Janna Bastow is a former product manager, and currently the CEO and co-founder of ProdPad. She also co-founded Mind the Product, a community for PMs, which has grown to 300,000 members across the world. In today’s podcast, Janna discusses the limitations of timeline-based Gantt charts and her “Now/Next/Later” framework. She also shares stories about hosting conferences and gives some great tips on how to improve your presentation skills and cope with performance anxiety.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/buildin...

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Where to find Janna Bastow:

• Twitter:   / simplybastow  
• LinkedIn:   / jannabastow  
• The ProdPad newsletter: https://www.prodpad.com/newsletter/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter:   / lennysan  
• LinkedIn:   / lennyrachitsky  

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Formsort: https://formsort.com/lenny
• Coda: http://coda.io/lenny
• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

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Referenced:

• Mind the Product: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/
• The Trouble with Traditional Roadmaps: https://www.prodpad.com/resources/gui...
• ProdPad’s Sandbox: https://www.prodpad.com/sandbox/
• Geoffrey Moore’s product vision template: https://www.prodpad.com/blog/product-...
• The Art of Profitability: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Profitabil...
• The Sandman on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81150303
• Startups for the Rest of Us podcast: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
• Christina Wodtke on Twitter:   / cwodtke  

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Janna’s background
(05:28) How the community evolved at Mind the Product
(08:22) The tricky logistics of putting together a conference
(10:48) Are conferences profitable?
(13:00) How Janna developed her storytelling and presentation skills
(16:44) How to fight performance anxiety
(19:25) Mistakes are humanizing—how to power through and deliver your presentation
(22:11) The limitations of traditional timeline roadmaps
(25:00) Janna’s Now/Next/Later framework
(28:08) How to work without the structure of dated timelines, and why soft launches are important
(32:57) What great product teams are doing well
(35:05) The importance of retrospectives
(36:45) How to shift the culture at larger companies
(39:43) How ProdPad creates better product management practices
(42:04) How to learn the Now/Next/Later framework
(46:59) Geoffrey Moore’s product vision template
(48:36) Lessons for PMs interested in becoming founders
(50:48) Lightning round

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