Marty Cagan argues that Imposter Syndrome is real and healthy when understood correctly: it is a signal that you have not prepared enough. Rather than trying to push past the fear, he uses it as motivation to study…
Marty Cagan clarifies a terminology problem in the product community: many people use "product leader" interchangeably with "product manager" or "product owner," which causes unnecessary confusion. He argues the two…
Lenny Rachitsky analyzes more than twenty public PM career ladders to identify the core skills companies value in product managers. He outlines ten recurring PM competencies, the shifts that separate junior from senior…
Marty Cagan follows up on his earlier argument that product organizations often degrade into service teams that merely document others' decisions. He offers ten practical moves for reclaiming influence: deep customer…
Marty Cagan argues that the best product managers think like owners rather than employees, taking responsibility for outcomes instead of merely completing activities. He draws on Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters to…
Marty Cagan contrasts strong product teams with weak ones, drawing on years of working with both top technology companies and struggling ones. He argues the differences are not minor but span leadership behavior, team…
Marty Cagan announces that the next SVPG book, TRANSFORMED, is in progress with Lea, Jon, Christian and Chris as co-authors, targeting early 2024. The book addresses the many established companies that struggle to shift…
Marty Cagan, author of product management writing, sets out the personal beliefs that underpin his work and teaching: faith in technology, leadership, honesty, people, giving back, and continuous improvement. He argues…
“Note: This is the narrative version of a keynote talk for the Lenny & Friends Summit. Recently I was asked a question that I haven’t been able to get out of my head: “In light of all that has changed, what are the things that you used to argue were true, that you no longer... The post Strong Opinions, Loosely…”
A Q&A post offering advice for someone becoming a startup's first product manager. Drawing on interviews with people who held that role at well-known companies, it covers when to make the first PM hire and what the job…
Teresa Torres and Petra Wille discuss the gap many product teams feel between modern, outcome-driven practices like continuous discovery and experimentation and the realities of organizations that do not support them…
Melissa Perri describes how a typical remote staff meeting can waste the chance to connect and align a team, and argues that remote work mainly amplifies existing meeting problems. She interviews product leaders at…
Julie Zhuo's personal essay traces how she came to see herself as an "ice queen": someone who learned to suppress emotion and present a composed, controlled surface. The piece frames emotional guardedness as a…
Jon Moore, an SVPG partner, argues that the principles behind empowered, outcome-focused product teams are not new and not tech-specific. He points to Ingvar Kamprad's 1976 essay 'Testament of a Furniture Dealer' as…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles 25 high-signal interview questions gathered from roughly 150 podcast guests, grouped by theme: handling hard situations, how candidates think, how they build and drive impact, who they are as…
Executive coach Natalie Rothfels observes widespread workplace anger among clients and offers a four-step process for turning it into useful insight. Drawing on Buddhist, Internal Family Systems, and somatic ideas, she…
Marty Cagan argues that after filtering out bad ideas, the next key tool for making hard investment choices is a Board of Advisors. Unlike a board of directors, which is shaped by investor duties and CEO oversight, an…
Teresa Torres argues that as a product grows and the leader can no longer be everywhere, the vision must be turned into guardrails that let others decide autonomously yet consistently. Drawing on the Heath brothers'…
Marty Cagan examines top-down deadlines, where management sets a date for a major outcome such as a trade show debut or a startup's runway limit. He acknowledges that such deadlines can create a powerful sense of…
Marty Cagan argues that successful product-model transformations deliberately confront political realities rather than avoiding them, since changing how an organization decides and builds is fundamentally a people…
Jason Fried argues that the excitement around AI agents comes less from the technology itself and more from the psychological experience they create: delegating a task to someone fully competent. He notes that most…
Marty Cagan responds to readers stuck in IT-mindset organizations who ask whether they can change their company or must leave for a startup. He argues that established companies can still produce disruptive innovation…
Marty Cagan argues that strong product people need both ambition and agency, and that agency depends on ambition: skills alone won't drive action without a desire to improve. He reflects on how some product people…
Marty Cagan argues that if he could change only one thing about how a product organization works, it would be empowering engineers. Engineers work with enabling technology daily, so they are best placed to spot what is…