How to innovate responsibly, with McKinsey's Rikki Singh

RS: 00:00

The first thing that folks struggle with is, is the definition of inclusion do no harm or is the definition of inclusion do good? The do no harm world is as long as you create equality or enable equality, it's sufficient. The do better than good is you need to enable equity.

TS: 00:24

Welcome to Made For Us, the show where we explore how intentional design can help build a world that works better for everyone. I'm your host, Tosin Sulaiman. Every week, we'll bring you inspiring conversations with founders, advocates and business leaders who are driving accessibility and inclusion forward.

In this episode, we're asking product managers an important question. How much do you value inclusion? And how does it stack up against other priorities like privacy or sustainability? Join us as we talk to Rikki Singh, a partner at McKinsey & Company and co-author of a report on Responsible Product Management that looks into these questions.

Just a quick note, one acronym that comes up a few times is SaaS. If you're not a tech person, that's SAAS or software as a service. That's when businesses use software through the internet without needing to install or maintain anything themselves.

Don't forget you can follow us on social media. You'll find us on LinkedIn and Instagram at Made For Us Podcast. Now here's my conversation with Rikki.

RS: 01:28

I'm Rikki, a partner with McKinsey & Company based out of our Bay Area office. I spend all my time with software clients, helping them build and scale SaaS products with a former PM with Microsoft before shifting to consulting.

TS: 01:43

And so being based in Silicon Valley, working with some of the world's biggest software companies, what are the major trends and challenges that your team is focusing on right now?

RS: 01:54

There's a wide breadth. For the past decade, there was a lot of question and challenges on moving folks from on-prem to SaaS and what it means to be a PM in the SaaS world, what it means to build customer-centric products, what it means to be a mini CEO as a PM. So we've helped organizations both build SaaS products, but then also make that transition to be able to do that at scale, build capability to be able to do that among PMs and engineers.

In addition, we've also, I mean, the traditional McKinsey that you think of, right, which is advising on which adjacencies you should explore, what your five-year product strategy could be, what your 10-year growth strategy could be. So it's been a breadth of those questions. And of course, in the last, I would say three to five years, the focus has been on AI and the last two on generative AI. So we've kind of gone through, we typically just follow the tech trends as they unravel because then every organization is trying to figure out their own answer to the questions that the market asks.

TS: 02:55

So I'm curious to hear a little bit about your career journey. You've been at McKinsey for over seven years and now you're a partner. What were some of the pivotal moments in your career that led you to the work that you're doing now? Was this part of the plan?

RS: 03:09

I am a firm believer that I don't think you know what you'll be up to in like more than two years. So I live my life two years at a time. I was an electronics and communications graduate from BITS Dubai and I went on to work as a PM at Microsoft. I love being a PM. I love building things. I'm also very self-aware. So I realized that in conversations that I was having at the time, I didn't really understand concepts like NPV or ROI in the discussions.

I realized I actually don't know economics and finance as well as I probably should. And so I was that unpopular kid that went to business school to study econ and finance because I thought that's why you go to business school. And then once you're there, all your seniors will tell you, you absolutely should be doing something different for the summer. So my different for the summer was doing management consulting in tech in the Bay Area. It tells you about my obsession with technology and you know consulting went from being my something different over the summer to here I am seven years later.

I think the thing that has kept me at the firm is twofold. One, I don't think there's ever been a moment when I'm not learning something new and the ability to have impact at scale exists every single day. Second thing is I've been able to do what I would do outside when I wasn't at the firm, which is basically either building products or working with product organizations. Both of those combined, it felt like the blink of an eye.

TS: 04:39

And in addition to your work as a partner, you founded the McKinsey Product Academy. You also have a really cool podcast. What inspired you to take on those projects and how does it tie in with your work with product leaders?

RS: 04:51

So it has been, I would say that I gave birth to my toddler and to Product Academy around the same time. You can call it, you know, a pregnant brain trying to do more. But essentially we'd been partnering with Microsoft to look at, what really drives ROI on software. And it's called Developer Velocity Index Research. We've published it as well. The top two drivers on the ROI front, product management is one of them. So we knew it's a critical function to invest in.

