Valentin Menard - Il est temps d’en finir avec le culte de l’utilisateur !

[00:00:03] I'm delighted to present this topic: it's time to put an end to the cult of the user, with a somewhat controversial title, expressly designed to try to bring other arguments to what we regularly hear and also to create questions with the time we have left. So, before diving into the heart of the matter, to introduce myself quickly, my name is Valentin Ménard. I've been working in product for almost 10 years in very diverse structures. I started by setting up a company, so we were four or five, where I took care of coding, design, and then, from what I learned, from what I understood later, another part called product management. And then I joined Blablacar, which was one of the most reputable companies for how they do product management, and I was able to learn from great mentors. So if you're from the product community, you might know Rémy Guyot, Martin Budge. And I was on very design-focused projects. So I revamped Blablacar's design system, or started thinking about a potential bus experience, the famous BlablaBus. And then, I followed my former manager to a company called Clustree, so nothing to do with what I was doing before. 60 people versus 600 at Blablacar. And at Clustree, it was a solution to allow large companies to do transverse mobility. So it was internal mobility, but not only, I'm a junior product manager and I want to become senior. And so for that, it was one third of the team were data scientists, who had to match the skills of people on one side and what was necessary in relation to the offers on the other. And finally, I changed context to go to ManoMano, where there are 1000 people, and a context we call very business, in the sense that the business decision-making poles, so sales, marketing, have quite a strong importance. And we look at our business metrics every day, every week, and that leads to re-evaluating our priorities on quite short cycles. So my goal was to see companies of very different sizes, at quite different stages of advancement, and different core businesses too. Well, that's a lot of different. But on one hand, we often describe the product management profession as the intersection of design, business, tech,
[00:02:27] and data science more and more. And so this was an opportunity to explore these four dimensions. And despite these really different experiences and in companies that had very mature ways of thinking about product, there was still a question that came up: what is product management? And it was something super complicated to really put your finger on. To the point that at one moment, there were quite important changes in ManoMano's organization. and that started to create friction between the business and product teams about what the role of product should be. Which led me to go on a kind of quest, and it lasted more than a year and a half. I met more than 70 people, internally and externally, both product and business side, roughly balanced 35-35. And the conclusion in the end was an alignment of the whole company, at all levels, right up to the CEO, on what the role of Product Management should be. And it wasn't a romantic view of the product, in the sense that it wasn't the product that defined its own role. It was, we take this whole ecosystem, how do you see the role of product and how does it align with it? Because the risk was to create a new framework where only product people adhere, and everyone else is like, "Well, you're cute, but we don't see things that way." And within this whole conclusion, which was notably transformed into an article, the Pulse framework for those who saw it, there were in the intro the five myths of product management. And those were the conceptions, the beliefs that many of us had about what product management should be, but with hindsight, we realized that it was exactly what was getting us into trouble and preventing us from having an impact within the company. And one of the myths was User First, that the PM must be User First. And after the publication of these articles, I was approached by Tiga, who was interested in this one in particular, to make a spin-off and try to unravel what this myth of the User First PM means. So this is the continuation of that reflection.
[00:04:45] And to start, it's worth saying, what is User First? It's something I think we often hear, implicitly we know what it means, but a full definition, it's not so obvious to find. And so, Product Borg, I find, summarizes well what I implicitly understood, which was: create happy customers and keep them satisfied, is the main objective of the product team and the company. Customer-centric organizations must therefore prioritize satisfaction and customer value over profit, and being customer-focused allows for creating a loyal fan base, which ultimately leads to long-term success. And what we're going to see, throughout this presentation, is already, why is the role of the user, the place we give them in tech companies, so important? Because of course, every company must pay attention to its users, but why do we talk about it so much in tech companies? And then, it's to look a bit at the three naiveties, in my opinion, that are hidden in this definition and that prevent us, product managers, or on a larger scale, other product people who would think this way, from truly having an impact for our company. So we're off.
[00:06:03] At the origin of this cult of the user. Why in digital do we give so much importance to user experience? The first reason for me is economies of scale. We are in an industry where economies of scale are tenfold compared to any other industry. Which means that by making a super experience, we will be able to attract more people and distribute the costs of this experience over more people. To the point that we can afford to have a Spotify that gives you all the music in the world and is able to recommend the music you need or that you will like, depending on the context, in a totally personalized way. And that for 10 euros a month. And if we compare with a more classic industry, it's as if a restaurant said, okay, I'm going to try to make a Michelin-starred dish for less than five people, for less than 5 euros, because I'm going to manage to attract thousands and thousands of customers. And in fact, in an industry like food, just the cost of ingredients makes it impossible not to do, to make a Michelin-starred menu for less than 5 euros. Whereas in the world of tech, the costs of servers, of design, when we're going to look for millions, millions of users, it's something it becomes. Hence an extremely strong importance on user experience to create this virtuous circle that allows for a better and better experience at lower and lower costs.
