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Eddie: Welcome to Episode
13 of the WebJoy podcast.

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I'm your host Eddie.

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In this podcast, we interview guests
about their origin story and what

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makes them excited and joyful to
be part of the tech community.

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I hope you enjoy today's episode, "I Hate
To Even Call It Secret" with Dan Cole.

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I'm excited today.

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I have a special guest, Dan.

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If you don't mind, just introduce
who you are, what you do, where you

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work a brief intro about yourself.

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Dan: Awesome.

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So hello, and thank you for having me
on my name is Dan Cole, I'm the Vice

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President of Product Management at a
cybersecurity company called ThreatConnect

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based out of Northern Virginia.

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Been there nearly seven years and I've
been a product manager for 20 years.

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Live here with my wife and two dogs.

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Unfortunately they're at daycare
today, so I can't bring them on.

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I know that breaks a rule.

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But yeah, very happy to be here.

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Eddie: Well, we're sad not to have the
wife or the dogs be able to say hi.

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So Dan is a special guest because he
and I actually have worked together.

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We work together at ThreatConnect
where he still is and same thing, a

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previous guest, when you're listening
to this , Kathryn, we mentioned that we

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worked together in the past same place.

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Kathryn, Dan, me all have
gotten to work together.

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And so it's nice to be able to bring
Dan on and kind of catch up and

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talk about his story and everything.

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Dan: Oh, I'm excited.

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And I appreciate you having me on.

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Eddie: Yeah, for sure.

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So what's a short of your story,
you talked about you've been at

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ThreatConnect for seven years, but
you've been in product management for 20.

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What kind of spurred you on to
thinking product sounded like a

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fun thing to do, and how did you
go through your product career?

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Dan: Well, the short answer is I didn't
think product would be right for me.

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Like a lot of people at the
time, I sort of stumbled into it.

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I graduated from college with a degree
in psychology, had no idea what I

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wanted to do and I had bills to pay.

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So I took a job as a government courier.

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Essentially, law firms would call
us up and  say, Hey, can you run

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down to the department of labor and
go get this 102B form or whatever.

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And so I would run down,
get it and fax it over.

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I realized in doing this, that the
way that customers interacted with our

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ordering website was very frustrating.

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It was very inconvenient for
our actual customers to place

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an order for these documents.

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And my feeling was a product like
that shouldn't get in the way of

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what they actually want to do.

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So I went to the owner of the company.

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And I said Hey, can I actually talk to our
outsourced engineering team and see if I

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can make some improvements to the website.

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And so I talked to some of our users,
I translated what they wanted into

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requirements for the development team.

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And we turned it around and ended
up increasing our revenue and

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getting rave reviews from our users.

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That was how I accidentally
stumbled into product management.

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Eddie: Wow.

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That's definitely an accidental stumble.

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No one even said, Hey
you should do this role.

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You literally were just like,
Hey, this experience sucks.

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Let's make it better for people.

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Dan: Yeah.

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I mean, I had no idea what I was doing.

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I didn't know what a product manager was.

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I just saw that our users were
struggling and  I couldn't code.

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I wanted to fix it in
whatever way I could.

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Eddie: That's awesome.

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I feel like that defines the role
of a product person really well.

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They help developers understand the
needs of the users , help translate that.

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Dan: Yeah for me, it all comes
down to empathy and understanding

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what does the user actually want.

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And can that be communicated in a way
that is meaningful to the engineer?

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Ultimately it's about
communication and empathy.

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Eddie: Nice.

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So you obviously stumbled into
product management and you stayed.

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So what is it  about product management
that gets you excited that has kept you

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for 20 years when it was all accidental?

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Dan: Good question.

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And in terms of what actually drives
me, I don't think a lot has actually

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changed from what drove me on  day one.

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Certainly for me personally and
professionally, a lot of it is now driven

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by my team, but the mission of that team
and the core drive is is still around this

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notion that users struggle and there's
gotta be a better way to do things.

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There's always a better way to
do things that fundamentally

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for me is what it's all about.

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And you see this a lot, especially in
B2B, where you're building software

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to help people do their jobs.

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And whether you're trying to place an
order with a document retrieval firm, like

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I used to or now when you're using this
enterprise cybersecurity platform, that

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software is there to help you do your job.

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It's not like business to consumer
where it's a purely for fun or

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purely for entertainment product.

