How I Work

I believe in leading empowered product teams, not feature teams. Empowered teams find themselves with problems to solve rather than features to build and are deeply involved in making meaningful decisions for our organization. I find myself to be deathly allergic to the “command and control” leadership style. Product teams under my leadership are cross-functional, highly collaborative, autonomous, and have ownership over their work. Product leadership involves casting vision for the future our products will create and how they will improve the lives of our users - this keeps us coming back day after day, month after month, year after year.

Which problems should we solve and in what order should we solve them? A strong product strategy answers that question but requires four difficult commitments from me as a product leader:

I commit to make the tough choices on what’s really important
I commit to generate, identify, and leverage data-driven insights
I commit to convert those insights into action
I commit to actively manage without resorting to micro-management

Delivering products that are worth buying (value), are usable (usability), works within the constraints of the business (viability), and something our engineers has the skillset to build (feasibility) is a journey not one for the faint of heart. I lead product discovery initiatives for the specific purpose of finding out what is valuable, usable, viable, and feasible before a single line of code is written. These initiatives involve techniques such as customer discovery programs, prototyping, and design sprints.

I believe when a product succeeds it is because of the accomplishments of what the team was able to do, but when a product fails it is the product manager’s fault. I take the role and responsibilities of product management very seriously for this reason. If you are familiar with the product development process then you know healthy management involves SCRUM ceremonies and agile philosophies. I am experienced in sprint planning, roadmapping, and user story mapping. However, the cornerstone of these ceremonies are the intangibles such as psychological safety on a team, the desire of every member to continuously improve, the presences of trust, and a posture of service.

The insights found from listening to the customer deliver the most critical components in understanding the customer’s needs and validating that our team is delivering an exceptional product. My experience in the customer experience has led me to never underestimate what a strong VoC Strategy can provide the entire product team.