Based on my former experience, I also knew that there's no PM comes from a product background, right? Like we've all got in either engineering degrees or business degrees, and then you end up in PM as a profession and then you learn in the profession. So we wanted to create a level playing field for folks from any background to be able to get started in the right manner in the profession. So that was sort of the motivation behind Product Academy, our way of giving back to the community at scale. And then of course, part of it was also selfish, which is I felt like I was contributing to a core that I spent so much time in and I'm deeply passionate about.

The podcast honestly was based on feedback. So when we did the speaker series, we had about 20,000 or so PMs that were enrolled in the program. And the most common feedback we got repeatedly was, could you also do short form format so that we could like listen to it on the go. And so that was the genesis of looking at the podcast.

TS: 06:21

And yes, I would recommend people check it out. So it's called McKinsey on building products.

RS: 06:26

It's called McKinsey on building products and we talk to leading product and engineering leaders and we cover a breadth of topics. Everything from how do you build products that customers fall in love with to how do you think about product-led growth, how do you think about generative AI, so it spans a breadth of topics.

TS: 06:43

So one of the reasons that I reached out to you was because in 2022, you co-authored an article on responsible product management. And it was based on research exploring product managers' attitudes towards privacy, sustainability, and inclusion. So I wanted to spend some time talking about that, particularly the inclusion piece, but also be great to dig into what's changed in the last few years since the report was published. But first, I was curious to know what initially motivated you and your co-authors to conduct that research. What were the questions that you were hoping to answer?

RS: 07:15

We were looking at what was happening to product management as a profession. And what we were realizing was the profession keeps going through these waves. So there was this initial wave of when things moved from on-premise to cloud. And that changed how PMs operated. The next wave they went through was as products got more consumerized. Everyone started talking about design thinking, being customer centric, being customer obsessed. And that's sort of in the evolution of the mini CEO role where you were trying to hold PMs accountable for the outcomes. That was sort of the second wave.

And we were beginning to see the emergence of a third wave, which is where PMs were now increasingly being held accountable by stakeholders, shareholders, customers on being able to build responsible products. Part of it was contributed by technology. Part of it was just demands of the market, right? And I think as a result, we wanted to understand, one, is this wave real? Like are people truly thinking about it?

RS: 08:12

And two, if they are, what are areas they are prioritizing and how are they going about it? When we did some initial interviews, what I also started realizing was there was a lot of passion about this topic in the community, but there were also a lot of questions and concerns like, care about this, I want to do something about this, but how do I get the funding to make a real difference? And so we thought, why not go and conduct research across PMs, across industry leaders to figure out how are they practically making a difference in these dimensions so that others could learn from it.

TS: 08:43

So before we dive into the findings, let's set the stage. How do you define responsible product management, responsible innovation, and what does that mean in practical terms for product leaders?

RS: 08:56

So even defining the dimensions of responsible product management was something that we did through research because there was a lot of debate on what are the dimensions to include versus not. I think the three that we eventually narrowed down on based on the feedback we got was privacy, which is essentially the ability to safeguard the rights of customers to their data information and how you use it. Sustainability, which was all about providing customers with tools that can help them meet their climate change commitments and the regulatory requirements. And inclusion was building products that are accessible. So they cater to a wider definition of the average user while solving real pain points.

TS: 09:35

And these terms, responsible innovation, responsible product management, they can sometimes feel a little bit abstract and intangible. Can you share a particular moment in your career when you saw these principles in action, something that really highlighted their importance or impact?

RS: 09:52

I was building software for a client and this is probably like a moment that every PM has lived, right? Which is accessibility requirements. And I feel like I live a little bit in a bubble because California has some of the strongest ADA compliance requirements. And so if you are trying to be compliant in California, the bar on accessibility is higher. I feel great about that because I think as a PM that makes it very real for you, right?

So to me, being ADA compliant for the software you are building was almost like the most tangible way of building something that was inclusive and feeling like everybody equally cared about that outcome. And I think that a lot of times what ends up happening, if you aren't thinking proactively about inclusion, ADA compliance can feel like a tax. Like you build everything, you design your screens, you code, and like before deployment, you're going through your accessibility review and you have a bunch of bugs to address because you didn't think of certain accessibility requirements, and then you go back and you fix them and you launch.

