I joined Shardul Mehta for a live chat on 18 Sept, where we unpacked a core PM assumption: are our executives really interested in the craft of product management?
YouTube video here (1 hour)
Podcast-style summary here (20 minutes)
We covered a lot of ground in this session, including some war stories and live Q&A. Takeaways:
- Executives outside of product primarily care about business outcomes and revenue, not the craft of product management
- We need to frame product decisions and trade-offs in terms of money and business impact, not technical details or process, to drive good company-level decisions
- We should try to protect some portion of engineering/design work for maintaining product health and quality, while collaborating with sales/marketing on customer-facing feature priorities
- Presenting simplified roadmaps to executives with 3-5 key items, tied to customer names and estimated revenue impact, keeps their attention.