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Janine N

I helped many teams get unstuck and move along their product journeys for 7 years - ask me anything

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As an innovation consultant, I've worked with many techniques and approaches to give a valuable outside perspective on how to move forward when things get difficult.

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Kate Kovbii
Hi, thanks for doing this and sharing your precious experience with the community!❤️ So my question is - what is the biggest mindset "blocker" you've faced while working with your clients? What exactly was stopping them on their product journey? And how did you manage to help with that?
Janine N
Hi @kate_kovbii Thanks for jumping right in :) so it depends on the team, the maturity of the team and the environment they operate in, of course. The biggest blocker is always a discussion that has no end and a decision (on a feature for example) that teams are struggling to make. The reason for this happening can have many different origins, so many it would be too long to list. But to solve this state of not being able to move forwards I often used one or more of these three approaches: 1) Thinking in extremes: If there is a block ask the simple question of, what would be THE BEST and THE WORST outcome of a particular decision. So go with one decision hypothetically and then ask the two questions separately. Once you have established that you have a completely different basis of discussion and that often "kicks" teams out of the circle they were stuck in before. 2) What would have to be true?: I love this approach. If there is uncertainty about something simply ask the question of what would have to be true for this scenario to work out and be a success. If we take air bnb as an example it would go something like: - For this idea to work out it would have to be true that people let random guests stay in their house - For this idea to work out guests would want to stay in private homes of people they have never met. - ... you can make this work for any kind of product, company or scenario 3) (Probably my favourite) Is there any data that we can use to support this decision: Often times we get lost and don't even realise that we are trying to re-invent the wheel. So simply looking if someone else has already solved this problem before and if there is data as to whether this was a success can be a game changer in moving things along quickly. Very often this applies in the world of UI and UX, but also to other areas. Hope this answers your question :)
Kate Kovbii
@janine_nitz, this is just amazing! 🤩 Thanks for sharing this in such a detailed and easy-to-understand way! Love each of your approaches and can't thank you enough for telling me about them! I'll definitely try 'em out in my work ❤️