And in my mind, instead of viewing it as a tax, if you truly design from the get-go for inclusion for accessibility at the bare minimum, because inclusion is a lot more than accessibility. But if you did that from the get-go, it's not a tax anymore, right? It's a collective effort to build something that a lot more users can truly use. And that mindset, I think, became very real for me as I went through that journey of building that software.

TS: 11:18

And ADA is Americans with Disabilities Act for people who are listening from outside of the US. So let's talk about the study. So as you mentioned, you looked at three dimensions, privacy, sustainability, inclusion, alongside performance and usability. So could you give us an overview of the key findings? Anything that surprised you?

RS: 11:38

I mean, we asked folks across the responsibility dimensions, like, how do you prioritize? What do you consider a strategic priority? And we also asked them which of those they invest in, make trade-offs based on. And the thing that, I don't know if it surprised me, but I think the things that have stuck with me, one was, none of the responsibility dimensions came to number one. Like everyone in the interviews had talked so much about caring about these dimensions, but they all followed performance. So business performance was number one across the board.

And then the second thing was privacy and inclusion was in fact, the lowest ranking. So there’s like the fact that while people cared about this, they didn't rank it one was surprising. And then the second thing was the fact that inclusion was ranked so low, even though the moment I say responsible product management, the first thing people jumped to is inclusion and equality versus equity.

And so it was a very sobering moment when I dug into what was happening there. I think on the first one, in terms of why people led with performance, I think the common feeling and one of the product leaders sort of articulated it quite well was there's a lack of alignment, agreement and urgency among people in the product space about how to create responsible tech. That is very telling. On business performance, you have clear goals, revenue or ARR, whatever it may be. Like those are very clearly defined outcomes versus if you think about responsibility, the lack of alignment on what the common definition is, what the metric is going to be, what the bar is on it, the sense of timeline or urgency on it, I think that does dilute the ability to prioritize those.

I think inclusion, if I think about it, the first thing that folks struggle with is, the definition of inclusion do no harm or is the definition of inclusion do good? The do no harm world is: as long as you create equality or enable equality, it's sufficient. The do better than good is you need to enable equity. And the difference is everybody can have the right to ride a bus, but are you creating a way for folks in wheelchairs to easily get on and off the bus? Right. That's equity in my mind. So I think the fact that there's lack of clarity on what are we trying to do when we say inclusion, think that's one thing that holds PMs back.

RS: 14:04

I think the other piece is, and this is what PM said, that they struggle with how to measure and the tools that they can use to objectively measure inclusion and its impact. That was sort of the biggest driver that they felt was holding them back from ranking it higher.

TS: 14:21

I'd love to dig into that a little bit more, but in terms of the numbers, so I think it was something like 17 % of the product leaders you surveyed ranked inclusion as a top priority, and that compared with about 37%, 38 % for sustainability and privacy. So it was significantly far behind the other dimensions as well as being the lowest.

RS: 14:43

Yeah, and I think like what has helped sustainability and privacy, even though nobody likes it, is on sustainability government regulations, right? And increasingly on privacy government regulations as well. Like if you have standards that you're requiring of organizations, then they will invest to meet those standards. And I think that's sort of been the driving factor behind those having a bit more priority versus inclusion.

TS: 15:08

Right, so because on sustainability there's Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and that guides companies, but with inclusion there aren't common standards that companies are agreed on.

RS: 15:20

Yeah, and beyond accessibility standards, there isn't really much. And to me, like I said at the start, I do think accessibility is the bare minimum. You should be doing more than accessibility, specifically as we're entering the age of AI. I do think there is some truth to what PM self-reported in terms of limited tooling, limited ability to measure. But I think it ties back to if you could define it in a very consistent manner, then you could measure against it.

TS: 15:47

And there's also the issue of urgency because climate change feels like an existential threat and there is a clear business case for action. Whereas inclusion, for some people, it might seem like a nice to have or something that can wait. What is your sense about the urgency for inclusion?

