How to Bring the Craft Back to Product Management (My Figma Config Talk)
Video, slides, and transcript from my talk to 800+ PMs and designers at the conference
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share my Figma Config talk on bringing the craft back to PM.
I gave this talk to 800+ PMs and designers at the conference, and many people came up to me afterward to tell me how much they loved it.
You can watch the full 17-minute talk now on YouTube. If it resonates with you, please consider liking or sharing it.
Below are the full transcript, slides (in Figma Slides), and of course, memes.
Introduction
Good morning everyone. You know, something happened to the PM career.
If you’re like me, you became a PM to craft products that customers love. But somewhere along the way, things changed for many of us.
Today, pushing metrics, growing headcount, and climbing the corporate ladder have overshadowed the joy of building something meaningful.
It’s time to bring the craft back to product management. To me, PM craft means focusing on:
Delighting customers
Caring about the details
And ultimately, giving a damn about the product that you’re bringing to the world.
I’ve worked in tech for over a decade and have interviewed many top product leaders.
Today, I want to share ten tactics to help you craft products you can be proud of.
1. Build with the community
On a product team, PMs, designers, and engineers talk to each other throughout the day. Building with the community means doing the same thing with your customers.
Here’s how I do it:
Set up a community. It can be a Discord, Slack, or even just a DM thread.
Build in public. Ask customers about their problems and share updates often.
Make time to hang out. Don’t just talk about your product. Build a casual environment where customers feel comfortable sharing the truth with you.
The tighter your feedback loop is with your community, the faster your product will improve.
At Roblox, I built a community with 100s of top creators.
I spend as much time talking to them as I do with internal stakeholders, as does everyone else on my team. The feedback has been incredible — creators feel heard, spread the word to other creators, and tell Roblox leaders about my product every chance that they get.
So, build with the community to build better products.
Focus on your customer instead of on internal shenanigans.
And don’t let anyone or any process get in the way of talking to your customers every day.
Now, just talking to customers isn’t enough. To build empathy, you must also:
2. Feel the customer’s pain
Here’s how I do it: