Transcript: How to Rally an Organization and Drive Big Product Moves — Orly Stern Yitzhaki, GM at Payoneer

Eyal David: [00:00] Hey friends, this is Eyal. You've reached Product Builder, where you can listen to the most interesting product conversations. My journey began in 2012 when I learned what product is at my startup. Since then I've worked in the industry, and since 2017 my company has been advising a range of companies. My drive is to help all of us improve as product people. And before we start, if you enjoy listening to Product Builder, please rate us five stars on Spotify. It gives me great feedback that the podcast provides you value, and it would make me very happy. So come on, let's begin. Orly, what's up? Hi, how are things? Great. Orly found parking right next to us, we're very happy. We waited a long time for this idea, I remember. Absolutely. So with us is Orly, who is actually a GM at Payoneer. Right. Right, and you actually came to Payoneer from Wix, and before that you came from more traditional companies.

Orly Stern Izhaki: [01:00] Tell us, tell us a little about your bio. So I've been 20 years in the tech world. I have a very diverse career, both in terms of the companies I've worked at, and the professions I've engaged in. So I started my career in the data world, and moved to development, QA there too, product, and in recent years my role has been general management. And I really started, I was many years at Bank Leumi, including managing Leumi Digital, for many years, which was super — hold on, innovative and exciting. Later I joined Pepper, the founding team, I was literally the second employee on the founding team. A crazy experience. So, what did you join as, product? So I joined as product, but not really defined. I mean, it wasn't fully clear what we were building, they called it back then an internet bank, not even digital. And we kind of got a headline, with a mission to go and decide what we're building. It really is a crazy journey. And apart from worrying about budget matters, it felt like a startup in every way. So I came in at the start and did everything, we were a very small team, from strategic work of research and understanding what our X-factor is, who the customers we're targeting are, business model, operating model. And later I took Pepper's banking product, really end-to-end, come on, go. Truly an exciting and special journey. And from there you went on to Wix, right? Along the way I was at Menora, where I set up all the digital, product, and innovation activity.

Eyal David: [02:35] What does it actually look like, after you go through Leumi, Pepper, and you're building a real app there, like all the customer-facing side of it, what does it look like at Menora? When you arrive at an organization that, I assume, isn't at the same level of digital, internet maturity?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [02:50] So I think first of all I knew what I was getting into, yes, Menora had, they basically had a site with one page, which was fairly obligatory to maintain, but very very uninviting, not easy with digital processes, no sales processes, no service processes, it was very hard to find your way there, a company that was really run manually. And yes, after I'd done the most amazing thing in banking, it seemed to me that if I went to insurance, which really is a pain point for all of us, that would be the next amazing thing. And indeed, it was a very challenging experience, but very satisfying, it's the kind of place where you understand that wherever you touch, you can make an impact. And then the choice of where to start, how to prioritize, and what to touch, is critical in order to succeed. That was one of the big challenges, but it's really building everything, it's building a team, it's recruiting people for this mission, and it's getting the organization to understand what this is, it wants it, but what does it really mean, to be a much more digital organization, or product-led, and much more advanced. Intriguing, okay, so we'll come back to that, and then you went on to Wix, Wix Restaurants, right? So at Wix I was at two stations, I was also in Premium Services, which is basically a group responsible for the company's business model, and it includes subscriptions and domains and more, and then I moved to manage Wix Restaurants, yes. And from there to Payoneer. And from there to Payoneer, right. So you've been at Payoneer a few years now? At Payoneer close to two years, actually two different roles I got to do there, I started there as VP Products of the company's core products, and recently, after an organizational change we made, and a move to a more matrixed model, a more matrixed structure, I manage a business unit called Business Applications, I manage a group of 200 people, from all the disciplines needed to achieve our business goals, both — I actually manage both the products we make available to customers, but also all the user experience and the worlds of monetization. So tell us, in a minute, what does Payoneer actually do? So Payoneer is a fintech company, that does its thing in the world of cross-border payments. What does that mean? What does that mean? We basically serve SMBs, business customers, medium and small, around the world, mainly in emerging markets, markets like China, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and these are businesses that basically want to operate in a global arena, and one of their challenges is the financial world, how you manage the finances in these worlds. I'll give an example of a Chinese seller, who sells on marketplaces, he even has a site that sells his goods directly to customers, and he basically needs to collect money from customers, say from the United States, and pay all kinds of suppliers, and it may sound simple to us, but it's not simple at all, it's not simple for a seller from China to open an American account in the United States, or even to hold USD in his own country. Another use case could be someone from the services world, a company in Argentina that sells marketing services to various companies, maybe even registered in several places around the world, and paying employees in several places around the world, this is where we come into the picture, we basically give them a financial solution, to move money around the world in different currencies, and additional financial services, that they need to run their business well and efficiently,

Eyal David: [06:27] and we really solve a real problem for customers around the world. What are the other capabilities besides the clearing and money transfers themselves?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [06:36] So beyond clearing and money transfers, and we really hold a kind of virtual bank account with us, we also have lending services, we have all kinds of capabilities of, of course we also make available and provide cards, but also capabilities of managing your budget, setting limits and budgets, etc.