[00:07:33] The second point is that it's very easy, or at least it's easier than in other industries, to switch to the competitor. And we are often in what is called the economy of comfort. So, it's enough for a competitor to do a little better, it's a little simpler, and he can capture a large part of the market. There are few barriers to entry.
[00:07:53] And an example that I find quite striking is Apple Pay. Apple Pay allows you to pay, well, you all know what Apple Pay is, but it allows you to pay globally, saving a few seconds with each payment.
[00:08:05] And today, just this incremental simplification innovation has allowed them to dethrone Mastercard in the number of transactions they make in the world. Visa is still ahead, but given Apple Pay's progression, they can still catch up. All this for a small simplification. So it shows again why it's so important to focus on user experience. There are few barriers to entry, so if we're one step ahead, we can capture a large share of the market.
[00:08:36] The third point is that one of the barriers to entry, one of the only remaining ones, is data. It's the volume of usage of our users. What makes Spotify today ahead of Deezer from a purely product point of view, anyway. It's their ability to recommend music, to personalize it, to make us discover new songs. And how do they do it? It's because they have millions of users who allow them to make connections between music associations that people like. Same for Blablacar. What makes it the world's number one carpooling today is because there are so many people that you have a much better chance of finding the trip that suits you on Blablacar than on another carpooling site. And to dethrone them by starting now, good luck.
[00:09:24] Again, creating a super user experience allows you to bring in more people, and the very fact of having more people creates a barrier to entry with competitors. And one of the few.
[00:09:38] And finally, the role in acquisition. Often when we talk about marketing, I don't know if you remember the 4 Ps, which include product, there's also place, distribution. And the digital product has an impact on word-of-mouth that is much stronger than in other industries. Again, if we take a restaurant, I can recommend a restaurant to a friend, but for him to actually go, it needs to be the day he wants to eat at a restaurant, it needs to be the type of food he wants to eat, it needs to be in the neighborhood he wants to go to, roughly within the budget, that there's availability, etc. There are many conditions. On the other hand, if I liked a digital product, I recommend it to a friend in two clicks and 5 minutes, he can himself be a user of this service.
[00:10:21] So the product has a role not only in the product as there could be in any product in other industries, but a disproportionate role in acquisition. Well, not disproportionate, but at least magnified compared to other industries.
[00:10:36] But now that we've said that, in this definition of User First, for me, there are still three myths. The first is that when we say User First, and therefore mainly focus on the user, there's this implication that the user is the ultimate goal of the company. We'll delve into that. Then we'll delve into the aspect of focusing primarily on the user, which is the core of our concerns, is necessarily the best strategy. And the third, which is a bit more implicit, is that it's the path of ethics. It's on the good side of the force to put all your efforts on the user side. And after that we'll see, okay, now that we've said that, what's next? Because the goal is not at all to bring something cynical. So the first illusion is that the objective of a company is to serve its users. That this is its absolute priority.
[00:11:30] And the ways we hear it, it's often from companies that will say, "Here, the vision we're trying to create, that's really the ultimate goal of what we do. And money is just a means to get there." Or, for those who come from the product world, Teresa Torres, who is one of the great influencers of product, she formulates it by saying, "Okay, how do you create value for users in a way that works for the company?" So we still see the priority is the user, and it has to work for the company.
[00:12:10] But when we look at the very definition of a company, so when we go back to the status of a company, so here from the BPI France website: a for-profit company is a company whose main objective is to generate profit.
[00:12:25] And today, if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company and you tell shareholders, "Well, what we're going to do is, we're going to lower dividends, we're going to lower the profits we generate to bring more value to users." And it's not in a long-term logic, it's not to capture the market and then you get more. But just because from a philosophical point of view, or in fact we think that our main objective is to serve the users, in fact, from a legal point of view, shareholders can remove you.
[00:12:56] And a tech company is a company.
[00:13:00] Why do I say that? I have the impression that there is a kind of irrationality in the way we approach tech companies and their monetization. When I go to a bar and they tell me I have to consume to be able to stay, it doesn't shock me. I tell myself, well, yes, otherwise they'll go bankrupt, the poor things.
