Slides Chris Butler recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor. Synopsis: To make something great it needs to be forged through adversarial means. During this talk, you will understand what adversarial models are for yourself, your teams, and your products. We will touch on the various places that adversarial models are used in today's world and how adversarial models (with compassion) creates great products. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People. Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community. http://TheProductMentor.com

1. Adversarial product
management
The Product Mentor Session 9
For references and more info:
https://goo.gl/NzpbmE

2. Chris Butler
Director of AI @ Philosophie NYC
TBPP 2016, TPM 4/6/7/8/9
18 years of product and BD
Microsoft, Waze, Horizon Ventures,
KAYAK, and started my own company
(failed)
chrisbutler@philosophie.is
@chrizbot

4. Philosophers’ stone #5:
Make It Better

5. Biases

6. Biases keep us constrained
● Naïve realism
● Attentional bias
● Confirmation bias
● Availability heuristic
● Status quo bias
● Bias blind spot

7. Three ways to remove constraints
● Red teaming
● Feedback loops
● Randomness

8. Red teaming

11. The practice of viewing a
problem from an
adversary or competitor’s
perspective.
- Red Team Journal

12. Assumptions

13. Rule 5: Assumption is
the mother of all
f***ups.
- redteams.net/rules

14. Product red teaming

19. Red teaming

20. Feedback loops

24. What makes it so good?

25. Feedback loops

26. What makes good feedback?

27. Personalized

28. Contextual and
situational

29. Timely

30. Actionable

31. How do we accept feedback?

32. Chris Butler’s writing...
“Could do with more
imagination/inspiration…”
“At parts feel a bit pedantic, there's some
profanity we'd need to remove...”
“Is all substance, no style.”
“Please stop using hyped topics (like AI)
just as advertisements!”

33. If it doesn’t “hurt” [it] is
not feedback.
- Gustavo Razzetti

35. Truth triggers

36. Relationship triggers

37. Identity triggers

38. Product feedback loops

39. Ask people: “I have
heard from people that
I… what do you
think?”

41. Feedback loops

42. Randomness

45. Product randomization

52. Randomness

53. What else is missing?

54. Compassion

55. Genuine acts of compassion
and compassionate
leadership fosters the ability
to withstand the forces that
cause burnout.
– Jerry Colonna, Reboot

56. Closing

57. Three ways to remove constraints (+1)
● Red teaming
● Feedback loops
● Randomness
● Compassion

58. Homework
Next time you have to make a decision try an adversarial method:
● Make a decision how your competitor would make it.
● Make what you consider a “bad” decision.
● Make what you consider a random decision.
● Make a compassionate decision.

59. Victorious warriors win first
and then go to war, while
defeated warriors go to war
first and then seek to win.
- Sun Tzu

60. Everybody has a plan until
they get punched in the
mouth.
- Mike Tyson

61. Thank you
For references and more info:
https://goo.gl/NzpbmE