I was inspired by what I read in Lenny’s Newsletter about how Miro builds product: “You know how a picture is worth a thousand words—similarly, real examples of high quality are a lot more powerful, and simple at the same time.”

Varun Parmar, the CPO at Miro, was talking about design, but I thought, “What if we applied the same idea to product?”

The assignment I gave the team that week was:

Everyone bring a product you think is great.

It can be a website, app, or physical product. Explain (briefly) why it’s great, how it could be better, and how you think the company measures success (or how they could measure it).

This led to a great, fun discussion. One team member brought up an ecomm site with a unique physical travel bag that a suit can be folded in. Another talked about Amazon’s shipping model as its own kind of product. Two came with Netflix in mind, but actually approached it from completely different directions. Etc.

Ensuring that we talked about the measurement of those products, as that’s something we’re always making sure that we think about early in our lifecycle, was a great way to reinforce our own data-thinking. A few times, team members came up with other measurement ideas for products, or other ways products could be improved.

One team member commented that it was an interesting thought exercise,  thinking about different products.

We spend so much time on our own products. Spending some time actively thinking about what makes products “great” and how to measure success in other contexts was a useful thought exercise. I’m hopeful the team all walked away with a better shared understanding of what “great” looks like.