultures involved.

Jodi McDermott: So we had Americans, we had Canadians, we had British, and we had Indian. Right? So, everybody thinks differently. They express themselves differently. Some of some are more direct, some are a little bit more subtle in the way that they talk about what's important to them. And so we would do a weekly call that we held every single week, and we took turns of who was gonna facilitate and who was gonna scribe.[00:21:00] 

Jodi McDermott: And everybody took a turn. So every single person on that whole call would take a turn from, we had directors all the way up to, myself and the CTO, and we all took turns at facilitating and scribing, and we would always start off with an icebreaker. Right? And that was the starting point. Right?

Jodi McDermott: Of just getting to and the most amazing cultural things would come out of that because, a pop culture type of question might get asked and people in another culture would go, we have no idea what you're talking about. Or they would say the same thing and we would be like, I don't know how to answer the question.

Jodi McDermott: And we'd laugh and we'd start to learn about, what we were thinking about. And it led also into, it was a nice way to grease into, okay, now we're gonna talk about the real hard things that we're doing of people, processes, tools, and it started to really build trust.

Jodi McDermott: When people feel like you can connect on a level that you're talking about your kids, you're talking about what you did this weekend, now you [00:22:00] don't have to open up what they call the Johari window so big that you were like pouring your soul out, but certainly sharing a few things about yourself that people don't know about you, so that you become more human.

Jodi McDermott: And when you become more human, it is a lot easier to talk about the hard stuff we have to get done. And it's easier also to get people motivated that, yeah, we got some hard work to do, but you are gonna feel really good when we get it done and we're all gonna do it together and we're gonna be in it together.

Jodi McDermott: So I think it's that combination of bringing people together, modeling that behavior, and encouraging people to open up and talk about what's on their minds. There were many times that we'd be, we'd be in our 9-Box Zoom call, et cetera, and especially through COVID, my gosh, 16-Box Zoom call and really going out of our way to be, "hold on, Trisha, I think you had you, I can see it on your face. What are you thinking? Tell us what you're thinking. Like I wanna hear your voice and encouraging [00:23:00] people to speak up." And you may not always agree with what they say, but you wanna get that dialogue out there and you wanna get people challenging and talking to each other.

Jodi McDermott: And for the people that don't talk on those calls, there's a lot of coaching going on behind the scenes. Yeah. Hey, you need to speak up. Like, when you're in a leadership role, your voice is critical that it's at the table. Yeah. You gotta participate. 

Trisha Price: Gotta participate. And one of the things I really try to encourage in those types of conversations too is critiquing your idea or critiquing the strategy for your product is not critiquing you.

Jodi McDermott: And, that's hard, right? Because it becomes your baby. 

Trisha Price: I know. And it's also, there's an art to doing that, right? There's an art to making sure you aren't critique. You have to look at yourself in the mirror too and say, did I critique them or did I critique the product? And then the listener has to feel.

Trisha Price: Well, [00:24:00] am I treating it like it's my baby or am I treating it like I need to do the right thing to deliver the business outcome? And I feel like those conversations are so critical to get right for culture, and you can't just let someone's bad idea go because. You don't wanna be mean. But at the same time, you don't need to annihilate people.

Trisha Price: Right. And that's just so hard because sometimes I've heard, especially earlier in my career, I've heard people say things like, don't criticize in public. Right? Only praise in public. But when you're in product and you're in a group session where you're trying to get product strategy and trying to get the right decisions.

Trisha Price: You can't not criticize the idea, you can't not criticize the product, but you don't have to criticize the people. And that's just, I don't know, it's always been a hard thing for me to get right. 

Jodi McDermott: You know what? I always encourage people to do ask questions. I've been in scenarios. I remember sitting in a big, it was our executive leadership team and our senior leadership team there, a couple [00:25:00] other more junior folks that had joined the meeting.

Jodi McDermott: And, at the time, the CEO had said something that somebody told me later, like, that was incorrect. He, didn't have all the information. I'm like. Ask a question. 

Trisha Price: Yeah. 

Jodi McDermott: Just ask a question. He would've wanted you to ask that question, right? Yeah. Or, when people ping me what they just said was wrong, ask a question and you can say it in a way that's illuminating.

Jodi McDermott: Illuminating, and not. Like you don't wanna, you wanna be careful not to put the person on the back foot if they didn't realize that they didn't have all the information. 

