[00:00:00] Trisha Price: Hi everyone. I have an exclusive discount for hard calls listeners to Pendomonium Pendo Product Festival. I would like to invite you to join me in Raleigh, North Carolina from March 24th to 26th with an exclusive 30% [00:00:15] discount. When you use the code hardcalls30, that's hardcalls all lowercase, and the numbers three zero.

[00:00:22] Trisha Price: Get your discounted ticket at pendo.io/Pendomonium. See you there. 

[00:00:27] Dave Killeen: I think the hardest call I've ever had to make on [00:00:30] people was our Productboard. We had three riffs, right? And most companies were just really just going through a lot of redundancies. No one knew it was happening in the market. And so it was hard to promise to the org, we're not gonna do this again.

[00:00:40] Dave Killeen: This is the first riff we've ever done. There's a never do it again, to stay with us. Then you go through the second, then you [00:00:45] go through the third, and you're trying to get people to believe. You're trying to be transparent and honest and authentic, and you're trying to wrap your arms about them and do it in the fairest way possible.

[00:00:53] Dave Killeen: It was one of the most, the proudest leadership moments I've ever had, but we're also one of the saddest as well, right? But you have to hold yourself [00:01:00] together for that and make sure the team that you wanna stay believe in it and are fired up. And obviously they're expected to do is more, more, more than ever.

[00:01:06] Dave Killeen: Right? With less, less resource. From 50 in my team to 18. Really that was the hardest thing I've had to do, I think emotionally. 

[00:01:14] Trisha Price: Hi [00:01:15] everyone, and welcome back to Hard Calls on today's show. I am so excited to talk to Dave Killeen, our Field Chief Product Officer for EMEA at Pendo. I know Dave, and if you know Dave, you know [00:01:30] he is a self-proclaimed product geek, I think we probably have that in common, who embodies an amazing mix of energy strategy and evangelism.

[00:01:40] Trisha Price: I am so lucky to work with Dave, and I'm so excited to talk with Dave today. He [00:01:45] has spent 25 years leading product teams across the globe. He has led teams of Produceboard Bumble, the BBC and MailOnline.

[00:01:53] Trisha Price: Dave brings infectious curiosity. If you've ever seen him live, I know that you are. [00:02:00] So excited to hear him talk again today because he's passionate about the right tools and how they can help product teams and help us all to think more deeply, move faster, and deliver impact at scale. So this is [00:02:15] especially true in this era of ai.

[00:02:17] Trisha Price: Dave is also the host of a podcast called the Vibe PM Podcast, where he explores new use cases and he actually demos hands-on new AI tools. Dave, welcome to the show today. [00:02:30] 

[00:02:30] Dave Killeen: Thanks so much, Trisha, for having me. I'm glad to be here. 

[00:02:33] Trisha Price: It's gonna be so fun. You are one person, a few who can match and maybe top my energy.

[00:02:42] Dave Killeen: Oh, that's a challenge. [00:02:45] I'll take it on. I'll take it on. 

[00:02:46] Trisha Price: Okay. Dave, so you know this podcast well and it is called Hard Calls. It's called Hard Calls because as product leaders that's our job. We get squeezed. Customers want one thing, our CEO and board want [00:03:00] another. Our sales person has the most important highest revenue deal of all time, and here we are stuck making the hard call.

[00:03:07] Trisha Price: So I'd like to kick off today with you sharing with us, what is one of the hardest calls you've had to make in your career? 

[00:03:14] Dave Killeen: Okay. [00:03:15] We were talking before this podcast actually, and it's like trying to pick your favorite child, like which of the hard calls you've had to make. And there's so many, right?

[00:03:21] Dave Killeen: And I joke is why I've got so little hair left, but I think one of the hardest calls I've had to make, which is less on the product side, but is like, I left Productboard back [00:03:30] in March 24, and I had three months like paid. Was it a redundancy? I had all this time, you know, March time to go outside, you know, get fit, take some time off.

[00:03:39] Dave Killeen: Right. And did I do that? No. What I did was, you probably know the story, but I basically stayed in this [00:03:45] room for three months. Pretty much every day apart from Saturday to Sunday when I wasn't allowed to at Faffing and going down Rabbit with AI And it was brilliant. My husband was really annoyed with me.

[00:03:56] Dave Killeen: He was like, go outside, get outta the house. You're doing my head in. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. [00:04:00] AI. AI. we have to lean into this and see where that puck is going. And so I went down that rabbit hole for three months and I thought I'd find a job. But then I started looking come towards what end of those three months.

