Product leadership expert Rich Mironov discusses three core challenges CPOs and product VPs face: effectively communicating value in business terms rather than process terminology, building trust through merchandising wins before gaining decision-making authority, and reducing product waste by making better decisions about what to build. Executives don’t care how product gets made; they care about revenue impact. Success requires translating product outcomes into financial language and proving value through small wins before requesting broader organizational changes.

We’re talking about the top challenges CPOs and Product VPs face. Navigating them well can cause your career to excel and result in valuable products. Navigating them poorly has career-limiting consequences. This discussion will help you avoid the latter by giving you approaches to address common product leadership challenges.

Our guest has mentored more product leaders and executives than anyone else I know over his 40-year career in product roles. He has served as interim CPO for 15 companies, founded the first Product Camp, consulted to hundreds of tech companies, and wrote the book The Art of Product Management. His blog, “Product Bytes,” is widely read by product leaders. From that description, you likely already know who our guest is—Rich Mironov. 

Rich has seen every product leadership disaster imaginable and knows how to fix them. Let’s learn how to address and even avoid such challenges.

First Principles for Product Leaders:
Rich outlines three areas product leaders must champion:

Speaking the Executive Language:

Reducing Product Waste:
Rich distinguishes between two types of waste:

The Trust-Building Problem:

The Merchandising Strategy:
Weekly practices for building influence by recording and communicating added value:

How Product Leaders Can Make Better Use of Product Managers:

Team Structure Preferences:
Rich’s preferred team composition:

“Other people are not an imperfect version of you. They are a perfect version of themselves.”  – Pam Fox Rollin

Rich has led product teams for 40 years, including six B2B startups and 15 interim CPO/VP Products roles.  Today, he coaches product leaders, helps design product organizations, and writes/speaks about how product folks can understand our go-to-market partners.  He been blogging about software product management since 2002, launched the first product camps and wrote “The Art of Product Management.” 

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

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