What makes a product leader “good” at their job? If you’re not sure how to answer that question, you’re not alone. After ten years of working with product leaders, I realized that it’s incredibly rare for companies to have consistent frameworks or rubrics that allow them to define what good product leadership looks like. Until now!
Read MoreIf you’ve been following my work for a while, you might be familiar with the PMwheel, a tool I designed to be a structured yet flexible "compass" for product management growth. If this is the first time you’re hearing about the PMwheel, you might want to hop over to this post to learn a bit more about it (and if you’re a product leader who’s interested in how you can make use of the PMwheel, I’d suggest starting here).
Read MoreStorytelling is a critical skill for product people. And it’s often not enough to tell your story one time in one format—you need to experiment with sharing it many times in many formats to find what works best for your company and stakeholders. This is why I love this story from my coachee, Matthew Arnold, Director of Product at Brain in Hand. Matthew knew that he needed a way to communicate his product vision and strategy—or “stratevision” as he calls it—and he landed on a solution that’s both simple and effective: a comic.
Read MoreI know it’s been a minute (okay, slightly longer than that) since I’ve offered a glimpse into what I’ve been up to. Of course I’ve shared news about the Product at Heart conference and my Communities of Practice research, but I haven’t shared any updates on my actual product leadership coaching for a while. But that all changes today!
Read More2022 is almost over, but I have one final Community of Practice (CoP) interview to share with you! This one is a little different since I’ve been working with Sarah Reeves and StepStone to help build out and mature the product CoP. Be sure to check this interview out if you’re especially interested in the early stages of getting a CoP up and running.
Read MoreOne of the things that’s so exciting about developing a coaching tool is seeing how people adapt it to their own needs. And this post celebrates two incredible product people who have gone above and beyond in their adaptations. Not only have they created dynamic versions of the PMwheel, but they’ve made these updates available to anyone who’d like to use them. Meet Product Coach Lisa Mo Wagner and Product Director and podcaster Jason Knight.
Read MoreLeaders often find it difficult to get feedback, especially in a structured and actionable way. That’s why I started to offer 360° Leadership Feedback, where I schedule and conduct interviews with your employees and colleagues and package what I learn into an easily digestible format. I believe this will provide you with a solid basis for your self-progression journey. But what is it really like to participate in 360° Leadership Feedback? I figured you’d like to hear directly from a past participant.
Read MoreSince publishing my book, STRONG Product People, I’ve been on a mission to get it into the hands of as many product leaders as possible. But beyond just getting product leaders to read my book, I want to help them actually apply the concepts they’ve been introduced to in the book.
This is why I’m excited about one of my newer offerings, the corporate book club for STRONG Product People. Everyone on your team receives a copy of the book and then we hold two 90-minute sessions to discuss any questions your team has about the concepts from the book and how to apply them.
In the past, I’ve written a few posts about the PMwheel, a tool I created to help define product managers’ roles and responsibilities. But today, I’m excited to share someone else’s perspective. Sophia Höfling is a Head of Product at Babbel. She’s been using the PMwheel as a coaching tool for the product managers on her team.
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