The Conference

Product Led Alliance (PLA) brings together product pioneers, growth gurus, and industry newbies throughout the year at summits worldwide. Over 2 days in NYC, PLA hosted 3 IRL conferences. We had the pleasure of doing a mad dash between the three summits taking feverish notes, and chatting with the attendees and exhibitors to hear their take on the gathering. Ok, it wasn’t that dramatic, the Chief Product Officer Summit, Product Operations Summit, and Product Led Summit were all co-located so our “mad dash” was more like hopping from one room to the next, but exhilarating nonetheless!

Navigating through the main hall lined with over a dozen exhibitors, we mingled with a diverse crowd of 200-300 attendees including everyone from SVPs and CPOs who were looking to share their expertise with industry peers or kick off their job hunt, to newcomers dipping their toes into the industry altogether. As one conference-goer who had been to PLA’s Vegas summits summarized ”The New York conference seems to cater more to folks across the product-led growth (PLG) spectrum including those who have done it from the start and who are just getting into PLG.”

As you can expect, the content was deeply industry-focused, honing in on everything from leveraging the jobs-to-be-done framework when improving products to, building an operational culture of efficiency in the age of AI. Still, we caught a lot of gems that can apply to a range of people.

PLA has conferences across the US and in Europe throughout the year. They have a few coming up throughout May. Many attendees regarded the conference highly, with a few sprinkles of repeat attendees who were excited to speak or simply volunteer for their second go-around. Check out one of the summits if you’re looking to expand your knowledge in the industry and build community. They offer a membership to help you do just that year-round.

Upcoming Summits…

• Product Operations Summit | Amsterdam | May 16 & 17

• Chief Product Officer Summit | Amsterdam | May 16

• Product-Led Summit | Amsterdam | May 16 & 17

• Product-Led Summit | Las Vegas | May 22 & 23

They’ve already released dates for 2025 so catch the discounted tickets now!

The Notes

For today’s note, we are going to dive into Product Led Summit.

One of my favorite talks came from Teresa de Figueiredo,a Product Manager at fast-growing startup Coda, who shared gems for improving collaboration throughout the product lifecycle. An indicator of healthy team dynamics is the ability to accurately communicate, AND interpret feedback when collaborating.

This takes time, practice, and intention.

For Teresa and her team to get there they implemented a "volume control" concept to help communicate, make better decisions, and build exceptional products. Here’s how you can too…

Mastering the Art of Feedback: How to Dial in Your Team's "Volume Controls"

It started when Teresa got this feedback from her CEO about a new product launch:
“Definitely excited to get this moving. A couple of thoughts: The tab behavior felt really awkward and it's worth trying to change this up.”

Her immediate thoughts were to fix the issue which would add another week to the MVP launch date.

Later, when she checked in to better understand, he recalibrated and said: “Oh, no, it's just something I want you to consider. Everything else looks great.”

Enter the Volume Control Concept…

1. Understand and calibrate each person's "volume range"

   • People express opinions with varying intensity, from soft, hedging language to forceful, absolute statements.

   • Tune into the specific phrases people use, like "I feel like..." (low volume) vs. "We must..." (high volume).

   • Explicitly ask stakeholders to rate how strongly they feel on a scale of 1-10 and whether they're aligned with a decision or not.

2. Foster psychological safety and transparency

   • Run a team-wide activity where people identify their "volume" tendencies and discuss how to best communicate with one another. Coda’s product team took a quick quiz answering questions like those below to aid self-identification.

   • Share project goals, milestones, and status updates proactively to surface helpful input and spot potential concerns early.

3. Prioritize feedback strategically

   • Identify a "brain trust" of key stakeholders for each project and weigh their feedback more heavily than other input.

   • Create a decision log to track who wants to be consulted on which types of decisions and to what extent.

By tuning into your team's feedback "volume controls" and being intentional about how you gather and act on input, you can enhance communication, decision-making, and ultimately product quality. "Knowing my teammates' volumes has made me a much better collaborator on my team. It's also helped our team move faster and make decisions more quickly."

Next Steps:

1. Take the Volume Control Quiz Teresa shared with her team. What’s your volume?

2. Get your discounted tickets for upcoming 2025 PLA summits and become a PLA member for access to content and community.

3. Subscribe to The Green Room for more conference notes you should know about, including speaking opportunities, discounts, and our calendar of vetted conferences for the month.

4. Catch Amy and Bryan on LinkedIn for our weekly conference round-up ripe with conference notes and more conference must-haves!