[00:04:10] Dave Killeen: And everything I looked at through recruiters was just like not interesting. I felt that company's [00:04:15] gonna die in the next two years. They got no idea where the puck is going, that alone, where it's at, Trisha. And so I was discounting everything to the point where exec search firms are coming to like, you know, a month six and going, Dave, you're too precious. You need to take a job. And I just held out. And then [00:04:30] Trisha, you came in my inbox and you saw me doing stuff on YouTube and you said, Hey look, you're a bit unhealthily obsessed about all of this. And you've done product for the last 25 years, do you wanna come into Pendo? So I really feel, when I talk to others that are unfortunately losing their roles, I'm like, you're very lucky.

[00:04:44] Dave Killeen: [00:04:45] It's the last thing people wanna hear, but I've got, I've got kids, I've got mortgages. But if you have that time at the moment to kind of make use of that time, whether you're working or whether you're, unfortunately not, it's a great time to be leading in and get some sense of where that puck is going.

[00:04:57] Dave Killeen: And that's brilliantly positioned me now here at Pendo to [00:05:00] be doing the VPN podcast and other things because of that unhealthy obsession of all things AI. But it was hard to convince my husband, to hold the course and go look. I know it's not great. Yes, we'll sell the car. Yes, we'll stop getting flowers in.

[00:05:12] Dave Killeen: But ultimately it's paid off handsomely for me [00:05:15] and for Pendo, I hope. And it's been really good. But yeah, a ton of other hard card calls we'll try weave into the conversation as we go ahead. 

[00:05:21] Trisha Price: Yeah, well I love that hard call and it's atypical, right? It's not the typical hard call where usually guests come on and talk about, you know, a person they really [00:05:30] cared about and had done great work for the company, but who couldn't take them forward and scale, or a decision from a product perspective that they had to say no to a important customer and feature.

[00:05:41] Trisha Price: But this one's so special and different because your career [00:05:45] is in a different spot than most product leaders right now, which I think is amazing that it does afford you time to stay up to date and play with the latest and greatest tools. And I wanna talk more about that today, but I [00:06:00] also wanna make a point, you know, that, that you just, I just wanna put a, a pin on the point you just made, which is, even if you don't lose your job and become redundant.

[00:06:10] Dave Killeen: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:11] Trisha Price: We as product leaders have got to get [00:06:15] hands-on with these tools today. Like it's a non-negotiable.

[00:06:17] Dave Killeen: A hundred percent. And I mean, you'll find, we talk a lot more about this on this, on this pod, but like ultimately you can, by finding the time it's a flywheel, right? You'll actually save an awful lot more time than the time you're looking for in the first place.

[00:06:28] Dave Killeen: Right? And it just [00:06:30] compounds. And I think if you're using AI in that kind of. You know, efficient and effective way of as a sparring and thinking partner. Then you will find then more time and more time, right? So you end up, I feel personally I'm getting seven days work worth of work done, and four now. As a result, just find that bit of time [00:06:45] upfront.

[00:06:45] Dave Killeen: I think you can leverage it a lot more effectively and it'll pay very, very handsomely for you. 

[00:06:49] Trisha Price: Yeah, I totally agree. And before we jump into specific tools, because you're an expert on this and I know our listeners want like the meaty important things that, you [00:07:00] know. Tell us why do you even care?

[00:07:01] Trisha Price: Like Sure, it's fun. Sure it's relevant. Sure, it's where the puck's going, but like why does it even matter, you know, getting a hands on with these tools? 

[00:07:10] Dave Killeen: I think it's so important. I think we are, it's just it's non-negotiable. It [00:07:15] is something that everyone has to get their hands around and, you know, the analogy I use, and it's kinda what struck me when I had those, that time off for those first three months, is that it's like, you know, you get home after a long day of work, you need to open up the fridge door to see.

[00:07:27] Dave Killeen: What's inside that you can rustle up for dinner? What ingredients you have to play [00:07:30] with, right? And I think most people, I keep saying they're not doing that. They know it's got potential. They know there's something in there, but you need to make time to open up the fridge door. And from a first principal's point of view, just get some sense of like, what tools can work for you.

[00:07:41] Dave Killeen: Right. You know, you know me, I do speech to text. I've, I really [00:07:45] type anymore. I can actually feel my fingers stiffening over the last year. And you start flying through your work, right? You're in deeper state of flow. And so I think once you taste it, once you pick those ingredients outta the fridge and start playing with them.

