Building diverse teams and unlocking innovation

Ronke Majekodunmi, Director of Product at Promevo, gave this talk at the Chief Product Officer Summit.

I've worked in FinTech for most of my career. I've helped to build B2B, B2C, and B2D platforms. Right now, I’m working at Promevo, where I get to help large, medium, and small enterprise merchants manage and grow their businesses.

The true value of a product leader is building people

I think every product leader should have the PM superpower, the thing that helps you get through the really hard days. For me, it's watching Mary Tyler Moore, eating my feelings in chocolate, and drinking wine. That's how I get through the really bad days.

Then I get up the next morning and I remind myself that this is what my PM superpower is; I'm always going to find a way. I'm going to find insight to be on the side of others, and a way to get my product out of the door.

John Quincy Adams says:

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”

I love that quote. That’s my job. Our job is to help our organizations grow, to help them become more. If it means somebody leaves my team for another team, fine. So be it. But at least I'm helping them grow.

I need them to know that I’m there for them. Not just for their professional ambitions, but for their personal ambitions as well. It's that simple. I see my job there. That's why I don't worry about promotions as much. I'm the rare PM.

Most of my colleagues are like, “Something's wrong with you.”

My promotions will come. But at the end of my day, when I go home at night, I want to know that I helped my team today, and I helped them grow.

The true value of my job as a product leader is that I want to build people. If I build people, not just my colleagues, but if I build my direct reports, if I build my engineering team, if I build my leadership around me, guess what? I'm going to build the best product because they're motivated, they want to build the best product, and they’re galvanized.

So, how do I do that?

Well, I believe that the core of leadership is people. Building a coalition and a framework for engaging individuals. And it's easy to accomplish your objective when you have a group of empowered people.

Debates are going to happen. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I'm going to destroy my organization today.” Nobody does that. We just have differences. I personally believe that those differences polish each one of us.

It’s our job to get into the room to figure out where you're coming from and meet halfway. But I firmly believe whenever I have a cross-functional leader or a partner who disagrees with me, I’m ready to go and have coffee with them to understand what it is that I'm not getting and meet them halfway. I take it from the approach that our disagreements or debates are just debates, but they make us better, they polish us.

The main takeaways from my talk today are

Embracing diversity and inclusion in product management

Everybody agrees that the world continues to change. There are over 8 billion people in the world, and they’re more diverse than ever. They're not going to tell us what they need. We’re going to meet them where they are.

So, how do we meet them where they are?

We need people in our organization who look like them. We need people with diverse genders, diverse thoughts, diverse backgrounds, and diverse circumstances. We need people who look like our customers.

I personally believe that as product leaders, we can help chart the way.

The great thing about product management is that no one comes from one particular place. We’re all just so diverse, and we need that on our teams.

It doesn't matter if it's a B2B, B2C, or B2D, we need people in our organizations who look like our customers.

I'm going to give you one example.

We did a customer interview, and my researcher was so great because she got diverse people for this interview.

We get into this interview with a woman of color, and we always ask, “How was your day? What do you love about your job? What do you not like about your job?”

Are you ready for what she said? What she didn't like about her job? She said, “I don't like my coworker.” Think about that. Most people would have bypassed it because it's so uncomfortable. They don't want to deal with that.

Guess what? My researcher doubled down. She said, “Tell me why.”

We discovered that she has to pull a report every single morning for her coworker because her coworker doesn't have access to that report, and because of our system, she has to wait until the report is done, so she can't do her job.

So, she actually provided us with some new requirements. But imagine if we hadn’t got her. Imagine if we’d just ignored her because she said, “I don't like my coworker.” Diversity matters.

That's just an example. The other is embracing neurodiversity. We all have people in our organizations and on our teams who are very quiet and don’t speak much. Guess what? That's the person I'm going to go and sit next to because they're just as brilliant and I want their ideas on the table.

I once had a software engineer who was a recent college grad. She was 21/22, she was shy, she was afraid, she’d never bring anything up or say anything.

