Drawer 06 · 560 notes · 139 people · 2005–2026

Leadership & management

Managing people, feedback, coaching, and leading product teams

Q:
Answers from Leadership & management notes, cited
SVPG · Marty CaganNov 12, 2024

Winning Hearts and Minds

Nov 12, 2024 · 4 min

Marty Cagan argues that a successful move to the product model depends on the product organization earning the trust of the rest of the company, which is a race to win over executives before they lose confidence. Senior…

SVPG · Marty CaganDec 27, 2019

Coaching – Integrity

Dec 27, 2019 · 7 min

Marty Cagan argues that integrity is the foundation of trust in empowered product teams, and that trust rests on both competence and character. He acknowledges that integrity is hard to maintain, since product managers…

SVPG · Marty CaganAug 27, 2024

The Moral Case for the Product Model

Aug 27, 2024 · 6 min

Marty Cagan argues that beyond the business case for the product model, there is a moral case: empowered teams are happier, more fulfilled, and proud of improving customers' lives or society. He notes that organizations…

Lenny’s Newsletter · Free post♥ 119

Becoming a senior Product Manager

Feb 9, 2021 · 11 min

Jackie Bavaro, drawing on research for her book Cracking the PM Career, argues that the hardest career step for many product managers is progressing from entry-level to senior PM, typically taking around three years…

SVPG · Marty CaganJun 25, 2024

Transformation Regrets

Jun 25, 2024 · 7 min

Marty Cagan reflects on his personal regrets from coaching companies through product transformations, prompted by a reader's question about whether every transformation in the book TRANSFORMED succeeded. He admits that…

SVPG · Marty CaganJun 3, 2020

Advocating For Racial Equity

Jun 3, 2020 · 5 min

Christian Idiodi, an SVPG partner and Black leader in tech, writes about the personal weight of racial injustice in America and asks why tech companies, which tackle enormous problems like aging and space colonization…

SVPG · Marty CaganDec 19, 2023

Product Predictions 2024

Dec 19, 2023 · 6 min

Marty Cagan shares his 2024 product predictions in narrative form, framing each as a hope and a worry rather than a forecast, given his track record of overestimating how quickly change arrives. He covers ten recurring…

SVPG · Marty CaganJun 14, 2021

The MBA Pathology

Jun 14, 2021 · 10 min

Marty Cagan argues that the MBA pathology, the set of habits instilled by many business programs, continues to produce weak product managers and weak products despite claims that it would self-correct. He stresses he is…

SVPG · Marty CaganOct 28, 2021

Process People

Oct 28, 2021 · 5 min

Marty Cagan argues that product organizations contain three kinds of contributors rather than two: makers (designers, engineers, researchers), managers, and a growing group he calls process people. Process roles like…

SVPG · Marty CaganMar 15, 2023

Product Model Competencies

Mar 15, 2023 · 5 min

Marty Cagan introduces the core competencies that a product operating model requires, framing product teams as responsible for solving hard customer and business problems rather than delivering features on request. He…

Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 322

My favorite decision-making frameworks

Feb 6, 2024 · 9 min
Subscriber post — summary only

Lenny Rachitsky compiles several lightweight decision-making frameworks, ordered from most to least structured, and explains when each fits best. He stresses that frameworks suit only high-stakes, one-way-door choices…

Lenny’s Newsletter♥ 232

A PM’s guide to influence

Oct 1, 2024 · 13 min
Subscriber post — summary only

Jules Walter, a product leader at Google formerly of YouTube and Slack, lays out five tactics for building influence as a PM: gathering intel on how stakeholders decide, framing proposals from their point of view…

SVPG · Marty CaganFeb 24, 2020

Team Objectives – Overview

Feb 24, 2020 · 4 min

Marty Cagan explains why he has largely stopped recommending OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to most companies: the technique is simple, but organizations rarely have the structure it needs to work. He argues three…

SVPG · Marty CaganMar 4, 2020

Team Objectives – Summary

Mar 4, 2020 · 3 min

Marty Cagan argues that team objectives are the mechanism for assigning work to empowered product teams in a way that still executes the company's product strategy. Product leadership chooses which problems matter and…

SVPG · Marty CaganFeb 21, 2022

Types of Product Coaching

Feb 21, 2022 · 4 min

Marty Cagan proposes a simple taxonomy for the types of product coaching, since no widely accepted vocabulary exists yet. He distinguishes product-related coaching (delivery, discovery, product leadership, and…

SVPG · Marty CaganApr 13, 2020

Discovery When Working Remotely

Apr 13, 2020 · 6 min

Marty Cagan argues that while remote product teams can deliver nearly as well as co-located ones, discovery and innovation suffer most when people work apart. He frames discovery as the core challenge, since creativity…