RS: 16:08

It's a good point, Tosin. I do think that when businesses realize the ROI on this, the urgency kicks in because the moment you realize that you could leverage, like if you are being inclusive, and this is a very commonly known concept, right? The curb cut effect, which is like the curbs were cut to enable folks in wheelchair, but now you see so many other groups benefit from it, right? Pregnant women, kids in strollers, things like that. So there is always like, you may design for a specific group, but it ends up benefiting the broader population. And as a result of that, you may find your product being more sticky or being more used.

I think in software, a good example for that is closed captions. They were created for folks who can't hear, but how many people have actually used closed captions, even when you can hear, right? You may be ramping onto a new accent. You may be watching a foreign film. Like they've helped across the board and they drive stickiness of these platforms now. And so I think when businesses start realizing that there are second and third order benefits of being inclusive to a broader group, that definitely helps at least pull forward the sense of urgency. And when businesses also start then measuring, right, their adoption across some of those marginalized or disabled groups, it starts driving a better sense of urgency. But you're right, like by default, that is in the starting point.

TS: 17:35

You mentioned in the article that there are some well-documented cases of how tech has failed underrepresented groups. Can you share some of those examples?

RS: 17:45

I think as we were doing the research, there were some of the more publicly known cases, for example, when initially you had face recognition and biometrics, it failed to recognize people of color. I mean, think that does a good job of surfacing our inherent bias. I think what was happening was training data sets were largely underrepresented on the marginalized groups. And so as a result, you just didn't have enough data in the training data set to be able to teach tech to recognize that. And so I think it just surfaced what had existed historically. It just made it very obvious in those cases.

I do think, though, that our organizations, and we talk about it in the article too, that our companies that learned from that and took very proactive steps. think financial services is a great example of that, where essentially a lot of online payment companies started working on capital products where they used sort of non-traditional scoring mechanisms to be able to allow businesses that didn't have the traditional financial history to still be able to receive fundings without the traditional credit check. That's a good example of equity, not just equality. In those moments, they took it a step further to recognize that, if we hold them to the same barometer that we have traditionally, we are by default going to exclude them. So how do we like create a more level playing field. And the way they did that was like adapting their risk scoring models.

And so I think tech has been on both sides of it, which is on the erring side in the beginning and then like increasingly on the right side of addressing the issues once they are surfaced. Hopefully we will soon see a world where we don't have to wait for the issues to surface. We can proactively be thinking about those scenarios.

TS: 19:36

And so what do you think is needed? it stronger consumer pressure, stronger regulatory pressure for things to change meaningfully?

RS: 19:44

So I do think that regulations help. think that as we were talking about it at its core, having a consistent measure for what we mean when we say inclusion will help the industry as a whole. And regulation less from a pressure perspective, but more from a perspective of being able to bring consistency is always great. Because then people are speaking a common language and it's easier for you to then align yourself to that common language, measure yourself against it.

I also think that, I mean, there is a sufficient consumer pressure, if you're being fair. think we are, you know, there's a woke generation and whatever you feel about the generation, I think the reality is people are on social media are very vocal about when they feel marginalized. And I think that helps because it helps technology companies realize when they need to act.

And then I also think that there is some work to be done internally in organizations, right? Whether it is how you think about your strategy, how you think about your prioritization principles, how you think about enabling your product managers. So I think there are some external factors and internal, both need to come into play for this to be more consistent.

TS: 20:59

Just to dig into the question of metrics a little bit more, you know, because it's so challenging to measure success and, know, when you're talking about human diversity, you know, things can get really complicated. What are some of the ways that organizations are addressing this?

RS: 21:14

I don't think there's a golden nugget there, but I do think that organizations that are taking more of a forward leaning approach. I mean, there's Google and Microsoft who are publishing their responsible AI frameworks more publicly so that others can adopt and adhere to consistent standards. There are those that, so I think in the world of AI, like de-biasing training data, making sure that the results are more representative of a broader group, I think there are consistent frameworks for that, right, that organizations are adopting.

If you think about the broader definition, like if you're building any product and how should you be thinking about diversity, I think there, there's a lot of frameworks and tools, but less clear metrics. So for example, perspective hats is something that a lot of design firms use, but it's a framework for how do you then put on different persona hats to make sure you're representing different groups as you're thinking through your design practice.