[00:07:55] Dave Killeen: You quickly realize there's no going back. And then you go down and down and down and down the rabbit hole. [00:08:00] and ultimately, like you say, you get to that point where you just, you feel you're flying, right? And then when they can start infecting your teams and your teams run that deeper state of flow collaboratively together. It's just it's quite different.

[00:08:09] Dave Killeen: It's amazing. 

[00:08:10] Trisha Price: So, Dave, with that, tell me like. One or two of you know, your [00:08:15] favorite tools are tools that have really surprised you, maybe you weren't expecting before you played with them to get real bang for your back or really change the way you operate and get, you know, different level of velocity.

[00:08:26] Trisha Price: Yeah. Share with me one or two of those. 

[00:08:29] Dave Killeen: I think basic [00:08:30] level and the one I keep banging on about is speech to text. And there's two there. There's flow voice, and then there's super whisper.com and they're one's more simple, one's more complex, and you've got these different modes. So if you're leaving comments on the Google Doc, you can just kind of have a mode for that, which essentially a prompt that says, take your [00:08:45] gobbledy gook and then turn it into a succinct comment that's helpful for the recipient and all these different modes in that app.

[00:08:50] Dave Killeen: And then something nice and simple with flow voice. That's the basics for me. The rabbit hole I've been going down in the last maybe say. Six, seven months, but particularly the last week is Claude [00:09:00] Code. And you know, and we're seeing a lot of traction now, a lot of commentary out there about how Claude Code is there for non-engineering tasks and Anthropic themselves came out with Claude Cowork just the other week and and it's fantastic, right? There's a huge potential to essentially have Claude Code work with what [00:09:15] could have been. HTML files, CSS files, JavaScript, TypeScript. Now your text files, right? Here's my Trisha page, here's my projects, and I've got MCP servers now in there pulling in my Granola transcripts and I've got MCP servers for clarity, you know, our Salesforce casting tool and for [00:09:30] moment our Gong type transcripts.

[00:09:31] Dave Killeen: And so, everything's now coming in here and it's on another level. So I've been doing that for maybe the last eight, nine months. But the last week's been unlock for me because there's a team called Every, and they're like a content production team, quite [00:09:45] small lean team, but they're seen as a kind of poster child for modern companies in terms of how they work with AI.

[00:09:49] Dave Killeen: And they've released a plugin on GitHub called Compound Engineering. And the idea is, you know yourself, right, the more features you add to a product, the more costly and complex that product becomes to build upon. And [00:10:00] so with AI, you can reverse it, you can flip it right? So with this plugin, the idea from an engineering point of view is wanna finish a task, building a feature, it has this thing where it looks back on our dance, Trisha, it looks about what we've learned and it actually creates a markdown file of those learnings that [00:10:15] get called in every time I initiate a new session. And so it's compounding its brilliance from an engineering partner point of view. And so I was on holiday just the other week and I shouldn't have been thinking about it, but I was like, huh, I've got this PKM system, personal knowledge management system, and [00:10:30] I love it. And Claude Code dances on my text files, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know, the more I add to it, the more bloody noise it is. It's hard to define stuff, right? Even I've got the AI in there, now I have got, I've taken the first principles point approach from taking, [00:10:45] the compound engineering and saying, how can I take that into Claude Code, where actually it works in my PKN. So the more I actually talk to it, the more it learns from me, the more information it gets. This, oh my God. Bonkers.

[00:10:56] Trisha Price: It's amazing. You know, I was talking to my friend Jay Jenkins [00:11:00] yesterday, and Jay's a amazing product manager. He worked with me back at nCino, but he's left and done two really small startups and obviously, you know, in that mode where.

[00:11:13] Trisha Price: You're one of just a few [00:11:15] employees and you're making big things happen. You are really getting your hands on things, and he was telling me some pretty cool stories how he was using Granola as well for customer meetings. And customers were either maybe talking about a bug or a feature request or [00:11:30] something that they wanted.

[00:11:31] Trisha Price: And he was able to take his transcripts from Granola, immediately into Claude Code and actually create the bug fix or the enhancement before he was even off the call, send it, you know, [00:11:45] as a PR to his CTO. And before the end of the call, the enhancement or bug was in production and fixed for the customer.

[00:11:53] Dave Killeen: It's bonkers, Trisha. I mean, honestly, I think the challenge for us then becomes, okay, hold on a second. So everything's coming into my [00:12:00] system. It's being like this great chief of staff on steroids, caffeine to the hills. Right? You know, how do you orchestrate that at scale yourself, right? So I have, you know, in Cursor I've got like various different agents working together on my knowledge.

