Pluralsight's Nate Walkingshaw literally wrote the book on product leadership. On this episode of Build, Nate dives into the importance of empathy in product and how his own background as an EMT helped him build more empathetic, more intuitive products. Plus, Nate shares his framework for the "product heart" – all of the key elements for what a healthy product should look like.

In this episode:

00:35 - Nate’s journey from EMT to Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Pluralsight

1:48 - Inventing products to solve EMT problem

3:25 - Nate’s work at Stryker

4:09 - The transition from hardware to software development

4:45 - Nate’s work at Strava

6:20 - Launching Strava’s first commerce based app

6:47 - Nate’s work as Head of Tanner Labs at O.C. Tanner

8:00 - The Mission of Pluralsight: Democratizing Technology Skills

8:30 - Joining Pluralsight

9:45 - How to develop a great product that impacts people

10:27 - Why “why” matters

11:25 - Direct Discovery: Mission, Vision and , & The Client

12:17 - Hearing the voice of the customer

12:50 - Customer Preference Testing (CPT) & Customer Confirmation Testing (CCT)

14:40 - Merely sSolving problems vs. creating meaningful outcomes

16:22 - Leveraging key performance indicators for product design

17:19 - Outcome and & the customer’s success

19:15 - How you can benefit from switching to output focus

23:17 - How Nate taught his team about output focus

25:30 - How Nate’s team stays available & engages customers

29:50 - Care for the craft (and popularity will follow)

30:35 - The value of listening in a distracted world

Books & Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Read Nate’s book on Product Leadership www.amazon.com/Product-Leadershi…ful/dp/1491960604

Check out more of Nate’s wisdom

medium.com/@nwalkingshaw

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And be sure to check out more insights on product development on the Drift blog at drift.com/blog and find us on Twitter @maggiecrowley, @drift and @seekingwisdomio.