Laura Schaffer

One of my coaches recently spoke to a very senior-level product leader (let's call him Jim). This leader had searched for new jobs for nine months and had yet to land something. When our coach asked the leader where they felt they needed the most help, the leader said, "Nowhere." So our coach dug in and spoke through the various aspects of job search * Defining a clear target and a strategy to land the target role * Building your narrative that showcases your skills * Writing your Resume and LinkedIn * Interviewing for the level you want * Networking so you get your foot in the door * Negotiating your target compensation Jim did not need help anywhere! My coach said, "Okay, in that case, I don't think we can add much value for you. I wish you all the best." "No, no, no, no, wait," said Jim. And the conversation changed. Only then it became clear how much Jim had been suffering from impostor syndrome, from concerns that his strategy was crap, that he did not really know how to present himself at the level he wanted. Jim had often considered giving up on the search. We often see this from senior-level product leaders. They do not want to admit anything is wrong because that is how they have been successful. They hide a sense of dread and impostor syndrome behind a veil of false bravado and project confidence that they really don't have. As my coach told me, "Doctors make the worst patients." If you are one of those folks who is used to sweeping problems under the rug, I don't blame you. We are rewarded daily for projecting confidence. But here's the catch: when you project that fake confidence to people who can actually help you, you lose. So, if you are ready to give up on fake bravado and instead seek the best guidance in landing your next product management role, please contact us. Let's talk, explore what's going on in your career, and map out your next steps. The link to book a call with us is in my bio.

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Having examined the careers of 1,000+ product managers, I find five "hidden" roadblocks that surprised these talented folks: 1. Being Stuck in Non-Product Land: Many find themselves in environments prioritizing outputs over outcomes, stifling essential skills development like customer insight and strategic vision. 2. Getting Known Only for Execution: Excelling in execution can, unfortunately, pigeonhole you into more of the same, preventing you from taking on more strategic roles that drive significant impact. 3. The Comparison Trap: Comparing your career to others can be detrimental. Each journey is unique, and focusing on your own path and progress is vital. 4. The Upper Limit Problem: This psychological barrier where you subconsciously limit your success can significantly hinder you. Recognizing and pushing beyond your internal limits is key to achieving greater career heights. 5. Extreme Manager Dependence: Relying too much on your manager for career progression can leave you passive in your own career development. Taking ownership and advocating for yourself is essential. Remember, your career is your story to write. Inspire your teams and stakeholders by transforming your environment and narrative. If you're stuck in a less product-led role, find ways to steer towards a more outcome-focused approach. Share your vision, and slowly shift the culture around you. If you would like to see an entire video that discusses these findings in depth, please comment "video," and I will send you the link.

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“If there is no clear owner, then it’s the PM that owns it.” I sat down with Esteban Contreras from #ProductState to discuss Product leadership, or Prioritization process at Productboard. We also dug into the concept of Extreme Ownership, which is a principle I firmly believe in. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVN47mWn #productmanagement #productexcellence #ownership

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How does a Senior Product Manager go from layoff to landing a Staff Product Manager role with a significant compensation increase? Join us as we chat with Nora Hughes, a seasoned product manager with a decade of experience in the tech industry. Nora shares her journey from being laid off in October to navigating the challenging job market. She talks about her initial struggles, including the overwhelm of job searching during the holidays, dealing with COVID-19, and the loneliness that came with it. Nora discusses how she discovered the Intentional Job Search (IJS) program and her thought process before joining. She highlights the program's structure and quality and how it helped her regain focus, prioritize effectively, and build confidence in her job search strategy. In this candid conversation, Nora also reveals her aha moments, including the value of peer interviews and the comprehensive support from the IJS community. She explains how the program's personalized coaching and strategic guidance were pivotal in helping her land a dream role as a Staff Product Manager in AI and ML at a large public company, achieving a significant pay raise and working alongside best-in-class professionals. If you're curious about how the IJS program can transform your job search and career trajectory, this video is a must-watch. Nora's story is a testament to the power of structured support and intentional effort in achieving career success. Key Moments in this Episode ======================== 00:00 - About Nora 01:00 - Challenges before IJS 02:45 - How Nora decided to join the program 07:30 - Nora's experience in IJS 17:30 - Negotiations 20:00 - Her message for you https://lnkd.in/eHEBAxpQ

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📣 Product Folks: 😡 Have you and your team hit the wall with trying to focus on value? That *could* look like: ▶ No steady stream of data to inform strategy, prioritization + roadmaps ▶ Stakeholder misalignment ▶ Competing priorities ▶ Duplicative or overlapping work streams 🤓 Are you ready to put Product Operations into practice at your company? Join me for Produx Labs' Product Operations June 5 Masterclass! Snag your seat today. https://lnkd.in/ephFvTwf #productmanagement #productops

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Lying to customers is not a good strategy. Focusing on building a better product is.

