It has been a while since the term Product Leadership has gained widespread adoption in blogs, articles and even books. It represents the intersection between Product Management and Leadership; which, in my point of view, have a lot to do with each other. Product Leadership also means a new way of responding to our organisations challenges, much more suited to the digital and transforming era that we live in. In our current scenario of competition, different approaches are needed if you do not want to disappear in the marketplace. In order to better understand it and how you can apply it to help your company thrive, I will walk you through three main topics: Fundamentals of Leadership, A brief of Product Management and Product Leadership shaping the company of the future.

#1 Fundamentals of Leadership

One of the first things I have learned about leadership is that, even though it is a noun, you should think of it as a verb. Leadership is essentially about dealing with people and their way of being. As they are constantly changing, the way you lead must be always adapting. A true leader can understand the uniqueness of each individual and build relationships over it, not only with the people you like first hand, but with all of the people in the team. Once you understood each one’s uniqueness and built relationships with them, there are two main goals to be accomplished: Develop individuals so they can achieve results; Wisely communicate the vision of the organisation and the connection that it has with the work of the team. It may seem intuitive that a leader’s #1 concern must be the development of the people in the team, but it is easy to be consumed by the day-to-day work and fail to do it with care. The main point here is: Just don’t do it! Another trap that is pretty easy to fall into is not setting a clear vision and outcomes for the team (obviously aligned with what the organisation expects). You can’t expect that an individual with developed professional skills achieves results if there is no clear vision of where to go, and it is also pointless to expect results of a team with a clear vision but without individuals developing themselves.

If you want to go deeper in this subject, I recommend to read the book “How Successful People Lead”.

#2 A brief of Product Management

If you are reading this, you’ve probably seen the picture below about Product Management a thousand times, but let me show it just one more time to reinforce one important thing: Product Management is not about being an expert in UX, Business or Technology, is about letting experts in those fields do their best and facilitate their communication.

Product Managers might, and should, understand about those topics. What happens is that, if a product manager spends his/her time coding, for instance, s/he is probably not dealing well with the key activities of the product manager: Helping the team overcome its roadblocks; Setting, communicating and updating product vision; Creating product strategy; Aligning product vision with the company’s vision; Gaining buy-in from executive level. Do you know which is the most important asset for all those things that Product Management deals with? The answer is: People! It does not matter whether it is your team or other people from your organisation, product managers must put people in the first place. If a product manager helps the team develop itself, the experts of the team will do their best and build a great product. If the product manager is able to align the product vision and strategy to the needs of the company, the product (and the team) will therefore be seen as essential for achieving great organisational results. Product feedback from customer and market-fit can also help to shape the vision of the company.

PS: Doesn’t it sound a lot like leadership?

#3 Product Leadership shaping the company of the future

Mr. Albert Einstein once quoted: “Insanity is doing the same thing over & over again & expecting different results.”

Many of the companies that dictated the market in the past decades didn’t care about product leadership and I assume they wonder why they have to do it now. As I also assume they don’t want to disappear or strive not to, that’s why product leadership is essential to respond to a competitive landscape that has rapid change as the only constant, and I support this thought on Mr. Einstein’s quote. Changes that regard customer needs, employees expectations and society have now a faster pace than ever. This is due to a digital and connected world which is going through the fourth industrial revolution. Regarding this landscape, Product Leadership came to the scene; it sets inspiring vision, cares about individual’s development, creates an inspiring environment to work, and eventually creates breakthrough business models through the combination of such factors. Creating new business models are not a matter of innovation anymore, but rather a matter of survival. There are lots of references about inspiring products that are in line with this thought: Peter Thiel and Salim Ismail, for instance, use different approaches in their books (Exponential Organisations and From Zero to one, respectively) to the same underlying point: Inspiring companies attract, develop and retain the best employees and build inspiring products that customers love. This is Product Leadership! As far as I’m concerned, deep transformations like this require new ways of thinking.

Product Leadership is thus sadly fated to fail if not supported by all levels of an organisation; it cannot rely only on Product Managers. Product Managers can set inspiring vision for their products, but the company’s vision must also be inspiring, supportive to the product level and carefully thought by executive leadership. The first will not be effective without the latter. The strategy of the company can also led to the birth of new products with a first direction, which will be later detailed by product leaders. But the birth of a new product or business unit can only be justified if thought to achieve product leadership, otherwise there is no product manager that will be able to develop a thriving product.

I hope this article was helpful to deepen your understanding about Product Leadership and why it is crucial for companies in our current competitive market.

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