It has been a minute, but here we are! You look good, and the year is looking greener.
We’ve switched things up a bit but let me give you a lay of the land for our updated LinkedIn Newsletter.
???Optimized Frequency: We will now be coming to you weekly to bring you a round-up of what happened and what’s to come in the world of conferences. This includes:
- ????Speaking Opportunity Alerts: so you can tell your story
- ???Discount Tix Alerts: so you can save some coins
- ???Notes from a conference: so you can stay in the know even if you weren’t in the mix
- ???The top 5 conferences happening next week: so you know where to be!
????Speaking Opportunity Alerts
On Monday
Amy Lattimore
and I posted these speaking opportunities:
- Social Innovation Summit UN General Assembly | Deadline: Accepting nominations through May 2024 | Compensation: Accommodations | Location: New York, NY | Dates: September 2024 | Apply to speak and share your expertise if you identify as a thought leader in: CSR, ESG, DEI, Social Impact practitioners, Cultural icons
- GoLab by Develer
| Deadline: May 1, 2024, | Compensation: Accommodations | Location: Florence, Italy | Dates: November 11-November 13, 2024 | Apply to speak and share your expertise on topics like: Cloud and networking, Language and ecosystem, Devices and platforms, Security, Cross-topic proposals are also welcome.
Next Monday, we'll be sharing these two opportunities...
- Women in Payments | Deadline: May 10, 2024, | Compensation: Inquire for more | Location: Toronto, CA | Dates: September 24-25, 2024 | Share your expertise in: digital payments, leadership and career development, payments innovation | Apply here: https://womeninpayments.glueup.com/event/call-for-speakers-101646/
- 2025 Education Conference by Apartment Association of North Carolina | Deadline: May 15, 2024 | Compensation: Paid | Location: Raleigh, NC | Dates: May 12-14, 2025| About: The conference brings together 690+ multifamily housing professionals. Attendance will be a majority of Onsite Associates and Regional Level roles, corporate Directors/VPs/CEOs, Independent Rental Owners, and more | Apply here: https://www.aanconline.org/2025-education-conference-call-for-speaker-rfps
???Discount Tix Alerts
???Notes from a conference
- Dive Deeper into Product Led Summit NYC here
- Get the step by step for implementing the Volume Control concept here
.
Three Rituals for Effective Collaboration Throughout the Product Lifecycle
Teresa
, a Product Manager at Coda
, a fast-growing document collaboration startup gave a dynamic talk at PLA's
Product Led Summit NYC.
Teresa oversees multiple projects at Coda and works closely with engineering, design, and leadership teams to bring new features to market. With several years of experience navigating the challenges of cross-functional collaboration, Teresa has developed a set of rituals that have transformed the way her team works together.
In her talk, Teresa shared her top three rituals for fostering alignment and transparency at each stage of the product development process. Follow these steps to put her advice into action:
- Get early buy-in from leadership on project scope and concerns: Before diving into design, create a brief PRD (product requirements document) with a dedicated section for stakeholders to voice their input and concerns. Send this PRD out proactively and prompt key decision-makers to weigh in. "Not only does this give leadership a place to put their own thoughts and feel heard, it also gives me a very clear picture over where I need to drive clarity," Teresa explained.
"This template allows any stakeholders and leadership to add in things they're concerned about, things they want to stay close to, maybe just saying, 'Oh, I'm excited about this."
- Keep stakeholders informed with a single source of truth: Set up a central document or dashboard where you track weekly goals, milestones, and status updates across all of your projects. This document should be accessible and serve as the single source of truth for your team and org. Include additional context that addresses common follow-up questions, such as your confidence level in hitting each milestone.
"Every Monday in our weekly kickoff meetings, we update our milestones, update our confidence, add our goals for the week, and do a quick retro of the previous week."
- Learn each stakeholder's "volume range" to better interpret their feedback: Pay attention to the phrasing people use when expressing opinions. "Phrases like 'I feel like we should do this' or 'Maybe did we consider...' tend to be low volume phrases, and then things like 'Do not ship this' or 'I strongly believe X' would be high volume phrases," explained Teresa. When asking for feedback on a proposal, have each stakeholder explicitly state how strongly they feel on a scale of 1-10 and whether they're aligned or not.
- Run a "volume control" exercise with your team: Have team members take a quick quiz to self-identify their usual volume range. Then, facilitate a discussion on how you can better calibrate your communication styles.
“Knowing my teammates' volumes has made me a much better collaborator on my team. It's also helped our team move faster and make decisions more quickly"
- Close the loop on how you're acting on feedback: Be transparent about whose input you're prioritizing by establishing a "brain trust" for each project. Everyone who wants can add their feedback, but if you're in the brain trust, then your feedback weighs more. Use a decision log to understand which stakeholders want to be consulted on which types of decisions. You provide them options to choose from: ‘I don't care, just tell me the answer', 'I care a little bit, keep me updated, but I don't need to be involved' 'Please keep me involved' 'I will have very strong opinions'
By implementing these rituals, Teresa has seen a dramatic improvement in the way her team collaborates and makes decisions.
To learn more, check out the following:
- Volume Control Quiz
- Dory/Pulse
: “Dory is how we get our most important questions discussed and answered first. And Pulse is how we get the sentiment about a project or idea from a lot of people all at once.” Shashir Mehrotra, Coda Co-founder & CEO
- Sentiment on a proposal
- Dive deeper on the conference and the volume control concept here
???Top 5 conferences happening next week
Which ones are you pulling up to?
Want the full list of vetted conferences for the month? Take a look here