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Metrics come up all the time in talking about how to prove design systems value. The prevailing idea is that increasing adoption is the key to unlocking value. I disagree. I think it may be a part of success, but it is a bad way to express value. Here is why! Adoption is the kind of metric you get when you throw up your hands because you can't get the right data or you're more focused on building the design system than what you can build with it. It is the equivalent of "well, people seem to use it, so it must be great!" this can be fine if you're just starting out, but it doesn't tell you how your system is actually delivering value. Heck, NPS (which is also pretty imperfect), or a qualitative ask of product teams of "how valuable is the design system to your daily work?" or "what would change if the design system went away tomorrow?" is a better proxy for value than just "do people view some pages or login once a week?" Adoption can be pushed as a mandate. After seeing hundred of design systems up close, I can say definitively that high adoption doesn't differentiate between dream design systems and that 17 tool spaghetti monster that has documentation in Excel with hundreds of links to a private Git repo along with a 22 swim lane flowchart that you just... keep... scrolling... down. The only reason why adoption persists as a common metric is because even really bad design systems have the ability to generate significant value. So what's better? First, we need to hone in on the unit of repeatable value. This differs depending on the stated goal of the design system, but the vast majority of good design systems that operate at a significant scale are focused on how fast the organization can build products using the system (that's not the same as building components or designs in the system itself). At Knapsack, we tend to express this at this as cycle / iteration time from design to code across product teams that consume the design system -- either faster iterations or fewer iterations. We tend to focus on capacity because individual cycle velocity is often poorly understood and varies between product teams or disciplines. However, most teams have a fair handle on their capacity both for a single cycle and across a historical range of cycles. These can also be expressed easily as a relative percentage increase or decrease. It also accounts for a lot of secondary things (e.g. QA time) There is a goldilocks zone that consistently lands between 20 - 40% greater cycle capacity. For most of our customers, that's literally millions of dollars. If you're using adoption, you're not alone. We've heard time and again on the Design Systems Podcast that folks look at this metric ALL THE TIME as a measure of success, but it certainly doesn't paint the full picture, nor is it the north star for understanding value.

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Chief Product Officers have the shortest tenure of any C-Suite member: 2.5 years. In my recent interviews with Product Leaders, a common theme emerged - navigating a role under a non-technical Founder/CEO can be extremely challenging…but not impossible: CPOs that focused on educating their org about how product works, shared their vision and strategy constantly, and showcased how product metrics tied to clear ROI and customer value had longer tenures and better, more collaborative relationships with the rest of the organization > those who didn’t.

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💯 If your team is drowning in support tickets and customer "rough edges" you should probably sit back and evaluate if you have a viable product. At the very least, you should evaluate if your product team is correctly focused on the needs of your customers when this pattern emerges. "Jessica pointed out that if our solution was to hire someone to deal with customer issues, then next week when we grew more we’d have to hire another person, then another, and so on. Her point was that the real solution isn’t solving tickets, it’s listening to customers and building a better product so customers never need to write in the first place." "In a sense, every customer support ticket is a privilege – someone took time out of their day to write about how to improve your product. But it’s also a failure – you could’ve saved them that time by making the product better and more intuitive in the first place. You can’t out-hire a bad product, or compensate for poor taste with a big support team." Customer feedback is a gift. Don't squander it or pawn the problem off on a man-power to solve it. A pile-up here is *always* a sign that your product direction needs improvement.