It's not a barometer of if you get a point two or a point three, you're higher or better, right? So it's not a metric, but more of a framework or mental model for making sure you're thinking more expansively.

And I think that is probably like the more proactive way of going after this problem too, where when you're in discovery, when you're in viability, if you can think through, you know, the traditional way of thinking about a persona is you have buyers and users. And when you think about buyers, you think about verticals, the role, like it might be a CIO in financial services, and that could be a buyer persona, right? But if you paused for a moment and you thought about, and this becomes even more critical when you think about your user personas, because that is where you see a wide variation in ease of adoption, contingent on some of the challenges we're talking about, right?

RS: 23:02

So if you're looking at your user persona, and typically if you've thought of it as, you know, the typical demographics, right? Urban city, gender, age group, what would it take for you to spend another moment and maybe add a few more demographic questions, whether that is race, whether that is income levels, to then help you think more broadly about that group. Now, the immediate next question I get the moment I talk about this is, but there are so many limitations on what data you can capture and how you can use it. The reality is if you told your users that you were capturing this data to specifically inform product design to enable them, they would be more willing, right? And if you say true to your word then, using it for those purposes only. And so I think that's the like sort of the real two way engagement that would help you foster a better inclusive product design.

TS: 23:57

So I'm curious to talk about what's actually changed since you published the research. Have you done any follow-up studies or have you noticed any major shifts in how companies are approaching product inclusion?

RS: 24:08

Of course, generative AI is like the talk of the town. And the good thing about models is they don't have judgment. They represent what is fed into them. And so they make our biases very apparent. That's, mean, the example I gave you on, you know, face ID or biometrics not being able to detect people of color, or, know, when you turn on the green screen in your video camera setting. And sometimes I'm like, wait, it's like masking me. Like, yeah, I'm here, right? All of those things, they just make the problem more apparent. And I think that has helped because when the problem is apparent, as humans have a tendency to solve them right away.

And then I think the second thing is they have also unlocked the ability to solve these problems at scale. There was an interesting example in India where this travel company is basically using multilingual NLP to go after tier two, tier three cities and serve them. And what they are doing is magical. They're using languages beyond English and Hindi so they can unlock and reach more population. They're also using modes beyond text because they realized in these cities, people find it very hard to use the key pattern text and punch in things and a lot easier to talk. And so they're using speech to text and they're using a multilingual NLP to be able to address those, to be able to create access for that population.

And that's an entire group coming online and doing their travel bookings on this platform, which wouldn't have happened before. So I think it's done. There's been two positives. The one is surfacing the challenge and second, enabling use cases that were harder to address in the past. And both of those have been very exciting developments.

TS: 25:53

If you were to redo the survey today, what changes would you expect to see in the results?

RS: 25:59

I still think that business performance would be one, not because I'm cynical, but because we still haven't solved some of the underlying challenges around being able to standardize and measure against inclusion. I do think though that inclusion would get ranked higher, maybe like at par with privacy and sustainability just because of the trend I was talking about, right, which is AI is surfacing a lot of the inherent bias and it is making people think about how to sort of make it more equitable.

It is also, I think there is a real question and discussion right now about making sure how AI does not leave behind the marginalized groups, right? How do you ensure that there is equitable access to the technology itself and how it enables everyone?

The other thing that I hope would look different is when we last did this and we asked PMs how enabled they felt on these topics and how supportive they felt, the responses were very abysmal and I'm hoping that that would have improved too. Like hopefully organizations are investing more and in capability building across these dimensions so that PMs feel more supported and enabled as well.

TS: 27:12

I think also lot of it comes down to incentives because from the survey it seemed like a lot of PMs weren't being incentivized to prioritize inclusion versus, say, sustainability. Some of them mentioned that there wasn't a link to performance.

27:28

And I think it goes back to like you were asking the question, right? What do organizations need to do? I think the way we thought about it was, first an organization needs to elevate one or two of these dimensions to a strategic priority so that it is one of your like company OKRs, right? Not just like a side thing you do. Then you need to really rethink your prioritization approach because at the end of the day, if you're in a big room planning or prioritization meeting and the only impact dimension is business ROI, then you're not really walking the talk.

