Bradley Wright

Unfortunately, the current redundancies / layoffs at THG are impacting my role, alongside c.40% of my amazing team members across Product, UX and Business Analysis. To say we’re feeling rather ‘unsettled' right now ... would be an understatement! But I'm ever the optimist and certain it’s just the end of this current chapter - and now it's time to turn the page and write the next one! From my perspective, the last 5 years has been a rollercoaster ride. I’ve continued to build and lead digital Product and Experience Design teams across different businesses and industry sectors. It’s been an honour and privilege to mentor and coach colleagues, especially those at the beginning of their careers. And let’s not forget all the ‘leg work’ of developing outcome-led product strategy, roadmaps and the associated discovery and UX that brings it all together! I’ve been at the forefront of delivering unique capabilities and entirely new product propositions in areas such as online gaming, accounting SaaS and end-to-end commerce solutions for omnichannel retailers and famous CPG brands. All underpinned by my previous experience delivering large scale digital transformation and working in Silicon Valley, which has heavily influenced how I operate and focus on ‘getting sh*t done’! So, what’s next? I’m really interested in fractional / interim / consultancy opportunities, where I can bring my proven skills and experience to those looking for support in delivering digital transformation (project or programme) and / or product development and UX design. I’m open to remote and hybrid concepts across Yorkshire, UK (and global travel is welcomed). If you have any suggestions, leads, or connections, I’d greatly appreciate your help. In the meantime, I’m going to set myself a goal to speak on a few digital-focused podcasts, given how many of them I consume every week! Time to pay it back! 😀 Feel free to tag, share, or otherwise boost this post. I also have more details on my areas of expertise here: https://lnkd.in/eEBxvg9G. Thank you! #OpenToWork #DigitalTransformation #Fractional #Interim #Contracting #ProductManagement #UXDesign

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Steal my senior leadership growth hack. At the start of the year, with more front than Brighton, I told my manager I'm capable of more. But I've got some gaps. And I'm not sure how to fill them. We put our thinking caps on and struck upon an idea that's turning out to be genius. I'm very strong operationally. I'm reasonably strong technically. I'm OK on product. I'm weakest on business. To shine at the senior leadership level in tech at Google you need to be strong in tech, product and business. All three. My operational strength is a bonus and sets me apart. It's my USP. The idea we came up with is designed to build my strength in business and product, anchored of course in tech. Here's how it works: 1️⃣ Every month this year, my manager sets me a challenge 2️⃣ I rise to the challenge and report back within the month 3️⃣ My manager reviews my findings, we have a great discussion, then she: - pushes me to go deeper if I missed a bit - sets me a new monthly challenge I think she's rather enjoying coming up with the challenges, and she seems really keen to read and discuss my write up each time. She's a great manager ☺️ I really enjoy the research, chats with various colleagues, the learning & reflection. I look forward to sharing back my findings with her too. The *most* fun bit is the deeply insightful discussion that follows and the wicked giggle we both have when she's setting me my next challenge! ➡️ January's challenge was to go and learn the infrastructure, serving and business model of ads ➡️ February's challenge was to go and learn YouTube's business verticals & how they make money ➡️ March's challenge was to go and learn about digital Trust & Safety ➡️ April's challenge will be revealed to me next week after I submit March's findings...! And on and on we'll go, every month this year. By January 2025 I'll: ➡️ Be adding way more leadership value ➡️ Have increased my credibility and sphere of influence ➡️ Be more confident contributing to discussions I didnt previously feel equipped to share a strong opinion in ➡️ Be able to spot opportunities to make a bigger, more sophisticated impact And, dare I say it, I will have manoeuvred into a much stronger position to be considered for promotion. In the most challenging and constrained time in Google's history to be promoted. Especially to senior leadership level. These days accomplishing Director-level promo is down to more factors than impact alone. So it may never happen for me. But, if that's the case, I'm damn sure it won't be because I'm not capable. And if I'm satisfied that's the case, I'll be happy either way. So, if you've ever wondered how to next level yourself from middle management to senior leadership, pinch my hack. It's way more enjoyable than I've probably made it sound here. And I can already feel the shift in myself. It's making a real difference and opening my eyes in useful and relevant ways. You're welcome! (And thanks boss 😊)

