In our latest podcast episode on The Product Experience, Glenn Block, Founder and CEO of ProdSense, discusses the concept of product equity. He stresses the importance of creating fair and equitable products in the tech industry, especially amid advances in AI. Glenn also shares his journey from a software developer to a product leader and the motivations behind launching his own business focused on product equity.
About Glenn
Glenn Block is a trailblazing product changemaker and equity advocate, known for reshaping how companies think about product development. With leadership roles at industry giants like Microsoft, Splunk, Auth0, and Uplevel, Glenn has built a career on creating products that are not only powerful and scalable but also intentionally equitable and user-centric. He has led product development for enterprise products used by hundreds of millions of users and platforms used by millions of developers.
Through his work, Glenn has championed strategies that prioritize diverse user needs and ensure that product experiences are accessible and empowering to those who are often overlooked. His unique approach, grounded in years of cross-functional leadership, bridges the gap between engineering and product, advocating for a balanced, people-centred design.
As the founder of ProdSense, Glenn is transforming SaaS companies to build products that align business goals with meaningful and equitable outcomes.
Featured Links: Follow Glenn on LinkedIn | Work with Glenn at ProdSense | Product Equity at Adobe What is Product Equity | Product Equity 101 | Design Justice | Building For Everyone | Cash App and their work to support the un/underbanked |
Key chapters
Key takeaways
Episode transcript
Randy Silver: 0:00
Hey, it's the Product Experience Podcast. I'm Randy Silver and I get to geek out in the intro today. If any superhero was a product manager, who would it be? There's a lot of good choices out there. We have, you know, business moguls like Batman and Iron man, royalty like Storm Namor and Black Panther, and tech geniuses like Iron man again, ironheart Hulk and many, many more. Like Iron man again Ironheart Hulk and many, many more. But I'm going to nominate Spider-Man. He never set out to be a hero. He's constantly juggling a thousand priorities and serves as the narrative connective tissue between lots of other heroes and, most importantly, his guiding principle is the message from Uncle Ben With great power comes great responsibility. With the advent of AI, we in the world of tech have never had more power. This week, lily and I welcome Glenn Block to the show to chat about building fair and equitable products, something that's more relevant now than ever.
Lily Smith: 1:02
The Product Experience Podcast is brought to you by Mind, the Product part of the Pendo family. Every week we talk to inspiring product people from around the globe.
Randy Silver: 1:11
Visit mindtheproductcom to catch up on past episodes and discover free resources to help you with your product practice. Learn about Mind, the Product's conferences and their great training opportunities.
Lily Smith: 1:24
Create a free account to get product inspiration delivered weekly to your inbox. Mind. The Product supports over 200 product type meetups from New York to Barcelona. There's probably one near you, Glenn.
Randy Silver: 1:42
thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing?
Glenn Block: 1:51
I'm doing good, randy. We just had a small vacation, small holiday, and got back from Europe where I was in Europe for two weeks, so that was actually really nice a couple of weeks ago.
Randy Silver: 1:55
So yeah, I'm doing good we actually ran into each other for the first time in person in Raleigh a couple of months back, but we've been talking online for years. You're a product tank person. You've been doing some interesting stuff. For people who don't already know, you just give us a quick intro what are you up to these days? How'd you get into product in the first place?
