Brian Boznak

NVIDIA’s CEO never does 1-on-1s 🤯 AND Jensen Huang has 60 direct reports. This isn’t conventionally considered best practice. But he shares his reasoning: “I believe that when you give everybody equal access to information, that empowers people. And so that’s number one… Number two, if the CEO’s direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you’ve removed in a company is probably something like seven.” What about giving feedback and coaching? “I give you feedback right there in front of everybody. In fact, this is a really big deal. First of all, feedback is learning. For what reason are you the only person who should learn this?… We should all learn from that opportunity… Half the time I’m not right, but for me to reason through it in front of everybody helps everybody learn how to reason through it. The problem I have with 1-on-1s and taking feedback aside is you deprive a whole bunch of people that same learning. Learning from other people’s mistakes is the best way to learn.” Fascinating to me. What do you think? #NVIDIA #leadership #management

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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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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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Reader feedback for my latest post about how to use AI and my PRD template to never have to write a PRD from scratch again. Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/eJjVXJUJ

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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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Spoke to Techstars (SF & Oakland) yesterday on building a growth machine. 13 takeaways to get to PMF & scale faster -   1. Growth is optional: Post-PMF, growth is hard, but the roadmap is simple (and mostly in your control).   2. Even the best startups get punched in the face (and often): But they find ways to not get demoralized, will things into existence, and take bad news well.   3. Sustainable growth is about scale AND unit-economics: You need both.   4. It’s easy to fake growth: Total Actives is a vanity metric. Understand the health of its inputs i.e. New, Resurrected, and Retained. The same concept applies to revenue, MRR, etc.   5. Marketing’s purpose Pre- and Post-PMF are different: When Pre, only spend to bring enough people back to validate PMF; when Post, go for scale.   6. A strong marketing mix has Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion: They’re all a hedge with unique pros and cons i.e., time to results, cost, effort, defensibility, etc.   7. You don’t need a Growth Team: The whole company is the Growth Team.   8. There’s 4-stages of growth: Know where you’re at b/c it’ll tell you where to focus, and focus is the lifeblood of a startup.   9. There’s various frameworks to hypothesize models for growth: AARRR, Growth Loops, The PLG Flywheel, and Network Effects are my favorite.   10. ICE is a great way to prioritize (Impact, Confidence, and Ease). Nothing easier than being busy in a startup, but it means nothing. Be effective.   11. Build great process to get through The Growth Flywheel fast: More tests > more learnings > better tests > higher success rates > faster path to growth.   12. When you find things that work, double down: Finding winners takes time; don’t take them for granted.   13. Make time to think and play offense: "Time to think” is 100% in your control; you have no excuse; when in doubt, do less.

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Ami Vora is the Chief Product Officer of Faire. Prior to Faire, Ami spent over 15 years at Meta where she was VP of Product and Design for WhatsApp (2B+ users), VP of Product for Facebook’s ads system (now a $130B business), and director of product at Instagram where she created Instagram's first ads platform. In our conversation, Ami shares: 🔸 Why execution eats strategy for breakfast 🔸 Using metaphor to rally teams around a shared goal 🔸 “Dinosaur brain,” “Toddler soccer,” and “hill climbing” 🔸 A pro tip for handling disagreement 🔸 Tips for working well with product-minded founders as a product leader 🔸 The story of Ami’s incredible 15-year journey from temp to VP 🔸 Much more Listen now 👇 - YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gQasbCbp - Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gQCjrhwn - Apple: https://lnkd.in/ghYTapTG Some key takeaways: 1. Execution eats strategy for breakfast: While strategy is undeniably valuable for guiding direction and setting goals, it’s the execution—the tangible implementation of those plans—that truly drives success. Without strong execution, even the best strategies can’t succeed. This means being willing to get your hands dirty, to tackle the mundane and sometimes tedious aspects of the work that lead to real results. Successful execution allows you to learn from both your triumphs and your setbacks, enabling you to refine and improve your strategy over time. 2. When handling high-stakes product reviews with executives (who are so inundated with information that they can't go deep on all of it, aka "dinosaur brain"), focus on distilling complex information into concise, actionable recommendations. By doing so, you not only clarify your recommendation but also empower execs to offer useful context, patterns, or insights at the right altitude. 3. When having a disagreement, use phrases like “Fascinating! You have to tell me more about why you think that” to show a genuine interest in learning. While everyone loves being right, delivering the best outcome is what truly matters. Put your ego aside, embrace curiosity, and collaborate to broaden your perspective and information set. 4. Use the “hill climb” metaphor to remind your team that moving from a local to a global optimum is like traversing hills and valleys. Imagine your product roadmap like climbing a mountain range, with your current solution being a local peak. Reaching the global optimum or the summit requires leaving your comfortable vantage on an arduous journey to explore other hills and valleys. Trying to play it safe by staying put means forfeiting your shot at reaching the global maximum. Use this analogy to remind your team that achieving the best outcome demands risk-taking and perseverance through challenges. Embrace these hurdles as crucial steps toward success, knowing each stride brings you closer to the summit.