[00:13:19] However, when I'm on YouTube and I'm watching a video and in the middle they put an ad, it annoys me. If they don't put ads but they put a pop-up to ask me if I want to subscribe to YouTube Premium, it annoys me too. And if I learn that they sell my data to make money, it annoys me even more. But it's a company, it has to make money, and at some point, it will inevitably create friction with what I want.
[00:13:50] And a tech company is even more of a company when we look at this profit priority, it's that tech companies are the pinnacle of capitalism. When we look at a company that starts in tech, very quickly it calls on financial professionals, and after two or three years, it may have already done two or three fundraising rounds and no longer be the majority shareholder of its capital. Which means that its quest for revenue, whether short or long term, because we talk about going to get more users, but because it's in a quest, of course, to monetize it at some point. But this quest for profit is multiplied by companies like these, compared to somewhat more family-like companies that may have less demanding investors. Because if we go back to this profit requirement, we have to say that the financial players behind tech companies are investment funds that have extremely high return expectations. If you look at the last few years, VCs return to their shareholders, well, not to shareholders, but to people who give them money, between 12 and 14%. Which are the highest returns. Real estate is more around 7-8%. So to believe that the tech universe detaches itself from all this capitalist logic and can focus more on the user as the main objective.
[00:15:14] So to summarize, from a purely objective point of view, the user for a company is less important than profits. And we often put the two, we often put the user as more important, or both on the same in the same sentence as if they were at the same level. But as we've just seen, from a purely definitional point of view, profits are the raison d'être of a company. And a final example, I find quite telling, is pricing strategies. Because with pricing strategies, for once, there's no bullshit. And how do we define a pricing strategy? We look at the maximum price a person is willing to pay for their service before going to the competition. So concretely, we're not trying to maximize the user's value that works for the company, we're trying to maximize the value for the company that works for the users.
[00:16:09] So obviously, we're looking for the best of both worlds and creating features, going in the direction where it always serves both the user and the company's business. However, keep in mind that by the very construction of a company, business is above the user.
[00:16:30] Note your questions if you have any. The second illusion is that, okay, the objective of a company is to make money. However, using the user as a spearhead and as a primary strategy is necessarily what works best. taking the user as a spearhead and as the primary strategy is necessarily what works best.
[00:16:55] So what we're going to do is start a bit from the precepts of this User First strategy and for each of these big precepts, take a flagship tech company that works wonderfully and that we often take as an example of user-centricity, but which nevertheless did not at all apply these principles to get there.
[00:17:15] So typically, if I'm a User First company, I'll be told that you have to start from the customer's need. And we can see it with the Opportunity Tree for those who are familiar with Teresa Torres, where your first step is to map all the user needs and then progressively arrive at the solutions. And after that, see what is the best business-user value ratio for you. But basically, we start from the user's need.
[00:17:45] If I take the example of YouTube,
[00:17:50] I don't see a single user in an interview saying, "What I'd like is for you to present me with products in the middle of my videos because I don't know what to buy, and I'd like you to recommend things to me."
[00:18:04] And the mission, and it's not the core of YouTube's mission. If YouTube had said, "Our core mission is to allow people to discover new services, by using users to watch funny things and right in the middle, we show them products that are interesting for them." No, that's not the core of their mission. The core of their mission is to show you content that will interest you, that will inspire you, that will entertain you. And if we continue the core of this mission, at no point will a user say, "I want to be cut off for an ad." And yet, if we look at the giants of the tech industry, most of them rely on advertising. So most would go against the primary principle of User First. If we take another example like Netflix, Netflix, we would say, well, User First. The main need of a user is to watch the movies they most want to see. Netflix, when they made their offer at 10 euros a month, I don't know how much it was at the time, for it to be profitable, they had to show movies that cost them as little as possible. So they would do a lot of advertising for the very sexy movies. But when you got to the interface, to find those movies, you really had to type them in manually. The movies you would stumble upon were the ones that cost them almost nothing in the catalog. And today Netflix is one of the biggest successes that we will always cite as User First. By the way, that's a good question, because when I say we'll always cite it as User First, I'd be curious for someone to say, at the end, a company that for them is User First.
[00:19:33] The second is: prioritize the biggest user pain points. That is, okay, now I have the pain points.
