As a community, have we gotten better at product leadership? The answer depends on who we ask and what we use to measure performance. In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Sean and Paul pose the question to Richard Banfield, VP of Design Transformation at InVision. “A lot depends how much you are able to distance yourself from the day-to-day work and take a bigger picture viewpoint,” he responds. “If you’re in the weeds every day, it’s hard to believe that we’re making progress because those daily challenges haven’t necessarily gone away. But if you take a step back and look at the entire industry, you can see we’ve got better at a bunch of things.” It can be easy to lose sight of this in the midst of the ever-increasing complexity in the tech space.
How can product leaders ensure that they are getting better and keeping pace with the industry? Richard Banfield offers these tips in today’s episode:
- Taking tips from other fields, like Formula One racing and high-performance athletes
- Mastering the ‘hard skills’ – the soft skills that are difficult to master
- Defining how you make decisions in a team environment with shared principles and values