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Hey rockstars. MASSIVE NEWS. I am hosting a COMPLIMENTARY LIVE session for Product Mgmt Rockstars to help you LAND an amazing product ROLE QUICKLY. We'll build your brand, show you how to stand out in the market, interview like a rockstar, and land the right job....quickly. We'll even do some LinkedIn reviews LIVE! When: May 7th-9th Time: 7pm ET / 4pm ET It's real content I have trained over 600+ product managers on. I would LOVE to see you there. Just comment LAND and I'll send you a registration link. LET's GO! #productmanagement

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Kudos to Zuck for taking aim at VP titles, the proliferation of which is inversely correlated to how lean a company is and how fast it can move. Hope more CEOs follow in his footsteps. It’s also an appropriate time to reshare my old article on Titles. It’s a call to arms to be very thoughtful and intentional about Director / VP titles and avoid them for as long as possible. https://lnkd.in/g4zQkEr

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Folks put time on my calendar frequently, but I sometimes get the sense they're unsure what to talk to me about. To have a high quality convo with your CRO, here's the mindset👇 Two years into my role scaling up GTM as a CRO, I would describe my #1 job as debugging. I'm always keen to talk to folks at any level with creative ideas and a vision for where the business needs to go and how we can unblock more revenue. Here are some prompts to get you started on a great convo with your CRO: - What's your POV on where your team needs to go over the next 2-3 years? - What skills does the team need to develop and what metrics will they move? - What hidden opportunities exist in the business that could be captured with small operational changes (to process, packaging, cadence etc)? - If I asked you to 2x, 5x, 10x your business in 12 months, how would you do it? There is value in the perspective from every seat. Don't be afraid to bring forward your ideas and excitement -- it's exactly what we want to hear.

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Product marketing often gets pigeonholed as being responsible for launches, messaging, and sales enablement. But smart product marketers play a much bigger strategic role that gets overlooked. The best product launches and roadmap decisions happen when product marketing has a real seat at the table to help shape strategy from the start. Here's why: 1️⃣ PMMs provide an outside-in perspective that prevents myopic thinking, realigning what customers need and value 2️⃣ As a credible voice of the customer, great PMMs bring real data from research and win/loss analysis to substantiate recommendations 3️⃣ The 10,000 ft. view. While PMs dive into user stories, PMMs keep an eye on the big picture - competitive forces, market trends, and corporate initiatives 4️⃣ PMMs ultimately own pricing, packaging, go-to-market. Those financial factors should absolutely influence product strategy PMMs shouldn't dictate every decision, but we need influential voices when defining problems and prioritizing features. Products improve when product marketing's insights are embraced early. Fight for a real strategy seat rather than an afterthought hired to "pretty up" finalized plans. The goal should be a true collaboration between PMMs and product teams.

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I’m seeing an increasing number of founders (and friends) exit their startups this year. Most of them have never exited a business before, and unfortunately, roughly half of them are likely to end up in dispute post-close. The most common reason is a term that almost everyone has never heard of. Working Capital Adjustments (WCA) are part of the broader Purchase Price Adjustments (PPA) in a standard M&A agreement. They intend to adjust the purchase price based on the actual working capital at closing compared to a previously agreed-upon target. This prevents the seller from emptying the bank accounts and running off with inventory before the deal closes. This mechanism is disputed so widely because Working Capital is often defined as “GAAP, consistently applied” — and this is not specific enough. A dispute arises when the buyer and seller interpret items differently, such as accounts receivable. These may seem small, but the cost can be in the millions. Many lawyers suggest that the solution is to draft a detailed dispute resolution process, which ultimately leads to higher fees for the lawyers. We believe the better solution is transparency. Referencing a pre-agreed set of financial statements and calculations that are up to date in real time during the closing process can align buyers and sellers. Combining this with a defined list of Accounting Policies and using GAAP only as a fallback mechanism safeguards against dispute and ultimately protects the sale proceeds.

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Product Leaders: Visibility is your responsibility. Don't just say, "Oh, that's all politics." If you don't take 100% ownership of communicating your achievements to your organization, your career suffers. But even more so, the company suffers because wrong decisions get made on who gets promoted and put in charge of important things. Do the work, and then take responsibility for communicating it.

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This is great advice especially as you grow your business many want results asap and sometimes putting blinders to your own culture doesn’t help. Look within first, and give people a chance to make real changes and contribute. Setting clear goals and sharing financial KPI’s are key to foster an open and sharing environment where people want to move that needle. #productstrategy

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Nick is one of the greatest product coaches out there today. 💪 It was a delight getting to chat with him about his journey from product to coaching. He talks about some of the things we don't often hear in Product Management, mental health. His stories about the challenges he's overcome were inspiring and hope to have him on the show again to cover more! If you have any questions for Nick after listening to the episode, comment on this thread so I can bring him back on. 🙌 Product Coffee - productcoffeepodcast.com #productcoaching #productmanagement #transformation

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