[00:19:39] So to decide which feature to launch, I'm going to look at what creates the most friction for my users. And by creating value for them, at some point, I'll be able to capture a part of it and that will make for crazy monetization. If we look at Amazon and its strategy for launching new countries. One could say India. India is a country where getting delivered is not that obvious. There are a billion people, so if we multiply the friction by the number of people, it would still come in the top countries. Yet when you look at Amazon, they're not yet in India, or if they are, it's very little, it's a competitor who took over, Flipkart, they had left the market so empty. They started with the most developed countries like the United States, like Europe. And it's not because the need was the user need was greater. It's just that from a monetization point of view, there was much more purchasing power in those countries and a much greater monetization capacity.
[00:20:45] And if I take an example at our scale at ManoMano, we launched the whole service to show complementary products when you are looking at a product.
[00:20:58] And that is a user need. However, it wasn't the biggest one. The reason we went there is because to monetize our traffic that we pay for from Google Shopping, it was the most effective opportunity to get there. the need was the user need was bigger. It's just that from a monetization point of view, there was a lot more purchasing power in these countries, and a much greater monetization capacity.
[00:20:44] And if I take an example at our level at ManoMano, we launched the whole service to show complementary products when you are looking at a product. And it's a it's a user need. However, it wasn't the biggest. The reason we went there was because to monetize our traffic that we pay for from Google Shopping, it was the most effective opportunity to get there.
[00:21:17] The third myth in this user-first strategy is that if we manage to create usage, at some point, monetization will follow.
[00:21:29] And I really like the experience the Spotify versus SoundCloud comparison. Because SoundCloud, it's a service that is very popular. People loved SoundCloud. They loved it so much that even in the free version, they loved it. Whereas Spotify, I don't know if you've tried the free version, but it's hard to last long on the free version. We have ads, we can't choose the songs of the artist we want. So at some point, if we really want to listen to music, we have to switch to paid. SoundCloud, I spent years staying on the free version. And today, well, SoundCloud, they're going bankrupt. Well, it's not very funny, but But well, they're doing less well, anyway. And if the user makes use of it, monetization will follow. Of course, this is a caricature, but do you know many unicorns for the homeless? However, they do have needs. We could find needs that they use. But at some point, monetization has to follow.
[00:22:30] And the last point, a little more implicit, is that the success of a tech company will come from its product innovation. It's by truly understanding the user, by going to the heart of their needs, that we'll be able to offer them a solution that will be so good that it will actually disrupt the market and we'll win the whole market. If we take the example of Microsoft, Steve Jobs already in the 90s in an interview said Microsoft had a stroke of genius, they launched a first innovation and then everything they did was to innovate the market with it and they created a quasi-monopoly position in distribution. And today, when an innovation is made somewhere, they've always seen it coming. Today Slack is bought by Microsoft and without Microsoft, they wouldn't be able to have the reach they have at all. So to say that the user-first strategy in product innovation is the best strategy, not necessarily. Go tell that to Microsoft, they're doing very well. Today, those who are at the head of OpenAI, it's one of the rare large tech companies that didn't innovate by themselves in artificial intelligence, and that doesn't prevent them from positioning themselves as leaders thanks to this acquisition.
[00:23:38] And then before moving on to the ethical aspect, I have a question: why do we believe that then? Because I see it makes some people smile, and even when I presented it, I thought there were quite a lot of evidence.
[00:23:49] I think if we believe so strongly in the discourse of the user is the ultimate goal, the user is the best strategy. For me, there are three reasons.
[00:23:59] The first is the discourse we hear in the product community. So for those who are part of the product. We will focus much more on how an entrepreneur succeeded in creating value for the user than how he managed to monetize it. Typically, if we look at Uber, I think a lot of people know the myth of he was in Paris, the plate takes a taxi, it was an atrocious experience and hey, we absolutely must revolutionize this industry. We know that. On the other hand, the part where he subsidized all taxi prices at a loss to stifle competition and then raise his prices higher than the entire market, because he could afford it, because now people were used to his standard. We hear much less about that. However, shareholders, it's mostly that part they liked.
[00:24:48] The other things are managerial discourse and marketing discourse. Because well, if you're the CEO of a company, saying "our goal is to revolutionize the world" is a bit more engaging than saying "well, our goal is to make money for our shareholders." And same for marketing discourse. When you're a user, you want to be told "everything we do is for you." And so you'll have an incredible quality-price ratio. And Apple, Apple always understood user-first as an example, by essence. Apple, they were still caught for planned obsolescence.