[00:12:14] Dave Killeen: My challenge [00:12:15] becomes, hold on a second. I've got six agents working across my knowledge graph and all these cool recordings and everything else. Like, just, just remembering where you were with them. Right. That becomes the bottleneck, I think now. Yeah. When it comes to personal knowledge management, but you're absolutely right.

[00:12:28] Dave Killeen: It is crazy. You know, [00:12:30] I had this thing the other day, which surprised me. I came out of a meeting with my line manager and basically Cursor was in, Claude Code was Instruments in a way where it basically wrote the email follow up for me. And he's like, do you wanna send that on to your manager? I was like, oh my God.

[00:12:44] Dave Killeen: Fantastic. [00:12:45] You know, we just, developed this new thing, which is like a, part of my role is to help our team and the sales team to kind of, you know, between stages one, stage two, to make sure that we're really setting the power of Pendo and connecting to business outcomes, right? So important in what we do and what generally what [00:13:00] product people do, right?

[00:13:01] Dave Killeen: And and so I now have a command that looks across all the transcripts and basically make sure that we're connected to KPIs at stage one to stage two in our sales cycle. where we're not, I get the names of the people I need to follow up with, where we're underselling [00:13:15] the capabilities of our. Had no platform of which we have so much power behind it, right?

[00:13:19] Dave Killeen: We're just going into point solutions like, no, no, no, no, no. There's an opportunity. You're underselling, right? And so, you know, we can give more value to the customer, give them better ROI. And so that for me was hard. For the last six months, I had to [00:13:30] do that manually. And now in my daily planning, I do daily plan, does all of that.

[00:13:34] Dave Killeen: Five minutes later I have my plan for the. 

[00:13:37] Trisha Price: I love it. Well, speaking about business outcomes as a product leader, I know this is a topic you and I are passionate about and I know it's [00:13:45] something we spend a lot of time with our customers in the market on, which is. Everyone knows the higher level business outcome they're trying to drive, right?

[00:13:53] EOD

[00:13:53] Trisha Price: Are they trying to get new, you know, AR growth in a new product? Are they trying to reduce [00:14:00] churn, you know, through increased stickiness or adoption? Are they trying to reduce support tickets? Like they all kind of know that. But like. It is so hard to take that and know how to translate that [00:14:15] into North Star metrics and what to measure for a product team to know how to tie their activity to the bigger picture of the company's success. So talk to me a little bit about that. Like I know you are, [00:14:30] you've also used AI to solve this a little bit, and you have opinions on what we should be doing as product leaders and as PMs. Share a little bit of your incredible wisdom on this topic with us.

[00:14:40] Dave Killeen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. you know, I mean, it's something I'm massively passionate about and, [00:14:45] you know, I think KPI driver trees are the DNA dollar logic of how you make. Money as a, as a business and how you connect the product to doing that. Right. So, Atlassian came out with our Atlassian state of product management report recently, just about, maybe about three months ago, I think it was, [00:15:00] and it said the stats showed 12% of product teams feel that the metrics they report on are connected to business outcomes that the board care about. Right? That means 88% of our teams globally, are basically feeling, yeah, we're shipping, but like, you know, does it make a difference? Is it important? Does [00:15:15] anyone care?

[00:15:15] Dave Killeen: Let alone externally, right? Yeah. 

[00:15:18] Trisha Price: Oh, four or five customers asked for this. It's like, okay, but is that gonna actually do anything? 

[00:15:25] Dave Killeen: Mental. And so I think for me, and the reason I'm so passionate about this particular [00:15:30] thing is it is this kind of comfort blanket, right? There's this stat, isn't there that I heard before that you know, the CPO is the shortest lived role in the C-Suite, 2.6 years on average.

[00:15:41] Dave Killeen: And because I think the consensus in that view is [00:15:45] that they basically are lacking that ability to kind of drive the C-Suite and align the C-Suite around market-centric data insights and customer-centric data from within the product. And if you don't do that, everyone will look at you in a C-suite and go, well, they're [00:16:00] driving their org by their gut, right? And if they're doing that, I'll tell you what I think they should do next. And before you know it, what happens? My hypothesis is they either resign because they have no relationship, but it's kind of, you know, not great. Or they get fired. And what's great about Pendo is [00:16:15] Pendo is either, the way I look at it is it's that sanity blanket, it's that comfort blanket.