Glenn Block: 2:17
Yeah, that's a great story. So I've got over now almost 30 years in the tech industry. I started coding when I was seven years old, so I won't start the story from seven, but I started off as a coder and then, when I got into my professional career, I started off as a software developer, then moved into engineering leadership and then accidental journey to product which I know is common especially for people coming from our generation I joined Microsoft, got an opportunity to join Microsoft as a product planner and at that stage this is back in 2006. Prior to that I had been leading engineering but had been getting more into like had in the companies I worked in. We didn't have product people. We had, like the CEO or, you know, the CTO, and somebody would act as like a business analyst. So I would kind of fulfill a lot of that and then got this opportunity to join Microsoft as a product planner, which I now realized really was product management. Actually, I was working on training and curriculum for developers and planning out like what we were going to build and anyway, that just led me from there. That wasn't that was just a stop point for me, but I ended up then moving into a program management role, working on the NET framework and also got really into open source, which brought my developer hat in, and just continued down that path and then did a lot of fun things at Microsoft. I was there for almost 10 years and then ended up getting ultimately into more product leadership and executive roles and then went off on my own and started my own company a couple of years ago, which is where I'm at now. And then my product tank journey, or my mind to product journey, is interesting. So after I left Microsoft, I was feeling like I really need to get a better understanding of how products are built outside of the ways we were doing it At Microsoft, and I was at Splunk, which was a very not Microsoft company.
Glenn Block: 4:24
I was there and a product primarily used in Linux, which is one of the reasons I went there and I learned about this mind the product Slack community and ultimately found my way to London to mind the product London, and I think it was in London that I learned about product tank. I was like, wow, this community sounds amazing and then came back and realized we had one in Seattle, but I was working at this startup in Bellevue because I'd left Splunk and was like people aren't going to cross. It was like a product management analysis. I'm like people are not going to cross the bridge from Bellevue to go to Seattle because the traffic anybody who knows who lives in that area is just awful. And so called a bunch of people together and was like, hey, let's have a product meetup.
Glenn Block: 5:11
And my secret design was to create a product tank. And that happened. So started product tank Bellevue, ran that for about five years and then moved back to the Bay Area when I started my company. And Product Tank San Francisco was just kind of trying to revive and so I've been leading Product Tank San Francisco for the last two years. So I love the Product Tank community and mind the product community. It's just been fantastic.
Randy Silver: 5:39
Wonderful Well, thank you for everything you've given back to it, and, as someone who spent only a year in Seattle and never once visited Bellevue, I can totally understand the story you're saying. We're here today, though, to talk about product equity. And it's something that we got a chance to chat a bit about and I wanted to dive into quite a bit deeper.
Glenn Block: 6:01
Let's kick it off.
Randy Silver: 6:01
Let's start with the definition. What is product equity? What does it mean to you?
Glenn Block: 6:06
Yeah, I'll just give my definition, but product equity is not only in the digital realm, but it's being used very heavily now in the digital realm, and that's where I'll use it. And what product equity is is what is the outcome of the experience of a user who is using your product and, in the ultimate, are all users actually getting a fair and just experience where they're able to fully take advantage of the capabilities that the product offers? They're not harmed in any way? And so this is really what product equity is about. It's actually about making sure, ideally, that all users have the best experience. And why do we need that?
Glenn Block: 6:46
Because we know from many examples that I'm sure we'll talk about and data that that is not always the case, and there are a lot of users that are overlooked for a myriad of reasons. So product equity is really about trying to right that wrong and make sure that the outcomes the outcomes are really important. So you'll hear other terms like product inclusion, and product inclusion is saying like, let's bring more people in the room when we're building our product, but at the end of the day, it's the outcome, and a lot of us, hey, we're product people, we think about OKRs, things like that. It's like is the result? Are you having the impact? It's the impact that really matters, not just the actions, and that's what product equity laser focuses on. What is the result?
Lily Smith: 7:34
And Glenn, you decided to launch a business focusing on this aspect of product development. What made you decide to launch that business and how was it like when you first started? Like did people understand what you were talking about?
Glenn Block: 7:52
Yeah, it's been a journey. So what made me decide to do it was recognizing this is a real problem. So where it really became clear to me was I went back to school and got my executive MBA in leadership and social justice at Seattle University and during that time we had to do a lot of research into technology and what are the harms? And as I started to do that, I started to realize, wow, there are a lot of harms, but that a lot of these harms are things that I'm not aware of, I don't think about because I'm not the one that's affected. So part of what made me excited to do this is I'm actually not the one who was affected by a lot of these systems that are designed in a way that is inequitable, but Because of our society, I have the power and the ability to use my voice and get people to listen, and I've also been there. So I can recognize from all my years like 10 years at Microsoft where we didn't ask certain questions that we should have been and that we just made assumptions and that some of those assumptions likely had a negative impact on people who weren't considered. So it just became really passionate about it and, prior to going off on this path.
