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Product Management

Andres Phillips

<p>In this ProductTank London talk, Senior Director at <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/thetaray/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ThetaRay</a></span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaun-smith-taylor/?originalSubdomain=uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shaun Smith-Taylor</a></span>, provides insights into how you can grow a product-led company by having the right culture. He explains the history of becoming product-led, the characteristics and culture of a product-led company, and the importance of the CEO and company structure to success.</p>
<p>Watch the video to see his talk in full or read on for an overview of his key points:</p>
<ul>
<li>Where have we come from?</li>
<li>Don Draper’s guide to being product-led</li>
<li>Product-led characteristics and culture</li>
</ul>
<h2>Where have we come from?</h2>
<p>In the early days of product management, many companies were marketing-led. In this situation, the customers were the ones driving decisions. Procter &amp; Gamble was an example of such a marketing-led organization focused on brand management and customer-centricity.</p>
<p>Eventually, businesses became sales-led. The primary goal was to bring value to the market. However, this was a long process where revenue was king and a focus on the customer journey with a go-to-market strategy at the end.</p>
<p>Next came project-led companies. For these companies, culture was not aligned to market-fit, vision, and strategy. In this scenario, the customer dictates 100% of what the company does. However, it’s hard to scale and prioritize. Also, products in these companies are seen as a supporting function, which ultimately doesn’t deliver the required value to the customer.</p>
<h2>Don Draper on product-led</h2>
<p>Shaun references Mad Men character, Don Draper, to provide some key traits relevant to being product-led. They must have:</p>
<ol>
<li>A desire to be a market leader</li>
<li>The ability to move fast</li>
<li>An ambitious management team</li>
<li>Have blue sky thinking</li>
</ol>
<h2>Product led characteristics and culture</h2>
<p>Shaun then touches on some of the key characteristics of a product-led company and the cultural values they employ.</p>
<h3>Characteristics</h3>
<p>A product-led company understands its market fit and is customer-centric. It focuses on product value and has alignment from the C-level right down on a shared vision as well as excellent speed to market and a low acquisition cost.</p>
<h3>Cultural values</h3>
<p>A good product-led organization and the product manager in such an organization utilizes a blue ocean mindset and can think outside of the box. They are customer-centric; they understand the value the product brings to the market, take full ownership of the product line, act fast and challenge the usual way of doing things.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Read this </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">article by </span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/profile/Federico%20Iglesias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Federico Iglesias</a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> on</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> how </span><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/building-extraordinary-teams/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Building extraordinary product teams</a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span></p>
<p>To achieve all of this, your CEO and management team must be product people. They need to lean and own the product roadmap, be innovative and visionary, empower and structure a team to move fast, and recruit a core executive team of product people.</p>
<p>The key takeaways from this talk are the questions that you need to ask to determine if your company is product-led. Some of these include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Are the company values at the heart of your product strategy?</li>
<li>Is there a 360 feedback loop within the product lifecycle?</li>
<li>Do you act fast and not afraid to fail?</li>
<li>Does your management team understand and support product?</li>
</ul>
<p>If the answer to most of these questions is no, then you are not product-led.</p>
<h2>Enjoy more from ProductTank</h2>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ProductTanks</a></span> are informal meetups, created by Mind the Product, to bring local product people together and to enable speakers to share amazing product insights. Today we have</p>
<p>ProductTanks in more than 200 cities across the globe and there’s probably one near you.</p>
<p>Learn more about ProductTank – find your local meetup, explore more <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/producttank-about/content/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ProductTank content</a></span>, see the latest ProductTank news, and discover ways to get involved!</p>
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Andres Phillips