Your Customers Won’t Change, You Should

In the journey to product-market fit many companies take a giant leap of faith in how important and prevalent the problem they are solving is. That’s the #1 reason for startup failure. To make sure it doesn’t happen to you, you must look at your customers for what they are and not for what you want them to be.

From Product Management Back to Strategy

In recent years it seems that product management is all about execution and delivery. But you can’t really succeed this way, at least not the way your company needs you to. Here are three mindset changes that you need to make sooner rather than later.

3 Must-Have Product Leadership Skills to Survive an Economic Downturn

COVID is gone, and despite the initial hype, the resulting economic slowdown is here to stay. To survive and succeed, your product leadership must be sharper than ever.

What a Customer Journey Really Looks Like

The customer journey is such an important tool when building your product strategy. It must make sense for people to make even a single purchase. In product-led growth, its importance is even more significant. But many people don’t deal with it at the proper depth. Here is an example of how it really works.

The Blessing and Curse of Product-Led Growth

Product-led growth is a hot trend. But how can you tell if it’s just a trend or a real revolution? B2C companies have been doing it for years, so perhaps it’s just a new name for old stuff? The answer, as always, is complicated. Here is what you need to know in order to have a solid opinion.

What the Board Wants to Hear in a Product Presentation

When product leaders need to present to the board, they often talk about the product. But the board doesn’t want to hear about features. They want to know that they can trust you. Here are the important points to make sure you cover.

The Mental Load of Attacking at All Fronts

Managing companies, like households, come with an often overlooked mental load. But ignoring it doesn’t take away its impact, which could eventually lead to not being able to meet any of your goals. Here is what the mental load means for a company and how to deal with it.

How to Encourage Your Team to Take More Risks

Taking risks is an inherent part of product leadership. But what happens when your team members have a hard time doing so, at least to the extent that you need them to? Here are a few things you can do to help them master this important skill.

Those Customer Requests in Your Backlog

Your customers seem to want new features all the time. If they use your product, that’s a great signal – it means they care and they want to do more with it. But you end up with an endless list of features in your backlog. Here is a quick guide to managing them.

The Right Way to Ask For Additional Resources

Did you ever find yourself struggling to explain to your manager why you need more people? You know you can’t continue this way, but while they sympathize with your struggle, they are not willing to give you what you ask for. The good news is that there is another, much more effective way to ask for additional resources, and here it is.

Negotiate the Problem, Not the Solutions

Product leadership seems to require nonstop negotiation with everyone you work with. You have limited resources on one hand and major decisions to make on the other. But are you negotiating the right things? It’s easy to debate solutions, but it’s hardly effective. To generate agreement when people disagree you must dive deeper. Here’s how.

3 Misconceptions About Product-Led Growth

Product-led growth (PLG) is a hot buzz. Looking at companies that succeeded with it, it seems to be an easy solution for many problems. But is it? Don’t rush into it without understanding what you get into.