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I frequently hear Exec teams simultaneously claiming “Customer focus”, whilst avoiding talking with their customers. 🤔 Establishing the practice of user research at the top-most level enables a culture of customer focus throughout the organisation. Some of the biggest breakthroughs I've witnessed as part of a leadership team have resulted from the whole C-level spending a couple of hours meeting with real customers. Examples: - Finding our customers have an alternate use case for our product - Realising who our real competitors are - Discovering a new channel where our customers are engaged - Understanding the real connection between our pricing and customer actions - Uncovering features/UX being used in an unexpected way

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It's getting a bit old now, but we keep coming back to Google's UX Playbook for Retail. It's a super simple but thorough overview of how ecommerce stores with larger product catalogues should approach UX. There's some really sold tips in there - link in the comments!

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Highly recommend this course for anyone who wants to wrangle, ahem I mean develop, people brilliantly!

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This is not just any "hey, we are looking for a dev" post. This might be one of the most exciting engineering roles we have ever hired for. Let me explain why: I have the great privilege of being the product lead for the exceptionally brilliant Rendering Engine Team at Miro. Several months ago, we took a bold step to revamp our foundational rendering technology from the ground up, setting an ambitious vision far beyond what Miro is capable of today. Building a highly performant rendering engine for a product like Miro is not trivial though. You are dealing with an infinite 2D canvas with potentially thousands of multimedia objects, all while multiple people collaborate in real-time. We want professionals & creatives to spend the majority of their working days in Miro. Unfortunately, every lag when panning a large planning board, every jiggle effect due to low FPS when zooming out from a large planning session, and every slight delay when selecting hundreds of multimedia objects not only results in lost time but also slight frustration. It's that small, annoying feeling that something felt slightly slow, slightly not instant, slightly irritating. A products performance is not just about the time you lose; it is about the feeling this product gives you. On the other hand, we all know the feeling of delight when you do something complex in a product, and it happens instantaneously. That feeling that no matter what you do, no matter what workload you throw at an application, it will be responsive, fast, and instantaneous. This is what we envision: A rendering engine that continuously surprises you with its snappiness, making work feel light and delightful. We are looking for someone who is as equally annoyed by these issues as we are and wants to take the lead in solving them. We aim to build a rendering engine that raises the bar for what people consider possible on a web-based canvas. A computer graphics professional who wants to take on the challenge of working on a renderer that powers the day-to-day work of millions of users and some of the most creative and innovative companies in the world. If you work in the field of computer graphics and want to contribute to the heart of a product that aims to amplify collaboration and creative work, give it shot. Feel free to DM me for more information or directly apply below:

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When you’re a millennial product manager, attempting to share her knowledge of product, with the wider community and one of the most successful artists in the world is currently on a mass tour of the UK, there’s only one question on your mind: What would the dangerous animals of product management be if they were Taylor Swift songs? If you've been asking yourself the same question then have I got a blog post for you! https://lnkd.in/dYxE_QDq #product #productmanagement #tech #UX

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In case you missed it while prepping for Flag Day 🇺🇸 Happy State of Engineering Management Report Day happened this week! The annual thought leadership piece from Jellyfish has dropped. Hear from Engineering leaders, managers and frontline ICs .... we cover a range of topics that matter to great R&D leaders. Key Points: 1️⃣ Engineers are now strategic partners! 🙌 2️⃣ Burnout continues to be a challenge 😱 3️⃣ The talent shortage is spiking back up. 4️⃣ Many teams have embraced #AI 🧠 5️⃣ Others have legit concerns about AI ⁉ If #developerproductivity #genAI #engineeringexcellence are important to you .... have a read! (link in the Comments)

