Thomas Ridings’ unique professional journey has proven to be a key piece in his success within the product industry. His current title is Product Director for Intent HQ.
Ridings’ Journey
Ridings, a graduate of the University of Warwick, has always had a special connection to entrepreneurship.
“I’ve always been quite entrepreneurial,” Ridings said. “I’ve always wanted to do my own thing. So, I did what every entrepreneur does and I went and got a job with IBM.“
Right out of university, as a “bright-eyed boy,” Ridings began his entrepreneurial journey with IBM.
He said his experience working at IBM helped him learn the ropes of big business, but the environment was too slow for him, and he often found this frustrating.
Ridings began pursuing consultancy jobs which he ultimately didn’t stick with. Instead, Ridings and his old coworkers from IBM launched a start-up company.
“Three of us got together and we raised some money from private investors and got accepted on to an accelerator here in the UK,” Ridings said. “I learned so much from that experience. Ultimately, arrogance got the better of us and the business model wasn’t there for the company. It was a really tough position, but I decided to leave.”
Ridings expressed how difficult it was to be an integral part of a start-up company.
“That 12-18 month period when I was doing the start-up was tough. Mentally, it was stressful, it was tiring, and you were working all hours. It was like your heart and soul — everything was exposed for the world to see”, said Ridings. “I put my life and soul into that.”
Although he didn’t continue on with the start-up company, his experience led him to enter the product space where he did freelancing that specifically focused on metrics driven marketing.
Breaking into the Product Space
After his experience freelancing with small businesses, he landed a job at Intent HQ.
“I got a job with Intent, who really talked to me on a number of levels that product proposition really resonated: big companies, lots of data, and how you use that to improve your marketing,” Ridings said.
Ridings started as an Account Manager with Intent HQ but was eventually promoted to Product Director.
“The company didn’t have a history of being a product company and was in this limbo state — I knew that the job [Product Director] meant I had to make them a product company,” Ridings said.
What key elements make a good product manager?
A good product team is made up of good product managers.
Ridings believes that it is a misnomer that all product ideas have to come from a product manager themself. It can come from the CEO, engineers, or even customers.
“A product management team is not about having the right answer — it never is,” Ridings said. “I don’t expect my product managers to have this epiphany moment and build the best feature in the world.”
He thinks this is a risky process, and instead suggests that a good product manager has the ability to “put ideas through a rigorous process.”
He also believes that a good product manager should be collaborative. Recognizing that “collaborative” is somewhat of a buzz word nowadays, he still stresses the importance of it.
Ridings said, “They’ve [product managers] got to have a natural ability to get people on board with them. They’ve got to be able to sell a vision. They’ve got to be able to sell a story. They’ve got to be able to bring those people on a journey.”
Two key elements that make a good product manager:
- Has a tenacity to find the “truth” of a problem
- Has the ability to sell a vision and get people on board
What are the biggest challenges you face in the product space?
Surprisingly, Ridings talked about how emotional certain aspects of his job have been.
After being promoted to Product Director, he found that the most difficult part of his job was inheriting the CEO’s vision of the product.
The CEO of a company is the original head of product: they are the creator of the idea, so things can be intense and emotional when addressing problem areas of a product.
Ridings said that the CEO of Intent HQ was “emotionally attached to various parts of it [the product].” Ridings wanted to reflect the CEO’s vision with care and understand which aspects of the product were and were not negotiable.
“Inheriting that product vision from him and being able to stand on his shoulders and put out a refreshed vision for the company was super, super tough,” Ridings said.
For Ridings, learning that emotions can run high was an important aspect of the industry to learn.
Ridings’ Fundamental Product Process
There’s lots of great feature ideas out there but you need a product process that delivers outcomes. Finding the real problem to solve is the hardest part of the job. Once you’re clear on the problem you can test and validate that what you’re building solves it; more importantly what’s the simplest way to solve it.
Ridings works in a B2B space and has found the book User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton to be a valuable resource in his personal product process.
It focuses less on features of products and delves further into general product logistics, problems to be solved, and how to unify a team behind selling a product.
Additionally, like many businesses, Ridings suggests implementing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)..
“Lean value trees for me are really a useful way to think about OKRs and to structure them,” Ridings said.
Communication is another key skill to implement in the product process.
Ridings said, “Anything that aids you in communication is super useful.” He cites his love of using a 2 x 2 grid to organize and visualize information.
Advice?
Help a person get to the answer themselves, rather than simply giving them the answer.
Ridings said that, “the process of somebody getting to the answer is as valuable, if not more valuable than the answer itself.”
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What is Metrics Driven Marketing?
Metrics driven marketing, according to start-upmarketing.com, “is the marketing process that applies detailed metrics to every facet of marketing.”
Ridings identified in his interview that it’s crucial to measure the impact your product process is having. In a marketing domain you’re often looking at the funnel metrics and can pinpoint your product features to tangible outcomes for the business.
Metrics driven marketing process includes:
- Acquisition
- Costs to funnel conversion numbers
- Landing page optimization
- Releasing and updating product features to maximize value
