Insights and advice from the deeper layers of product leadership
Your product sells not for its features, but for the value it brings to your customers. Defining the value though is easier said than done. True product value lies in understanding and meeting the deeper, often unspoken needs of customers, beyond just functionality. Here’s a three-step approach to ensure products connect with users on a more meaningful level.
Product leadership is such a hard role, one of the hardest. You live at the heart of endless conflicts caused by a variety of points of view that collide with each other. You are involved in complex decision-making under extreme uncertainty. Here is a simple tool that will help you shine and help others along the way.
Nobody likes bad news. But what happens if this is the reality? Realizing it is one thing, and a more important thing is to accept it as it is and then act to change it while you can. You can’t change the reality of today, but you can change tomorrow. Here is a quick guide to get you going.
When you are asked to provide competitive analysis, don’t treat it as a chore. If you imagine diving into endless lists of feature comparisons, think again. The competitive analysis itself is a major part of your product strategy efforts, and here is how to do it at the right level.
As a product leader, your role entails much more than leading the product itself. It often involves complex decision-making – and many decisions that you can’t necessarily make on your own. Here is a simple tool that will help you create clarity and lead to alignment and better decisions.
OKRs are an amazing tool to drive business success. Starting with OKRs is easy. Doing it right is not necessarily so, especially with product OKRs that are a unique beast. Here are a few common mistakes to avoid.
Sometimes your competitors are not the usual suspects. They might not be the products that appear exactly in your category, and honestly, they might not be products at all. Here are six categories of competition that you must be aware of.
Most of us try to avoid arguments with our peers. We have so many of them regardless. However, provoking productive disagreements is a key leadership skill you want to master. Here is how fostering healthy debates is essential for effective leadership and better outcomes. Yes, you want people to argue with you.
When you start selling your product, you feel great, but that doesn’t last for too long. At some point, the results you expected and even produced in the past aren’t replicating. You add features, you replace salespeople, but it doesn’t help. You blame the market, but often that’s just overlooking the real problem. A product strategy is often the missing link that would convert your efforts into actual revenue.
A good product strategy is something every company needs. When VCs and customers aren’t throwing money at whatever you tell them, it becomes a critical tool. When you have fewer employees than you need, even more so. Here is how a product strategy can help you create business results, even when the market is not in your favor.
Leadership without authority is product management 101. You must master it to succeed, in most cases with developers. But as a product executive, you must take it to the next level – and this time use it with the entire management team.
There is a perception that great salespeople can sell anything to anyone. They might, occasionally, but do you really want your success to depend on that? Here is what it takes to help them succeed consistently and at scale.
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