Trisha Price: Right. 

Jodi McDermott: Oh, well, hey Trisha, did you know that we just got more feedback from a customer? Has that gotten to you yet about that feature and why it's not meeting the business need?

Jodi McDermott: Oh no, I haven't gotten that. Can somebody send that over my way? I'd love to see it. Right? So I try to encourage people, ask questions, and that a lot of times, even when you are coaching people on how to criticize their own product by asking them questions. They're asking themselves the questions and they've gotta get to that moment of honesty and of what's [00:26:00] actually happening and data's a beautiful thing.

Trisha Price: I love that. That's a beautiful thing that, well, I think asking questions can be so powerful. Other than that. What are other tips or tricks or pieces of advice that you give to your product managers who are aspiring to be product leaders or product leaders that are aspiring to be a CPO?

Trisha Price: Like, how are you helping them? What advice are you giving this next generation of leaders? 

Jodi McDermott: Be curious. That's always, I mean, with everything that's changing right now with, I mean, you and I both lived through the SaaS and mobile eras if you will, it's the AI era now, right?

Jodi McDermott: And so you be open and be curious and be studying and be trying new things. To anyone who wants to be A CPO, learn the financials of the business. 

Trisha Price: I love that.[00:27:00] 

Jodi McDermott: Really understand what are the levers that are gonna drive enterprise value in the business. It's gonna be top-line growth, bookings growth, and annual recurring revenue in a SaaS business.

Jodi McDermott: It's gonna be that gross retention rate of keeping those customers renewing and and staying on the product, right? And it's gonna be at the same time having a really clean shop of operations, and especially also on the technical side that you're not building up a whole bunch of technical debt, but like learn your product craft as you're going.

Jodi McDermott: But do not shy away at all of what your investors, whether you are a privately held company, founder-led, or public company, how do you make decisions that impact the value of the company? At the end of the day, your job is to build enterprise value as a CPO, and there's a lot of different ways and levers to do it.

Jodi McDermott: That starts with a product manager learning their product. Right. My favorite question to ask product [00:28:00] managers, especially in group settings, is how many of you know the bookings number for your product this year? 

Trisha Price: Yeah. 

Jodi McDermott: Not all of them do. Right? Yeah. And they, if, if they're gonna run a mini business, they gotta know like, what is the sales team trying to achieve?

Jodi McDermott: What is the average sale value of my, of my product, and how often are we winning and or losing? For every at bat, are we hitting it? Are we, not hitting it? And what do I need to do as a product manager to optimize this product that's going out the door so that customers not only buy it, but they renew it.

Jodi McDermott: So I think the, the financial acumen is a huge piece that I just can't emphasize enough, is probably one of the areas that I see is a, a growth area for so many, product managers and even aspiring executives. So there's the technology side, there's the creativity side of building great products.

Jodi McDermott: But if you really wanna cascade up into the next level of your career, [00:29:00] you, you've gotta make sure that financial basis is there as well. 

Trisha Price: I totally agree Jodi, and I said this so many times, like to me that's the biggest difference when, especially when you're jumping from like Director to VP or VP up, you gotta know this business.

Trisha Price: You've gotta understand the business metrics where, where they could be optimized, where little tweaks in your product strategy can, can help jump forward ARR or margin, wherever you are in the cycle. And I think understanding the business metrics is so critically important. 

Jodi McDermott: And it doesn't discount, right?

Jodi McDermott: You still need to know what's happening with the competition Of course. And what are they releasing and how are they positioning their product? It is multidimensional. 

Jodi McDermott: I'm just saying there's one side of it of focusing on like, do you, the telemetry around your product is not just how many people clicked on something or used it today, monthly, daily active users.

Jodi McDermott: Yep. It goes so much deeper than that. And yes, as a product [00:30:00] manager, we could take that and slice it right down into the narrowness of a product manager, get closer and closer and closer to your user and customer. I can't emphasize that enough, right? There's a lot of product managers and CPOs that don't spend enough time with customers out in the field.

Jodi McDermott: How are they using it? What does my product look like in the wild? And really understanding that, so that, that's probably the more practical side of it that you, that you'd add to it. 

Trisha Price: Even like, what's your strategy, right? When I think about executives talking to other customer, like to the customer executive, then it's like not just how are you using my product?

Trisha Price: What do you like about it? Is it delivering value for you? But where are you taking your business over the next three years? 