Eyal David: [06:55] And now the company is going through something that's actually a change? Right, so in the last two, three years,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [07:01] we've been going through a kind of transformation, to be a much more product-led company. The company is celebrating exactly these days twenty years, it was founded in Israel, today it's very large, successful, operating in a hundred and ninety countries, about two thousand five hundred employees, traded on Nasdaq, but it's been very much built over the years on operations, like many startups in fintech, when they need to answer more regulation and there was another opportunity, and they grew, grew very very nicely, but a lot of the things rely on manual work, and we basically understand that in order to give even better service to our customers, and to keep growing, we have to make this shift. It's something that comes really from the company's management, which pushes very very hard toward it, and I joined right within this journey, which is very interesting, and it's basically at every level, I mean, all the circles of the company need to change, it starts with product, but if we take it to the wider circle it's the technology organization, and beyond that of course it's the whole company and all the different functions in the company, from marketing and finance and go-to-market, that need to work together in a different operating mindset, a really internal change of how a company works and thinks.

Eyal David: [08:16] It improves its bottom line, and when you come in, so basically you said you came in as VP Product. Right. And how was it, you come in basically, and like at Menora you had to build some plan and basically look at all the different areas of the company and say okay, this is what we're going to do, or how was it?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [08:34] So it's basically a kind of double work, I mean, first of all I have my areas of responsibility, in which I had to advance products and projects and all kinds of initiatives, while building a strong group of my own, but also on the other side, it's basically the cross-cutting view of the transformation process in the company, and how we build a product organization that's much stronger, and can take us to the places we want to reach, and that includes redefining our hiring process, and what a good product manager is in our eyes, what the concept of the ideal product manager is, work processes, work processes, really the whole product life cycle, delivery life cycle, defining it, embedding it, processes like the product reviews we do within the company, in order to keep improving all the time and raise the bar on how we do product. So okay, mainly processes, and you already touched on it, so I'll ask, what in your eyes are the most important product skills of a product manager? A product manager, in my eyes, is a bit like a Swiss Army knife, right? He needs to know a lot of things, and he's required to have a lot of skills, but if I have to choose then I'll choose three, I think one is the ability to rally, which is really about taking some vision and rallying people, and being the glue that connects everyone around it, the second would be the ability to separate the essential from the peripheral, I think it's a critical skill, to cut through the noise, to focus, it's related to how you do scoping, it's related to how you manage even within a conversation, and the third would be really being empathetic to customers, really wanting to understand your customer, their pain, to understand them really well, and to want to solve it.

Eyal David: [10:16] Okay, so you started recruiting people according to this goal, can you give some story, or an example of how you rallied people, and how you brought these abilities to bear in practice?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [10:29] Sure. So when I arrived at the company, I got responsibility for a product, a critical product from the company's point of view, both for its results, and for the customer experience. It's basically the company's onboarding process, which sits... can you describe what the existing situation was? So I think that in fintech companies in general, and financial companies in general, the onboarding process is always challenging. And why is it challenging? Because unlike other companies, other companies, where it includes one objective of Conversion and Acquisition, it also includes aspects of compliance,

Eyal David: [11:09] and it usually brings costs with it too, in worlds that are very compliant. What do you mean by costs? I remember I went through it,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [11:15] you wait about three days until they approve you, so basically in financial processes, you have to make sure the customer is one, kosher, let's call it, in order to pass this process, that he's a customer we can, sorry, the process is a customer we can really, approve and provide services to, and the second thing is, to make sure the customer who presents that he is, is indeed that person. A due diligence process, in financial language, we call it KYC, Know Your Customer, and it's a complex process, especially when you serve 190 countries, with different regulations, with different documents, with different documentation and so on, and therefore a lot of the work, in a lot of these companies, is done manually, and that's also the reason it takes a long time, sometimes, to approve a customer, because basically the customer submits all the documents, and behind the scenes a manual check is required. So that was the process that existed. Also in terms of user experience, it wasn't very up to date, there were a lot of places to improve.

Eyal David: [12:18] So let's sit again on... maybe we'll explain, in one more word, why it's so acute, the onboarding stage basically, for the whole lifecycle of a customer at the company? Why did you at Payoneer also decide to magnetize onto this thing? It's critical,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [12:31] first of all, one second from the company's perspective, this is the gate. Okay? It's the gate also in the sense of, it's my way to bring in customers, and to engage them, so they'll continue the process. But it's also the place where I need to identify risk events, fraud events, detectors. And I need to know, basically already at entry, what kind of service, whether I can give him or can't give him. And it will go with him throughout his life with us at the company, and again, this is true for every company, I did similar processes before this too at Pepper and Leumi, this is the way when you open an account for a customer.

Eyal David: [13:03] Because he gets some score behind the scenes, and then you can assess his risk, right? That's the idea.

Orly Stern Izhaki: [13:09] It's basically the way to do it, I mean, behind the scenes, yes, defining with some risk score, that you work with, that can also be updated over the customer's life, but the starting point, the opening point is definitely critical. So how did you actually approach onboarding? I think the biggest challenge, because many of us have gotten to do onboarding processes before at various companies, I think the very very big challenge was also an attempt to solve a lot of things over a long time, and the moment they don't get solved an organizational bottleneck is created too, because a lot of things depend on it, since it's at the start of the process, if you don't do it well enough, you can't do additional things afterward, and the roadmap and the backlog basically fill up, and also some frustration is created, and this frustration happens also in teams that already tried to lift this thing, and it didn't work before, but it happens in general too, with stakeholders waiting for all kinds of things, and certainly with management. So I think my biggest challenge was, one second before, to understand what's happening, what was and so on, how to create something that, one second, creates trust, and reassures... you mean trust within the company. Within the company, yes. Even before, one second, with the customer, which is super important, but then a few things I think are important to do, in order to create this, one, is not to ignore the history. Usually we don't step into a vacuum, things happened before, give them their place, to them meaning both to the things that happened, and to the people who made it possible to get where we got, and from there, one second, you need to take it further. So to listen, to hear, to look at data, to understand what happened, not analysis paralysis, okay, you need to know where to stop, but yes, to understand what happened,

Eyal David: [14:58] and give it its place. So how does such a process look? Because you say there were four, three... let's try to dig into this. There were three or four such attempts, all documented, over a span of twenty years, say in the last ten years, they probably happened, on average every two or three years, that it basically didn't succeed, people are no longer at the company, I don't know if there's even documentation of the thing, how do you basically go back,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [15:22] how do you basically see what happened, what worked. So first of all, people who are at the company of course, to talk to them, to hear, and you don't go back back back, because you don't always have the information, and that's exactly the place of analysis paralysis, and I also accept that I don't know everything, and I need to move forward, there's some balance point, that you mustn't miss. So to talk with people, it is to look for materials and read, it's also okay sometimes to reach out to people who are no longer at the company, but are always happy to share knowledge, because it was their baby and something important to them, and the company is probably important to them afterward too, and they want to help, so all these things were done. Another thing, is of course to talk with customers, always. Which is very hard around onboarding. Right, it's very very hard, and then to catch them many times at the moment of truth, and to try to reach out to them, it's to do it through support, or whoever accompanies them, and also through CSMs. Many times when these processes don't work smoothly, there's some CSM who accompanies at least some of the customers, or the managed customers, and salespeople, so basically also to get information, in real time from important customers, what they feel. Another point, is to bring into one room all the important people from the start, and what do I mean by the important people? everyone relevant to the process, not to wait with this until the end. I think there's something about bringing everyone into a room, and together trying to crack the problem, and okay, in the end everyone has their role, and there's also someone who decides, but everyone sitting in the same room, talking together, having a place to think together, that's critical to the success of such a process. The method I like to use is usually to do blitzes, a kind of offsite, it's always better if it's face-to-face, but if possible then remote too. The reason is that usually you meet, talk, an hour, and then try to find time in the calendar for another two weeks from now, and the context just disappears like that. There's something about this stretch of a day, two days, to sit, to talk about all the problems, to think about all the possible solutions, to also prioritize the problems, and then to set out with this group

Eyal David: [17:30] continuing to update together. So if I understand correctly, this upfront research you did before this session that happened, right. I also understand between the lines who made the decision in the end, what was actually the output

Orly Stern Izhaki: [17:42] that came out of this meeting? So from the meetings I think we managed first of all to prioritize the objectives. There were three different objectives, if not four, so basically what's the most critical thing that has to happen, that you can't compromise on? The rest are important too, but they're secondary.

Eyal David: [18:00] And were these objectives necessarily products, or were they also concerns of people who were in the room? No, they're really cross-

Orly Stern Izhaki: [18:06] company, they're not products, the product is the way to translate a solution to those objectives. So this alignment was critical. The second output is guidelines. It's basically what, like, do, don't. What are the things we must be careful about and what are the things we can't do. And some beginning of a kind of journey like this, of how we imagine this thing looks, not hermetically sealed, because you really can't close everything in a day, and there's also deep work that needs to be done, the teams whose specialty this is, but it does let everyone be aligned, and get as many answers as possible at the start so that you can set out with some solid assumptions. Another very very important thing, maybe it's stating the obvious, but all the work really really agile. Especially in such processes, you always try to solve everything, because everything is connected to everything. How do you manage to still start shipping in small pieces, also in order to, again, to gain trust in the organization. But as we know, also to see how customers respond to it, and how to really experiment. Should we try to think? So okay, it's a kind of scoping to... okay, this is our plan, and also some risk management, this is basically what came out with the folks in the room. How do we make this thing happen in light of the things that happened. Over what time frame

Eyal David: [19:24] did you actually start dripping out these drops? So the first milestone

Orly Stern Izhaki: [19:30] took about three months, but from that moment it's at a daily level, every day some change comes up, every day we update something, and of course the rollout is also very gradual. What do you even measure? So you look at conversion, within the conversion there are all kinds of parts, conversion from start to finish, there's basically activation, which is the transition from completing the signup to the first activity you do, so you look at these things, you look at this relative to different segments in the population, what an ICP customer looks like, versus, one second, the rest of the customers, of course. You look at costs, whether there's a rise in support inquiries and if inquiries do come, then the handling time for them, whether it's long or short, and of course also SLA, how long this process takes. That's probably the significant thing here in this case. That's the significant thing, but not only. Yes, but it's found to be at the tail of the things basically. Right, but we really saw, and again, we're not fully rolled out, we're in stages, but one is that we went live, and we're no longer talking in endless conversations about what if, and we're not in lab conditions, but we're live, and part of the populations, and we see in practice how it works, and we can do a rollback if needed, and fix.