Glenn Block: 9:08
By the way, for many years in tech, I was noticing that I have a lot of advantages and privileges that others don't whether it be, you know, people of other genders, people of other races and identities and was trying to use my power and voice to try to change that. It's part of why I went into product leadership, because I could create a culture that was more intentional about trying to give more people opportunity and have a good experience. So this is kind of like a culmination of a lot of that work that was happening for a long time. Just as one example at Microsoft I was on a allyship V team that was responsible across a 40,000 person organization with thinking about as leaders, like how do we kind of encourage people in the company to care more? How do we create more accountability. So it really was a continuation of work that I was doing for a long time.
Lily Smith: 10:06
And how was it when you first launched the business, in terms of, like, getting your first customers, did they really understand? You know what you were trying to do. And, like did they find you and come to you and go, hey, like we want to solve this problem within our organizations, this thing's happened. Or this person's come to you and go, hey, like we want to solve this problem within our organizations, this thing's happened. Or this person's come in and they're really excited about it, or, you know, I'm really curious to know, like, how this conversation starts.
Glenn Block: 10:34
Those conversations are still happening. It has definitely been a journey. It's been a journey for me for how to talk about it, really Like you see a thing and you know a thing is real, but how do you articulate it in a way that will resonate with businesses. So that has been a lot of work. I've interviewed like over a hundred people probably hundreds trying to understand you know their pain points. Is this something they think about? A lot of people. There were a bunch of people that it didn't resonate with or just didn't understand it, or other people who would say, wow, I never even thought of that, which can be good and bad, because it means there's no budget but there's opportunity. So what I would say is it's been a lot of work. It's been a lot of work refining the message, delivering it and I would say, more recently, I've gotten very close to actually a fairly big client that I'm working on, but there actually was a product equity summit and Google, linkedin, slash, microsoft, meta, Pinterest, adobe they were all there. You'll see, on my website I mentioned Adobe because Adobe is one of the companies that's been at the forefront of this. But what's been different about what I'm doing? I'm not those big companies and I'm actually not going to those companies that are already like doing the work. I'm actually going to other companies, which are the large majority, and trying to, like you know, build off of what these other big companies are doing to give it credibility and then, you know, show them something different. So it's definitely been a work in progress and I've had some amazing people who've been very open and willing.
Glenn Block: 12:26
And one thing I have found you know Randy mentioned, like accessibility. Companies that have already done work on accessibility have been probably the first ones to be like we get this, we get the idea, because I think it's a mind. A lot of this is about a mindset shift. It's shifting away from just what are the things that we directly think of related to the business task or even the job to be done that the user is trying to get done, into looking at who they are and challenges they may face. When you're talking about accessibility, it's things a person was born with, you know, which could be neurodiversity, could be ableness issues. I think where product equity gets really interesting and harder in some ways is it's much broader than that. It's like who are you and is who you are and who this system was designed for going to affect you getting the best out of your experience Been a lot of education. But it is. It has made tremendous progress over the last two years.
Randy Silver: 13:29
Let's use accessibility as the wedge there. This is something that comes up again and again with people. Accessibility is something we all know we should do, but very often it's seen as a nice to have. It's something that's added in later. Let's create the MVP. Let's create the MVP, let's create the thin slice, let's be expedient, improve something and then, we'll go back and build for everyone else, and too often we don't.
Randy Silver: 13:54
So how do you approach that? How do you merge the advice to get something done quickly and build a thin slice versus going more expansive and putting equity in from the start?
