WRITINGS
The Product Leader
Aug 30, 2024
1 Product Leader
2 Responsibilities: Envision | Embody
4 Modes: Discovery | Design | Delivery | Distribution
1 Product Leader
The product leader is responsible for seeing, cultivating, and directing action on deep, well-formed, strong ideas, strategies, senses, intuitions, analysis, and more. They have responsibility and accountability for product success and failure. If they aren’t the company leader, then they report directly to them.
This person manifests the highest agency possible. They rely on smarts, wit, politicking, cleverness, humility, experience, kindness, graciousness, wisdom, their network, resources, and ability to learn rapidly and figure out who to talk to.
They are at their best when they are not myopically bogged down in the particulars of the product they are working on. Instead, they see this product as one within an ecosystem, one of many they will have the privilege to shepherd.
They are like a movie director, a shepherd, a master gardener. While they love this movie, this flock, this garden, they know it will fade, so they’re not blind to the realities of its limitations and weaknesses.
They know when and how to be decisive and when and how to be deliberate.
They know when and how to operate in each of the four modes: Discovery, Design, Delivery, and Distribution.
And they are able to see and hold the unity of the product.
As the leader, though they know how to operate in the modes, they are not directly carrying out the vision. There might be software engineers, project managers, product designers, marketers, account managers, accountants, lawyers, and more. These might be employees or contractors. They might be remote or in person.
But they are people coming together for a time to build a product.
This person is a product leader. While they are extremely well-versed in the particulars of software products, they are even more adept at leading people. Everything they get done only gets done through the people they lead. They must therefore be capable of gaining the respect, admiration, and trust of the people they lead. They must have a spine, and they must care for their people.
2 Responsibilities: Envision | Embody
Envisioning is seeing the patterns and principles underlying reality – what is and what could be.
Embodying is bringing the vision of what could be into being.
4 Modes: Discovery | Design | Delivery | Distribution
These modes are not chronological or linear. The product leader may be stronger in one or another. But they know how to shore up their weaknesses by installing capable, adroit leaders, systems, and processes.
The modes are semi-permeable. There’s no reason a person might not develop expertise in and through all of these areas. Or, a person might possess extremely specialized competency in one. However, the overlap and interconnectedness of the four means that leaders and team members only stand to benefit from learning adjacent areas.
Discovery Practices
Strategize, analyze, compare and contrast, envision, understand, feel, gauge, measure, dialogue, gut-check, debate, clarify, sharpen
Discovery Outcomes
Straightforward, clear vision
Buttressed by a sound strategy
That takes the right risks
Design Practices
Identify constraints, feel out boundaries, explore, diverge, conceptualize, ideate, integrate, test, tinker, play, understand, make intuitive leaps, iterate, create a form, map, model, maintain conceptual integrity, architect information, interview, show and tell, garner feedback, align, refine
Design Outcomes
Working prototypes of slices of functionality, meaning, aesthetic, etc.
Remarkable customer service and experience outcomes
Delivery Practices
Facilitate, communicate, coordinate, negotiate tradeoffs, review, execute, tweak, test, refine, polish, get to good, ship
Delivery Outcomes
Shipped, reliable, secure, performant, tested, quality, valuable, meaningful, coherent whole products
Distribution Practices
Position, price, market, message, publish, network, negotiate, make deals, lobby, persuade, argue, publicize, broadcast, stream, entertain, educate, explain, inspire
Distribution Outcomes
The product serves the right people
At the right time
For the right price
In the right places
Conclusion
While the above tries to lay out what the product leader is and does, much is left unsaid about what makes a product leader good. I’ll leave that for you to ponder, dear reader.