Five factors of leadership

I’ve stated before that product managers have to be leaders (in the true sense of the word) because they have the responsibility on their shoulders to get products out the door on time, with high quality and under budget. The kicker – and the reason they must be leaders – is the people they rely [...]

Leadership and product strategy

Though the role of product manager differs from one company to the next, most product managers I know believe they drive the strategy for their products. I suppose in most cases they do. Strategic product managers spend time understanding the market and directing product activities toward meeting those activities. CEOs and other executives don’t always [...]

Good to Great

I’m certain everyone who reads this blog has at least heard about Good to Great by Jim Collins. This is perhaps one of the clearest, best written books about how great people have done amazing things to catapult companies into prominence. The companies in this study that went from good to great are Abbot Laboratories, [...]

Ten principles of effective leadership

I recently read a post giving tips for efficient blogging. Tip 3 says readers love bullets, lists, and numbers. Reading that tip reminded me of a leadership seminar I attended last year presented by Doug Wood. The topic was becoming an effective leader. He presented ten principles of effective leadership that will build desired results, [...]

Go fast or go far?

I recently read an African proverb that says: “If you want to go fast, travel alone, but if you want to go far, travel together.” This applies nicely to many jobs, roles and professions. I like how it applies to product management. We can do things ourselves and get them done quickly or we can [...]

Trust is vital

In my experience working as a product manager I have learned that gaining and keeping the trust of the teams you work with is vital not only to the success of the product but also to your personal success. Product managers (and leaders in general) gain the trust of their teams by rolling up their [...]

Tuned in

I have been following the folks at Pragmatic Marketing for nearly five years. A few months back I downloaded and read an e-book – The Secrets of Market-Driven Leaders – written by Phil Meyers, Craig Stull and David Meerman Scott. I was impressed by their insights into what really drives great companies and how the [...]

Lead on purpose

Welcome to my blog! My reason for starting this blog is to open up discussions on being a leader in an organization (whether or not you have management responsibilities over other people). My experience has been in software product management. As a product manager you typically have no direct management over people on teams you [...]