Speaking the Language of Stakeholders and Working Better With Product, with Sean O’Neill (ex Amazon, Tesco, GfK)
Sean has spent the past 25 years at the intersection of commerce, consumer behaviour, and data-driven feedback loops. This included working for Tesco, GfK, and two long stints with Amazon, among others. In this chat we talk about how design can better work with product, how to speak the language of our senior stakeholders, and what he's learned about hiring from interviewing over a thousand people at Amazon.
Timestamps:
- 00:00 – Intro
- 03:54 – How does Product act differently in small vs. in big companies
- 05:53 – Interviewing others as a Bar Raiser at Amazon
- 10:55 – Portfolios – How do you get to the bottom of study cases?
- 13:24 – The one question Sean likes to ask in interviews
- 17:58 – How does a good relationship between Design and Product look like?
- 29:58 – Challenges that Product faces when they deal with Design
- 49:10 – Making it 'cheap' to be wrong
- 53:23 – Why sometimes Design reports to Product
- 56:53 – End of show questions.
Connect with Sean
Selected notes from the episode
Sean's 10 Product Development Principles (to create the right culture and velocity):
1. Solve the right user need
2. Measurable accountability to outcomes
3. Release value in slices (avoid long bets)
4. Put data in the hands of decision makers
5. Build once, run everywhere
6. Make it cheap to be wrong
7. Build it fast AND proper
8. Extreme focus on top priorities
9. Simplify, simplify, simplify
10. Be credible