Develop skills and strategies to create a more effective team
Product leaders can't do everything for everyone all the time
As a product leader, you’re expected to be a strategy expert, liaison to the executive team, relationship builder, people manager, and operations guru. It’s not easy. And the only way to succeed is through deft use of change management tactics to get your team headed in the right direction.
Product operations coaching focuses on a few key techniques: finding the areas where your team is struggling, coming up with potential solutions to help smooth their path, and creating techniques to implement change. In other words, we work together to apply a product mindset to your professional development.
As time goes on, you’ll see improvements in how you problem-solve as a manager and approach your professional relationships. We’ll use these newfound skills to get your team running more smoothly and reduce the surprises that ruin your workday.
Cisco
Everything I do is exclusively about helping product teams navigate changing how they work and making it stick.
The Linux Foundation
My coaching program is a way to go through my Mastering Product Operations course with customized guidance and feedback.
From my experience, there are a few different reasons that product operations struggle at companies:
- The wrong infrastructure: whether training, templates, tools, meetings, or documentation, it needs to be easy for people to change from the status quo
- Lack of buy-in: everyone involved in the change needs to believe in it. That means selling a very clear vision, getting participation from influencers across the organization, and creating a sense of inclusion
- Too fast a pace: the pace of change needs to match the capacity of the organization to handle the change. If a company is used to frequent changes, it can be easy to shift quickly. If the company hasn’t experienced that in the past, they need to learn the skill of adaptation alongside changing how they work.
I focus my coaching program around getting these three elements right. The way I do it is by bringing a product mindset to product operations – building out an iterative and user-informed roadmap, structured around a clear strategy and vision. I call this the Product Ops Strategy Stack, built off of the Product Strategy Stack by Ravi Mehta.
The coaching program is structured to get you results as quickly as possible, while also customizing for the unique needs of the organization.
There’s not one best way to build products, but rather there are better ways to build products depending on the organization’s unique characteristics. This program is designed to find those better ways as quickly as possible.
The program includes the following steps:
- Vision workshop: I do this complimentary with qualified clients as a way to get to know each other. We talk about the vision for the product organization and create alignment around it.
- Product culture blueprint: From the vision comes the blueprint, which is an artifact that the company makes which helps share where the product team is going and why. It’s a critical piece of creating buy-in for change.
- Process map: We map out how the organization is working right now and identify the key points of friction in that process. We can also use this map to prototype changes in the future, so it’s a great tool to have. It sounds like your team might have already completed this step, which is great!
- Strategy creation: We articulate what the product ops strategy is going to be, based on the culture we’re trying to build, the major points of friction we identified, and the strengths the team brings to the table.
- The roadmap: With this foundation in place, we can now create a roadmap of what challenges we want to address and in what order.
- Identifying and implementing infrastructure: Given the roadmap, there will be a set of solutions (infrastructure) that make sense to support our goals. The rest of the program is working through the steps to iterate through solutions until the product leader has the skills to continue iterating independently.
Our first step will be getting the vision workshop on the calendar – it will be a great way for all of us to get to know each other better and see if there’s a fit. At the end of it, you’ll have a clearer sense of what kind of product culture you’re wanting to create.
HOW IT WORKS
Vision workshop
This workshop helps us get to know each other, allows me to meet the team, and sets the stage to make sure we’re aligned around goals.
Weekly sessions
We meet weekly. In each session we work through the next step in building out your product operations strategy stack.
Unlimited async
Between meetings, you’ll have unlimited access to me via Slack, email, and text so you're never blocked waiting for the next session.
Personalized workspace
You’ll get your own personalized coaching workspace with templates, guides, and resources.
Minimum 3 month commitment
We are trying to make lasting change in your organization, and that takes time.
Company sponsorship
My coaching is structured to benefit the company as much as the individual, and so the financial investment is usually paid by the company.
What coaching includes
The core of the coaching package is the weekly meetings where we work through the program step-by-step. That includes the templates and articles that I’ve developed over my years of working through product ops challenges and teaching others how to improve their operations.
All packages also include:
- Unlimited email follow-ups between calls
- A direct slack connection to make sure you’re never blocked
- An onboarding call to establish goals and objectives
- Access to my product management articles library, with the best writing out there on a variety of topics