[00:25:21] So globally, I don't know if you remember, they had done a phone update and once that update was done, the battery, poof, it dropped. If we were below a certain OS.
[00:25:33] So, it caused such a scandal that for a while, we could buy batteries almost for free and they'd install them for us, or it was 30 euros.
[00:25:42] But if at their very core, they were user-centric, if their priority was the user, They would never do that.
[00:25:52] It's a discourse. Sometimes it serves you to conquer the market, but sometimes it doesn't serve you anymore.
[00:26:06] And so, well, it's something I often see in product or design, but to believe that a company that doesn't put user satisfaction first in its strategy, that it's doomed to failure, to believe that it's doomed to failure is a false idea. There are plenty of companies that manage without it, and they manage very, very well. And I'd like to make an analogy with personal life.
[00:26:31] Because it makes me think a bit of the discourse of follow your passions and you'll see, don't worry, it will end up allowing you to earn a living. Which is a discourse we hear a lot right now.
[00:26:46] Imagine your child tells you, "I want to be a pole vaulter," and "I don't want to be a pole vault teacher, I want to be a world champion." I mean, I really want to be a high-level pole vaulter. There are maybe three or four people who live from this sport in the whole world.
[00:27:04] Honestly, what are you going to tell him?
[00:27:09] And frankly, it's a strategy that I find very beautiful, very risky, and in the most inspiring examples we have in the world, these are people who dared to do that. They said, "Actually, I don't care. At worst, I'll have fun, but it's the thing that drives me." And there are people who have that, and it's magnificent. But for all that, it's not adapted to everyone. And this level of risk is not adapted to all situations either. If you are a father or mother of a family, you have children, yes. Uh, you have a loan on your house. In fact, if you go into it, You have to go for it.
[00:27:49] Yeah? And when we're told, well, focus fully on the user and we'll see about monetization. That you have employees, that you have shareholders. And above all, the more you go up in investment levels, the more the shareholders who come have expectations of stable income. Today, you're on the stock market, people will want 7, 8%. That would already be super good. That would be great. And if you tell them, "No, no, actually, we're going to totally follow a path and whatever happens, and maybe we'll make 50%," they'll say, "No, no, but wait, what I'm looking for is 3, 4%..." No, no, but wait, what I'm aiming for is 3-4%. Don't go off into your complete unknown.
[00:28:32] So yeah, it's a strategy.
[00:28:34] There are people who are called to it, and who can afford it also because of the pressures they have, but it's not the only strategy that works.
[00:28:46] And the third point, a little more implicit, and you may recognize yourself in the following sentence, or recognize some discourse, is that User First is synonymous with ethics.
[00:28:56] And the belief is our work has meaning when we do everything to serve our users. And when we start going in other directions, we feel like we're making compromises. Ah well, that doesn't satisfy me as much anymore.
[00:29:12] The thing is that the company is a balance between a lot of actors. There are employees, there are suppliers, there is general management, there are users, there are shareholders. And so as soon as we clearly display that we put the user above all else, it's always to the detriment of others. And I propose we look at some examples.
[00:29:36] Mass distribution, which communicates enormously on we're going to have the lowest prices because you, customers, deserve them. As a customer, it's great to have lower prices.
[00:29:49] But we all see the consequences it has for farmers, for their way of life. It's dramatic. And is it, is it ethical to do that? I'm not sure.
[00:30:02] Amazon, it's great to be able to get your package delivered for free in less than 24 hours.
[00:30:09] Obviously, I love it.
[00:30:12] But then we see all the consequences it has for employees. We, in France, maybe a little less because we are more protected in the contract, in the work contract. But in many countries, there are employee strikes complaining about salaries, about the pressure conditions they are subjected to so that the pace goes fast and to be able to deliver at that level. Is that good again?
[00:30:35] I don't know.
[00:30:40] The return policies.
[00:30:43] Okay, thank you. The return policies. Uh, I was going to do a triathlon. I went to Decathlon and I wasn't sure about my size. But they didn't have the other size. So I ask them, "Okay, my triathlon is tomorrow, but the wetsuit is a bit expensive, so if the wetsuit turns out to be too small, can I come back to exchange it for a bigger one?" They tell me, "Yes, no problem."
[00:31:07] Great.
[00:31:09] And they say, "And out of curiosity, what are you going to do with the one I wore for one day?" They tell me, "Well, we don't really have a choice, we might have to throw it away."
