How to set up your product org for success - Trisha Price (CPO, Pendo)
Mar 19, 2025
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Trisha Price, CPO at Pendo, shares her insights on establishing a successful product organization, highlighting her experience in guiding teams through growth. She discusses the shift towards an outcome-driven culture and the importance of aligning product teams with customer insights. Trisha emphasizes measuring success with qualitative metrics like NPS and using AI to understand customer sentiment. She also advocates for integrating OKRs to foster innovation and collaboration, showcasing practices that encourage engagement and quick iterations in product development.
Pendo's success stems from transitioning to an outcome-driven culture that prioritizes measurable results over simply delivering product features.
The company's commitment to innovation is reflected in its structured approach to managing customer requests while aligning with long-term strategic goals.
Deep dives
Growth and Expansion at Pendo
Pendo has experienced significant growth over the past three and a half years, with revenue more than doubling during this period. The company has successfully transitioned from primarily serving technology and SaaS companies to catering to traditional sectors such as healthcare and banking, reflecting a broader adoption of product-focused strategies. Noteworthy achievements include the evolution of Pendo's offerings from an analytics and guides company to a comprehensive platform for product leaders, integrating various tools such as session replay and AI features. This strategic shift underscores Pendo's commitment to enhancing product engagement and customer success across diverse industries.
Building an Outcome-Driven Organization
The establishment of an outcome-driven culture at Pendo involved significant changes, including the introduction of new leaders who understand both product management and business objectives. This shift required redefining processes to prioritize measurable outcomes over simply delivering product features. Implementation involved creating a scorecard linked to organizational goals and consistently revisiting these objectives during team meetings to assess their effectiveness. This ongoing focus on outcomes took approximately a year to fully integrate into the organization’s DNA, aligning product development with overall business metrics.
Navigating Customer Demands and Product Development
Pendo has developed a structured approach to managing customer requests while maintaining a focus on long-term strategic goals. When faced with specific demands from enterprise customers, the product team assesses the implications of these requests instead of defaulting to immediate compliance. This involves a rigorous review process where the sales team must provide context for requests, ensuring the product team's alignment with broader strategic objectives. By fostering an environment of clear communication and aligning sales efforts with product vision, Pendo effectively balances customer needs with its long-term goals.
Fostering Innovation and a Customer-Centric Culture
The culture at Pendo emphasizes customer obsession and innovation, driving teams to prioritize user needs in their product development processes. Regular hackathons and recognition programs celebrate innovative contributions and foster collaboration among product, design, and engineering teams. This innovation-focused culture is complemented by company-wide initiatives that engage all departments, ensuring that feedback and recognition circulate throughout the organization. Ultimately, Pendo’s commitment to staying attuned to customer feedback and celebrating team successes cultivates an environment where product excellence can thrive.
Featured Links: Follow Trisha on LinkedIn | Pendo | Trisha's 'The future of product management'talk at #mtpcon roadshow Amsterdam 2024
Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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