Eyal David: [20:48] That's a significant improvement. That's interesting, okay, let's get into this for a second. First of all, in terms of populations, so was it cross-border too, or was it... this, we always, again, serve 190 countries,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [21:00] so we always start opening up every development we do, gradually, not to all countries at once, also not always a hundred percent in a specific country, but also in a graduated way, depending on the development. Like you said, there's different compliance after all, so no, it's a harder move like this. Both compliance, and also customer behavior is different between different countries, okay, so it's not compliance, I mean, there are countries where something we did will work very well, in other countries maybe less, sometimes it's related to content, sometimes it's related to a document that needs to be uploaded in a certain country. And how does

Eyal David: [21:30] a rollback of such a thing look, like, I just started an onboarding process that's

Orly Stern Izhaki: [21:38] already... to bring me back after them, I'll be liable. A customer who already went through the process, from here he's with us, already our customer, of course he continues, but you can decide that in that same country, now the rest of the customers won't go through this experience, and go back. Okay, so how did it continue

Eyal David: [21:50] from there? I'll now try to kind of fast forward a few drops ahead, basically. Yes, so we're

Orly Stern Izhaki: [21:56] again, still in a kind of rollout process, one of the critical points was really to define the metrics. What is success? And because there are, as I said, there are a lot of objectives here, and as you said, there are a lot of risks here, so there are a lot of metrics that we look at, some I mentioned earlier, there are additional ones related also to the world of risk and compliance, and that's what lets us, together with that same committee that worked from the start, decide whether we keep opening up, or slow the pace and need to fix something. I was really

Eyal David: [22:32] impressed, I discovered that in these situations you usually define what is not good, that's the more interesting thing. So basically today you're in a process where you're still working on it, still improving there, how does it actually look?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [22:44] Yes, so it's still in a rollout process, and during the rollout process we also keep improving all the time. Tons and tons of tests in this area, which is also a kind of muscle we strengthened a lot at the company in the last year and a half. Fewer assumptions, less guessing, check and fix fast. And it's amazing to see how the team did the... how it adopted, one second, this method

Eyal David: [23:08] of operating, and how it works. Which is exactly what you brought from Wix among other things, right? Right, at Wix,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [23:14] this topic of, one, talking with customers all the time and hearing them and not thinking we know everything. Fewer surveys, fewer of those, really being very much with the customer. And two, the topic of A-B Testing, which is really, one second, checking in practice what happens, and many times you discover that things you're sure you're doing for the customer's benefit and that he'll want and adopt, turn out differently

Eyal David: [23:38] in reality. That's it, we didn't even talk about it, you have enormous amounts of traffic, right? Are you talking about Payoneer

Orly Stern Izhaki: [23:44] or about Wix? I'm talking about Payoneer. Yes, so Payoneer has two million customers, and the funnel of the onboarding is much bigger, millions a year, and relatively fast you can

Eyal David: [23:56] see the impact of things you do. And it's also important to note that it splits for you, right? It's not that I only come to open an account, I, like you say, I can be a vendor and I can be a

Orly Stern Izhaki: [24:08] receiver, how is it called? There's payer and receiver, right? We're actually moving today toward very much an approach of you're our customer and we want to offer you as many services as possible, we also grow the variety of services we offer over time, but absolutely you can be with an intent of payer, you want to pay suppliers or companies you work with, and you can be on the other side

Eyal David: [24:32] a receiver. So you really gave an example here of how you enter a company and manage or push a big process forward, how was it at Menora for that matter when comparing?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [24:44] I think Menora was less of a tech company from the start. Exactly,

Eyal David: [24:50] that's why I say, you touched and started to map and find the things and find the opportunities and everything you touched, like

Orly Stern Izhaki: [24:56] you say, there's oil there, so how did it look there? Right, so there it's really also very collaborative work with a lot of players, from a place of teaching them how to even do it, I mean, how we look at things, how we look at the customer's journey and identify pain points, how we do prioritization — back then it was even beyond agile work, scrum and sprints, so a lot of this kind of learning on the go, on the job training there was pressure, as always, at every company to run very very fast so you can't, one second, teach everyone and then start a small move, and along the way you bring the right people from inside and outside, and teach them and I think after the first couple of processes, you also build the infrastructures, the technological ones that let you run faster like that, people already start to understand what you're talking about but at the start you really hold it, you're kind of the flag bearer