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5 years ago, I felt like I was sh*t at product if I wasn’t: 💥 Always using outcomes 💥 Full of evidence and insight 💥 Able to influence a stakeholder to do what I thought was the ‘right thing’. This was emotionally draining, needed full-time graft & was setting me up with unrealistic expectations (hello perfectionism 👋🏼). Product purism makes you believe you’re not adding value if you’re not doing all of these things. But the smart people know that you need to add value in the context in which you operate. This means: ✨ Progress over perfection ie. Start to present some data around an initiative after you launch (don’t worry about having the clear outcome upfront right away). ✨ Pick your battles: choose 1-2 areas to add impact ie. Doing discovery on one topic that you can contribute positively too & show the value ✨ Protect your peace: drive as much as you can, but know when you’re giving too much energy to something. & if the culture fit isn’t there - don’t be afraid to find somewhere that is. If you feel like you’re trying to take on it all, & you feel like you’re failing - know that it’s not you. You need to work WITH your environment. Focus on the small steps & all of the progress along the way 🤍 —————— Hi, I’m Evie. A product leadership coach 👩🏽‍💻 I work with product leaders to 10x their confidence and deliver more impact (without burning themselves out) 🔥 Drop me a DM to work with me ✨

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Engineering Managers are losing hundreds of hours a month without making a successful hire🫨 I spoke with 5 separate Director/Head's of Engineering this week who told me that their hiring process has cost them and their teams over 100 hours a month; but here is the real sticking point⬇️ They screened and interviewed hundreds of applicants, but have still not hired the Software/Platform Engineer they are looking for🤨 Some of these engineering positions have been open for over 6 months... The issues?⬇️ ➡️Their job adverts are too vague and do not accurately explain the position and critical skills needed ➡️In turn, they receive hundreds of unsuitable applications that are still screened ➡️They rely heavily on inbound applications and do not map the market and headhunt in anyway at all ➡️They had an expectation that they could hire for free with the influx of available applicants; but did not calculate the cost in time and productivity in not making a successful hire relying on this method alone ➡️Their organisation was not marketing themselves to the wider engineering community so ultimately 95% of the suitable candidates didn't even know their company existed ➡️External hiring budgets are constrained and the "need to save money" was out weighing the "need to hire the right person quickly" For niche, expert level Software & Platform engineering positions, hiring the best people is still challenging. Relying only on the above methods is creating bad candidate experiences and costing huge amounts of time that could be put to better use elsewhere. The issues mentioned above need to be addressed if organisations want to create a efficient and successful hiring model. This approach I have highlighted will not work forever and is not sustainable. #hiring #engineering #activesourcing #candidateexperience

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📝 It’s the first week of the second half of the year. Engineering managers, here’s a few things that are worth doing. ⬅️ Review last quarter (Q2) Sit down with focus time and look back. Go through your team and project retrospectives and check against your mental understanding of how the team did and felt. Try to capture 2-3 aspects of the quarter that you think were absolute gold for the team and 2-3 that were misses. I find that the act of writing these down will help me understand the facts - do I have surface level understanding or do I know exactly how the team worked? At incident.io we have a way to channel customer feedback about what the team builds so I don't capture it again but if you don't have this I'd recommend sending over a few nice things customers have said about what your team has shipped. 📝 Recap first half of the year (H1) Most good managers tend to know how the team has done. It is worth digging a bit deeper and write things down. Did the team trend upwards or downwards? Even if a team has done well, the direction of travel might be wrong. One thing I love to do as I reflect on the first half of the year is to write down what I would have changed and done differently. And here’s the kicker: I then ask myself if some of them are still in time to be done - and sometimes they are but easily forgotten if you don't reflect. Especially changes to processes that get in the way. ➡️ Look forward (H2) 1. Start with something simple: are your people well rested? Do people still have 20 days to take or just 5? Useful time to nudge people. 2. What is the behaviour you want to change in yourself (and perhaps in the team)? No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes - but without change (even if minimal) you end up being behind what you could be. 3. Have your stakeholders changed with any company change in goals? If so, meet them, align yourself and your team with them. 4. Is your team going to do work that introduce risks to the company? If so, write them up, raise them with you manager, and start work on reducing them. 5. It’s easy to overthink and plan for an entire half year - I’d recommend not doing that - keep it simple, nail the quarter (Q3) but make sure the direction of the team is right. 💬 Ask people for feedback You’re always thinking of all of the things. Usually not thinking about yourself. How well have you done? Do you know your blind spots? Do you have your top 3/bottom 3 for you to work on? Have you reflected on your work and how you drove the right outcomes for the organization? And finally, have you taken enough vacation? If not, why not? If the answer is “only I can do X”, you need to train and delegate. Rest is important - it grounds you, builds you up, and re-energises you.