What I started to do was sit next to her. And while the rest of the engineering team, which were all men, were all going on and on about a particular topic, I’d say to her, “What do you think?”

She'd say to me, “Well, I think this, this, and this.”

So I raised my hand and said, “Guys, timeout. College grad thinks we should do this, this, and this.” And guess what? A year later, that same woman now speaks and presents.

Embrace neurodiversity.

Finally, I want to mention inverse mentoring. I love inverse mentoring. It means that I get to be partnered with somebody from another demographic so that I can learn about their life. It's not me parting my wisdom on them, they’re telling me how they’re adjusting to our organization, which means that I can help make life even better and they feel like they belong.

I always say that diversity is a fact. It's going to happen. But inclusion doesn't act. Belonging is the outcome of those things. Therefore, inverse mentoring is a big deal. If I care about you, and when you think about our culture and organization, I can help you grow, and then you'll feel like you belong in our organization.

Transforming, persuading, and motivating through storytelling

I believe that my experiences should drive the conversation with a customer or a leader. I also don't show up without a prototype, and the reason is if I have a prototype in front of you as a customer and I'm doing an interview, I've already changed you. I've transformed you from the world you have to the world that you could have.

The next thing is to align. You're going to tell me why this experience isn’t going to work for you or why you would never click on this button. And I get to understand more about your end-to-end journey.

And then guess what? You're motivated because you're not going to leave to go to my competitor now; you see what I'm trying to do. Even if that north star isn’t going to be everything, you're still going to work with me to build. And that's just on the customer side.

Internally, within my own organization, I use experience to drive the conversation, not just with my cross-functional partners, but with my own leaders as well. I know that if I show them what the current world is and what it could be for the customer, how that customer is going to become the hero in their organization by using our product, I’ve transformed them as well.

Then I align with them because I explain to them that, “This is the Northstar, but this is what I see as the MVP.”

And they’re probably going to help me by adding more resources.

And then finally, motivation. I can galvanize not just my leadership, but my entire organization to rally around this prototype, this product feature, and how this customer is going to be the hero in their organization by using our product.

That’s how storytelling works.

One thing I want to mention about that storytelling piece is that it's going to travel. Because I'm using an experience, it doesn't matter if it's a large or a small organization, what usually tends to happen is I’ll get, “Please can you send us that prototype, that presentation after the call/after the meeting?”

I say, “Sure, why not?”

Well, guess what? My partners are going to share that experience with their teams. But do you notice that I’m not in the room and the story is still traveling? I don’t have to be there.

Junior PMs or aspiring product managers will say to me, “What should I work on?”

I say, “You’ve got to build relationships. Go make friends.” It's as simple as that. Go make friends.

In any organization, I have one-on-ones scheduled with all the leaders because I need them to understand where I'm going when I'm trying to drive the product vision. It may not be perfect, but I want to hear what they think.

But I also really care, so I’ll go around and try to cultivate relationships, even with engineers that I don't work with because I need to understand how their role fits into my role and how I can help.

Have you ever been in a one-on-one with your boss or your colleagues just looking at their phone? They’re sitting there going, “Uh huh, uh huh.” I don’t know about you, but it just makes me feel like I'm in the way.

I go out of my way to be present. I'm not looking at my phone. Sometimes I go for a walk and I'm having a one-on-one one as I’m walking so I can be present.

I purposely pick a fight with one of my cross-functional partners; his favorite Avenger is Thor and I tell him that he’s not the best Avenger, it's Captain America. I purposely pick a fight just so that we can spend five minutes talking about Marvel and then get down to what we really need to get down to. But I'm present and I’m listening.

Do you ever have a one-on-one and you're talking to somebody and the first thing they do before you open your mouth is offer your advice? I don't do that either. I'm just there to listen. I’ll say, “Okay, here's what I'm hearing. Now, tell me how can I help? What do you need on my end?”

I find that even just listening makes a big difference. Remember, I'm trying to grow an organization here. I'm trying to galvanize people, so my job is also to be empathetic.

