In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller sits down with Jennifer Soy Long, founder of Selby Group, LLC, to explore the art and science of leading change within organizations. Jennifer shares her journey from “accidental change manager” to 28 years of guiding leaders through complex technology-driven transformations.

Together, Heather and Jennifer dive into:

• How to handle ineffective bosses without letting emotions derail your impact.
• Practical strategies for building alignment and influence with peers and stakeholders.
• The importance of empathy and understanding others’ goals to drive successful change.
• Identifying “traditionalists” (stabilizers) in your organization—and why winning them over can make or break your initiatives.
• Real-world examples of navigating organizational change, from technical teams to leadership dynamics.

If you’ve ever struggled with driving change, gaining support from key stakeholders, or leading without authority, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you lead more effectively—and get results that stick.

LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferselbylong/

Website:

https://www.selbygroup.com

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

AI is everywhere — but is it actually making products better?

Together, they unpack what it really means to use AI well — not as a shiny feature or market grab, but as a strategic tool that helps product teams deeply understand their users without sacrificing usability, trust, or human connection.

Andy shares how his team uses AI to analyze long-form customer stories (not surveys) to uncover motivations, emotional patterns, and unmet needs — and why asking better questions matters more than generating faster answers.

This conversation is a must-listen for product leaders who are tired of “AI for AI’s sake” and want to build products that actually serve people.

• Not every product needs AI — and forcing it in can make things worse
• AI works best when it frees humans to operate at a higher strategic level
• Great product management is still about asking the right questions
• Understanding customer motivation is more powerful than tracking behavior alone
• Human connection isn’t optional — it’s the competitive advantage

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

Transformation is more than hiring a consultant or handing over a shiny playbook—it’s about changing human behavior, founder habits, and team dynamics. In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller breaks down why so many transformation efforts stall once consultants leave and what real, lasting change truly requires.

Heather dives into:

• Why playbooks often fail: Static documents don’t adapt to real-world complexity, and teams won’t follow what they don’t trust.
• Founder behavior patterns that derail progress: Bottleneck founders, hero syndrome, and chasing short-term wins can silently block transformation.
• What real transformation requires: Patience, intentionality, and a holistic approach that aligns founders, teams, and systems.

If you’re ready to stop performative change and create transformation that actually sticks, this episode will give you the insights—and the tough truths—you need.

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller goes deeper into a concept that sits at the core of product leadership and business success: risk-based decision making.

Building on the previous conversation about product management as risk management, this episode explores what risk really means, why it’s unavoidable, and how great leaders make conscious, strategic decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Heather breaks down risk in practical, real-world terms — not just for product managers, but for founders, consultants, and business leaders navigating complex decisions every day.

• What “risk” actually means in business and product work
• Why risk is never zero — and why that’s not a bad thing
• How risk tolerance differs across industries (from medical devices to SaaS to consulting)
• The three ways to handle risk: mitigate it, accept it, or offload it
• Everyday examples that make risk decisions easier to understand
• What a risk register is — and why visibility matters more than complexity
• Why security, vendors, and infrastructure decisions are often long-term risk choices
• How risk-based thinking helps leaders move from reactive decisions to strategic ones

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

Product management isn’t about writing tickets, answering quick questions, or being the catch-all for everything unclear.

It’s risk management.

In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller breaks down what’s really happening when teams say, “Let’s just have product handle it.” What sounds harmless often creates serious market, execution, and founder risk—and most teams don’t realize the damage until it’s too late.

Heather shares real-world stories from product launches and critical rollouts, including the invisible cost of context switching, burnout, and being pulled into “quick” meetings that derail deep work. She also explores how unclear role definition at the leadership level trains teams to bypass product—and why that creates single points of failure across the business.

This episode reframes product managers as an early warning system for the business, not a slowdown—and challenges both PMs and founders to stop tolerating small risks that quietly compound.

• Why “just have product handle it” creates hidden market risk
• How execution risk shows up as burnout, delays, and degraded quality
• The role founders play in unintentionally bypassing product
• How unclear escalation paths overload PMs and leadership
• Why product managers must stop apologizing for protecting focus time
• How product connects market, execution, founder, and even cyber risk

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller sits down with Makoto Kern, product strategy and UX leader, to unpack what really drives successful products — especially in a world obsessed with speed, AI, and shipping “something” as fast as possible.

Makoto shares his journey from electrical and robotics engineering on the manufacturing floor to leading enterprise and B2C product strategy, and how firsthand exposure to poorly designed software shaped his holistic approach to product development.

Together, Heather and Makoto explore why jumping straight into wireframes is often the most expensive mistake teams make, how product owners act as the true connective tissue between business, UX, and engineering, and why “slowing down” early is the fastest way to win long-term.

The conversation also dives deep into the current AI hype cycle, drawing parallels to the dot-com boom and bust. Makoto introduces the concept of the “AI Competence Mirage” — where AI creates the illusion of expertise without true understanding — and explains why experience, judgment, and asking better questions matter more than ever.

This episode is a must-listen for product leaders, founders, and executives navigating enterprise UX, AI adoption, and the pressure to move fast without losing direction.

