Top challenges product leaders face and how to overcome them

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TLDR

Product leadership expert Rich Mironov discusses three core challenges CPOs and product VPs face: effectively communicating value in business terms rather than process terminology, building trust through merchandising wins before gaining decision-making authority, and reducing product waste by making better decisions about what to build. Executives don’t care how product gets made; they care about revenue impact. Success requires translating product outcomes into financial language and proving value through small wins before requesting broader organizational changes.

Introduction

We’re talking about the top challenges CPOs and Product VPs face. Navigating them well can cause your career to excel and result in valuable products. Navigating them poorly has career-limiting consequences. This discussion will help you avoid the latter by giving you approaches to address common product leadership challenges.

Our guest has mentored more product leaders and executives than anyone else I know over his 40-year career in product roles. He has served as interim CPO for 15 companies, founded the first Product Camp, consulted to hundreds of tech companies, and wrote the book The Art of Product Management. His blog, “Product Bytes,” is widely read by product leaders. From that description, you likely already know who our guest is—Rich Mironov. 

Rich has seen every product leadership disaster imaginable and knows how to fix them. Let’s learn how to address and even avoid such challenges.

Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers

First Principles for Product Leaders:
Rich outlines three areas product leaders must champion:

• Real end users
• Extended teams (product managers, designers, engineers, DevOps, technical writers)
• Overall business health (long-term value)

Speaking the Executive Language:

• Executives are not interested in hearing you talk about product processes and methodologies
• They want to know when money will arrive and how much
• Product leaders must translate improvements into financial impact
• Example: “Reducing churn by 2% equals $45-50 million more revenue and IPO one year earlier”

Reducing Product Waste:
Rich distinguishes between two types of waste:

• Engineering waste (late delivery, quality issues) – the minority
• Product waste (building the wrong things) – the majority of failures
• Focus on reducing products that “land like a dead thud in the market”

The Trust-Building Problem:

• Moving to product-led decision making requires taking authority away from sales and marketing
• This creates resistance unless product teams prove they make better decisions
• Solution: Build trust through showing value before requesting organizational changes

The Merchandising Strategy:
Weekly practices for building influence by recording and communicating added value:

• Document and communicate product team wins in financial terms
• Ask your team members for names of people outside product management who did something good in the last week and thank those people through their managers
• Translate OKRs and metrics into monetary value
• Block 15 minutes every Friday for “merchandising meeting” with yourself

How Product Leaders Can Make Better Use of Product Managers:

• Delegate product work to focus on organizational leadership
• Critique work as a mentor, not just a boss
• Help struggling product managers find roles elsewhere in the company where they’ll succeed

Team Structure Preferences:
Rich’s preferred team composition:

• 1 product manager (not writing code)
• 1 designer (essential for user-facing products)
• 4-6 developers/engineers/DevOps professionals
• Warning signs: 1 PM across 2 teams, 1 PM with only 3 engineers

Useful Links

• Connect with Rich on LinkedIn
• Check out Rich’s blog

Innovation Quote

“Other people are not an imperfect version of you. They are a perfect version of themselves.”  – Pam Fox Rollin

Application Questions

1. How can you better translate your current product initiatives into financial terms that would resonate with executives? What specific metrics could you connect to revenue impact?
2. What small, measurable wins could your product team achieve in the next quarter to demonstrate value to skeptical stakeholders? How would you merchandise these wins effectively?
3. In your current role, what decision-making authority currently belongs to sales, marketing, or other departments that might benefit from product team input? How could you build trust before suggesting changes?
4. Looking at your recent product releases, which ones might qualify as product waste? What could have been done differently in the decision-making process?
5. Based on Rich’s team structure recommendations, how does your current team composition compare? Are there changes you could advocate for to improve the product manager to engineer ratio or ensure adequate design support?

Bio

Rich has led product teams for 40 years, including six B2B startups and 15 interim CPO/VP Products roles.  Today, he coaches product leaders, helps design product organizations, and writes/speaks about how product folks can understand our go-to-market partners.  He been blogging about software product management since 2002, launched the first product camps and wrote “The Art of Product Management.” 

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

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