Businesses change fast. Staying competitive is hard. Innovation is relentless.
But organizations can navigate these challenges more effectively if they rely on strong product leaders. How can you be that person?
With stellar industry knowledge and the ability to adapt quickly, product leaders drive strategic initiatives, ensuring their teams remain competitive and ahead of the curve. A product leader is key in any organization. But they are not all the same.
I have been coaching product leaders for years. In my sessions, I identified key skills that set apart good product leaders from outstanding ones: a partnership attitude, business awareness, and a growth mindset.
I bet you aspire to be in the outstanding product leaders group. Curious to know if you have what it takes? Keep reading to find out.
1. Partnership Attitude
You should never allow the product VS engineering or product VS sales mentality to take place at your company.
I know there are still many teams that look at each other as impediments on their way to success, but this needs to change. As a product leader, you should regard your engineering counterpart as your most important partner, and pass that mindset on to your team. Experienced leaders know that neither can be successful without the other and that nothing is more valuable than aligning on your collective ”WHERE TO?”
Great product and engineering leaders are like functional, healthy parents.
They might have their disagreements and fallouts, but they never show it in front of the children. In the same way, you might have opposing points of view but these should be managed collaboratively and no tension should be passed down to your teams.
Besides engineering, you also want to keep a partnership mindset with design, forming what Teresa Torres calls “Product Trios”, where teams “are jointly responsible for building a desirable, viable, feasible, usable, ethical product”. And don’t forget to employ the same thought process with sales or customer success, it’s only when all three teams work together to build, sell, and service a product that companies sustain long term growth.
To foster this kind of culture, you need to break down silos. How do you achieve this?
Start by ensuring that there is a shared understanding of the Product Vision, short-term goals, and long-term challenges. Everyone involved should use the same language, processes, and documentation.
Next, be mindful of how you communicate. Openness and transparency are crucial. Establish communication channels that everyone can use as a means to facilitate collaboration, and encourage people to participate actively.
Lastly, adopt a posture of empathy and mutual respect. Although you are all working towards the same goal of creating a great product, your paths to success may differ. Product and engineering teams come from different backgrounds and contribute unique perspectives to the conversation. Sales is often focused on this quarter’s quota and CS needs to keep customer satisfaction scores high. Instead of viewing differences in opinion as threats, keep an open mind and try to understand your counterparts' viewpoints.
“Partnership” is more than just a buzzword; it is a fundamental concept that you, as a product leader, should embrace and practice daily in your work, and instill down to your direct reports and across the organization.
2. Business Awareness
As a junior product manager, you might fall in love with the idea that the product you are working on is the center of the world.
But as an experienced product leader, you understand that if the product you are working on is only making the clients happy, something needs to change. You understand that a product is not the ultimate goal, but rather a means to an end. A product doesn’t only exist to serve clients; it also must help the business achieve its goals.
As a product leader, you must be deeply aware of these objectives, especially since your job is to understand and share them with your teams. The best product leaders regularly reinforce the desired outcomes (the “Where to?”) so that the people who report to you can make the necessary plans to make these goals happen.
You are the bridge between business strategy and product strategy. As Melissa Perri explains, “Product Strategy is a system of goals and related choices that work together to accomplish the mission and vision of the organization”. The mission and vision represent where you are going, and the strategy is the framework that guides decisions to get there together.
This emphasizes the need for that healthy partnership within your sales organization. It’s through them and the information they provide you that you understand the success - or failure - of your product strategy compared to the business goals. Based on these findings, you can proceed to change or fine-tune your strategy as you go along.
If you want to stand out as a product leader, being able to properly deploy the high-level objectives AND support the establishment of the lower-level metrics for success is key. As you progress in your career, these skills become increasingly valuable, and at CPO level, they are fundamental for your daily work, as I explain in this article.
3. Growth Mindset
As a product professional, you should be used to having an iterative approach to everything. You do that with your products, after all: you seek feedback and you take it as a base to improve and evolve towards your goals.
This doesn’t apply only to your products but also to yourself, your teams, and your processes. Constantly striving for better, improved versions of yourself and those around you is the mark of a distinguished product leader.
If you are unsure how to put this into practice, here are three practical ways you can do this:
Think of Yourself as a Product
You are a product leader, experienced in managing products. But have you ever thought of yourself as a product that can be managed? Your team as a product? Your processes as well?
When I say this, people frown at me.
But let me explain why I firmly believe that “everything is a product, even you”.
First, when defining Product Strategy, you should start with a vision. The same is true for your career, your teams, and your processes. Where do you see yourself in five years? What does the future look like? Crafting a personal vision directs your short-term goals and shapes your strategic choices.
Now, consider your current state. You do this for your products, but for yourself, you would ask questions like: What do my peers and managers appreciate about my work? Where have I been successful or failed? What skills do I have that are shining through or are underutilized?
Now that you have your vision and know where you stand, it’s time to set a strategy. Think about what are your unique selling propositions that only you can bring to an organization. Focus on how you can leverage those skills and experiences to launch yourself into the next step. And if you want support from your manager in doing this, I explain how you can earn it in this article.
Now, are you starting to see why you should look at yourself as a product?
Leverage the Jobs To Be Done Framework
Another way you can foster room for growth is by adopting the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework.
This approach focuses on understanding the "job" or task that customers are trying to accomplish with your product. By exploring their motivation, JTBD aims to understand why people choose certain products and how you can help them progress and achieve their desired outcomes.
This mindset becomes even more critical when you realize that you are part of an ever-evolving organization and business landscape. The key to staying competitive is to adapt to changes and ideally, stay at the forefront of the innovation curve. And that’s where you will position yourself if you ask the right questions, like the ones that JTBD forces you to.
By adopting this mindset as a foundation and instilling it in your teams, you can foster a culture of flexibility and adaptation, ultimately leading to innovation.
Kaizen Everything
Finally, another way to apply the growth mindset is by having a kaizen attitude. This Japanese principle of continuous improvement is based on the idea that creating small positive changes will eventually lead to major improvements.
Some key ideas of kaizen include the belief that everything can always be improved, that nothing is status quo, and that adaptation is more important than perfectionism.
Kaizen is not just a specific action you take; it is an attitude that you can adopt at work (and in life!) that improves things, but also improves people. By “people” I mean both you and your teams. This will strengthen your position as a leader and contribute to the growth of your direct reports and, ultimately, the organization as a whole.
This growth mindset should be larger than you. As a product leader, it’s part of your role to nurture your direct reports to become the best possible version of themselves. By taking the steps above, you can lead by example and inspire your teams to cultivate a growth mindset as well. You will foster an environment where people will be encouraged to embrace challenges, seek new opportunities, and view setbacks as chances for learning and improvement.
Conclusion
In short, great product leadership combines healthy collaboration, strategic thinking, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
It sounds simple but navigating all this on your own can become challenging.
If you are looking for support to become awesome and get recognized for it, I invite you to check out my programs to find the right fit for you or schedule a FREE 30 min chat to talk about your current situation. You can also always send me an email at tami@tamireiss.com to share your story or a question.