[00:16:19] Dave Killeen: It's what drives that alignment. More importantly, helping you and your C-suite agree on what not to do. So here comes the KPI driver to, right, because if you have that, then you have that [00:16:30] DNA data logic. All codified. And that becomes the guardrails for everything that you do. Right? And also more importantly, for the teams to feel joy in their work. To feel, oh my God, we're making a difference.

[00:16:39] Dave Killeen: Yes, we're connected to that important conversation at the top. So .I was going to accomplish it [00:16:45] all. 

[00:16:45] Trisha Price: It makes PMs feel empowered because no good PM wants to be told what feature to build, right? 

[00:16:51] Dave Killeen: Yeah. 

[00:16:52] Trisha Price: But. When it's all bottoms up, you might get a lot of cool features, but not a lot of cool features that [00:17:00] actually drive to the strategy or drive to the higher level KPIs or OKRs that you're, you know, trying to drive in the business.

[00:17:09] Trisha Price: So I think when you think about any kind of cascading in the driver tree like you're talking about, [00:17:15] you're actually, people are afraid, like, "are my PMs gonna be empowered", but that's what actually empowers them because there's no driver tree telling you what feature to build. The driver tree is telling you what north star metric matters at the cascaded [00:17:30] level, and now my product managers are, to your point, not just motivated and tied to the company's success, but empowered to make feature level decisions. 

[00:17:38] Dave Killeen: Quite, quite. And it is. It is just that such an alignment tool, isn't it? Right. And very few can argue with you [00:17:45] with what you want to do if you've got that kind of, that logic.

[00:17:47] Dave Killeen: Complacent, codified. And so, yeah, I went down then to, Auckland for a conference to product managers, 400 product managers. And the hard thing, you know, when you go to a conference like that and you have a booth and you're hoping people come to you over the coffee break, right? [00:18:00] And I thought. Hold on a second.

[00:18:02] Dave Killeen: What if I vibe coded a KPI driver tree on the plane? And Elon Musk's Starlink, great connection, Claude Code fired up. And we pull it together and we'll be sharing this actually quite soon in the coming week or so, [00:18:15] online, on my, on my LinkedIn, and basically it looks at everything that's available around the company and comes up with a star to for 10.

[00:18:23] Dave Killeen: Now of course it's probabilistic, right? So every time you do it, you get a different KBI driver tree. But where it gets more robust, and that's quite [00:18:30] interesting from AI point of view, is we actually in the app have the AI red team itself. Trisha. It's hilarious. The AI comes in and goes, Dave, honestly, you think that's a North Star metric that's riddled with ambiguity.

[00:18:43] Dave Killeen: What? And this is a [00:18:45] leading indicator. No, it's not. But the AI came up with it. Right? But then when the AI came, read teams itself. The quality goes up such a level treasure and such, so interesting, 

[00:18:56] Trisha Price: like AI is giving the AI a hard time. But you know what, [00:19:00] like that makes sense because you could come up with a North Star metric and I might not like it and I might, you know, give you a hard time about it.

[00:19:07] Trisha Price: And we would go back and forth and back and forth and what we would end up with would be better than what I came up with to start, or what you came up with to start. Mm-hmm. [00:19:15] And honestly, agents. Are the same way, like, you know, they have the same kind of reasoning skills and going back and forth is how you get to a great result.

[00:19:23] Trisha Price: You don't just take the first results and your first prompt. 

[00:19:27] Dave Killeen: No. 

[00:19:27] Trisha Price: You know that, that you get just like, you [00:19:30] don't just take the first idea that someone on your team gives you. 

[00:19:33] Dave Killeen: I, and you're absolutely right. And I think treating them like that, right? you know, having that agent and subagent architecture so you can actually make what's happening a little bit more deterministic.

[00:19:43] Dave Killeen: and, but yeah, we've [00:19:45] shown it to a few other leaders and they'll be like, oh my God. Like even just today, went to see a large grocery retailer here in the UK this morning. And they're like, this is really helpful. We've spent weeks going back, like you say, Trisha, back and forth debating, and this is educating us about how we should see things and maybe it's coming up with [00:20:00] KPIs we haven't thought about before.

[00:20:01] Dave Killeen: So yeah, I'm TLDR hugely passionate about it. And I think Pendo plays such a role in that, right? Because once you've got that pulled together, then the power of Pendo pushes in those metrics and then you can see exactly where you're winning and where you might need to lean in more to. 

[00:20:14] Trisha Price: I love it. [00:20:15] So right, you, you've talked about.