[00:31:20] And that happens all the time. We don't necessarily know it, but when we buy online on fashion sites, in many cases it's so complicated to rearrange it on the shelf that it's just thrown away. From a user point of view, it's great. Societal point of view, not sure. And finally, this one is perhaps a little more tricky, but compared to shareholders. Because shareholders, we often see them as the big bad guys who have plenty of money anyway.
[00:31:50] But imagine, uh, I've worked independently all my life and I haven't contributed enough for a retirement. And so, uh, I'm investing in a pizzeria to, uh, to finance my retirement. I tell myself, well, I don't want it to be a crappy pizza service. So if it's rated 4 on Google Maps, that's fine with me. However, my main objective is still to finance my retirement. If one day my manager comes and says, "Listen, Valentin, actually, I'd really like to serve a 4.5 experience and thus lower prices so that there's a better quality-price ratio, but on the other hand, you'll have less profit." Well, no.
[00:32:32] I'm sorry, I worked all my life to be able to afford this pizzeria and for it to finance my retirement.
[00:32:38] So okay, the users won't have a 4.5 experience.
[00:32:42] But I'm fine with them having just a 4 experience.
[00:32:46] And today, tech companies, many other companies, they belong in many cases to pension funds, which themselves are actually the funds that manage pensions for many countries. that don't have retirement systems like ours. Although there is abuse by the way, obviously. But what I mean is that for many people, the income we give to our shareholders is what will determine their retirement. So is it ethical to sacrifice at a certain point the shareholder's income to get a better rating on Google Maps? I don't know.
[00:33:26] My point on this is that reclaiming the user is not a holy war. We saw it in the first part. It's super important, having the best user experience is what will allow you to make economies of scale, to create barriers against your competitors. But for all that, it's not the ethical path.
[00:33:47] You have to stay in this balance, and the user is one of the sides of it's not a rectangle, it has more sides.
[00:33:59] And so, what do we do with all that?
[00:34:06] Because, uh, I said it wasn't a romantic vision of the product, but it's not a cynical vision either. My objective is to allow discussions to happen at the right level. It's not to be naive and have totally misplaced expectations that make you feel like you're always in the wrong company or that the CEOs are doing whatever. Once we have this framework, what can we do?
[00:34:30] First thing is to evolve the framework. We can evolve the framework when there are aberrations, when there are absurdities due to the user's place. Typically, if all the employees of the company are no longer motivated because everything is too focused on bringing value to shareholders and in fact, the user is never talked about, we feel that everyone doesn't care. Well, in fact, putting user value back into the company's entire value proposition will be vital to re-engage people and to recreate dynamism so that this company gets by, because otherwise it's going to go badly. Or if a company starts to no longer be able to differentiate itself from the competition because it can no longer innovate, okay, well, it's perhaps because it can no longer understand its users. And in that case, we need to focus on that again to understand them, to reconnect with their needs and to create value again that we can then capture in another way.
[00:35:25] But we see that it's no longer the same way of setting the framework. Typically, when we have expectations and say that revenues should be at the same level as the NPS.
[00:35:37] So NPS, Net Promoter Score, it's how much users love your service.
[00:35:44] In fact, that's naive, as we've just seen. However, there can be something much more rational and measurable, which is, okay, your goal is to maximize revenue, but can't we agree on a minimum NPS? Can't we say that we are proud of this company if at least we have an NPS of 30?
[00:36:05] But I think the most important point is to be clear with yourself.
[00:36:10] What are you looking for in your company, in your professional experience? And what are the considerations? Is what's most important to you your salary? No judgment, with the lifestyle it will allow you to have, and you say to yourself, in fact, what will be able to fulfill me is everything that is outside of work. Is what will interest you the most being on a subject that passionate you, or being in a work environment with colleagues that give you energy? Or is it about having an impact? And what is the weighting between the three, because we always want a bit of all three. And that will be my last slide, so choose the framework accordingly. We are often told to be the actors of culture, especially in product, where we say as if the founders hadn't understood the role of the user well enough. And so, our role is to educate even the CEO to say, "Wait, I don't think you understood, the user is really more important than you think." So, as we saw before, in some absurd cases, yes. But there are many companies that get by without putting the user at the heart of the machine. And it's not about truth, the place of the user that you've given, but about conviction. And we, as employees of a company, we are all at the service of the CEO. So if he has a certain conviction, we can try to change the culture to a certain extent, but then we are still there to advance his vision of things. So that can mean, if you find that the user's place within your company is not important enough, either to go towards a CEO who very clearly states that for him, the user's place must be very important.
