Summary
If doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, most enterprise product teams are insane. In today’s world, shipping truly innovative, customer-obsessed experiences means that we must break down silos and collaborate in new ways. In this talk, Head of Product (CPO) at Nextdoor, Tatyana Mamut, PhD–who also led multi-functional product teams at Amazon, Salesforce, and IDEO–draws upon experiences at enterprise companies that managed to break Conway’s Law and ship innovative product experiences by working across silos and functions.
Key Insights
-
•
Conway's law dictates that products reflect the internal structures of organizations.
-
•
Breaking out of organizational silos is crucial for effective product development.
-
•
Customer-centricity should be prioritized over revenue, technology, or business models.
-
•
Leaders must spend time with customers in their environments to build empathy and understanding.
-
•
Avoid using proxies such as surveys or sales opinions; direct customer interaction is essential.
-
•
User personas should reflect real customers, not fictional composites.
-
•
Effective product development requires understanding what customers actually do and need.
-
•
Metrics for success should align with customer value, not just shareholder interests.
-
•
Cross-functional teams foster better collaboration and innovation.
-
•
Organizations need to resist internal pressures that prioritize their agendas over customer needs.
Notable Quotes
"The products you ship are direct reflections of your organizational processes."
"Customers are the North Star, and we need to live by that, not just state it."
"It's not that people are wrong; it's that they all have different perspectives and partial knowledge."
"Customer centric organizations obsess over customers instead of business models."
"Spend time with your customers without an agenda, just listen to them."
"Market research can become proxies for customers, which is dangerous when creating new products."
"Sales objections do not equate to customer insights; they're two separate things."
"Fictional personas muddy our understanding; we need real names and stories."
"It's critical to measure what matters to customers in our success metrics."
"Breaking Conway's law means shipping products that customers will truly love, not just reflecting internal structures."
More Videos
"When I taught in California, I noticed issues were absent in the conversations that made me create the Critical Alphabet."
Jennifer Strickland Lesley-Ann NoelFireside Chat: How Design Addresses a World on Fire
March 18, 2022
"If you use color variables, one change updates everything."
Jaime CreixemsBest Practices when Creating and Maintaining a Design System
June 7, 2023
"Being trauma-informed is a journey; you never completely arrive, it's a continuous process of learning and adapting."
Uday Gajendar Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSWLeading through the long tail of trauma
July 13, 2022
"Surveys measure self-reported attitudes but can't confirm what caused those attitudes."
Katie HansenExperimental research: techniques for deep, psychology-driven insights
March 12, 2025
"Design operations is about being a resilient force for the design organization."
Dave MaloufTheme 3: Introduction and Provocation
January 8, 2024
"Empathetic relationships are as crucial to service delivery as automation."
Jeff SussnaWhat DesignOps Can Learn From DevOps
November 6, 2017
"The value of design is in the verb, in the designing."
Dave MaloufClosing Keynote: Amplify. Not Optimize.
October 24, 2019
"An external organization having the last word on the study findings represents a critical power dynamic."
Sarah FathallahA Typology of Participation in Participatory Research
March 28, 2023
"Designers had misinterpreted the significance of the act of walking long distances for these women"
Alba VillamilStereotyped by Design: Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural User Research
March 30, 2020