Glenn Block: 14:07
So I think part of this is, you know, we live in systems that need to change. So, if you really want to know where I'm at, I think the thinking needs to change, recognizing the idea that when we say, get to market quickly, and we do that in a way that is allowing us to actually harm people, that's actually not a good thing, but today we're in a society where those things are not valued, and so there needs to be a lot of education. So that's the first thing, and so for me, even with my business, I'm actually choosing to work with people that like value this. If you don't think this is even work that makes sense, I'm not going to spend the time to try to educate you that it does, because I'd rather put my energy in on people that are there and are just looking for, like, how do we take this? And like move forward and apply it to deliver a better experience. So I think it is tough because we do live in that society. I think if we learn about the fact that harms are actually getting caused, that can help us to slow down, and so where the interesting thing that you said? And if we look at AI just as an example where this is a really cautionary tale. We've seen enough examples, even with open AI, in that it's too late to go back later. Because, with these large LLMs later, because with these large LLMs, once you've trained them, unseeing is just often not going to work.
Glenn Block: 15:30
And I'll give a closer story, which is Amazon. But it's not like OpenAI. They had a recruiting platform and they actually did try to remove bias from it by getting it not to recognize gender, but it looked at resumes and it still learned the patterns, because these are all patterns-based. That's the cautionary tale. It still learned that the dominant culture, which the dominant resumes that were submitted to the system, were men, and it still learned that that was the default. So it still found a way to be biased against women.
Glenn Block: 16:02
Now you could say, well, what could they have done to prevent that? Well, it would have had to have had rigorous testing, like they just assumed, I guess, because of the fact that they had removed, you know, the identity of gender, that that meant it wasn't going to be biased, but it was, but it was. And the cautionary tale is they spent a lot of money to try to get that system to unsee the bias and they could not do it. So I think the problem in this world that we're in right now is, with AI, like with other systems, you might have a chance to clean it up. I think, with AI, it's becoming more and more likely that you may not be able to clean it up. I think, with AI, it's becoming more and more likely that you may not be able to clean it up.
Lily Smith: 16:45
And when you start to work with an organization or like if you're thinking about your own product and your own organization, how do you kick off sort of an audit of your kind of current approach to product? I guess because it's probably like as much a process thing as a let's look at the product right now and see how equitable it is.
Glenn Block: 17:08
Yeah, that's a great question. So, like my company does multiple things, One of the things we do is workshops, you know, where we basically bring product people together. We haven't yet audited how they build stuff necessarily, though some of that might craft into the workshop, but we're at least giving them the ability to like identify why this happens, when it happens, what you can do to try to avoid it. That's kind of like the idea. There Audits are definitely a real thing and, like you said, often it's like you could look at a specific product, but often it really comes to how does that team build products? What are the kinds of things they're doing? Even talking about this whole like get to market quickly, like is there enough pausing and enough places where questions are being asked and there's curiosity to challenge assumptions that could result in having a better outcome? So that kind of you know doing the audit gets a chance to kind of look at how companies are building products and then come back to them with actionable advice, guidelines on how to do things differently and, depending on who the client is, that could go deeper into actually working with them, engaging actively. Metrics is a big part of this too, because how can you? You know you need some way to be able to say that we're having an impact. I can't tell you exactly what that's going to be, but we can work with you to figure out, based on your product, what are the right ways to measure to make sure that you're hitting on the intended market that you're you know, or people that you're trying to serve.
Glenn Block: 18:43
Also just wanted to mention something Randy mentioned, like this thin slice idea. So you know, there's this one idea of like build for everyone, and there've been books been written on this and Annie Jean Baptiste has a great book on this and for a big company, you might be able to do it. I think a lot of the data has shown us that that's not the best experience to try to build for everyone. So, in line with the thin slice, a different approach and I want to call out this book, Design Justice by Dr Sasha Costanza-Chalk, which talks about this approach of identifying who are the people that are going to be the most underserved and marginalized within the product and building for their needs, and what the data has shown is when you do that, you actually meet the needs of your wider user base. There's lots of examples of that. So that's one way to make this more applicable even to a smaller company product people.
