Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams

Talking to this core user group provides the product/market-fit feedback you need to make confident decisions about what will work in the future. As product leaders we realize how stressful it is to operate in uncertainty. Successful leaders don’t resist this reality, but instead embrace it and become the masters of the “fuzzy front end.”

The initial problem for many product leaders is they have a massive reservoir of data and insufficient methods for turning that data into insights. Leaders need a process for how to pick and choose which measurements to focus on and why those are meaningful.

Figuring out which product opens doors and builds relationships with your customer base means you’ll have an entry point for the other products in your suite. If your standout product is the marketing engine, then this product will drive your sales.

“Two, if you don’t do X, all of the things that depend on X in the system don’t exist.

With the speed of change only on the rise, it puts more pressure than ever on an enterprise organization’s ability to innovate, build great products, and disrupt itself before a competitor does.

Successful leaders don’t assume that hiring smart people is enough, just as they understand that using smart tools or processes is not enough. Without the right guidance and direction, neither great people nor perfect processes will produce good results.

Most people prefer either building something from scratch or joining an established team. There are the extremely rare people who can do both.

They discovered that their primary customer, very seasoned developers with 7–15 years of experience, wanted to scale up their skills but not on a predetermined career path.

Avoid the expense of failure and product debt by doing as much lightweight testing as is reasonable. This is the best way to ensure that what you’re building is going to be useful and usable.