Things I Think I Know About Product Leadership

Over the years, I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge from building and leading product teams. My domain expertise is in data platforms and data products, but I feel the knowledge gained from this domain applies across the broad spectrum of products. Here are my keys to successful product leadership:

Alignment. Everything comes back to alignment. I find successful product leaders are the ones that spend most of their time and energy aligning strategy to execution. As a product leader, I feel you need to seek out and understand the business strategy, as well as all the different forces pulling on the product. Translating that understanding into the alignment of the development priorities is crucial to meet business objectives.

Communication. Great communicators make great product team leaders. I find communication skills to be more important than technical skills. Successful product leaders interact with multiple stakeholders and various team leaders all the time, having strong communication skills is a necessity, not a nice to have. Domain specific experience is the second most important experience.

Feedback. Feedback is crucial. User feedback, general product feedback, team feedback, and stakeholder feedback is instrumental in building a successful product and product team. As a product leader you need to constantly seek out and review user feedback. The best product leaders course correct the product team’s journey based on feedback.

Build Empathy. Use the product as a user. Every product leader should use the product as a typical user would use it. I find it useful to create an environment in which you can interact with the product as a user — this means logging in, resetting passwords, using the account features, etc. The goal is to interact with the product through the eyes of a user, as the saying goes “eat your own dog food.”

Serve the Product, Business and the User. It’s not about you. As a product leader, you are responsible for the success of the team, not the product itself. If the product team is successful, the product has the best chance for success.

Learn. Just because the product failed, that doesn’t mean you or your team failed. Products and companies fail all the time. The goal of a product leader is to position the product for success, but there are far too many factors that determine the success of a product. Leading the team to the business objectives is the goal of a product leader, sometimes those objectives are off the mark.

What do you think? What do you think are the successful traits of product leaders?