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And when I think about B2B specifically,
and what drives me as a product manager

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is can I help free up our users to
focus on what they're passionate about?

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So that can be something like can
I help them do their job better?

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If they're doing a whole bunch of
mundane tasks, can I give them a

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product to help them automate it.

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So that they can focus on things
that they are more passionate about.

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And when I say more passionate
about I'm not just talk I'm

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talking about in their work.

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If they are a engineer that is very
passionate about coding, but they're

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stuck writing test cases and they hate
that can I build a product that will

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help them automate writing those test
cases so they can be freed up to do

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more coding or it doesn't have to be
passion for something in their job.

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It can be: am I helping them leave at
five o'clock every day so they can go home

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and cook or do photography or spend time
outdoors whatever their true passion is.

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Am I building products to
actually free them up to do that?

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Eddie: I really love that, because
the tools that you help create through

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understanding the needs of people;
these things, help people do their job

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better, which gets them promotions,
which gets them money and freedom to do

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what they want to leave at five o'clock

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Dan: Or four o'clock.

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Eddie: Yeah.

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Three o'clock why not

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Dan: Go for it.

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Eddie: To really find joy in
their jobs, which I love that.

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That's a really awesome
thing to have as a mission.

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Dan: Yeah, exactly.

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And it's tough because I don't think a lot
of people are gonna be passionate about a

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new procurement system or a new piece of
software for filling out expense reports.

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But if I can make that process easier
for them and free them up to do

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things that are not procurement or
filling out expense reports, then I

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would consider that a job well done.

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Eddie: One interesting thing is
sometimes you might hear someone on

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a podcast and everyone's listening
to you right now and you think.

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How much of this is actually just
this person saying fluffy stuff.

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And I do wanna actually say the cool
thing about what Dan's saying is I've

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actually seen this in real life, right?

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Not to give away any secrets.

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But the questions he's asked and the stats
that he's shown as a product person when

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I was working with him  really did focus
on like, Hey, what do people enjoy doing?

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And what do they not do?

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And then now like, let's figure
out how this software actually

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can help shift that time spent.

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And so that's the really cool thing
is, as you're saying all of this,

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it actually aligns with literally
what I've heard you say in the day

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to day job, which is really awesome.

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Dan: Oh, I'm just glad that
that survey made such an

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impression that you remember it.

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But yeah, that question of
where are you spending time and

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where do you want to spend time?

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Is very core to what I try to do.

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Eddie: Awesome.

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Well one of the big things about
this podcast is what brings you joy?

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And obviously working as a product person
brings you a lot of joy, but what else

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would you like to talk about today?

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Dan: Sure.

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Well right now I am a manager of
people, I'm not just a product manager.

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I'm a manager of product managers.

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A big part of what drives my joy in
the day today is actually my team.

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I am inspired and invigorated by the work
that they do, by how they execute on the

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objectives and the purpose that I lay
down and I'm inspired and invigorated,

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despite the fact that I haven't even met
some of them in person, thanks to COVID.

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We are currently a
completely distributed team.

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So even though I've never met
some of them, working with them,

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has brought me a lot of joy.

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Eddie: Well, that seems challenging.

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In fact, I mean, obviously again,
I'm kind of cheating compared to most

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podcasts because I was around when
you actually went from being the main

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product person to actually having a team.

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And like you said, you had
to do that all remotely.

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So how did you approach that when
you suddenly had this mission

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of I need to develop a team
around me to do what I've done.

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And yet coronavirus, literally this
is in 2020, like things are shutting

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down and you have to build a team.

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Congratulations, Dan, like, how did you
think through that and approach that.

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Dan: It was very challenging.

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In fact we were creating new products.

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We were expanding more
markets and I needed more PMs.

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I had a few of the hires and we had
actually scheduled our first team on site.

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We'd booked the conference room.

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We'd booked the equipment.

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People had scheduled their
flights for late March of 2020

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Eddie: no,

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Dan: like the first series of
weeks where COVID was really

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happening and I had two challenges.

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One was doing this remotely, but the
other challenge was I had never really

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brought a team like this together
starting from scratch, and trying to

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build them out around a common purpose.

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And one of my secret weapons, and
I hate to even call it secret, cuz

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I want people to know about it.

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Was a tool called re:Work.

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So like re like you put in an email
subject line re:Work, and re:Work is

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a project that came out of Google.

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They're very data driven.