Eyal David: [25:52] you're like me, you're a process person I understand, tell me, and now when you look at Payoneer, what are the significant challenges

Orly Stern Izhaki: [25:58] of yours there? So there are many challenges, I think the most significant challenge that I'd point out is the shift from looking at features and outputs to business outcomes and to impact. I think that in many companies that got used to measuring success by the amount of features you deliver and whether a certain feature was delivered by a certain ETA and what really matters, we're a business exactly, it's in the end the business results, whether I managed to move the needle of acquisition or NPS and customer satisfaction and so on, and from my point of view in the end I want teams that really have power, and they can know what they're measured on and choose what to work on, but this is a change that's also within the technology organization — the squads need to know how to work this way, but also management needs to know how to measure success this way with the technology teams and product teams. I also want

Eyal David: [26:58] to — tell me, at the level of your product teams is this something you managed to instill? So we're in a process

Orly Stern Izhaki: [27:04] and that's why it's still a challenge, we work with an OKR mechanism at the company it's very clear what counts as success at the company level. And we cascade it inward and we're really in the process of defining at each team level what its KPI is and then really starting to let them instead of being a backlog manager to really be a product manager, to really manage the movement

Eyal David: [27:28] in the right direction according to what they feel is right. Do you feel this is today a problem of product

Orly Stern Izhaki: [27:34] managers at companies? I see it at many companies, this conversation happens a lot I hear it quite a bit and I think everyone is kind of on the way there, because what happens many times is you work on a lot of features you deliver a ton but there's kind of a feeling that they don't understand what you're doing and don't understand what you're doing because, one, it's hard to track all these features, Orly — strange, interesting. I think the world has rightly shifted and people look at this in the big numbers of companies, but in the end in the teams that do the work they still don't know how to connect the things well enough. I think it's also very related not only to the product person who works,

Eyal David: [28:24] maybe there's product, like you say, there's after all a side that's basically dev's, and if it isn't aligned to this, then it's just not measured on it. Right. So it looks like that. Tell me, how does it look for you today in job interviews when you interview people, how do you examine this aspect, that you define as challenging?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [28:40] So we first of all work in the method of the big tech companies, we do product sense and execution and leadership, and basically within these ideas, and also mainly in sense and in execution, there are a lot of questions related to KPIs, and one second the understanding of them and of trade-offs, so that's one angle. But also in the free conversation I like to hear what they did before, and to dive into something they choose, and through that to also see how they measured their success, what happened when something didn't succeed, and also how they communicate it to the organization, which is no less important, to the organization, to customers, to customers we always think, right, how we do marketing, how we communicate to them, outside the product, inside the product, but how you communicate it also inside the company, that's also a skill, that's very very important, and it simply comes up in a free conversation about something that arises on its own. I'm going to really draw a parallel to what you actually did,

Eyal David: [29:33] after that you'll tell maybe also about Wix, that's a nice story too, but what you just did in this onboarding project, you really sat people down, you came with materials in advance of okay, this is what we did until now, let's avoid the things we understood aren't good, this is the existing situation, let's talk about what we want, the next stage, after we did that, it's also to understand for a second how much it's going to cost and how much time, and how you divide it, I really loved actually the... Right. That's exactly it. Right. So that's how you drive a move, basically that's how you communicate it inward too, because otherwise you can't rally anyone, and you probably also can't explain it well enough to yourself. Right. Not to mention onward. Right. So I'd be happy if you'd maybe also give the Wix example, you came to Wix actually right before COVID, in '19, right? Right, I came in '19,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [30:18] and I think that actually in this context, if we connect for a moment to my journey at Payoneer, then actually the second role I did at Wix Restaurants also required several elements of rallying, I'll say, I joined Wix Restaurants right after COVID, you can say right after, because COVID didn't end in a day, but when it started to fade there, and there were challenges there. Maybe give a bit of context for whoever isn't familiar, what happened at Wix Restaurants during COVID? Sure. So first of all Wix Restaurants is a product, it's one of Wix's verticals, it's a product that was acquired something like ten years ago, some startup that was acquired, and basically gave solutions to restaurant owners, to build sites, to manage their menu, online orders, table reservations, etc. During COVID everything exploded, as we know, e-commerce also in the restaurant world, and basically the numbers grew and grew, restaurants very very offline basically came up onto the platform, and we really saw very very significant traffic, our results too were accordingly, the group grew a lot, and what happened, and happened to a lot of businesses, basically part of the COVID growth, not all of it, was a bit of accelerated growth, I'll say, that doesn't represent reality, and basically there was a question of, okay, what went up? And one of the challenges in what went up, beyond, one second, doing the strategy work and understanding where we are relative to the competition, and what the added value is that we give to customers versus the competitors and in general, was the fact that we're basically relying on very very old infrastructure, that basically didn't sit on Wix's infrastructures. Now, for whoever isn't familiar, Wix is amazing in this respect, that it develops platform capabilities all the time that then let all the groups run very fast, and build specific solutions for the different verticals. But we couldn't enjoy all this goodness. And there was some crossroads here of deciding, one second, what's next, how we achieve the continuation, chapter two of Restaurants. I believed you had to build, it's basically three products, these three products anew on the... why three products? Because it's menu management, online orders, and table reservations, that's what three products. that you need to build anew on Wix's infrastructures, because we tried a lot to do a kind of refactor,

