By Melissa Perri · melissaperri.com · @lissijean on X · LinkedIn
Melissa Perri interviews Brian Bhuta, CPO at Signify Health, about how product leaders gain trust and influence, especially when joining a team full of resistance. Bhuta argues that influence is an advanced form of communication aimed at getting decisions and actions, not just understanding. He recommends leading with humility and assuming colleagues share your goal. He also stresses checking whether leadership and company mission align with your product goals before taking a role, and that CEOs grow nervous when strategy rests on "I think" rather than data and customer validation. Finally, he outlines how to raise a team's talent level by making hard people decisions and bringing in a top performer.
01Key takeaways
- Treat influence as a distinct skill aimed at getting specific decisions or actions, not just getting people to understand your view.
- Approach resistant colleagues by assuming they want the right outcome and asking what you might be missing.
- Before accepting a product leadership role, confirm that your boss and company leadership support your product goals and mission.
- Back product strategy with data and customer validation so CEOs can trust the judgment calls you make.
- Invest development effort in your highest-potential people rather than trying to fix every underperformer.
- Hiring a top performer can quickly raise expectations and energize the rest of the team.
02Key sections
- Influence as an advanced skill
- Bhuta distinguishes communication, which aims at understanding, from influence, which aims at a specific decision or action. He notes that influence scales from prioritization debates to sales, marketing and operational choices as a CPO.
- Leading with humility
- Winning over skeptics starts with assuming everyone wants to do the right thing and asking what you might be missing. Admitting you aren't always right disarms people and reveals shared objectives.
- Checking leadership alignment before joining
- A new product leader should first assess whether their boss and company leadership support the product agenda and share a mission. Without that alignment, conflicts become nearly impossible to resolve.
- Grounding strategy in data for the CEO
- Strategy will always involve judgment, but CEOs become uneasy when it lacks data and customer validation. Drawing on Andy Grove's view of executive time, Bhuta explains that CEOs spend most of their day gathering information and need product strategy rooted in it.
- Leveling up teams through talent decisions
- Bhuta advises measuring team gaps honestly, making hard talent calls, and focusing development on high-potential people instead of rescuing low performers. Bringing in a top performer can also raise the bar quickly.
03From the post
“Brian Bhuta, CPO at Signify Health, has a knack for getting the toughest critics on his side. We’ve watched firsthand as he’s joined organizations and come up against tons of intense resistance. Then, within a month, not only has he accomplished what he needed to get done, but he’s made friends along the way. He uses this superpower to transform…”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.