VPs and Directors of Product Management: Finding Excellence

We'll start with a case study out of the Netherlands.

We'll talk about how we find innovation, and then we'll go back to our greenhouse AI case study.

Let's talk about the importance of having our teams interview customers, and some problems we might run into as product leaders.

We'll do a practice activity around interviewing gig workers (like Uber drivers)

Let's do a practice activity around gaining customer insight for floor scrubbers

Let's talk about how - as product leaders - we can guide our teams to do customer interviews

To find innovation, we need to test and refine our new product concept ideas.

If you are using a stage-gates process for new product development, let's talk about how to infuse the best practices of a discovery and delivery method.

Let's talk about product analytics - we'll start with software products in this lecture.

We'll continue our discussion on product analytics, this time with hardware.

We'll talk about six rules of the road for structuring product teams. Sorry, this is a big topic, and this lecture is a little longer than the others.

Let's practice structuring product teams with an example of a transportation technology startup

We'll look at tight prioritization vs. loose prioritization across all our product efforts

Let's look at roadmaps as a prioritization tool

We'll discuss 8 steps to create roadmaps with our teams

We'll talk about using objectives and key results (OKRs) as a prioritization tool

In this lecture, we'll look at our third prioritization tool - development buckets

We'll talk about best practices for working with engineering teams and engineering leaders

We'll talk about working with product designers in a side-by-side, data-driven fashion

We'll introduce a salmon aquaculture case study in this lecture

We'll talk about the "rules of the road" for successfully working with sales teams

Let's talk about sales enablement tools

We'll talk about training, deal support, and view-from-the-field

We'll look at 5 steps to guide a team to better support sales

Let's look at our sales support case study, using a salmon aquaculture technology company

In this lecture, we will look at effectively launching new products to the market

Let's do a practice activity around launching new products

We'll talk about how to find growth through the different phases of a product lifecycle

We'll look at product-led growth companies, and what we can learn from them

We'll consider growth strategies during the late growth and mature/declining market phases

We'll look at six steps to guide our team toward finding growth for our products

We'll introduce this section on product strategy, and also introduce the Envoy case study

We'll talk about finding impact with product strategy, and how our product strategy nests within a corporate strategy

We'll describe a product vision and objectives, with examples

We'll start with customers and markets

In this step, we'll look at competition

We'll discuss business models, recommendations, gaps, sequencing, and gauging impact

We need to operationalize our strategy, and track KPIs to ensure success over time.

We'll look at good strategy/bad strategy, and how to organize a team to create a product strategy

We'll talk about how to guide product teams over time, balancing team-level empowerment vs. top-level strategy

Let's do a practice activity around where product teams get into trouble

We'll look at 5 recommendations for working well with executives

We'll go back to our Envoy case study in this lecture

We'll introduce this section and talk about teamwork

To build our teams, it helps to start with a one-year-out organization plan

We'll talk about the steps to recruit job candidates for our team

We'll discuss interviewing and hiring product managers

Let's do a practice activity for interviewing and hiring product managers

To help make our newly hired product managers successful, we need to onboard them well

We'll talk about upfront training, sharing what "excellent" looks like, and 1:1 and team coaching

We'll do a practice activity around salary increases

We'll go to space for this practice activity

We'll talk about creating the conditions for great teamwork

The first 90 days on the job are critical to find success as a VP/Director/Head of Product. We'll talk about how to approach these tough, crazy, rewarding first days.

We wrap up the course in this lecture. I hope you find excellence in this role!