Eyal David: [32:42] which didn't succeed several times, and all kinds of solutions like this and that. One second, I'm like probably the manager who hears this, and says, thinks in his head, like, we poured a ton of money into this on refactors several times, COVID ended, it's expensive for me to bring new users, and now we're talking about, hey, let's build this whole thing anew. So what time frame are we talking about and how much will it cost them?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [33:10] So at this stage it was even at the level of an initial conversation, I mean, can we even go out and examine this thing? I think the response overall was like, no, really not, including from the teams themselves. I mean, it's not just management, it's also the teams themselves. And meanwhile they keep trying to do a refactor. Here we'll jump a year and a half later, we did it. We did, and basically built the three products anew. It wasn't feature parity, we didn't copy the products we had onto Wix's platform, but built leaner products, more precise, that answered what was important at that time, what our customers need, and also where we can compete against the competition. And from here you can only keep running, because basically the platform enables a lot more capabilities, and blah blah a lot lot more. But how did we get there? So there were basically three possible directions, I won't tire you for a second with all the details, but three possible directions that were possible, I'll just say that one of them is this direction, and basically we, Restaurants people, gathered, we split into a few groups, by the way people from product, from engineering, from design, from data, from operations. It sounds familiar to me, the process. Right. And each group simply got one theme or one direction we chose out of the three, and had to work on it and basically say how it would work, how long it would take, what resources are needed for it, what the pros and cons are, what we'd gain if we did it and what the risks are or what we stand to lose if we go in this direction. And this process, which didn't take long, a few weeks, let us in the end come back and gather together for a decision. And not only that, when we came and presented it to management, then it's much easier to explain. That it's grounded. That it's grounded, that there's really strong engagement from the team that wants to work on this thing, and also to explain very well what would happen if we go in other directions. And from here the road was already easy, and we ran very very fast to go live in super agile work.

Eyal David: [35:19] Because what, because I'll go to a practical bit, basically the thing I thought about is wow, you need to maintain what exists while building all this goodness, like you said, and there are three layers, do you need all of them at once? No, so there was a plan that was gradual,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [35:34] and we started from one product, and then moved to the two other products, we split into groups, it also required some organizational adjustment in order to succeed working on the things at the right pace. That was also part of the proposal. Right.

Eyal David: [35:46] Yes, so it was more or less... and another question, did you actually go for the significant money maker or did you actually start small?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [35:54] We went for the thing that was furthest from where we want to be. We felt that if we don't provide an answer there, then we're really missing the market, and then we continued to the thing that was actually a bit simpler to solve, and from there we went to the thing... yes, the thought was basically to start from it,

Eyal David: [36:14] because that way it's easier to bring new users or easier to basically retain those who exist? Because I think we felt that if we don't start from the thing

Orly Stern Izhaki: [36:21] that we're furthest from, we'll simply lose the market. Now because it's basically three different products and you can decide you use only one of them.

Eyal David: [36:28] And really, what were the challenges now in this process, what do you remember? So I think the challenge, after the moment of the persuasion journey,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [36:37] was really the challenge of scoping, because you really can't do everything, and we understood we're not going to do feature parity, but, as they told me at the time, some of the features were written in blood, how do you know that this feature yes or this feature no. So a lot of customer conversations, a lot of looking at competitors, there are successful competitors who also don't have some of the features, maybe it's not so terrible. Of course, data, usability. You have tons of use — that's it now. Tons, tons, right, right. So a decision that can be very grounded.

Eyal David: [37:07] Wow, a stunning story, I want to open a parenthesis, our whole conversation is an opening of parentheses, we're closing them, describe to me your entry into product, a really interesting story.

Orly Stern Izhaki: [37:19] Yes. First of all, everyone has interesting stories about entering product, right? There's no one routine way to enter product? You came from data, I don't think we've seen that here yet. I came from data and from development. I basically went through both these stations, so back then I worked, something like 15 years ago, I worked at Bank Leumi, and I was in the development world, at the stage we're talking about, and I felt something was missing, like there wasn't some passion there. And then — he says, development 15 years ago at Bank Leumi? So development, in very very outdated languages, in Cobol and, I think, there aren't many people who know it anymore, and SQL and C and such. Fun. And I managed at the time basically the operations preparedness of the bank, when they were mapping the branches and the start of digital, but something was missing. I felt I needed something that would stir my heart more, and I was probably brave then. Now when I look at it in hindsight, I basically simply sent an email to one of the very senior managers at the bank, I was quite a kid, and I said that I simply want to meet. Happily, he responded to the request, we met, and I said I simply want to work with him. He had a lot of interesting things, one of them was digital, after a week he called me, and he said to me, I have something for you, you know, product management, 15 years back. It wasn't very familiar. I said to him, no, but I'll learn. And that's how I basically entered at Leumi Digital into product management, into a management role, not an IC role, I mean, I managed a fairly large group, and learned product management on the go. So first of all, the fact that he believed in me and gave me the opportunity. You know, I don't know what I did there, but the fact that he gave me this opportunity, it was amazing, and it's undoubtedly easier to make the move to product management within an organization, I mean, they already knew me at the organization, he also knew me. I probably did a few things okay before they'd let me, one second, make this move. I will say, and it's kind of a recommendation, a lot of people rush, one second, to manage and manage people, and I do see it in the product world. I started that way, but because I was a bit missing some of the foundation, when I later moved to Pepper, I did a ton of hands-on, for a very long period, I didn't manage anyone, I did everything myself, and it really let me learn product management much better and strengthen my skill set related to it, and then go back to management. So I really recommend whoever feels they're missing it, yes, to take these breaks into IC roles and...

