Great way to distill the things you learn at a conference and share them with your colleagues - write and deliver a short summary of key points and take aways. Kevin Davis does a great job of identifying some of the big issues and actions that Business of Software Conference 2013 threw up for Yammer.

1. Trip Report
OCT 2013, KEVIN DAVIS

2. Topics
Culture, Culture, Culture
Jobs to be done
Hiring badasses
Support as a secret weapon
Developers, entrepreneurs and depression (video)

3. Culture, Culture, Culture
“Culture is the OS of business”
Culture exists beyond the team – alumni, no-hire interview candidates
Culture : Recruiting :: Product : Marketing
Be intentional – culture debt incredibly hard to pay down
Don’t build scar tissue by punishing many for the mistakes of a few
Things we can start doing today:
Measure employee happiness. Frequent, lightweight surveys (every 90d @hubspot)
Write down what we care about in a durable fashion

4. Jobs to be done
Bob and Chris led my friend Tyler through an exercise,
providing insight into his thinking when recently buying a car
There is a well-worn path people take when choosing products
(see the following slides borrowed from their talk)
Talk to people about what they’ve done rather than asking them to speculate.
Things we can start doing today:
Think through what jobs people are hiring Yammer to do: which do we want to encourage?
How can Yammer better speak to the struggling moments people are having?
Interview our incoming / outgoing customers – why are they choosing us? why aren’t they?

5. #JTBD Forces Of Progress
Struggling
Moment
Business
as Usual
New
Behavior
Two Forces Promote a New Choice
Push of the Situation
Habit of the Present
The tug of historical allegiances
Jane Doe
Problem solving – Make it better
Pull of New Solution
Attraction of relevant news
Anxiety of the New Solution
Uncertainty surrounding a new choice
Two Forces Block Change
via Bob Moesta, Chris Spiek of The Re-Wired Group
Concept
Of New Way

6. #JTBD Timeline
First Thought
Passive
Looking
Event #1
Event #2
“Finished”
Or Experienced
Buying
Active
Looking
Or
Deciding
Consuming
via Bob Moesta, Chris Spiek of The Re-Wired Group
Satisfaction

7. Hiring badasses
Things we can start doing today:
Fill our recruiting funnel
- great job descriptions for specific jobs, clickbait titles
- increase prominence - blogs, events, open source etc.
- recruiting is lead-generation, not sales
Do a better job closing candidates
- get verbal agreement
- role play them getting a counter-offer
Disclaimer: Mikey is a friend of mine. A badass friend of mine.

8. Support is a secret weapon
Expectations for product and customer experience are higher than ever
Customers can be a multiplier of our efforts positive or negative.
Their interactions with support can make the difference.
Support is part of our product
Things we can start doing today:
Leverage our CSMs – have a formal channel for surfacing issues
• They’ll be more effective, knowing they’re having a bigger impact on product
• Being closest to the customer, they’re most likely to have the insight that really opens
up new opportunities
Dedicate resources to knocking out customer-found bugs eg. 3x in a week = fix

9. Developers, entrepreneurs
and depression
Greg Bauges gave an incredibly powerful talk about mental illness, a
very real and important issue in our industry and beyond.
Please take the time to watch this.
Video (30min)

10. Awesome shit to check out
Netflix culture code
CultureCode.com // Hubspot culture deck
Lominger cards // what super powers are you hiring for?
Mr. Selfridge // British period piece (surprise) on innovation in department stores..
Predictably irrational // book on consumer + product psychology
Jobs to be done radio // podcast
Product strategy is about saying no // incredible lightning talk by Des Traynor (7min)