Frameworks for Leading Product Excellence

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I’ve spent nearly three decades in all levels of product leadership at incredible companies like Adobe, Ancestry, Vivint Smart Home, and Lucid. In that time I’ve developed three battle-hardened frameworks of enduring principles and patterns that are essential for product excellence. If you’re missing or only partially leveraging any of these principles and patterns, applying them will have a significant impact on you and your team.

The enduring nature of these frameworks has never been more critical for product leaders. With the excitement and disruptive evolution of AI, product leaders need enduring principles to help them navigate the turbulence. While AI will certainly change and accelerate how product teams operate, the principles in these frameworks will remain essential as long as people continue to be responsible for delivering outcomes to shareholders.

Product leaders that combine these three frameworks are truly leading product excellence.

Product Leadership Framework

As the product leader you are the steward of product vision and strategy. You are a builder of teams and developer of people. Your people are your product. You are ultimately accountable for aligning the business to find the intersection between customer value and business value and delivering outcomes for both.

Steward Product Vision & Strategy

The head of product is the primary steward of product vision and strategy. Vision is your why. Strategy is your how. Roadmaps are your what and when. While many can and should contribute to vision and strategy, at the end of the day the head of product is ultimately accountable for its evolution and for winning the hearts and minds of the people that will make it a reality.

Invest in People

Vision and strategy are meaningless without the people that make it a reality. Your people are your product. You lead through love, compassion, kindness, service, and invitation. You find people of high potential and accelerate that potential through empowerment, autonomy, and investment. You create a culture that sustains the acceleration and wellbeing of people.

Align the Business

The product team cannot succeed in isolation. It does not matter how great the product is, if it is not aligned with the business it will fail. You stay aligned with your peers across the business and you ensure that product investments can be effectively delivered through your company’s value delivery chain. It is not possible to find the intersection between customer value and business value if the business is not aligned.

Deliver Results

You are ultimately accountable for leveraging the people and resources entrusted to you to find the intersection between customer value and business value and deliver outcomes for both. Your team moves top level metrics that matter to the business and the customer. You create clarity and accountability for these metrics. You apply the Product Leadership Framework and Product Excellence Framework as essential mechanisms to do this.

Product Excellence Framework

The job of product is to find the intersection of customer value and business value. Rapid learning is the core enabling mechanism to get there. Delight and moving metrics that matter are the ultimate outcome.

Find the Intersection

The job of the product team is to find the intersection between customer value and business value and deliver that value to both. Value is delivered to customers when pains disappear and gains are realized.

Maximize the Speed of Learning

The faster teams learn the faster they find the intersection and innovate. There are four types of learning that are central to product teams: hygiene, discovery, de-risking, and optimization.

Build to Delight

Delighting your customers is the reason you build and you donʼt stop building until you have delighted your customers. Your teams must aspire to deliver delight in every epic. They cannot stop at MVP.

Move Metrics That Matter

If the metric doesnʼt matter to the customer or to the business it is not worth your time. Your teams must pursue your top-level metrics with religious fervor. You invest to instrument your systems to capture signals.

Life Fulfillment

You are more than a product leader. Your impact is more. Your life is more. Your opportunity for joy is more. Show up for yourself and those you love before you show up to work. Take intentional time to invest in you. Set and honor boundaries for yourself and others. You can win at work and at home.

Show Up Before You Show Up

You show up better at work when things are right at home. The titles of mom, dad, spouse, partner, brother, sister, son, daughter, friend, and neighbor are more important than your title as Chief, VP, or Director.

Invest in You

If you don’t invest in yourself you’ll soon lose your ability to invest in others. It takes intentional time and planning to invest in your physical, emotional, mental, intellectual, social, and spiritual health. Balance is better than hyperfocus.

Defend the Boundaries

Set and honor boundaries for yourself and others. Boundaries increase prioritization and focus. They allow you to focus on the highest levels of value creation at work and protect time for you and those you love.

It is time for a transformation. There is a better and faster path to leading product excellence. I’d love to work on it together through private coaching, leadership workshops, or product transformation engagements. Let’s work together.