Eyal David: [39:55] I actually want to go back to this move you made, I think that's the best way to do it, especially in today's situation, and now, if someone in development is listening to us, who wants to move to product, what's actually the way you recommend

Orly Stern Izhaki: [40:09] to do it, when I hear you talk a lot about the business side. Right. So I think that somewhere first of all you can come from all kinds of directions, naturally also within the company. What I always suggest is one, that your managers and the managers around you know that you're interested in this thing, okay? Like, one second, to say hey, I'm here, this interests me. But before you actually ask to make the move, yes, to ask to take some side project. Organizations usually allow these things. Yes, I want, one second, in my area to experiment and take some small product work. Yes, I want to do something like that. It doesn't matter, one second, whether you're in data or in development. I've gotten to work quite a bit with people over my career and to give them this place. Sometimes they discover they don't like it, that happened to me too. I can't understand that, yes, I think I love the most amazing job, I'm laughing, but it's really a good way to check that it suits you, and if so, you also prove there's something to the direction, and then in larger organizations there are more structured processes, sometimes you need to pass some test, sometimes there's a really clear process for members, and of course smaller ones, it simply fits in afterward into the team if there's a role, of course.

Eyal David: [41:18] You know, I'll add something to this, I think it's true, it's also what I did in my career, but if you don't have a doer or someone who really looks at what you're doing and says, as you said, on the focus of what's right and what's not right,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [41:32] because that's the significant muscle at the start, then it can be a bit barren, or it may be that a result you'll bring or produce won't be good enough.

Eyal David: [41:39] So it's also a matter of maybe organizations also basically providing that, like there's an interest for the company, I think, to do this, to a point.

Orly Stern Izhaki: [41:46] Right, so... it's basically the dissonance here in this case. Right, so I have to say that both today and at previous companies I was at, they allow these moves, they do encourage them, but you need to fit it, and in the end those same skills don't exist in everyone, and then in these processes they do give someone to accompany you basically and let you see whether you're in the right direction or not. Which is always only because such people are... the busiest. Exactly, I didn't want to say it.

Eyal David: [42:14] We'll close these parentheses, let's go back for a second to Payoneer. We came to Payoneer for a moment, I want to talk for a second about AI and about trends in general happening in this industry. Where does it catch you? What even is it?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [42:26] First of all we're living in a crazy time, where you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning to find you have to learn everything all over again. There are two aspects to this. One is the aspect of work processes, and the second is really inside the product. And the aspect of work processes, like everyone, we want to be very much there, and we're on the way, we're in some process. So looking specifically at product management, everyone works with all the AI tools, we all know them, to do better research, to shorten work processes, to probably phrase emails better, and to help with presentations, etc. We want to take this much deeper, to the worlds of writing user stories in a much more, to do prototyping in a better way. There's a way to go, especially a company that's heavily regulated, so security matters and so on. There are more challenges like this, these birth pangs that everyone experiences.

Eyal David: [43:18] Oh, look how many ideas for side projects, so that you can help split up the product, and then they'll also have an interest in helping to do shadowing for you.

Orly Stern Izhaki: [43:25] Oh yes, okay. And the second aspect is really inside the product itself. So there too we're doing quite a bit, but there are more very interesting directions that we're taking forward, we're really in the coming days planning an internal AI hackathon, around specific customer problems that we want to solve. Oh, that's cool. And then these ideas you basically rank according to their value? Like, why would people work on significant things? Or how does it look? So we, there are a few... it's always the challenge, right? A few problems we chose, and basically groups can choose these problems and work on them specifically, and out of the things that come up, some of them, I kind of, will go up to production, maybe. But even before that we, if I talked earlier about onboarding and the need to upload documents and verify them, so there are today a lot of capabilities in the AI worlds of OCR and reading the documents automatically, and up to worlds of really all kinds of risk models and so on, that we're already using today. As the technology develops, it lets us grow a lot in these areas, to do much better, more efficient work, and most importantly that our customers also experience a much better experience. That's it, also scale entirely, right? Totally, totally. Stunning. I'm rooting for you, one should say, actually... it's fun for us. Yes, I'm not sure, actually — a call from Brazil, basically getting, yes, getting real. I have, I have maybe a few interesting insights to share, so I'm really really waiting, waiting, there are times that will shorten. Right about that. Stunning.

