Practical tips that guide you from first-time product manager to leader

"How do I prove my value as a product manager?" This is one of the most common questions I get. Heck, I've asked myself that question throughout my career. Still do. It's often articulated in different ways: How can I get more empowerment? How can I convince my boss / leadership / execs to "let go"? How can I get engineering to follow my ideas? How can I get sales to not just see me as "technical"? How do I help my boss understand my impact? How can I grow from being an order taker to a...

Succeeding as a Product Executive Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes Today, I'm going to talk about what it takes to succeed as a Chief Product Officer. Maybe this is a role you're new to or one you're aspiring for. This is THE BIG job. The biggest in product management and indeed in the commercial success of any product. If you're a first-time CPO or aspiring to get there, you need to understand what it takes to succeed in the role. Unfortunately, most first-time CPOs struggle or fail...

How to Get the Most Out ofYour Execs Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes This is for the pro product folks out there... Would you believe that out of all the folks who have reported to me across all the companies I've worked at in the last 24 years, only 6 of them sent me consistent updates? Sounds crazy, right? From VPs to Directors to individual contributor product managers. Sure, since they reported to me, I would follow up with them and we had our regular 1:1s and team meetings. But...

Getting Promoted to Director Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes Getting promoted to Director is one of the most common questions I get. Small wonder: it's one of the hardest leaps to make. It sounds sexy, right? In a Director role, you have the opportunity to generate outsized impact. You are considered a member of the management and leadership team. You have the opportunity to impact product, process, and people. And it's a key stepping stone to getting into an executive role. Plus,...

The Economic Value of a Feature Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes "Not every backlog item can be attached to revenue." Today, let's talk about how to assess the economic value of a feature. I've argued before how customer satisfaction is not the #1 metric for product management. The assumptions here are: (1) Happy customers will make for a successful product. So if we just focus on making customers happy, everything will work out. (2) Product management has little to no influence over...

A Feature-Based Roadmap Is Not Evil Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes I stopped worrying about whether I or my teams were in a feature factory years ago. My reasoning was simple: If those features are delivering value to customers and growing the business, keep on keeping on. If they’re not, then move to delivering things that do. I get the concern - that we may be prioritizing quantity of features over quality, outputs over outcomes, short-term delivery over long-term value. That we...

Writing a PRD Read on my website / Read time: 3 minutes If you're like me, you're a busy person. That's why I like simple approaches. When I had to learn how to write a Product Requirements Document (PRD), I downloaded all these complicated, detailed templates that had all these "fill in the blank" sections that were meant to be helpful, but only ended up overwhelming me. And the worst part was after spending days writing it, no one would read it! However, as one product manager recently...

Shut Up and Listen Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes So you've landed your first meeting with a bigwig stakeholder. You want to make a good impression. And you're eager to establish alignment as quickly as possible. After all, you've got a product to run and goals to accomplish. Wait. Not so fast. The first meeting with any stakeholder is not about alignment. It's about how well you LISTEN. Often I see less experienced product managers rush to explain themselves, showcase their...

Managing Executives Read on my website / Read time: 5 minutes Last week, I talked about how to get executive decision makers to actually make decisions. That naturally leads to the question of how to manage "up" to executives. Because so much of what we do in product management is resource intensive and impacts customers directly, product management has unique access to executives that many other groups in the company don't enjoy. (Sales is the other group.) This means managing up to...