Product Excellence: Insights from Award-Winning Product Management Leaders | Strategies for Success

Product teams built their validation habits on lean methodology. Drew Falkman, Principal at Moves The Needle, explains why the next generation of technology demands something different.

In this Product Excellence clip, Drew maps where product management practices need to go as AI, VR, and voice interfaces introduce complexity that extends the distance between hypothesis and testable prototype. Products built around non-visual interfaces require different research methods, different prototyping approaches, and different ways of gathering user input.

Drew also identifies the growing stratification of PM roles in larger organizations. Specialization around ideation, growth, and lifecycle management is accelerating. For PMs navigating career decisions, this shift shapes which opportunities exist and where.

The conversation surfaces a particular growth area: voice and conversational product design. As more products move toward listening-and-responding interfaces, the PM skill set required to build them is becoming its own discipline.

🎯 Get the full uncut conversation with Drew. Join The Product Way on Patreon, where we connect product managers with companies actively hiring for PM roles: https://patreon.com/theproductway/membership

Ask a room full of product managers to define their core responsibility and you will get a dozen answers. Maya Brooks, Product Manager at Klaviyo, gives one that resets the conversation: build a system where your team can thrive.

In this Product Excellence clip, Maya explains why PMs lead through empowerment and what that looks like at the level of daily work. She identifies the specific activities that create alignment. Clearing blockers in requirements. Reducing meeting friction. Building transparency into how the team communicates. Her frame: same page, same pace, same goal. A PM who achieves that alignment has done the job.

TPW members get deeper strategies on team empowerment and cross-functional operating systems. Plus PM Select, a direct line between product managers and the hiring managers looking for them. Join at patreon.com/theproductway

Maya Brooks is a Product Manager at Klaviyo. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and brings over 10 years of product experience. She previously co-founded Privy Labs and mentors through digital undivided and Techstars.

Jenna Gaudio, Co-President of Vydia / Gamma Distribution and Technology, walks through the sprint planning process she built for her team.

Her approach changes when planning happens, who is involved before planning day, and how ownership is distributed during the sprint. By the time her team sits down to plan, the hard decisions are already made.

The sprint itself runs differently too. Jenna describes a structure where the PM shares leadership with people in roles that rarely carry it, and a closing rhythm that pulls every department into what the team shipped. The cycle she walks through covers the full loop, from idea intake to company-wide rollout.

Jenna started her career in government operations managing electronic warfare projects before moving into private sector tech and product leadership.

🎯 PM Select connects product managers with companies actively hiring for PM roles. It is part of The Product Way membership, along with the Product Excellence series: full, uncut conversations with award-winning product leaders. Jenna's runs over an hour. https://patreon.com/theproductway/membership

Garrett Lang has spent over a decade building PlateRate, the only pickup/delivery app that credits diners for trying a restaurant's highest-rated menu items. PlateRate won the TPMAS (The Product Management Awards) award for Visionary Product of the Year 2019.

In this Product Excellence clip, Garrett explains how he validated PlateRate by running beta events at real restaurants with real diners. The product confirmed. Diners could order, manage checks, tip through the app. And the feature that generated the strongest response was the freedom of walking out without waiting for a check. Order, tip on the app, leave. The restaurant already knows you paid.

That signal showed up because Garrett tested in real environments with real users. Real-world beta events surface behavioral data that surveys and assumptions leave on the table.

Garrett also shares his quality thresholds for moving from beta to public marketing: user friendly, intuitive, bug free, and performant. If you are building something and trying to figure out when you have enough signal to move forward, this is what that process looks like from a founder who has been iterating on the same product for over a decade.

🔗 Join The Product Way on Patreon for deeper strategies on startup methodology, turning beta feedback into product direction, and knowing when your product is ready for growth: https://patreon.com/theproductway/membership

Members also get access to PM Select, our service matching product managers with hiring managers at top companies.

🔗 Connect with Garrett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettlang1/

When you walk into a product organization as an interim leader, everyone knows you are temporary. There is no slow ramp to build trust. Credibility comes from one place: visible action that demonstrates genuine investment in the team's success.

Harpal Singh has been in that position more than a dozen times. As an interim CPO managing teams of 10 to 12 product managers, he developed a philosophy that carries real cost: he would rather compromise the quality of the product than fail to give his people what they need to succeed.