Randy Silver: 19:53
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Lily Smith: 19:56
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Randy Silver: 20:20
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Lily Smith: 20:37
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Randy Silver: 20:48
Check out mindtheproductcom forward slash MTP Con to find out more, or just click on events at the top of the page so just to to put it in terms that your cfo might appreciate, what you're doing by designing more inclusively in the first place is you're increasing your sam, you're getting a bigger slice of your straight away, and you're correct also. And then from the product side, from an experiment point of view, you have a, you're casting a wider net, you have a greater chance at finding your product market fit or your feature market fit for what you're trying to do, and then finding, you know, where is this actually working and what can we then refine?
Glenn Block: 21:39
Yes, and I think. But I think what's really interesting about it is a lot of people when they first hear about this, it's kind of like we have our core and then we'll look at what things we can do to address those who are outside of who we consider our core. But the really radical idea of this is to actually challenge that notion and say no, don't go after the core, go after those and meet the needs of those who are the most likely not to have their needs met. And that again, data shows that when you do this, you will actually serve the needs of the greater. So that's a big flip in the way of doing things from the way we build products today.
Lily Smith: 22:19
And Glenn, when you say data shows, what are you referring to? I know you mentioned some really good examples earlier, so it'd be great to kind of talk through those.
Glenn Block: 22:29
You know there have been studies. I've linked some stuff on my website and Sasha mentions this in their book and actually Kasia mentioned this in their talk at Pandemonium. That shows, you know, that when the features that are being I don't have hard numbers I can put off right now, but the data is definitely there. Actually, a great example is Uber. Here's a concrete example. Uber added safety features in their product because women were feeling unsafe and this was particularly for, I believe, the riders female riders but that is a feature that drivers have used and that everybody has used. So women were the target of why this particular capability was built, but in actuality, it tended to be something that everyone used, and so there's a lot more data like this that indicates that when you take this kind of approach and take care of the needs of those who are likely not reserved, that it will benefit the overall market.
Lily Smith: 23:34
I can share some links after too, but Sasha's book is a great book that covers this as well is a great book that covers this as well, and you mentioned some other examples earlier as well of like how you sort of quantify the return on investment when you think about your products in this way of like building for everyone rather than, or kind of serving the larger population rather than kind of the minority, or your early adopters or whatever.
Glenn Block: 24:01
Yeah, well, the first thing I want to mention, which is really important, also something central in Sasha's book, is this concept of co-design. So how do you even identify, like, what are those places? What are the things that are important to the communities that are likely not going to be served? You actually have to engage with those communities, and going further is actually to involve people from those communities in the design process, because, as product people, we often go out and we gather data and then, based on that data, we're like, oh, I think I know what needs to get done, and often, even in doing this, you can be introducing your own biases. So what co-design does is actually empower people from those communities that you're trying to serve to say here's actually what we need. Now you're still the product person, but it is helping to shift some of that decision-making because it really is based on this idea of meeting the needs of a community that is not actually that you're not necessarily representative of.
Glenn Block: 25:09
So that's a first thing, like utilizing a co-design model. Once you've done that, one of the things you can do with metrics is actually say, hey, like once we've now put together our plan of things that we're going to put into the product, measuring that those things are actually getting used, and because of the fact that you've now known, based on the data that you've gathered, that these are things that specific communities have mentioned, so that you can then look at that data and then you can go out there, obviously, and talk to people. So I think testing is a key part of this, and testing you know all the way through like once the product actually has shipped or these things have shipped making sure that you're getting out there and getting the data from users and hopefully you build traction during your discovery process of finding a bunch of users that can be representative and that you can actually work with.