Eyal David: [45:09] I want to ask you one last question. What do you foresee happening to the product role in this whole crazy AI world that's basically happening now?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [45:22] So there's a lot of talk, right, around whether professions will disappear, roles will disappear, what will happen to product management? I don't think product management will disappear. I think it will become simply a touch different. I mean, I think AI will let us be much more efficient, much faster. A lot of the work — in product management there's of course a lot of work that's sometimes Sisyphean, a lot of these things will be shortened and become much more automatic, and I think product managers will have much more room to do strategy, to understand customers. If I talked earlier about the skill set that's required, then this topic of focus, the topic of organizational engagement, these are things that it's very hard for me to imagine how you do without this human factor. Yes, and maybe also really communication in general, right?

Eyal David: [46:05] So I very much connect with what you're saying, basically product will become much more entrepreneurial,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [46:12] basically that's the thing, because right, it will be much easier to move things basically. Right, right. If you think about it, one of the pains of a lot of product managers, at all levels, is that they don't get to properly, don't get enough to talk with customers as they'd want, they don't get enough to do strategy as they'd want, because there's a ton of work that needs to happen. I think a lot of this thing will shrink and there'll be more room left for the more, kind of the cherry on top, and it will change the essence in this respect. Or not, let's see. Or not. Yeah, so it was really interesting. Orly, tell me, so are you looking for employees now? Yes, excellent question. So we are looking for employees, looking for product managers and not only, and we'd really be happy to get inquiries from people who kind of connected with what I told and with the path we're going through, and you can really see everything on LinkedIn or on our jobs page on the site. And tell me, and for these ideas, when people reach out to you,

Eyal David: [47:11] what do you expect the basis to be that they arrive with? I'm not talking in terms of abilities, how should they prepare to listen to this episode, presumably?

Orly Stern Izhaki: [47:18] So to listen to the episode, there'll be an area, and I think that in general it doesn't matter, not just with us, and I think that a product manager who arrives at an interview, should always read about the company, it sounds obvious right, but it doesn't always happen, read about the company. Or use it. And try the product, exactly that's what I wanted to say, when I ask candidates, did you try the product, and he says to me no, it kind of feels to me that they don't really have a passion for the product. So those are two good tips, and again, it depends on the position itself, and as I said, our process is very very clear, and they explain it, the recruiters explain it. What, is it a mock process? It's not a mock process, it's a process of product sense, execution, and a leadership test. And I think that in this process we also learn to get to know the candidate well, but he also learns to understand how we work and what our expectations are, and in the end an interview is a mutual thing, right? So I think both sides win for a moment in this process. I have just one question, what is a leadership interview? A leadership interview is an interview in which we want to see people's ability to drive, their ability to handle complex situations, the ability to communicate well with their stakeholders. So it's basically a simulation with a situation that... it's really a set of questions, it's not a simulation, it's a set of questions, they're just more focused for a moment on these areas of work interfaces, of the ability to lead and manage without authority, as it's called, the ability to handle disappointments within this thing that we have quite a few of, right? So in these areas, unlike product sense and execution, which are really a case study you work on together, some exercise you do on the fly. Which is really something, in my opinion, if you want to hack it, you can practice with ChatGPT for that matter, to get counter-arguments and at least practice the basics of the thing. Right, right, there's a lot, I think there are also a lot of videos online. Yes. By the way, there are a lot of frameworks, for whoever's familiar, they're not obligatory, they only help organize your thoughts, and sometimes it really helps candidates like, to stay focused and centered and not get stressed, and yes, with ChatGPT you can do things. Or any AI, right? An AI tool, you can do really interesting practice drills, there are tons of questions online, I think you need to enjoy it, I mean many times people come to it stressed, it's really like doing a brainstorm with whoever's across from you, specifically for product sense, there's also no textbook solution, you can take it in tons of directions, so you can prepare and you can also come and even enjoy it.

Eyal David: [49:57] I'll ask one more question, that we always ask here at the end, what do you wish for Orly in another 5 years? To keep enjoying what I do,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [50:04] I so truly, I so love this field, and I think I got to do something I so love, I wish for myself to keep getting excited every day, when I talk with the customers and understand that I'm solving some pain for them, or when I sit with my team and crack some problem.

Eyal David: [50:21] Good luck with that. And if someone wants to get in touch with you, someone who wants to get into product or any other consultation,

Orly Stern Izhaki: [50:27] how to drive a case in an organization and push against the current? Sure, gladly, all my details are on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, I'm more than happy to accompany and help like that. Great, and we'd be happy for you to come back in another year to tell where things stand.

Eyal David: [50:44] Gladly, I'm happy too. Meanwhile — thanks. Thanks, bye bye. Bye. Hey friends, thanks for listening. If you found this podcast valuable, you can subscribe, follow us, of course for more episodes, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other app, and of course if you didn't find us on some app, stars on any platform, and follow us so that more listeners can be exposed to us and find the podcast. You can also find the previous episodes on any app or on the YouTube channel, we have links in the description. Until next time, come on, be efficient and bye bye.