[00:20:18] Trisha Price: Voice to text as a huge time saving hack. You've talked about vibe coding, in terms of a, a velocity and really time to [00:20:30] value hack. But you know, as product people, product sense and product taste. And when I say those things, product sense to me is just like knowing your customer and customer value and to [00:20:45] an extreme that you really, really know and can make good judgment calls, you know, based on that job to be done and the customer value. And when I think about product taste, it's a little bit more of like. The [00:21:00] amazing minutiae detail that delights a user every day. You know, I know you talk about this, and I think about this a lot, which is, how does AI help us or hurt us?

[00:21:13] Dave Killeen: Hmm, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:21:14] Trisha Price: [00:21:15] As it comes to relying on either product sense or product taste. 

[00:21:18] Dave Killeen: Yeah, I was talking with another product here recently who said, I've just got into vibe coding. And they were in Gemini AI studio and they kind of vibe coded something in like an hour, which would've taken team like, you know, a month to do.

[00:21:29] Dave Killeen: And then they're [00:21:30] like, oh, that's great. Thank you very much for that. And by the way Gemini, can you come up with a six month roadmap for me please? And what we should do next? Thank you. Love you. And then it does and then goes, "Hey Gemini, can you now implement that for me? And it gets it done in about 45 minutes."

[00:21:43] Dave Killeen: Like where this six month roadmap idea [00:21:45] comes up. I have no idea. But surely you'd think Gemini knows it's not gonna be six months, but and this whole thing turns into a Frankenstein, right? Yeah. It's gone off the way else completely. And I think, yeah, to your point, that's where that taste piece kicks in.

[00:21:57] Dave Killeen: You have to make sure that you're really watching it and being [00:22:00] quite ruthless. Despite having all of this power at your hands now, just being really ruthless about what it is you're asking for and making sure that it really does pop from a delight perspective. Right. You know, and it's just, yeah.

[00:22:13] Dave Killeen: I just, [00:22:15] I see so many people vibe coding stuff for the sake of doing it. And it was like, you know, people on Twitter, like, yeah, look at this, our vibe code, the Kanban board. And it's just really like, is that all you can come up with? You know, you need to have that taste and second guess that, that gut piece [00:22:30] and that comes some experience and a good strong appreciation for kind of, you know, what works and pops and that can be replaced by AI

[00:22:36] Dave Killeen: So it's a partner, right? It's a partner, but my lord, have I been surprised with some of the ideas that it has come up with where my taste is able to judge that and go, yes, you are on the money. [00:22:45] Thank you. So yeah, taste, taste, taste. 

[00:22:47] Trisha Price: I love it. So tell me, in this rapid prototyping or even vibe coding, beyond prototyping world, assuming we've got amazing product sense, amazing, we've got [00:23:00] amazing product taste, and we're using all these productivity tools, how would this world do we actually get the proper feedback at scale and do discovery at scale? Because like some of the older mechanisms of feedback [00:23:15] and discovery are hard to do quickly to keep up with the pace when you're using all these tools. Yeah. How's this changing? 

[00:23:23] Dave Killeen: I think there's, I think there's two things, right at one end of the spectrum where you go and meet a customer on a call or you [00:23:30] would, you know, go, go to, go to see them.

[00:23:32] Dave Killeen: You know, rather than doing an interview with five coding, we can literally actually vibe code it there and then. You get their feedback, take it on board, suck in the Granola transcript and go, right, okay, what can we do with this? what do you think of this, [00:23:45] Trisha? And so I think that's a different way of doing it in the kind of the, the less scalable way, but quite an interesting angle, I think.

[00:23:51] Dave Killeen: and then ultimately I think, you know, what we're doing here at Pendo of course, is we allow you to collect that at scale from. All your different systems and bring that together. And I [00:24:00] think being able to process that through AI and having that taste element on top of it right, is just so powerful and so effective.

[00:24:06] Dave Killeen: And I think then kind of going beyond that, where we're going I think is being able to tailor interfaces, being able to actually run those experiments at scale per segment, you know, [00:24:15] offered up through Pendo, for example, right in the UI. I think that's fantastic. Right? So that becomes. You know, mini experiments that actually can be surfaced to, to folk and to get their feedback and see how they're using things.

[00:24:27] Dave Killeen: So I think that whole space is fascinating. And [00:24:30] you think about like, some people are doing that where you can actually create like virtual cohorts of people, they're not even real people, but they're personas that actually have, you know, valid opinions, right? And how do you throw concepts and ideas at them?