Connect with Makoto

Impact.io

LinkedIn

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller sits down with Kerri LaRose, self-leadership coach, counselor, and advocate for intentional living, to talk about the invisible work that shapes everything else — our thoughts, beliefs, and patterns.

While we often focus on career strategy, productivity systems, and performance, this conversation goes deeper. Kerri explains why self-leadership is the foundation for every other role we play — as leaders, partners, parents, and professionals — and how unexamined beliefs can quietly limit our growth for decades.

Together, Heather and Kerri explore how mental load shows up both at work and at home, why “just pushing through” doesn’t work long-term, and how learning to lead yourself creates stronger relationships, clearer decisions, and more sustainable success.

This episode is especially relevant for women navigating demanding careers alongside family life, leadership roles, and the constant pressure to be “on” for everyone else.

If you’re not getting the results you want — in your career, relationships, or energy — what belief might be driving that outcome?

If this conversation resonated and you’re ready to explore self-leadership more deeply, connect with Kerri and learn more about her coaching work.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerri-ouber-larose/

https://www.ctacoaches.com/Kerri_Ouber_Larose/

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

So many founders believe they’re moving fast — but what they’re actually doing is starting over again and again.

In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather Miller digs into a pattern she sees constantly with smart, capable founders and leadership teams: changing direction every week in the name of speed, validation, or momentum — and unknowingly stalling their own growth.

From messaging and pricing to features and positioning, these changes often feel productive. But when nothing is allowed to stabilize long enough to learn from it, teams lose clarity, data becomes meaningless, and founders become the bottleneck.

Heather shares:

• A real founder story about constantly changing messaging — and why nothing was “working”
• A lesson from a scaled agile environment that applies directly to startups and growing businesses
• Why two weeks of data is often just noise, not insight
• A simple analogy that explains why stacking changes destroys your ability to evaluate results
• The human cost of constant pivoting: confusion, lost trust, slower execution, and burnout

This episode isn’t about moving slower — it’s about moving with intention.

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

This episode wasn’t the one I planned — and that’s exactly the point.

A text from my college-aged kid (“I need to call”) turned into a real-time reminder of what founders experience every day:

Teams calling them for answers.

Teams freezing in uncertainty.

Teams unable to move without authorization.

Today we’re talking about founder dependency — how it forms, why it’s a risk, and how to shift from being the bottleneck to being the capability architect.

Inside this conversation, you’ll hear:

✨ A relatable real-life moment guiding someone through fear

✨ Parallels between panic on ice and panic inside organizations

✨ The hidden leadership patterns that keep you over-involved

✨ How to coach instead of rescue

✨ Practical steps to transfer decision-making confidence

If you’re tired of being the person everyone runs to…

If you want a business that functions when you’re offline…

If you crave more strategic space or actual rest…

This episode is your wake-up call — and your blueprint.

Download The Shiny Object Test for Free- Helps you figure out what to stop doing and what you should pause

Download the 90-Minute Strategy Audit- Includes my Strategy Pillar system to help you decide what you should be doing more of and what you need to delegate; Only $19

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9

In this episode of Beyond Product Management, Heather sits down with Radhika Dutt — MIT engineer, serial founder, author of Radical Product Thinking, and upcoming author on why OKRs fail — for a conversation that will completely shift how you approach goals, strategy, and product decisions.

Radhika unpacks:

• Why OKRs inherently incentivize teams to hide bad data
• How “product diseases” quietly infect even the most well-intentioned organizations
• The real reason leaders become “the last to know”
• What happens when we optimize for quick wins instead of real learning
• Why research shows goal-setting only works for repetitive tasks — not strategy, innovation, or product development
• How to replace goal-setting with puzzle-setting and puzzle-solving
• A fascinating case study where this approach doubled revenue and dropped churn from 26% to 4%

Heather and Radhika also dive into:

• How teams accidentally sabotage each other’s success
• Why focusing on “the number” destroys collaboration
• What to do when your goals depend entirely on other teams
• How to bring this mindset into your work even if your org won’t abandon OKRs

Radhika shares her OHLAs Framework (Objectives → Hypotheses → Learnings → Adaptations) and where you can get her free toolkit to start applying it immediately — even as an individual contributor.

If you’re tired of soul-sucking OKR cycles or you’re heading into annual planning and know something feels off, this conversation is the strategic reset you need.

Links Mentioned

• Download Radhika’s free OHLA Toolkit
• Connect with Radhika on LinkedIn
• Radhika' Website

PDRM Consulting's mission is to help businesses reduce risk, specifically in the fields of Cybersecurity and Product Management.

Heather bridges the professional development gap in the corporate space by empowering growth-driven product managers to transition into strategic, results-oriented leaders. By focusing on enhancing key skills and decision-making capabilities, she helps them accelerate their leadership journey, achieve measurable outcomes more quickly, and excel in driving product success. Her approach ensures they thrive in their roles and unlock their full potential as impactful servant leaders within their organizations.

You can follow us for more daily content:

Instagram: @pdrmconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pdrm-consulting

Join our Newsletter:https://solitary-block-17987.myflodesk.com/ofo6k6a0f9