Foreword
Introduction
Who Needs This Book and Why
All the Responsibility with None of the Authority?
What Makes Product Leadership Unique?
The Ideal Product Leadership Style for Your Product Stage
How This Book Is Organized
Leading Through Growing Pains
Learn How to Build and Train a Team
Implementing Process and Purpose-Driven Direction
Understand How to Evaluate the Success of Your Work
Acknowledgments
From Richard
From Martin
From Nate
From All of Us
I. The Product Leader
1. What Is Product Management?
The Product Management Role
How Product Management Evolved
Product Management Is Born
Product Management Comes to Technology
Product Management Goes Agile
Product Management Takes a Seat in the C-Suite
What’s Next for Product Management?
2. Why Is Product Leadership So Relevant?
The Product Leader’s Impact
The Evolving Organization
The Team
The Makers
Challenges Specific to Product Leadership: More Than Just a Seat at the Table
What Product Leadership Is Not
What Makes Product Leadership Strategic
What Keeps Product Leaders Awake at Night
Prioritizing Ideas, Features, and Projects
Collaborating Effectively and Productively
Training and Developing the Product Team
Managing Upward and Outward
Aligning and Focusing the Organization
3. Being a Great Product Leader
Setting Product Principles
Setting a Product Vision
Moving from Vision to Strategy
Moving from Strategy to Roadmap
Focusing Themes on Customer Problems
Prioritizing Goals and Strategic Activities
Managing the Unknown
Mapping Ambiguity to Time
Product Is a Team Sport
Designing a Product Team
Cross-Functionality
Developing Product Team Talent and Designing Careers
Balancing Discovery and Delivery
Pushing Pixels Versus Pushing the Envelope
Making Discovery Part of Your Process
Just Enough Process
Communication and Constraints
Clarifying the Question of Authority
Managing Politics
4. Is There a Formula for Success?
What Does Product Leadership Success Look Like?
Measuring Success
Measuring Success as a Problem-Solving Ability
Common Characteristics of Successful Product Teams
How to Identify Product Leaders
5. Hiring Product Leadership
Hiring and Onboarding Product Leader Talent
Timing for Hiring
Timing for Founder-Led Organizations
Timing for Emerging or High-Growth Company Hiring
Timing for Hiring at Enterprises
Apprentices: Creating Your Own Product Leaders
A Case for Long-Term Commitment to People and Teams
Becoming a Product Leader
II. The Right Leader for the Right Time
6. The Startup Organization
Startup Product Leaders
The Biggest Challenges
Startup Product Leadership Style
Aligning Product Vision with Strategy and Tactics
Playing the Customer to Discover Core Value
Research, Data, and Testing
Product Founder Versus First Product Hire
Startup Product Teams
Wearing Lots of Hats in Small Teams
Developing Talent
7. The Emerging Organization
The Biggest Challenges for Emerging Product Leaders
Maintaining a User Focus
Checking the Ego
The Journey from Technical Master to People Leader
Connecting the Dots
Supporting Transitioning Leaders
Preventing Communication Breakdown
Practical Advice for Transitioning Leaders
Execution Informs Vision
Building Teams
Getting the Right People on the Team
8. The Enterprise Organization
The Biggest Challenges for Enterprise Product Leaders
Avoiding Complacency After Success
Staying Disciplined After Success
Maintaining Focus as You Scale
Delivering a Customer-Centered Go-to-Market Strategy
Communicating and Collaborating Effectively
Avoiding Sanitized Data
Measuring the Right Thing
Working Within the Company Culture
Enterprise Leadership
Communicating with Internal and External Customers
Promoting Collaboration
Changing the Corporate Culture
Showing, Not Telling
Maintaining Vision Clarity
Taking a Product Portfolio Approach
Thinking Small to Think Big
Making It Before You Make It
III. Working with Customers, Agencies, Partners, and External Stakeholders
9. Mapping the Partner Ecology
Making It Work
Finding Common Value
Trust Is the Glue
The Value of Customer Input
When and Why to Use Consultants
Filling Experience and Tactical Gaps
Managing Change
Embedding Outside Help in Your Team
Managing Pitfalls
Agencies, Design Firms, and Development Shops
Example Scenarios
Freelancers or Contractors
Strategic Partners
Multidimensional People and Partner Solutions
Multiple Hiring Strategies for the Win
Final Thoughts on Partnering
Final Words
Make It Valuable, Feasible, and Usable
Maintain a Learner’s Mindset
Think Outside the Box
Embrace Change
Stay Humble
Index