[00:24:41] Dave Killeen: There's some really interesting startups in the space doing that right now. So I think this [00:24:45] whole space is fascinating. It's only gonna give us an awful lot more, more, more taste, and uh, and far, far greater impact as, as teams. 

[00:24:53] Trisha Price: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think another approach too is if you're vibe coding and you're able to go this [00:25:00] fast, I mean, experimentation looks totally different, right? I mean, you could put five different experiences between feature flags and rolled it out to different, you know, subsegments of your population, whether that's based on role, like some sort of [00:25:15] metadata or actually usage analytics, first time users, experience users, admins, things like that, right?

[00:25:21] Trisha Price: And I think like it's another really effective way, and that might've been really hard to do. I mean, maybe not for like a button change or a [00:25:30] wording change, but that was pretty hard to do at scale quickly before, because you had to use your engineering team to actually build every single one of those experiences.

[00:25:40] Trisha Price: But when you're able to code them, like. It's pretty cool. 

[00:25:44] Dave Killeen: It's, it's [00:25:45] so cool. I mean like, go back to the KPI Driver Tree idea. Right. So, you know, I've been banging on about this for a while and I think I'm massively passionate about it and I think, you know, there's something in it. But like, what I'm now doing is I put this onto Versal and and, you know, there's no PII data in it, but basically.

[00:25:59] Dave Killeen: I'm releasing it to [00:26:00] those people down in a Oakland, that sign up to it, right? And I'm gonna use Pendo. It's in there now. I've got all my agent analytics in there. I've got all my guides in there. I've got everything in there, and I'm gonna go and get the qual, the quant data, the visual data, everything, and use that as [00:26:15] a way to bring it back into the business and say, look, let's build this.

[00:26:17] Dave Killeen: Right? So I think we are just all, not just people like me, but every function across the org. So much more empowered now, to bring their creativity to life and have that sparring partner in it that can actually, giving the confidence to march forward with [00:26:30] their ideas. Right. So it's just so good. So, so good.

[00:26:34] Trisha Price: So, I mean, fast forward for our listeners. They start utilizing a lot of these tools that you're talking about. They free up their time. What do we do with all this free time, Dave? [00:26:45] 

[00:26:45] Dave Killeen: Oh, so I read this book called The Brain at Rest, and I've been a bit of a workaholic over the last 20 years, 25 years.

[00:26:53] Dave Killeen: And the Brain at Rest basically talks about we have the default mode network and we have the executive mode network. And so. [00:27:00] Unfortunately for most of society over the last maybe 10 years, we've been very much in the executive mode network where it's all task-based work and TV watching, all that kind of stuff, and social and all mobile, blah, blah, blah.

[00:27:11] Dave Killeen: And then we don't have enough time for the default mode network. It's where all creativity, [00:27:15] you know, flourishes, right? So the book I read on holiday, and it was a bit of epiphany for me, because one view on AI for organizations and individuals is that, well, look, just get more done. 

[00:27:24] Dave Killeen: You know, keep working your ass off for five days a week, 12-hours a day, whatever.

[00:27:29] Dave Killeen: And [00:27:30] it says three signs. No, no, no, no, no, no. You find some time, with the science backing it up to go outside, go for a walk in the in the forest, hug a tree, and cold water swimming. Watch this blue sky, the shape of the clouds. Just get some [00:27:45] default mode network going. And then what happens is then all your ideas will flourish.

[00:27:49] Dave Killeen: And so, I think what we should be doing. Is not spending as much time with work. Find time for those breaks to let those ideas flourish and then [00:28:00] leverage into the AI in a more productive way to have that as a true sparring partner to extend your thinking. And I think that's where we should be. I hope that's where people get to, but I think the danger with AI.

[00:28:10] Dave Killeen: We're just a bit lazy about the whole thing and we just keep running and running and running [00:28:15] and just do not make time for what is such a critical part of our creative, our creative thinking. So yeah, I would advocate, ChatGPT a summary of the Brain at Rest to anyone watching by the book. It's such a game changer.

[00:28:27] Dave Killeen: Encourage your or to embrace the ideas. 

[00:28:29] Trisha Price: And so [00:28:30] tell me, Dave, like that obviously comes from lessons learned from you where maybe in one of your past roles. You didn't give yourself enough time to think so. No. You know, any other, any other little nuggets of wisdom from any of your past roles or [00:28:45] other stories you wanna share with our listeners before we finish?

[00:28:48] Dave Killeen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I would say to those earlier in the career. Just lean in with your gut and what you believe back to your taste. Common. Right. I remember being at the Daily Mail newspaper group here in the UK before [00:29:00] the internet was even a thing. Really. We're trying to figure out as a bunch of geeks, like what do we do with these paper brands?