In this clip, Harpal traces how that philosophy developed over two decades. He shares the early career habits he had to unlearn, why interim roles forced a clarity that permanent positions often allow leaders to defer, and what it looks like when a team recognizes that a leader's commitment to their growth is backed by consistent action.

Harpal Singh is CPO-in-Residence at Rothschild & Co, with previous interim CPO engagements at Ada Health, Automata Robotics, Lendis, and Epica.ai. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and UCL.

🎙️ If the people side of product leadership is where you want to grow, TPW members get actionable strategies on building teams, earning trust, and leading through complexity. Plus PM Select, a curated service that introduces PMs to hiring managers looking for product talent: https://patreon.com/theproductway/membership

#productmanagement #leadership #interimCPO #theproductway #productexcellence

What do great product managers actually do every single day?

Maya Brooks is a Product Manager at Klaviyo leading Billing & Monetization (Growth), with over 10 years of PM experience, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a background as a startup founder and CEO.

In this Product Excellence clip, Maya shares the three daily habits she believes separate great PMs from good ones: knowing your team deeply, building transparency into your processes, and talking to your customers obsessively.

She explains why knowing your team is not about task tracking. It is about understanding how people communicate, where they get stuck, and what they need to do their best work. She also shares how she built an environment at a 12-person startup where people were genuinely not afraid to say they needed help.

The full-length interview goes deeper on all three habits. Available exclusively for members of The Product Way on Patreon, along with early access to all Product Excellence clips and PM Select, our curated introduction service connecting product managers with hiring managers. 👉 https://patreon.com/theproductway/membership

Many teams keep moving forward without ever slowing down to reflect. Over time, small frustrations pile up, problems go unspoken, and trust quietly erodes.

In this Product Excellence clip, Maya Brooks explains why regular team retrospectives matter just as much as shipping. She shares how creating a consistent space to surface issues, talk honestly about workload, and reflect on team dynamics improved both product outcomes and team health.

This clip gives product leaders a simple, practical way to prevent issues from festering and help teams reset before problems compound.

What You Will Learn

• Why teams sweep issues aside when there is no structured reflection

• How regular retros create psychological safety and trust

• What to include in retros beyond product metrics

• Why emotional and workload check-ins improve execution

🎥 Want more? Members of The Product Way on Patreon get exclusive access to the full-length interviews and early access to all Product Excellence clips.

👉 https://patreon.com/theproductway/membership

As a Practitioner member, you also unlock access to PM Select, our curated introduction service connecting product managers with hiring managers and decision makers.

#ProductManagement #ProductLeadership #CareerGrowth #Innovation #ProductExcellence

For years, product managers learned the craft alone. Each PM owned a piece of a product, optimized for local outcomes, and figured things out as they went.

In this Product Excellence clip, Drew Falkman explains why that era is changing. As product teams grow and scale, coordination, shared language, and organizational alignment matter more than individual heroics. Drew reflects on how conferences, community, and evolving practices like portfolio management and product operations are shaping the next phase of product leadership.

This clip offers perspective for PMs who feel the weight of uncertainty and shows why that uncertainty is part of a discipline growing up.

What You Will Learn

• Why imposter syndrome is common in product roles

• How product teams evolve as organizations scale

• What portfolio thinking solves that individual ownership cannot

• Why better internal communication leads to better products

Daily standups are meant to create clarity. Over time, many teams discover they are doing the opposite.

In this Product Excellence clip, Maya Brooks explains how standups lose value when they are applied uniformly instead of intentionally. She shares how her teams adjusted process based on the type of work underway and why matching rituals to risk and complexity restores focus, transparency, and trust.

This clip helps product leaders rethink ceremonies that have quietly become habit instead of help.

What You Will Learn

• Why daily standups can reduce clarity over time

• When standups are genuinely worth the cost

• How to tailor process to the size and risk of the work

• What makes reporting out useful instead of draining

In this Product Excellence clip, Jenna Gaudio shares how accountability works best when it focuses on solving problems rather than blaming people. She explains why trust, safety, and honest retrospectives turn mistakes into learning and help teams grow stronger over time.

🎥 Already watched the full interview? This clip captures one of Jenna’s most important leadership principles.

🧠 Haven’t yet? Watch the full Product Excellence episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/jenna-gaudio-to-118893809

Members also get access to PM Select, our curated introduction service connecting product managers with hiring managers.