This is the weekly newsletter for People people who think like Product people. If you think traditional HR practices are stale and out of touch, you have found your People🤘

Learn how product principles and design thinking can transform your People function into a growth driver… all in the time it takes to drink your morning coffee☕

Whether you’re a PX newbie or already a pro, here you’ll find actionable tools and tactics to get full leadership buy-in and make an impact from day 1 🚀

P.S …mine’s a Cortado with oat milk if you’re buying 😉

Immersive PX is heading to London👑👀

“I can genuinely say that this event changed my career FOREVER” After an incredible experience in Amsterdam back in June, Immersive PX is gearing up for a return to London in October! 40 Progressive People Leaders 10 expert facilitators 2 immersive days + we will be joined by additional guest speakers for our live AMA + interactive fireside panels. This is a high touch, high value experience for the lucky 40 who grab these spots! A little over a week since announcing, we are down to just 16 spots left 😱 Will you be in the room? Or will you watch on with FOMO? 👀 find out more + secure your spot!

Read time: 2 minutes

Hey Reader 👋🏻

Ever felt overwhelmed by endless must have requests?
Ever feel like you are stuck in a loop of employee feedback and half finished projects?
Ever launched a programme after months of building to find that it made little to no impact?

Yeah... me too!

Well, I recently read The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick and it has flipped the way I think about customer discovery conversations - in short, I’ve been f*cking them up for a while… and I didn’t even know it 😂

The book was recommended to me by my advisor (thanks Liesa! 🙏🏻) after I had excitedly told her (paraphrasing myself) - "I am going to build X, Y and Z - I think this will be the thing that really takes off".

Correctly, she stopped me in my tracks and said before you do any of that, read this book!

As always, when expanding my own product knowledge, my immediate thought when reading was: “This is exactly what People teams need.”

I had a conversation earlier this week with a Head of People who is implementing product-led PX with their team. The conversation confirmed my instinct that People teams needed The Mom Test principles too. This is the ask that lead to the call;

"I was wondering if I could set up some time with you to pick your brain on a topic I feel like myself and my team is struggling with. I recently listened to Lean Startup (from your recommendation). After reading the book I feel like my team is still really struggling with doing quick tests to get feedback. I feel like too often we get stuck in trying to continuously collect employee feedback ahead of building MLPs (minimal lovable products). I would love to talk to you as we are about to start the second half of the year and I want us to operate with more velocity. Let me know if you would have 30-45 minutes in the next few weeks. Thanks!"

I spent most of the conversation asking questions to understand the problem the team was encountering and it came down to two main issues:

1. No clear differentiation between what was a hypothesis (we think this problem exists, let's collect some data) and what was a solution (we know this problem exists - because we have the data which proves it - let's test and develop the solution).
   ​
2. Ineffective and misleading employee discovery conversations - 100's of employee conversations and survey responses -anecdotes and personal preferences masquerading as hard "data" - leading to a never ending backlog of must haves and need to dos

It became clear to me that, with good intention misplaced, the team wasn't pushing back on requests when they should have. they were accepting anecdote as data. They were asking the wrong questions in surveys and employee interviews. They were building and iterating solutions before understanding the problem - or even before checking the problem was actually a problem.

Guess what? I have made ALL of these mistakes too, as a Head of People and as a Founder... The good news, you won't make these mistakes again if you take "The Mom Test" principles on board and really put them into practice in your employee user discovery conversations.

Note: the same principles should be applied to exec requests - even from the CEO / Founder - it's our job to make sure we spend time solving high impact problems, not just executing requests, regardless of who puts them forward.

After the call, I quickly set about making a short guide / cheat-sheet for their team to use to bring the principles of The Mom Test into their discovery conversations. I had planned just to send it as a follow up to the call, but then I decided to make it available as a download - within 48 hours over 100 People leaders have downloaded it - so I thought, why not share it with the thousands of People Leaders who read this newsletter! 🙌🏻

In the guide you will find:

• Example user interview questions (good and bad!)
• 6 step guide to turn discovery insights to action
• GPT prompt to create your own "Mom test" inspired discovery interview questions

For that reason, I won't repeat those here (you can pick them up in the guide), instead here is a very quick breakdown of The Mom Test as it relates to PX discovery and a link to download the guide.

You really should read the book. But in the meantime, start here.

💡The Mom Test in PX (quick breakdown)

The problem:​
Too many employee discovery conversations (and surveys) turn into polite echo chambers, or an outlet for moans, or wish list generators.

Generally we ask what people want (or some ambiguous "how can we be better" questions). They tell us something vague or idealistic. We add it to the backlog… but it never solves the real problem.

The shift:​
​The Mom Test teaches a totally different approach.

Instead of asking for opinions or ideas, you learn to ask about real behaviour:
​
→ “Tell me about the last time you struggled with X.”
→ “What did you do about it?”
→ “What happened next?”

You stop leading the witness. You stop pitching your ideas. You start listening. Really listening. Not to be polite, but to find the truth.

Why this matters for PX:​
When we treat employees like internal customers, we should also borrow customer discovery methods. Unless we’re solving real problems that people already care enough to do something about… We’re just building features no one uses.

A tool to help you start:​
As I mentioned, I pulled together a cheat sheet to help you structure employee discovery interviews inspired by The Mom Test and designed specifically for PX teams.
✅ What not to ask
✅ What to ask instead
✅ How to find real, actionable insights
✅ A GPT prompt to create your own discovery questions

👉🏻 PX Discovery Interview Guide - Avoiding BS (and biases)​

Final thought:​
Every People team has a choice: Design for what’s loudest… Or design for what’s real.

Choose wisely 😉

OK, that’s a wrap for this week.

Grab your coffee and open up your inbox same time next week for more practical insights, tips, and resource flags on how to smash HR silos, add strategic value and turn your People function into a growth driver 🚀

With love,

Luke ✌🏻

PS, when you are ready you might like...

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