[00:29:04] Dave Killeen: And and we had this thing like, you know, blogging was taking off at the time and we were like. Well, people are commenting on blog posts. Can we like convince the editors of the newspaper to let people comment on [00:29:15] articles rather than like letters to the editor? Right. That was sacrilege. Right. But we believed it was gonna be something quite interesting.

[00:29:21] Dave Killeen: Our hypothesis was people might actually be more interested in people commenting than the author writing, the journalist writing the piece of content. And it turned out they were. And [00:29:30] so. But we culturally, trying to do that at a young age in my career was really hard. You're trying to convince these floody, dollies and the future and the potential of the internet, but, and then we created clickbait at the mail online.

[00:29:41] Dave Killeen: And so again, hard to do, right? But like, you know, I just [00:29:45] think to people, you've got good taste. You believe in something, use AI to bring the stories to life. Use Pendo or something similar to get the evidence in to build out your case. That's definitely one thing. I've always stuck by my gun since [00:30:00] because I just felt that actually, you know, it's important to do so and if you've got a good argument, but now, God, I wish back then I had something like AI to bring these ideas and concepts to life.

[00:30:11] Dave Killeen: I think. What else? Yeah, just, just, I mean this [00:30:15] people issue's been discussed before in this podcast, but I think the hardest call I've ever had to make on people was our Productboard. We had three riffs, right? And most companies were just really just going through a lot of redundancies. No one knew it was happening in the market, and so it was hard to promise to the org we're not gonna do this again.

[00:30:29] Dave Killeen: This is the first [00:30:30] riff we've ever done. There's a never do it again to stay with us. Then you go through the second, then you go through the third and you're trying to get people to believe. You're trying to be transparent and honest and authentic, and you're trying to wrap your arms about them and do it in the fairest way possible.

[00:30:42] Dave Killeen: It was one of the most, the proudest leadership moments I've [00:30:45] ever had. but also one of the saddest as well. Right. But you have to hold yourself together for that and make sure the team that you want to stay believe in it and are fired up. And obviously they're expected to do is more, more, more than ever.

[00:30:56] Dave Killeen: Right. With, with, with less, less resource, went from 50 my team to 18. [00:31:00] Really, that was the hardest thing I've had to do, I think emotionally and then product wise. Yeah, killing products that, you know, just aren't going anywhere despite everyone, all the execs wanting them to win in that space.

[00:31:11] Dave Killeen: So yeah, lots and lots and lots of hard calls, I think is why I got so [00:31:15] little here. 

[00:31:16] Trisha Price: Yeah, it's, it's the best and hardest part of our job is making those hard calls, you know, whether it's people, process, product, it's what makes the job fun and challenging. But it's also, [00:31:30] what. What makes the job hard?

[00:31:32] Trisha Price: So 

[00:31:33] Dave Killeen: my, my, my grandmother once asked me,"Hey Dave, what is it that you do, because your mother's not able to tell me." And so I was like, look, Granny, what I do is I play whack-a-Mole and I'm at the fairground every [00:31:45] day and I'm getting these obstacles popping up left, right in the center. And you're like, boom.

[00:31:48] Dave Killeen: Got it. You know? You're nearly thinking Trisha, as creatively around your hard calls as you are around your roadmap and market. And I think it's, it's a really, it's perversely a very [00:32:00] interesting role, product leadership, but also, yeah, very, very challenging but rewarding. 

[00:32:05] Trisha Price: It is. Well, Dave, thank you so much for joining hard calls today.

[00:32:11] Trisha Price: Even a bigger thank you to you for joining Pendo and the impact that [00:32:15] you're having, not just at Pendo, but for all of us. It as product leaders in our product community, for Dave and I both. A big part of what gets us up in the morning is, spending time with the overall PR community. That's why we have this podcast [00:32:30] here today.

[00:32:30] Trisha Price: And so Dave, I just thank you for, for all you're doing for the craft and for the community. Thanks. 

[00:32:35] Dave Killeen: Thank you, Trisha. And thank you for bringing me into Pendo as well. Thank you so much. Massive dent for me. I really believe. Thank you. 

[00:32:42] Trisha Price: Welcome. Thank you for listening to Hard [00:32:45] Calls, the product podcasts, where we share best practices and all the things you need to succeed.

[00:32:50] Trisha Price: If you enjoyed the show today, share with your friends and come back for more.