Alexandra is a Product leader and a current CPO @ uptime.ac with over 14 years of diverse global ecosystem, working in start-ups, scale-ups, consultancy and enterprise. Alongside founders and exec teams, she builds a vision and an inspiring story, and breaks these down into actionable steps for the product and design teams she manage. She is a big fan of Lean, different forms of Agile and User Centred Design when it comes to solving user problems and delivering business outcomes. She uses a mix of quantitative & qualitative insights in order to de-risk product direction fast and create a learning organisations that drive product led growth.

As a people manager, Alexandra believes coaching, mentorship and constructive feedback are key aspects of good management today.

Today we are going to talk about:

• Building and growing products teams at different stages of the organisation growth
• The importance of post talent acquisition work for new hires, specifically onboarding and mentorship
• And empowering your team to create the best products out there

Episode Highlights

[2.30] Coming into the role of a CPO from engineering background

[7.48] Cross industry product management skillset transfer

[11.30] Learnings from different stages of product maturity

[15.20] Keeping everyone aligned on the same vision when in high growth mode

[18.40] Successful onboarding in the remote environment

[23.00] Mentorship of Junior PMs

[27.50] Alexandra’s 3 core learnings

Cross industry transfer of product management skillset

Product mindset and being strategic are two competencies that remain to be central in working with any product organization, irrespective of product maturity and focus of the product itself. Every product ad product organization will face different challenges, even if within the same industry, making your journey as a CPO/Product lead unique every time.

And your product organization grows and matures, CPOs need to keep the clear direction of the product and communicate the vision and next in line priorities for the team. That affects the product organization structure and hiring plan, allowing you to focus on the skillset in the incoming PMs that will allow you to get to that next stage of the product growth. Alexandra took time to define the global strategy and define the roles in detail.

Alignment of product teams in period of growth

As a product leader, Alexandra shares, that you need to keep a high level vision in sight at all times, the North Star should always be visible. What is more tricky is managing the “in-between” moments of team growth, keeping in mind the onboarding time for new hires and managing the transitions.

Alexandra shares the importance of the onboarding process. Some things she saw working well are :

• Managing expectations from the role from Day 1
• Mandatory attendance of client meetings/demos
• User research and discovery to help understand the user base better

Connect with Alexandra on LinkedIn and on her site