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They had done a project
called project Aristotle.

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And essentially their goal was to
data-ize, human resource management

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and project Aristotle specifically
was set up to answer the question,

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what sets a high performing team apart
from a less high performing team.

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They did all this research and they
discovered that what sets high performing

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teams apart it wasn't who had the
best degrees or who went to the best

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schools or, you know, it wasn't about
culture or where you worked before.

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It was about which teams had the
highest level of psychological safety.

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And so they took the data from project
Aristotle and they created re:Work,

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which is a series of resources to help
build high performing teams around

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that concept of psychological safety.

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The first thing we did with
re:Work was we used a program.

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They had set up to create a set of team
values and team mission, and purpose.

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The most important thing for me, for
creating this purpose for my team amidst

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COVID setting everything else aside was,
is this purpose coming down from me sort

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of from on high or is this a purpose
being created by the team together?

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And part of the reason I chose re:Work
was it did have resources for helping

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the team create that common purpose.

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It was a very collaborative exercise.

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So we went through re:Work's entire
workbook in terms of creating our team

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shared values and our team shared mission,
and they had tons of fantastic activities.

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One of them was we had to go through
and on a whiteboard put up, who

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are the people you admire most?

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Why do you admire them?

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What values or qualities do they embody?

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Then we did other activities where
we talked about who are our users?

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What drives them?

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What are their frustrations?

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Then very key to our team's mission was
what do you want our team to be known for?

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So for that exercise, the goal
is we take five minutes of quiet

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time and everyone on PostIts.

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Writes down what do you want
the team to be known for?

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It's quality.

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It's solving user problems.

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It's making the company money.

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It's helping our users.

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It's having an impact.

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Then after the five minutes you do
all kinds of exercises, like affinity

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mapping, where you look for common
themes amongst all the post-its, you do

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dot storming, where everyone gets a set
number of stickers to actually vote.

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And through this, very rigorous and
democratized brainstorming process.

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What you arrive at is that set of shared
team values and a shared team mission.

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It was a very fun, rewarding three
day exercise where the team really

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came together and collaboratively
arrived at that common purpose.

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Eddie: That's really seems like
something that can bring a team together

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and really give people ownership.

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it's interesting though.

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Cause it almost feels like a
parallel universe because that

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sounds like something you need to
do inside of a hotel room, right?

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Like, you were talking about set
up a conference, have a whiteboard.

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In fact, as you read through re:Work
stuff, it seems like, Hey, this is

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a great, like three day offsite.

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Well COVID hit.

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How did you handle that?

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That's a big curve ball.

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Dan: Exactly and they give you
literal physical workbooks to work in.

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And I had booked the conference room with
the whiteboards and in fact, still have a

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drawer full of multi-colored post-it that
I had purchased exactly for this offsite.

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And those post-its have never been used.

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Eddie: They're all empty.

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Dan: they're all empty.

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But of course we still did the exercise.

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And it was a hundred percent remote.

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And the reason we were able
to do it was thanks to a

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collaboration software called Miro.

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Miro is a collaborative, white boarding
and post-it noting SaaS based tool

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that is specifically designed for
distributed or remote collaboration.

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So even though we were completely
remote, we could still in this Miro

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whiteboard we could very easily put
up post-its, we could put up stickers.

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We could connect the dots between
different concepts, just as easily,

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as we would with a whiteboard
in fact, more easily, if you've

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ever seen my handwriting, cuz
all these were actually typed up.

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They do just such a fantastic
job of it's not just a post,

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it goes up and it's there.

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You can actually see different
participants moving their cursors around.

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You can see them adding
things in real time.

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Just like in person scenario, you
can see that your teammates are

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going up they're adding things.

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You can see that in Miro.

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On top of all the things you get in from a
real whiteboard, Miro provides things like

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built in timers and music for the timers.

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They provide drawing tools, post-it
tools, sharing tools, cuz you

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wanna bring other people into this.

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But one of the great things
that they do is they have this

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phenomenal library of templates.

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So as people are struggling to
translate this in person experience

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to this remote experience.

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They give you all these templates
for collaboration, brainstorming,

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or team alignment exercises.

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They give you these templates that are
designed to be Miro and remote first.

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So if you wanted to have a design
session with an engineering, And you're

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struggling to think about how to do that.

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Remotely Miro gives
you templates for that.

