Strategy + Leadership

Strategy + Leadership

With guest speakers:

Tom Prior & Aleksandra Melnikova

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Event description:
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In this exciting meetup we learn about how to navigate the murky waters of product strategy using Strategy maps to guide us on our journey to the treasures that lie below the surface! 🗺️ 🏴‍☠️ 💎

We'll also be delving into the hot topic of leadership - using real world examples and tangible lessons, this is not a talk to be missed! 🤜🏼💥🤛🏼

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Event Format:
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This is a hybrid event, offering the option to come along in person or join us from anywhere online!

For online, register here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkdOmsrzovE935WYGrscHUFu_tmwbbZsal

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Our speakers:
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Tom Prior

Digital Product Designer & Design Strategist (Independent)

Tom is an independent Digital Product Designer and Design Strategist. He's spent over 15 years working for organisations you've never heard of (like Cannes Lions and EMAP Group), and a handful you probably have (like Virgin Holidays, Specsavers, and Save The Children).

Through a decade of design leadership he has grown design teams both agency-side and in-house, and has a passion for making improving the strategy and business confidence of product teams.

A keen supporter of the grassroots design community, Tom is a design mentor, co-organiser of the UK’s largest UX Barcamp, and regular contributor to the UX Brighton community. In 2020 he started Designers in Business, a newsletter and interview series aimed at helping fellow designers build their business confidence.

About the talk:

Uncovering Product Treasure with Strategy Maps

Product strategy can be an intimidating terrain to navigate.

Vague strategy statements can leave us directionless. Blindly following competitors can lead us up mountains we’ll never conquer. Poorly defined success metrics make it tricky to know if we’ve successfully reached our destination.

Let’s better equip our teams to set off on their product strategy journey. In this talk we’ll explore…

• Tools to make strategic decision-making more practical, creating maps that highlight opportunities for strategic product investment
• Simple ways to define metrics that can support the business case for investment in mapped product ideas

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Aleksandra Melnikova

Inclusive Research & Service Designer (Cosmic Velocity)

Aleks is an Inclusive Research & Service Designer on a mission to make a positive difference to the world.

Over the past 15 years she has led design teams across London-based UX/product design agencies such as ORM, Foolproof, BIO, Radley Yeldar, Publicis Poke and Inviqa, delivering successful products and services for a variety of clients in travel, finance, real estate, and healthcare, as well as internal audiences.

Recently Aleks has co-founded service design agenc Cosmic Velocity. They help companies create innovative products and services in a sustainable way with a meaningful impact.

Working with a range of clients from startups to larger businesses, they also partner with design agencies to co-deliver great work. Their forte is Inclusive Research, UX and Service Design.

About the talk:

Leadership as an ever-evolving service

In this talk, Aleks will tell a story of creating the futures of people, together with people. It will heavily feature one brilliant team, and a multitude of tangible team evolution examples centred around four aspects of leadership she believes in: listening, co-creation, pro-active inclusion and sustainability. Spoiler: it might end with a holacratic team model, where the leader renders themselves redundant, and therefore free to design the next thing.

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Our November Event is proudly sponsored by Askable!

Askable is for the legends who test, it enables you to ask real people the right questions. Access thousands of participants from all walks of life, ready to share their thoughts and ideas. Improve your products, services, early concepts and prototypes without assuming what your audience wants because you don't need to assume when you get direct access to them with Askable.

Find out more at askable.com

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About your hosts:

Product Unleashed is brought to you by your hosts John Griffin and Dominic Port.

The duo have worked on the design of products across all shapes and sizes, and bring their energy and enthusiasm to this unique meetup, packed with great guests and knowledge - for anyone interested in levelling up their game in the world of products.