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I've been threatening to write a post for awhile now about how elegant standards like Speculation Rules are, as they are built in a way that provides an natural progression for rolling out. Harry Roberts does an _excellent_ job of demonstrating that in his latest, talking about how you can put prerender and prefetch spec rules together to push it above and beyond. https://lnkd.in/gv7HBdsU

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Me: "I'll give that public speaking thing a try in 2024." Also me: Getting stuck right into the big games apparently... I'll be talking at BigDataLdn this year. It's a solid mix of hype and anxiety, Hanxiety if you will! But mostly hype. #BigDataLDN #data #dataengineering #dataleadership

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The majority of my new team have been with the business for an extended period of time, and I’m talking 20-30 years. They have also had “squiggly careers” within the business, meaning that people are encouraged to try new roles and learn new things. If that doesn’t scream positive things about the business, I don’t know what will. Be more Co-op 😉 #culture #careerdevelopment #growthmindset

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🚀 New blog post 🚀 This week’s discovery: 🦥 Good work can look lazy 🔨 Building on what you already have 👫 Emotional differences in modern dating 🔑 The only metric that matters Read the full post: https://lnkd.in/eT-S5KFx #ModernWork #SelfAcceptance #Relationships #PersonalSuccess #PursuitCommunity

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The secrets of how experienced engineering leaders accelerating growth of new Tech Leads... 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘦𝘵 + 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 + 𝘚𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 + 𝘍𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 = 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗲𝘁 Individual focus → 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 I love Andy Grove's definition 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦. Although I prefer to use the term 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀. It's possible for a team to product a lot of output but not much value! 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱? A team scoped Tech Lead can have many flavours. Is team leadership included? What about line management? What about delivery? Clarity is key 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 Engineer → Tech Lead is a tricky transition. Holding more frequent 1:1's initially Seek feedback from team Stay close 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 We all make mistakes when taking on new responsibilities  Provide both reenforcing and corrective feedback Observations + Impact = Actionable feedback Learn from mistakes Celebrate the wins P.S How do you support new Tech Leads?

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Klarna has made a flurry of announcements about their new tools this year, but interestingly, they haven't provided any specific details on how they did it. If you replace 'AI' with 'awesome', 'crappy', or even 'God' in their announcements, the intent becomes visible. It seems like they're generating buzz to prepare for their IPO. If they've developed a cutting-edge CRM tool or innovative workforce solution, why not monetize it or offer it as open-source or freeware? That would create more excitement and marketing traction than these vague announcements. Are we to expect similar announcements about upcoming payroll software, bookkeeping software, and marketing automation software :-)

The UK #product scene has some way to go to catch up with the Valley's innovation. From Figma to Miro, the most boundary-pushing B2B tools have historically emerged outside the UK. Let's change that. That’s why I’m excited about what’s happening at PricingMonkey, where I’m helping #founders Alec Clements, Pawel Badenski, and Rob Howarth find a Senior #ProductManager. You can check out their job spec—but here’s my take on what makes this role special: 🧑🏽‍💻 UI Innovation: Traders rely on PricingMonkey’s derivatives platform as part of their daily core workflow. It's a tool that they trust and use all day, every day. The challenge? Drive continuous UI innovation for some of the most productive and demanding users on the planet. 🎯 Metrics + Insights: Their users love the product, and they’re actively using it. This role has huge potential to combine advanced data analysis with qualitative feedback to shape powerful new features. 🙋🏼‍♀️ Strong Founders: Alec, Pawel, and Rob are domain experts who have scaled the product and achieved strong growth. Now, they’re ready to hand over the reins to a Senior Product Manager who’ll have genuine ownership of the product roadmap. This is a unique opportunity for anyone passionate about data-driven decision-making and meaningful UI innovation. Reach out if you’re interested, or tag someone who might be the perfect fit!

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