As a product leader, you face a number of challenges. You might lack confidence in your coaching abilities, struggle to get stakeholders on board, or simply feel overwhelmed by meetings that creep across your calendar and prevent you from getting any real, strategic work done. So how do you take charge of your own professional development as a product leader?
Read MoreHow can you help your product managers meet their goals? It helps to translate big, lofty ideas into specific plans of action. And one tool that can help you achieve that is the Future Self template.
Annu Augustine is the founder of product management training and consulting company NedRock in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. Annu has also found this framework useful in her training and consulting work.
Read MoreIn every product organization, you as HoP—along with your product managers—must constantly balance product discovery (what to build) and product delivery (build it). Do too much of the former, and you’ll never get anything built. Do too much of the latter, and you’ll fall victim to building the wrong products in a beautiful way.
Read MoreMy virtual book tour is still going full force and my latest stop was close to home at ProductTank Hamburg.
Read MoreEven if you haven't read the book Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, you might have seen the title. And if you are a product leader, chances are you believe in servant leadership or the fact that you should prioritize your team’s happiness, health, and motivation above your own.
Read MoreIn my new book STRONG Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, I’ve aimed to deliver everything a product leader needs to help team members live up to their full potential and to feel empowered. Get a quick overview of the book here and find out how I recommend approaching the content in the book here.
Want to actually dive into some of the book content? In this post, you can preview Chapter 11: How to Find the Time?
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreOne of the biggest topics I address in my daily work is the development of strong product people. I help product leaders to understand the importance of people development and I’ve created all sorts of frameworks and canvases. My goal is to help them become the best coach their PMs have ever had.
Read MoreIn our conversation about STRONG product people, I chose to focus on Chapter 4: Define Your Good. You’ll hear about my own approach to defining good and the six personality traits that I believe define great product managers.
Read MoreThree interviews, three podcast episodes, four wonderful hosts! Tune in if you want to hear me talk about my career in product, how product leaders can build a strong product organization by helping every individual on their team to develop, and about my new book (of course!).
Read MoreMy book, STRONG: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, is now available and I already answered some of the common questions about the book in my previous post. Today I’d like to talk about something else: about how to read the book and to make sure you are getting the most out of it.
Read MoreIn case you haven’t heard the big news yet, my book, STRONG is now published. In this post, I’ll be sharing some of the concepts from the book. If you find yourself wanting to explore any of these topics in more detail, be sure to check out the book. You can order your copy here.
Let’s talk about developing product managers—and not just any product managers, but strong product managers. We all know that product management is a super hard business to be in and we expect a lot from our product people.
Read MoreBig announcement! My book, STRONG: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers, is now published. If you already know you want to get a copy (or two), you can do so here.
Want to learn a little bit more about who the book is for and what you can expect to learn from it? Keep reading!
Read MoreLet´s assume you are a Product Manager and you know or have figured out what your next best development topic is (e.g. by using the PMwheel) you then should come up with something I would call a development plan. Something that helps you commit to small actions that get you closer to the competent product management personality you want to become.
The future-self framework takes the form of a document that you need to fill, and it has four parts: As-Is, To-Be, Actions and a Timeframe.
Read MoreThe PMwheel has become a reliable compass for people who want to navigate their product career or develop their direct reports. It’s an approach that I have personally used in my work with clients ever since I developed it.
For managers, The PMwheel is a simple, but powerful way to assess the responsibilities, skills, and knowhow of your product managers. Keep in mind that no two assessments for your different product managers will be the same—some will be stronger in one area, while others will be stronger in others.
Read MoreSome weeks ago, I had the honour of being interviewed by Teresa Torres. There was no shortage of topics for us to cover in our recent conversation. We’ve talked about my upcoming book, about how to develop STRONG product people if you are a product leader and about my coaching cards.
Read MoreWhat is the job of a product leader? How should a Head of Product, a VP of Product, or a Product Team Lead behave?
Many articles have been written on this subject, most of them either by product consultants or people holding one of the above titles. But what if we ask these questions to the people they’re supposed to lead? What does a product manager think about this? What do they want from their boss?
Read More