[00:37:53] Either to go into companies that haven't raised much yet. We talk a lot about unicorns because we are able to value them. So we say, "This company raised 200 million, it's valued at 1 billion, it's incredible." Okay, but there are plenty of companies that today manage to generate as much revenue, but without raising any money, and they are completely overlooked. Whereas they are much freer. And we see Frichti, which was bought by La Belle Vie. La Belle Vie, I don't know how much they raised, but really not much. Whereas Frichti had raised tens or even hundreds of millions.
[00:38:28] So if you want a company that puts more emphasis on the user, you also have to go towards companies that are less enslaved to the expectations of return that financial actors can have on them. And finally, if you really have a very strong expectation of impact, it can also be the associative sector.
[00:38:49] That's it, that was all for this presentation. I hope it interested you, and uh...
[00:39:00] And then we can move on to questions if there are any.
[00:39:10] The first is always the hardest.
[00:39:15] It's not a question, it can also be a disagreement, huh.
[00:39:25] Yes.
[00:39:31] These reflections that you present to us, how does it impact your job? What is your vision of your profession, how do you take into account these other aspects that we tend to forget?
[00:39:49] Yeah. Well, what it affects is the expectations I have and the humility with which I approach a founder, for example, when I present ideas.
[00:40:00] So, depending on if I think the company doesn't emphasize user value enough and talks too much about revenue, I'm not going to come in and say, "I think you're wrong." However, I can come in saying, "Okay, strategically, maybe that can help, but maybe it can't. It's not a dogma that user first must help." So it's more where I see it, I see it mostly in management. I see it in management with product managers who may have unreasonable expectations about what the company should do and how it should position itself in relation to its user approach.
[00:40:43] But typically, on the NPS. On the example I gave, typically ManoMano, I wouldn't seek as a battle to ensure that the NPS is as high as the revenue we make each month. Whereas I hear many people who actually want that, saying, "No, but actually, user and business must be at the same level. So you have to put as much weight on one as on the other." However, I could say, "Okay, very good, our goal is to make revenue, but if we compare it to our differentiation strategy compared to the competition, compared to our values, what threshold of NPS do we want to give ourselves?" And that helps, typically, when we do advertising. If we spend our time comparing the NPS, because then you drop a bit in NPS when you put more ads on your site, versus the gains you make in revenue. Instead of saying, "Okay, well, we did less on NPS, but we made 1 million more in revenue, how do we make the trade-off?" Well, if you've set yourself a limit value rather than a joint objective, meaning, "Careful, guys, here, on this part of the experience, we've just dropped below 30." So if we are consistent with the values we have, well now, we have to find a happy medium on the functionality we are going to put in place. NPS threshold. And that typically helps when we're doing advertising, if we spend our time comparing the NPS because you lower your NPS a bit when you put more ads on your site versus the gains you make in revenue. Rather than saying, "Okay, well, we got less NPS but we made an extra million in revenue," how do we make the trade-off? Well, if you set a limit value rather than a joint objective, it's like, "Careful guys, on this part of the experience, we just dropped below 30." So, uh, if we are consistent with the values we have, well now, uh, we need to find a happy medium for the functionality we're going to implement.
[00:42:04] Thank you.
[00:42:07] Uh, do you know the book "Employees First, Customer Second" and if so, what do you think of it?
[00:42:16] No, I don't know it, sorry, but if you want to say a sentence from Well, I saw the conference, I haven't read the book.
[00:42:23] But basically, what it says is that to serve your customers well, you need to have happy, satisfied employees. And so, listening to your talk, I'm thinking that ultimately, well, I'm wondering what the positioning of employees is in all of this. There, you're offering us a vision, well, capitalist versus product first, and so, I'm offering another perspective, I'm wondering where where where do employees fit into all of this?
[00:43:04] Well, uh, when I said user first, it means it's at the expense of all other aspects. We could do the same thing with employees first, is it at the expense of others? So my point on that is it's more about nuance for user first, saying, "Be careful, a company is a balance between many different poles, and be careful not to damage others too much, at least from an ethical point of view, I'm not sure it remains ethical to do that."
[00:44:01] I will repeat the question, uh.
[00:44:03] Yeah.
[00:44:05] Thank you, thank you again for your uh, quite a lot with what we do, the difference between reality and reality, the myth uh. But there, uh, you've shown us number one with uh, you've clearly shown us uh, actors who don't want it, and those who want uh, a very, very good one. How to understand the and how to do it well?