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So it is really just a tremendous
and, in my opinion,  team saving

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tool for doing that sort of
remote highly collaborative work.

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Eddie: Nice.

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And I have to say that really
the combination of the re:Work

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and Miro is really powerful,
cuz you all did it that spring.

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And I saw the output of that
and I thought that's awesome.

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I wanna do something similar.

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So I actually took my
team through it that fall.

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So it was really fun to then  steal a
bunch of ideas and thoughts from you.

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Take my team through it.

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So for anyone listening to this, that's
like, yeah, but how successful is it?

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We were able to do it across two
different teams first with Dan's,

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then with mine, it was very different,
but very successful in both teams.

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Dan: It's super effective, but the other
challenge that you get that's I think

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unique to remote, is not being able to
do those full day or multi-day onsite.

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The human attention span, like you can sit
in a hotel conference room for a full day

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and you know, you get coffee and lunch.

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You're interacting with
people, in three dimensions.

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But it's a lot to ask people to sit
at their desk for a full day, focusing

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exclusively on one thing when you've
got dogs and kids and everything else

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going along and just staring at a screen.

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So for these onsites, we generally
won't do more than a half day cuz

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frankly, anything more than that.

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And everyone just starts to
get sort of remote work brain

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and it's less productive.

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Eddie: Nice.

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This has been really interesting.

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as we wrap up, we always like
to talk about as a community,

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we like to support each other.

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And so I just wanna ask, do you have
anything you're involved in or anything

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you're passionate about that you'd
like to share with the community?

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Dan: I have lots of things
I'm passionate about.

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But one that I'll sort of give a
shout out to is I'm very big into

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wildlife rescue and wildlife care.

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I'll sort of talk about a national
organization, called save a Fox.

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I'm actually.

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wearing one of their shirts today.

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Foxes are wild animals, but we do in the
United States have a thriving fur industry

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where these animals , will be captured
and placed in very small wire cages.

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And that's where they
will live out their life.

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Not really being able to move.

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They'll develop these genetic defects
cuz they're bred for their fur.

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It's not a happy life.

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So Save a Fox based out of Minnesota,
is an organization that will actually

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rescue these animals from fur farms.

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They rescue minks and other animals,
but Fox is sort of the main deal.

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So I try to spread awareness.

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Try to ask for donations, because the
work that they do is frankly absolutely

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heartbreaking when you see these foxes
in their original situations, but

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tremendously heartwarming when you see,
the outcome once they've brought these

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foxes to these big open enrichment
spaces and they're cared for, and

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they  have these very happy lives.

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Eddie: Wow.

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Yeah.

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That's some important work,
taking and helping animals that

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are being essentially mistreated.

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Foxes do they hold a special place
in your heart for some reason?

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Dan: They do.

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I mean, they've always been, my
favorite animal, my whole life.

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I'm very blessed to live right
next to a fairly large park.

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So we've planted all native
plants in our backyard.

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Lots of pollinators, lots of other
plants that actually attract, wild foxes.

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So they'll come right up to the
backyard, sniff around catch squirrels.

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So I've just been very blessed to
not only be able to help in these

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captured foxes, but actually be able
to see them in their wild element

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living out their Foxy lives in my
backyards that's been a great thrill.

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Eddie: It's amazing.

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Some of the photos that Dan's been
able to take of these Fox that are

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just hanging out in his backyard.

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So in the show notes, I'll throw
a couple links to some tweets.

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With some photos.

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And yeah, that's pretty much it.

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Dan, thank you so much
for joining me today.

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Dan: No, thank you so much for having
me, it was great to talk to you again.

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And I hope we get to chat again real soon.

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Eddie: Thanks for joining us
for Episode 13, "I Hate To Even

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00:20:57,699 --> 00:20:59,619
Call It Secret" with Dan Cole.

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You can find out more about
Dan on his twitter @DanCole42.

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You can find links to everything we
talked about in this episode, as well as

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00:21:10,104 --> 00:21:12,234
a link to Dan's Twitter in the show notes.

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00:21:12,834 --> 00:21:17,424
If you enjoyed this episode, help
others discover it as well by rating

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00:21:17,784 --> 00:21:22,554
and reviewing it in your favorite
podcast directory and don't forget,

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00:21:23,034 --> 00:21:26,134
follow us on Twitter @WebJoyFM.

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00:21:26,814 --> 00:21:29,784
Thank you for listening
and have a great day.