Afternoon Insights Panel
Summary
Join conference curator Christian Crumlish, the conference speakers, and guest commentators for a lively panel discussion reviewing highlights, sharing notable takeaways, and diving deeper into questions inspired by the afternoon’s presentations.
Key Insights
-
•
Shielding product teams too much can stunt their growth; occasional challenges help build resilience.
-
•
PMs risk burnout and becoming bottlenecks if they try to filter all communication between executives and teams.
-
•
Storytelling is a vital, cross-functional skill for conveying value and aligning stakeholders.
-
•
Tailoring strategy communication to audience attention span and priority is key to effective messaging.
-
•
Repeatedly asking about fears and risks surfaces critical unknowns and guides research priorities.
-
•
Translating risks into financial terms facilitates executive-level decision making.
-
•
Different org sizes and maturities require different leadership approaches to information sharing and team autonomy.
-
•
Having one designer supporting many PMs and products is fundamentally insufficient for successful product outcomes.
-
•
Framing product value as a benefit to partner teams aids greater organizational buy-in beyond end-user focus.
-
•
Leaders should name and credit team members for successes but own and investigate failures to instill trust and transparency.
Notable Quotes
"If you don’t have a little earthquake every now and then, you have a real big one after a while."
"If you put yourself between the C-suite and the product teams, you become a bottleneck with no time for actual leadership."
"When something good happens, I want to name the person who did it and say yes, they passed through me. When something bad happens, I say let me and my team go look into it."
"Storytelling helps us speak in the language and context that motivates each team and stakeholder."
"You can build your strategy into eight pages, five, three, one, half a page, then a sentence to adapt to your audience."
"Have you just asked what scares us or keeps us up at night? Those repeated fears highlight the risks we need to avoid."
"I know that a development team of six costs me a million bucks a year, so risk has a dollar value executives understand."
"The idea of one designer to 12 PMs is dead on arrival; either design isn't valued or the company is short on designers."
"You’re not just convincing people of the value but the benefit to them of working with you on the product journey."
"We can design the experience of working with us just like we design for end users."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"For the iBio people, knowledge is relational, not objectified, emerging from relationships like songs."
Victor UdoewaBeyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
March 26, 2024
"Most categories are fuzzy; there’s no clear boundary between what’s in or out."
Peter MorvilleThe Architecture of Understanding
May 13, 2015
"The boss’s son is no longer the default backup boss; there are now written rules accessible to all."
Sam LadnerHow Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight
March 9, 2022
"Show don’t tell is really critical for getting stakeholder buy-in on a new tool like this."
Michelle Bejian Lotia Anne-Marie MorellRolling Out a Repository: How Zapier Centralizes Insights from Across their Organization
March 28, 2023
"At Atlassian, many confident non-researchers were already doing lots of research, which was an opportunity and a challenge."
Leisa ReicheltOpening Keynote: Operating in Context
November 7, 2018
"In Toronto it’s now illegal to transmit a Wi-Fi signal in designated public spaces, with penalties for violations—a policy driven by people wanting to unplug from digital life."
Sarah GallimoreInspire Progress with Artifacts from the Future
November 18, 2022
"When designers describe their problem, they often describe a pain point, but you have to enter the user’s actual task."
Joerg Beringer Thomas GeisScaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
September 10, 2025
"Centralized design teams tend to be brought in after decisions are made, turning design into an us versus them relationship."
Peter MerholzCustomer-Centered Design Organizations
June 8, 2017
"We have been focused for so long on getting that seat that we haven’t realized that a lot of us are actually already there."
Dalia El-ShimySo You've Got a Seat at the Table. Now What?
March 31, 2020
