Product Power Hour: On Crafting Pilot KPIs, Shifting Sales-Led Teams, and Stepping Into Strategy
Nuggets of product support from my January Product Power Hour 💪
Last week I hosted another Product Power Hour with 10 PMs across a diversity of topics & levels.
What’s Product Power Hour? Think of it as office hours for PMs looking for support on a variety of product topics. If you missed it, the next one is February 19th!
The discussion was rich, the space was non-judgemental1 and I realized the tactical support I offered was applicable beyond our group.
With that, here’s what’s coming up for people in the product community in 2025…
On Productivity
“I’m doing busy work instead of actually doing the things I need to do.” - Senior PM
Whether you’re job searching or knee deep in launching a product, its tempting to start with the easy, mindless tasks. And it takes a lot of intention to recognize when you’re falling into that habit. I penned this article when I found myself dilly dallying on easy tasks. My two cents: Start with the dreaded thing. Like building software, use a spike to break down the dreaded thing into meaningful pieces to de energize the anxiety. Starting with the hardest things makes the rest of the day cruise on by. More on that approach below:
On Pilot Metrics
“How do I show positive signals for a pilot when I don’t have real data yet?” - Product Lead
To this I ask, what would the real data get you? In this case, the product was meant to increase the speed in which customers were able to query large amounts of data. Upon digging into the problem of not having real data, we realized that having customers test a prototype with synthetic data could actually help the team understand if the product was actually reducing query times. Real data of course would be preferred, but in this case, it actually wasn’t necessary to create a benchmark metric.
On “true” product-led organizations
“What are some ways to help shape an organization to be truly product led?” - Director of Product
I’ve spent a lot of time writing about how to spot a good Product Culture but what does it mean to transform it from within? Co-creation is everything. Building opportunities to co-create with other parts of the org beyond product helps shift a culture. Like bringing sales-team into authoring a product vision or allowing engineers to go on customer calls. There’s a lot of nuance to this question but I think Marty Cagan’s book Transformed has some of the best tactics for PMs who are stuck in this exact position. So I’d urge you to check out his book.
On personal growth
“What does growing like a leader without an org look like?” - Founder & Fractional PM
I know a thing or two about losing the built-in mentorship you get with a big organization. Ironically, I feel better equipped with mentorship working independently than I ever did working at a company. The solo nature of my work forced me to find and build exactly what I needed (shoutout to my communities: Coaching Corner, Infinite Mastermind, Entrepreneur Hour, Fabrik, etc.). Now more than ever there are so many places to plug in as an independent professional. If you need some support, hit me up, I have lots of ideas.
On backlog management
“How do I know if i’m doing backlog management right?” - Product Owner
To this question I always start with a question back - “Did you ask your team for feedback?” I’m big on collecting regular, real time feedback. So if something doesn’t feel right or you’re just not sure, a great place to start is to get feedback. In this case, I advised this PO to simply ask the engineers “how things were going” and “what could be going better” as a light weight way to gauge how they’re doing. PMs all have imposter syndrome and the best way to combat it is to own what you don’t know. More on imposter syndrome below.
On shifting from execution to strategy
“I’ve been in execution mode for 8 months. How do I move more into strategy work?” - Senior PM
We’ve all been there: doing our job really well but not presented with the right opportunities to do the work we really want to. To that I say, go find the opportunities, don’t wait for them to come to you. To this Senior PM, I suggested connecting with other PMs who were doing more strategic work at the company. Gather some data and ideas to create opportunities for yourself instead of waiting for them to come to you.
The best way to chart a path is to learn from others who did just that.
Till the next Power Hour!
If you missed the Product Power Hour, I’m hosting two more this quarter:
Can’t make either? Subscribe to my calendar to get updates for future events.
Hi - I’m Jori and I’m a Product Coach.
If you’re looking for support - drop me a note, I’d love to connect. 🤝
I co-host Product Leadership Breakfast NYC, a monthly product breakfast series to bring together curated groups of PM leaders to connect over casual breakfast. If you live in NYC or find yourself passing through, join us! ☕
Always a delightful surprise when you gather strangers on the internet :)