An unquenchable drive to improve and grow

I want to build a culture that encompasses intellectual fortitude. What does that mean? It means that I have a diverse culture, a diverse cross-functional team who's not afraid to grow, and who knows that they have a safe space. I don't care if they have the most ridiculous ideas, bring them to the table, let's talk about them.

Make sure that they feel like they can go out into the world and find solutions. We're not just solving for today, we're solving for tomorrow, we're solving for the problems of that emerging demographic that they haven't even told us about yet.

Think about how the world has changed since the pandemic. Zoom is the office. I don't have to be physically in the office, I can be out in the world. The mall is Amazon, and for movies, I’ve got Netflix and Disney for that.

I need my team to be brave and go and find solutions that I haven't even thought of. But how do I do that and create a safe space for them to come and share those thoughts? No idea is ridiculous.

I'm going to give you an example - I celebrate failures. When my team tries to prototype or we try a proof of concept, we go with a prototype, we show it to a customer, and the customer says, “No, this is ridiculous. We're not going to use that.”

Or if we create a proof of concept and it fails, we name it after the show, Friends. We title it, ‘The One That Failed.’ I brought in doughnuts before COVID and we celebrated.

The reason I do that is because I want them to try again. I want them to continue. I want to create a culture where they're constantly trying to build solutions for our customers. So I celebrate their failures just like I celebrate their successes.

Finally, it's about creating a culture of innovation. Remember, there are no stupid ideas. Bring them to the table. And we're going to try to find a way to build innovative products for our customers, products that they didn't even know they needed.

Influence is the last one. My job is to get cross-functional partners to understand the value of the product. And how do I do that?

I want you to know that I’m one of those leaders who creates a two-year vision, but I know it's not going to come true. I know that. It’s just to drive conversation because I know it's going to change. The one that I submitted last year to my leadership has already changed, and that's okay. But I needed to drive a conversation. “This is the north star. This is where I see us in two years. What are your thoughts?”

Telling the story of your customers. That’s why using experience is important. If I show up with a prototype, guess what? I'm telling you the story of a customer and how they're going to be a hero in their organization by using our product. So now you and I can align or disagree. But at least I'm telling you the story of what they're trying to do.

Top-down versus bottom-down. I'm a big fan of the bottom-up approach. I'm not a big fan of leadership in the sense of me coming down and telling my team what to do. I want them to come back to me and tell me what the right thing is for our customers.

But to provide that, they need a safe space. For them to come back with the best innovation, I need a diverse organization that looks like my customers, that thinks like my customers, and that comes from diverse circumstances. That’s how I influence - bottom-up, never top-down. I want them to grow and I want them to innovate.

Changing the world as a product leader

Being a product manager or product leader, being where I am in the world in product, is one of the most humbling experiences of my life. And because of that, I always want to make sure that I'm giving back and I'm encouraging my team to practice the same in everyday communication. And I do that every day.

I'm a firm believer in the alarm clock test. I'm a history nerd. Jon Meacham talks about the alarm clock test; we all get up every single morning and we hit the alarm, but there's a purpose that we're serving in the world today.

Sometimes my purpose is to go to work and build people, help them grow, and help them become what thought they would be.

But there's also the portrait test. I may have my picture on the wall one day, but at night, when I go to bed, when I look in that mirror, I like to know that I changed the world today through my team, through my organization, and through my leadership.

I like to know I made a tiny bit of difference, just a tiny little bit, whether it's the product that we released or the first iteration of it, whether it's a teammate getting a promotion and moving on to another role, whether it's a colleague having a baby and sending pictures wanting us to know that little person, it doesn't matter. I just want to make a difference.

So, I bring up the portrait test. This is my measure of how I’m changing the world. I like to make sure that when I go to bed and I look in that mirror, I'm extremely happy with who I see.

I’m aware that there’s no perfect solution to the challenges that I face. But what I maintain is optimism. Colin Powell mentions optimism as a force multiplier, and that's what I do. I will galvanize my entire organization, my team, and my leadership by making sure that they understand the customer story that we’re telling and the impact we have on our customers in the world.

Purposeful product leadership: Building diverse teams and unlocking innovation