[00:44:32] Yeah, so the question is, uh, if you arrive in a company that still has product teams that are very immature on these topics, how do you go about educating them on this and uh moving more in that direction? That's it.
[00:44:52] What I see is that, uh, product teams or product people who are not necessarily very mature on these issues, they don't really have a say when it comes to making important decisions. And as a result, they are often marginalized and they complain about being marginalized. So, I would start by seeing them and first checking if that's the case. Because if it's not the case and their CEO is very happy with them, then why not? But if they have been completely marginalized from discussions because the sales teams, the marketing teams, think they are completely off track. Which happens, still happens. Uh, I would start by asking them if they want to be at the negotiation table. Do they want to be an opposing force and in that case, accept trying to pull a culture that you've never really managed to pull? But if they truly want to impact decisions, then they need to be open to how others think. And I think this presentation, if I do it from a business perspective, there won't be too much, there won't be too much debate. So in any case, if I were a consultant and doing that, I would go in that direction.
[00:46:12] Is there another question?
[00:46:15] Yeah.
[00:46:19] Awesome, thanks for your questions.
[00:46:21] So that, uh, after your discussion, it just came to mind. But precisely, isn't it also that you talked about several elements that ultimately led to this myth? But is the organizational aspect also a factor today in other companies, where we have a product manager on one side, and people managing the budget on another, etc., does that also ultimately contribute to perpetuating this myth? And do you think there are also organizational levers to remedy it?
[00:46:55] That I would struggle to answer, it's less my expertise. Nevertheless, uh, one of the conceptions of the product manager's role is precisely to manage to bridge all these different professions to propose a path that works. And so, uh, I think what doesn't work well is when you have a product manager who thinks they are the user's representative and who is in opposition with the business people, where they'll feel that they haven't really understood the product philosophy. So from an organizational point of view, for me it's mainly about rehabilitating the product manager's role as it was originally conceived. Which is really about managing to synchronize all these points of view to propose the path that, from a strategic perspective, will best meet the CEO's expectations. So I don't know if it's an organizational change, but uh at least a rehabilitation of the product manager's role.
[00:48:05] Another question.
[00:48:08] In the introduction, you mentioned 5 myths. Uh, and an article, does the article detail the 5 myths or does it also focus only on user first?
[00:48:21] No, no, the article the article details the 5 myths, though not as much in detail as this one. Uh, because that's another article that detailed it, but so the initial article, the 5 myths were precisely the user first aspect. It was, uh, that the product manager cannot commit to deadlines.
[00:48:43] Uh, darn, I think I've forgotten them, that's a good one.
[00:48:49] Uh, the other myths,
[00:48:55] darn, I forgot. Who read the article?
[00:48:59] Uh, well, I can come back to that. But basically, so there are the 5 myths and uh, and then, there's especially a framework for how to progress as a product manager when you arrive in a team that doesn't really understand what the role of product is. Which happens a lot, and that's the Pulse framework, and the Pulse framework is to say, there are a lot of people on the product side, when they arrive, we tell them. Well, actually, you just need to deliver this feature, and all your work to understand the needs behind it, we're not that interested. And there are many confrontational situations between product and business teams that have very different visions. And my point of view is, as a PM, if you want to push the very essence of your job, you have to go progressively. And so it's the letters, the first one is P, so it's about being the go-between. It's accepting that initially, what you'll do is just streamline and deliver features that were requested from you. The second is Y, it's uncover. It's saying, "Okay, you're asking me to do this, now I'm going to try to understand what the need is and if what you're asking me to do is really aligned with what you actually need to do." The third is uh the fact uh so it's prioritization. It's making sure, "Okay, are we working on the most important needs?" Then, it's about enriching with a deeper user understanding to say, "Okay, you have all these needs that you've already understood, all these opportunities, but now we're going to step a bit out of this closed room to go and understand other user opportunities that we're going to map to business opportunities to enrich your mapping." And finally, I will propose a vision, so V is for vision, and there I will start proposing a 1-year, 2-year vision, on what the overall direction of the team should be. Where, as a product manager, it can be tempting to come in and say, "Well, before I start anything, I want to make sure I fully understand the overall vision to understand what the biggest needs are, then how to address them, and only then am I okay to deliver." But by the time you do that, you've lost all your business contacts and there's no trust relationship left. So that was the Pulse framework, and for the 5 minutes, sorry, uh, too much memory.
[00:51:19] Okay, I think it's time. Well, thank you very much, and don't hesitate if you want to continue discussing.

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