Jodi McDermott: How can we be a partner for you? 

Trisha Price: Yeah, that means it's a game changer for how you think about your product strategy and investments when you know your most strategic customers and what their three year and five year plan are, so that you can really start to align not just the here and [00:31:00] now and what they like about your product, but you know where you're going together over the next three to five years.

Jodi McDermott: Yeah. The dynamics change a lot. I think, back in the days of just, writing stories in Jira and building a product backlog, et cetera. As your career progresses, there's a lot of other dimensions that have to come into it and skill sets to really round out being a fulsome product leader.

Trisha Price: So as you're, engaging with different product companies and different product leaders today, how are you thinking about AI? Right. There's, for all of us building product, it's incorporating AI, whether it's agentic experiences, conversational interfaces, AI summaries into our product or using, you had mentioned this a little bit earlier, AI tools to give us more efficiency, how are you advising the people you're working with today in terms of AI?

Jodi McDermott: Well, I think you need to [00:32:00] look at AI and how it's gonna disrupt every aspect of business. And that's a very broad statement to start off with, right? Yeah. But I'm sure at Pendo you're looking at, how do we not only optimize our operations, customer success, support sales, what tool sets can we use to, build better pipeline, right?

Jodi McDermott: Or increase our win rate? And those are all internal operations. But it's also how do you incorporate that into your product so that your end user is getting that same, same leverage. So I think there, there's an internal view to it of what are all the tool sets that could apply to how, where I spend time in my job and what I do.

Jodi McDermott: Right? So you're a product manager, writing user stories or PRDs, are you doing competitive intelligence? The tools can save you a ton of time. Now they're not, they're not always a replacement for a human, but they certainly can give you a lot of leverage. So that you can, and instead of doing [00:33:00] 500 Google searches, you can have a starting point.

Jodi McDermott: That's a lot has a lot more thickness to it. So I, I think any, any product person out there should just be looking at every single aspect of how they spend their day and all the tasks that they do, and what are ways that they can be applying AI to go faster. I think it's also important of, where is your company adopting it and what are the privacy rules ,and what's the governance that you've put into place to make sure that you don't have IP going out the door, especially with your product folks and the searches they might be doing.

Jodi McDermott: So I think that's important for a leader to be thinking about putting it into the product. You're thinking about it just on the other side of that table, right? And I think for product people, it's probably kind of easier to think about it that way. You just have to go to the other side of the table and just look back and say, okay, if I was using this just as if I was using any of these other products I use in my day-to-day, what would I, where would I inject AI in?

Jodi McDermott: What would I do? Where does it make sense and where does it not [00:34:00] make sense? 

Trisha Price: Yeah. 

Jodi McDermott: It's a powerful tool. 

Trisha Price: It is so powerful. And you're right. I mean, we at Pendo are rethinking every one of our processes and where can we use ai? And we've had. Some huge wins and we've had some places where we've learned maybe it didn't work as well.

Trisha Price: And that's on the internal and the external side of things. And I think right now for all of us, we've gotta keep experimenting and keep trying and learn new things and figure out what works and doesn't work. But I do think everything is sort of on the brink of change right now. 

Jodi McDermott: You know what I think is really interesting though in this timeframe is that I think.

Jodi McDermott: I think our kids are in similar age ranges, if I remember. 

Trisha Price: Yes. 

Jodi McDermott: But our kids grew up with no AI. No AI. No AI. It's cheating. It's cheating. It's cheating. And it was hammered into their heads. Yeah. And so now, of course I'm trying to get my kids to think about AI and they're like. Stop. They're like, no, it's bad.

Jodi McDermott: It's like, no, it's not bad. Right? 

Trisha Price: And [00:35:00] it's not bad. 

Jodi McDermott: It's not bad. And I think there's a lot of employers out there who have to almost give permission to that generation where AI was introduced and they were quick adopters of taking a look at it and using it. And then they were quickly, harnessed, wait, hold on.

Jodi McDermott: You can't do your test and homework on that, right? And so I see schools starting to embrace it a lot more and try to work it into the curriculum and get that permission going with the younger generation. I say younger generation, my gosh, like, multiple, who knows how that is even defined, but.

Jodi McDermott: I'm part of the younger generation, aren't we? Both? 

Trisha Price: Of course. We're part of it. 