Randy Silver: 26:04
So that's one of the ways, I would say, and Glenn, you had a couple of really good examples. You had a really good example earlier about Uber, but before we turned on the microphone you talked about another one in finance.
Glenn Block: 26:18
Yes. So I think this one is great because, you know, product equity is much bigger than people think, and that's one of the things I've been trying to educate on. It even gets to assumptions about workflows and how products work that make lots of decisions that actually do restrict or reduce the ability for people to get benefits. So a great example is Cash App. So Cash App is an app for sending payments and we have lots of apps like PayPal and Venmo, et cetera, that do this.
Glenn Block: 26:53
But a lot of these payment providers, these payment apps, they make an assumption that you have a bank account and it turns out that the underbanked or the unbanked there's a fairly large, there's a large community of people that you know that don't use banks for a number of reasons either they can't or they don't want to, and these people were completely shut out from using services like PayPal because of the fact that they don't have those accounts.
Glenn Block: 27:20
So Cash App went out of their way to say we're going to do this, we're going to find a way to meet these communities, and they did. They came up with alternative ways to get money that didn't require you to have a bank account, that you could actually work with someone else's bank account. They just did a lot, and what this speaks to is about intentionality. They asked questions, they understood the needs and then came up with something that really addressed and lifted their market share. And I know for a fact there are so many people today, for example, that really love Cash App, and this is one of the reasons is because of that flexibility, so you could imagine this had huge impact to their business. I don't know the exact numbers, but I know that it was central to one of the things that they did as part of the app and enabled them to get a much bigger market share.
Lily Smith: 28:11
So you mentioned earlier one of the ways in which an organization works which does kind of consider product equity as this kind of like co-design sort of way of working and that like thinking about product equity kind of requires a bit of a mindset shift in order to you know, to really take on board that in your, in your product development process.
Lily Smith: 28:35
is there anything else that you've kind of like noticed in the organizations that you've worked with? You know, you said you you tend to work with businesses that already care about this stuff, so is there anything else that kind of really comes like stands out as a common thread between these different organizations and the way that they work or the way that they operate or their leadership or anything like that?
Glenn Block: 28:59
that is like a big sort of like oh yeah, these, these people are getting it well, yeah, I mean, and even when I say I'm talking about like who I want to work with, one, I think is you can look at the culture of those. Companies like these are companies that are working on trying to build a culture where people from any kind of background can be successful, and so they're already. I think there's a lot of empathy. I think these are organizations that have a lot of empathy and I think if you're not actually trying to build that kind of organization, it's actually going to be hard to build a product that has those kinds of values emblazoned within it. So I think there's that kind of talk the talk, walk the walk kind of thing is one aspect.
Glenn Block: 29:43
Curiosity, I think, is a big one. So another cautionary tale I'll mention is there was a soap dispenser that was, you know, several years ago. This was an automatic soap dispenser at Meta that didn't work for people with dark skin, and you know how did that happen. So I'll go back to the curiosity thing. I mean it's it's very clear that this is something that was manufactured, shipped, etc. That only worked. You know there's a whole segment of people that just weren't considered. But if early on from the envisioning stage, it had been called out, that you know we're going to to build this thing and we're going to make sure that it is going to meet the needs of all people, that shift, keeping those messages going. I think that is something that is prevalent in the organizations that are doing this well, that they're keeping that message alive of constantly challenging their assumptions and having a genuine desire to see people as human and want them to have a good outcome with my product. And then I'm not okay with, you know, large swaths of the human race not being able to have a great experience in my product, and so you know, some of this is hard to measure.
Glenn Block: 31:02
Of course, there are some great examples, and so I think the organizations that are doing it the best they're not like. They, they certainly want their business to benefit and they know that there's a business benefit there, but they're more driven by the humanistic aspect of like. We want to like, give the best experience to users, and we recognize that some of the decisions we're making may not actually result in that happening. And again, I think with AI it's even more scary because there's industries like healthcare there recently was. I'll give another great story recently there was Whisper.