So you need to have an impact dimension, which could be privacy, sustainability, inclusion, whatever you pick, right? But some consideration of that towards that impact dimension when you're prioritizing in the room. Then you need to make sure that you go and enable and capability build across your PMs so they understand how to think about sizing this impact for the product areas that they work on and have a consistent framework to be able to do that.

And then of course, the last piece is if all of this is manual, then it will be viewed as overhead. So you need to make sure that as much as possible that are off the shelf tools that can enable them, whether that is tools that are more used for product instrumentation, usage analytics, or tools that are used for tracking the metrics, reporting on them, but as much as possible sort of enabling them with tools so that it doesn't feel like a lot of overhead. And those are sort of like the four consistent things that would have to come together to be able to then do this more at scale.

TS: 28:58

And I'm curious what's changed within McKinsey itself. Is product inclusion, inclusive design, a growing area of focus?

RS: 29:06

I mean, our design leader would be much better positioned to answer this, but I think that as a whole, we have a huge focus on inclusive design. And I think inclusion for us goes both ways, right? There's of course, like being inclusive when we're thinking about who we build for, who we serve, what we do. There's also internal inclusion. And I think we've made massive strides on both fronts. I mean, one aspect of that has been the women in the workplace research that we've been doing. It's in its 10th year now. And it's an attempt at surfacing what is happening to women in the workplace and making that very transparent across the industry so that you can be more targeted about actions you take. So I think that we've continued on both being able to do that internally for ourselves, being able to do that with clients, and then being able to do that in like products and services we build.

TS: 29:57

As we wrap up, for any leaders listening to this and wanting to make a tangible difference, what's one small but meaningful action they can take today to start embedding inclusion into their product development processes? I know that we've touched on some of these, but if you could sort of narrow it down to one thing.

RS: 30:15

The most tangible thing that they could do is, and it's a very small step, right? Go and look at your user demographics and see if you see underrepresented groups in those demographics and ask the question why. Just by doing that one step, you will uncover if there is untapped groups that could benefit from your product but aren't because of whatever limitation it may be. And I think that's a very tangible thing you can do. Everybody tracks their customer data and like knows who their customers are and who their key users are. So just look at the user demographics cut to see if there's anyone underrepresented and ask why.

TS: 30:53

Okay, that's great advice. And do you have any advice for, I know you advise a lot of major companies, but there might be some people who work at startups, they don't have necessarily huge resources, but they do want to prioritize inclusion and other responsible dimensions. What would you say to them?

RS 31: 11

For startups, there is massive ROI on investing in inclusion, right? Because if you think about it, your source of distinction could be serving an underserved population and growing from there. Like the curb-cut effect is most real for the startup population because you could target an underserved group, you could build something that delights them, and the other users would follow. So I think that for resource-constrained startups, thinking creatively about underserved populations and how they could truly unlock potential for them can be a source of distinction versus distraction.

TS: 31:47

And how can people learn more? can they keep up with your work?

RS: 31:51

You know, of course we have the podcast. shared a lot on that. And then of course we continue to publish. So we are looking to publish an exciting article about what we think generative AI tools could do to the product development life cycles. That would be another interesting thing to look out for.

TS: 32:08

Thank you so much for your time, Rikki. I'm really glad that we had the conversation.

RS: 32:11

Thank you so much for having me, Tosin.

TS: 32:17

That's a wrap for today's episode. A huge thank you to Rikki for sharing her valuable insights. If there's one key takeaway from today's discussion, it's this. Inclusion isn't just a nice to have, it's essential for creating products that serve a broader and more diverse audience. Start with small steps, expand your user personas, or rethink who your product is really designed for.

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to share it with your favorite PM. And please leave us a five-star review to help others discover the show. I'll catch you next time on Made For Us.

RS: 32:51

A book or a song? This is a tough one. So I have a two-year-old. So at any point, I'm reading two things. Right now, one of them is this book called The Lion Inside, which is meant for toddlers. But honestly, it's a wonderful book that tells you, know, inside each one of us, there's a lion and a mouse. And to be brave, you don't have to be big.

And the other one that I'm currently reading is the Lean Startup, which is just me going back. Like it's a refresher in my mind. And I like both of them. So I might recommend both of those.