Jodi McDermott: We're still young. We're still young, but I think there that there is a group of folks out there who, weren't given that permission. And in that the world is changing so quickly that I think it's upon leadership team members to also really encourage their team to like, use it, try it.

Jodi McDermott: I want you using it. This is how it's gonna [00:36:00] help you. It's gonna, it's not gonna replace you. It's gonna augment you to be, supercharged. To do so much more work in a value. Your brain becomes the value add on top of what AI does. 

Trisha Price: So true. My kids, Jodi, make fun of me all the time. I'll be doing something.

Trisha Price: They're like, did you just AI that? Whether it's like planning a trip or getting ready for a list of questions at a doctor's appointment. They're like, did you just did a, did you just ChatGPT that mom? And I'm like, why is that?

Jodi McDermott: Yes, I did.

Trisha Price: Guys, you should be congratulating me. And then this weekend we had a fascinating conversation about.

Trisha Price: AI being people and certain like are people going to have philosophical issues with it, and are they gonna have biases against AI? And do we need to rethink just like many years ago, how we had biases against certain groups of people and rethink that [00:37:00] with AI. And it was like a crazy, fascinating discussion in our house with as a family this weekend.

Trisha Price: It was pretty fun. I know. 

Trisha Price: Yeah. Wild. 

Trisha Price: It's wild. 

Jodi McDermott: It's an intellectually stimulating conversation to have. 

Trisha Price: It is. It's, but it is definitely going to change our world. Well, Jodi, as we close out today, I do wanna come back to Hard Calls and just ask you one more question as we finish up. You said this in the beginning, and I totally agree, and it's actually why I created this podcast, is what makes product hard is that everyone has an opinion, right?

Trisha Price: Sales thinks they know what's best for the product. Yeah, support team, like if you just fix this one thing, it would make my life better. Customers have opinions for products. They want you to build our board, turn everything upside down and go AI first. But at the end of the day, we're the ones accountable and we're the ones who have to make that call.

Trisha Price: So how do you think about data [00:38:00] versus gut instincts? And like what you really lean on in terms of what's critical to get the hard calls, right? 

Jodi McDermott: It's gotta be both, right? I think that, you have to have telemetry around the decisions that you're making. As a product leader. Now that's sometimes really hard.

Jodi McDermott: You might walk into a business and there's no data. I've had that where there's limited amount of data, and so you're going more off gut instinct than you're going off of data-driven, but you might pull that information from a cross-functional group of people to understand, well, tell me what's going on in the business.

Jodi McDermott: And you do have to make a discerning call based off of what is a little bit more I'd say EQ versus IQ of, of what might be coming in. But it's also your job to get that telemetry going so that you can at least reduce the margins in some of those calls, 'cause sometimes you have to make a call [00:39:00] and you, you don't have all the data, you just have to pick a point and start moving forward.

Jodi McDermott: And I, I think the, the one thing to be careful of is, somebody shared the concept with me of a one-way door or a two-way door, right? Yep. So is it a door that you can walk back through or is it a one-way door that you can never turn around and undo what you've done? Yeah. And so I think that's another dimension you can layer on top of that is as you start to make hard calls and decisions.

Jodi McDermott: Yep. Yet there are often ones that you have to make a really hard call and it's a one way door. And the question is, is how high are the stakes when you make that decision? 

Trisha Price: So true. And the higher the stakes, the more data you want. Right?

Jodi McDermott: But you can't have analysis paralysis either. Yeah, right?

Jodi McDermott: And so I think a, a good product leader has, has that gut instinct to, sleep on it, see how you really feel about it, and you [00:40:00] sometimes. You just have to make the hard call without all of the information because you know the business has to keep moving forward. 

Trisha Price: Yeah. Jodi, at Pendo we say no decision is still a decision.

Trisha Price: So you made a decision. You just made no decision. That might be the worst call, you know? 

Jodi McDermott: That's true. That's very true. 

Trisha Price: Yeah. Well, Jodi, thank you so much for being on Hard Calls for this episode. I know our listeners have learned so much from this conversation. I have too. Always a joy to spend some time with you.

Jodi McDermott: Likewise.

Trisha Price: Thank you so much.

Jodi McDermott: Thank you.

Trisha Price: Thank you for listening to Hard Calls, the product podcast, where we share best practices and all the things you need to succeed. If you enjoyed the show today, share with your friends and come back for more.