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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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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable X personality Trung Phan about the evolving social media landscape, and how to tame the mayhem and pandemonium of X. https://lnkd.in/dVHMzbui

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As a product builder, one of my favorite concepts is Balaji Srinivasan's Idea maze (attached below). End users of a product only see the final decisions made. They don’t see every tradeoff the builders agonize over and the alternative universes that could’ve been. Great product are designed by builders that put an incredible amount of thought behind each decision. Steve jobs talks about a similar feeling in building the Mac. IMO this is the essence of finding product <> market fit, and makes a world of a difference in outcomes. For example, “video on the Internet” in the early 2000’s was an obvious emergent trend. But Youtube and Vimeo are very different products, and company outcomes. I think about this concept often for the market of “GTM signals” and "AI for Sales." It’s hot right now, many GTM teams are talking about using signals and AI, and there’s a wide diversity of products to choose from. Some tenured GTM operators gripe about how this is nothing new and it’s a renaming of age-old concepts like ABM, intent, B2B marketing, etc. There’s some truth to that and as a builder I’m always curious about the history of our space, but I also believe that AI (specifically LLMs) are unlocking new use cases that were previously not possible. So next time you see a new product in a confusing market, keep an open mind and see if it helps you accomplish something radically new. You could be looking at the next Youtube.

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How can product leaders move the needle and take the lead in this shift? Moving Off the Solution – guide your team to step back from the tech stack and view the challenge from the POV of a new user. Measuring Customer Perceived Value -- require PMs to sit with a cohort of users -- typical users. Conduct a discovery exercise. A small sample size is sufficient. Embrace the Change – this should require a complete change in mindset but a different orientation. Focusing the team on adoption, cross sell and upsell has clear near-term and long-term ROI for the company. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gjJk_K5V #leadership #prodmgmt #ROI

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The perfect idea doesn't exist. No idea turns out exactly how you expect it to when it confronts reality. As Naval shares, quality products come out of confronting reality 100x by putting something in the hands of customers and continually tinkering with it. 📌 I shared 9 more tips to elevate product quality here: https://lnkd.in/gRzMGmNE

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So excited to have Marty Cagan back on Product Coffee this week! 🎉 If you haven't had the chance to pick up the book Transformed, I highly recommend it. So many of the concepts that are aggregated and shared in the book have helped me share the practices and the practical operating model of how companies produce great products. My favorite so far is Time to Money vs. Time to Market. The biggest takeaway is that there is always a better way. We can always improve at how we produce products and not undermine the progress that people make in pursuit. It reminds me of Eric Ries' book, #theleanstartup, Build 👉 Measure 👉 Learn 🔁. We can use the same approach as we tackle pursuing a better product operating model. 💪 You can listen to the episode here: https://lnkd.in/gBnmxxYN

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There is a common, fatal mistake that most product managers make without realizing it. The other day, I spoke with an accomplished product group product manager who was looking to advance to the director level. He possessed all the relevant skills and experience. He had the opportunity to participate in numerous interviews, a testament to his marketability and the demand for his skills. But he failed to convert them into offers. He had been through five of his "top tier" target companies and not landed a role. Why was this case? He had joined our program, and after some mock interviews, we dug into the feedback he had received from our coaches [who are often product managers and leaders at these target companies], and I helped him see this pattern. He was interviewing for the job that he had rather than the job he wanted. Interviewing for roles you have held vs. the ones you want is a fundamental mistake that I see many product managers make repeatedly. They are telling the story of their experience, but the framing is entirely wrong. See, the hiring managers and other interviewers really have no interest in your past. They only care about it if it's retold from the perspective of "Why are you a clear fit for the role that you are applying to?" There is no silver bullet to fix this, but there are many lead bullets. Your words matter, as does how you shape the interview and move from one question to another. How you tackle product design, execution, metrics, and leadership interviews also matters. Our coaches understand the difference between the different levels of interviews and can help you reshape them. This approach enabled us to help a Senior Product Manager land a Director role recently (more on that in the next few days). But for now, remember - interview for the job you want, not the job you've had.

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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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I found this article to be a great summary of what a product manager does- understanding all stakeholders and acting as the glue across the organization. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/g39gC_4G

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If there are two things that I advice constantly to PM folks reaching out to me on Linkedin, a) please stop using superlatives like "relentless pursuit of exceeding expectations" in your cold messages/mails. Same in CVs. b) stop putting skills such as "Strategy, Roadmapping, Stakeholder management etc", which are tablestakes for a good PM, in your top-of-CV summary. These are expected out of you. Showcase impact in these, or your differentiation, or strengths. #CVGyaan #NetworkingGyaan #ProductManagement

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Dealing with ***very*** surprising changes will be your most important skill in the next 5 years. As product managers, we often encounter unexpected changes that can disrupt our well-laid plans. Whether it's a feature redesign, shifting priorities, or unforeseen challenges, how we respond can make or break our projects. Here are a few key questions to ask yourself when faced with such situations: How flexible is my current plan? What are the top priorities right now? How can I communicate changes effectively to my team? What steps can I take to adapt quickly and efficiently? How do you handle unexpected changes in your projects? Share your experiences. #productmanager #Agile #projectplanning #adaptability #productdevelopment #leadershiplessons #productor

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