Rise of the Product Leader

Hello! 🙋‍♂️

I’ve been putting out consistent content on product management and leadership on LinkedIn - and people actually like it! Imagine my surprise 🫢 Since this content is a fraction of the ideas and concepts I have, and since coaching & mentoring have always been a passion, I thought I’d start a proper blog.

(Note: for those looking for my creative writing blog of historical urban fantasy, it’s here).

What’s in it for you 🫵

Insights into product management and product leadership, coming from an enterprise guy who’s been around the block a few times. Topics cover common-sense product management (surprisingly uncommon), product leadership through organisational growth and change (unsurprisingly hard), book and resource reviews (to help you decide what to study next), articles on the philosophy and practicalities of Product, and anything else I can think of that brings value to those growing their careers and facing challenges.

It’s all packaged with a lot of storytelling, a touch of humour, rare bouts of foul language, memes and visualisations, and Australian spelling.

What’s coming 🌠

I have ideas for a few articles, which I’m currently working on. I’ve also written a few articles around the web (from creative writing for product management, to effectively leading transformations), while I’ll republish here for easy reference. I obsessively study things I’m passionate about (I consume a bucket-load of books and articles every month), and love visualising as I learn new things (mind-maps and other infographics). I’ll use those to illustrate points and hopefully provide better insights — seeing is believing. Ideas are abundant and I’m experienced with content pipelines, so expect new articles fortnightly.

This is coming to you from my perspective: I’ve been in and around software products for 25 years, been a product manager for half of that, and have been leading and managing teams and organisations for the past few years. My background is primarily enterprise software, and that will colour my experience and view points. I’ve been building knowledge and information management for government agencies, law-firms, banking and financial services, utilities, health, and other large, usually highly-regulated customers. While that end of product development has some fundamental differences from B2C and team-based B2B, I do find that a lot of the fundamental concepts of product management and leadership apply across domains.

These articles, observations, philosophical digressions, and advice are hard-earned lessons I wish someone told me when I was just starting and hard lessons I’m still learning and earning. I named this blog “The Rise of the Product Manager” as I wish to help those growing in their career from just starting to leading organisations. There was a small fraction of the material available today, which is both a blessing and a curse - you can easily drown in the wrong stuff.

What’s next for you and me 🎚️

I’m going to post another article in a moment, so the blog doesn’t look empty and you get a clue about the quality of writing. I’ll choose something controversial 😉

I’ll also post the link here (probably before anyone reads this 😅 … here it is), and cross-post to LinkedIn. I don’t care how you consume the content, nor am I planning on monetising it. If you stick around and find the material useful, just pay-it-forward: share these and your own lessons with others, to uplift the practice of product management and leadership.

Until next time, Vale!

Assaph