Glenn Block: 31:43
Openai has this service called Whisper, which transcribes speech that it hears. It hears audio and it transcribes it. And healthcare companies were using this and they were using it for things like recording doctor meetings and transcribe what the doctor said. The data was scary. It was something like 50% of the time it was wrong. Imagine what hallucinations impact when you're talking about a doctor visit. That can be horrible. So I think there's some real harms that we're now seeing as a result of systems that are not being designed in a way that results in an equitable outcome. And the thing is it may not be like they intended it, but it doesn't matter. You're building a system and you're using services that are introducing things that could really cause harm introducing things that could really cause alarm.
Randy Silver: 32:44
Glenn, this has been fantastic. I think we've got time for one more question and you've just stated made a really clear case as to why this is so important. But one of the things I've learned over the past few years of consulting is I can't change an organization.
Glenn Block: 32:58
I can facilitate change.
Randy Silver: 33:00
I can help them change, but it's got to be something that the organization has already made the decision. There's got to be people with authority and that doesn't mean that they're the top people in the company but their authority to push things through and help sway and do things and I can facilitate and enable that change. What can people do if they're in an organization where they think there's a real opportunity here? We can do a lot more around product equity, around accessibility, around all these types of things that we all believe or at least those of us on this podcast today all believe are the right thing to do, but it's not always something an organization considers the most expedient.
Glenn Block: 33:48
Yes, and you're absolutely right that even my role, I can't change a company. All I can do is advise, guide. Maybe I can help convince in some cases or convince that there's things maybe they're missing, that they should be seeing. I think every person who builds a product has an ability to cause change here, and it starts with just one getting educated. There's definitely lots of resources out there. I have some on my website. Adobe has some great resources on product equity. We'll share some links. So I think getting educated is one Asking questions.
Glenn Block: 34:19
We all have the power to ask questions and often when I'm working with organizations, I don't like to come in on a top down thing, like I really want to work with like one team and because if we can show successes, then that's going to expand on its own, because others are going to see, you know, having those bright spots in the organization that can then be examples for others. So, yeah, I think it starts with curiosity. Honestly, I believe if a lot of product folks across the board whether it's engineering, ux just pause to think more about this, we'd make different decisions Like that soap dispenser would have never happened. That wasn't like rocket science, right. I mean it's almost seriously. I mean it's like if a few people might have asked different questions and maybe some did, and they were quieted, which is another problem. But so I can't stop that right. There are leaders that are not going to want to hear this, and that's just the reality. But I think there are other leaders that will be open to it, and often it's just we're moving so fast that taking that time to just slow down and ask some questions, and if you are educated, like if you're coming with real knowledge so it's not just like you're just trying to stir the pot, so to speak I think you can absolutely have a big impact.
Glenn Block: 35:40
And as product leaders, you know you have a lot of decision-making capability. Like you are driving, like here's the product we're building, so you have the ability to say, hey, wait a minute. Like, can we do this slightly different? Are we possibly missing an opportunity here? So I think that we have a lot of power actually to do that, because we get a lot of. You know, there's a lot of organizations where product people have a huge amount of autonomy, and so you obviously have a line. You're constantly walking and this is not going to be perfect. But what I try to educate organizations is. I believe that anything you do to try to make it better is going to be better than doing nothing, and if you don't try, you never know.
Randy Silver: 36:25
Who knew that writing good acceptance criteria was so important? It's the little things, Glenn. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Glenn Block: 36:35
Thank you, it was a really great conversation.
Lily Smith: 36:38
Thanks, Glenn. The Product Experience hosts are me, Lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day.
Randy Silver: 36:56
And me Randy Silver also host by night, and I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work.
Lily Smith: 37:05
Luran Pratt is our producer and Luke Smith is our editor.
Randy Silver: 37:10
And our theme music is from product community legend Arnie Kittler's band Pow. Thanks to them for letting us use their track you.
