Product Development with Purpose: Building a Winning Mindset and Core Principles for Success with Eric Leach, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Strata Identity

Product Leaders Podcast

A big shoutout to all product leaders. Welcome to the Product Leaders Podcast by Fireart with your hosts, Dima Venglinski and Tolik Nguyen. Every episode is a deep dive into different aspects of product leadership to enhance the end-user experience.
In this episode, Tolik is joined by Eric Leach, Co-founder Strata Identity, a provider of identity orchestration software and Chief Product Officer at What/Why Consulting. They discuss mindset and core principles to guide your product development.

Topics we discuss:

• The evolution of product management
• From waterfall to agile companies
• Aligning product and project management
• How to build a product management mindset
• The What / Why Consulting

Hot Takes and Key Highlights:

The Evolution of Product Management

Product management has undergone significant changes in recent years, with the adoption of new development methodologies being among the most notable. Although these changes may seem cosmetic, they have had a significant impact. For example, Eric's early career was focused on writing product requirements documents or PRDs, which provided a comprehensive plan in advance.

However, contemporary product managers operate under the assumption that they do not have all the answers and, therefore, devote more time to interacting with customers before embarking on product development or sales. This approach emphasizes understanding the customers' problems and needs as a prerequisite to delivering solutions that meet their expectations.

“The biggest difference is that you assume you don't have the answers at the outset. And so you spend much more time with customers before you even start building or trying to sell anything”.

Aligning Product and Project Management

The goals of product and project management are distinct. The product manager's responsibility is to deliver a successful product that meets the market's needs and the company's goals while maximizing profitability.

On the other hand, the project manager is responsible for defining the project plan, managing the project budget and timeline, and ensuring that the project meets its objectives. Aligning the two functions over time requires transparency and constant communication between the product and project teams.

“Visibility and communication make the collaboration between product and project much more friendly and efficient”.

Building a product management mindset

The foundation of a mindset is rooted in understanding the "why" behind our actions. Why is this important? Why should anyone care? Why would someone use it? These questions form the basis of a mindset. However, as you progress, you will encounter numerous forks in the road, points of transition, and decisions to make. A mindset provides a set of principles and a foundation to make decisions consistently, logically, and in a way that others can follow.

Establishing principles to guide daily activities is crucial to maintaining consistency. For instance, designing secure products can be a core principle around which a mindset can be built. When setting a core principle, it is crucial to ensure alignment among team members. Consistently revisiting and reinforcing these principles is also necessary to maintain a strong mindset.

“You can't force people to have a mindset. You have to influence them into a mindset”.

Guest at a Glance:

Eric describes himself as an entrepreneur and product leader with a profound focus on creating new market categories and building teams to tackle the challenges faced by the customers in those markets. He has over twenty years of experience leading product strategy, go-to-market, and innovation for identity management, application security, and data protection products.

Eric is the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Strata Identity and is also an Advisory Board Member of Baffle, a software development company that offers cloud data protection services. Recently, he also started the What / Why Consulting company. Before Strata Identity, Eric was the Vice President of Product Management at Oracle. He is a contributor to RSA Conference and has written and published several other articles about product management in his What and Why Newsletter.

• Eric Leach on LinkedIn
• Strata Identity Website
  
  

Hosts at a Glance:
Dima Venglinski: Dima is the CEO of Fireart Studio, a boutique design and software development company committed to innovation and technology. His client portfolio ranges from startups to established global brands like Rolls Royce, Google, and Atlassian.

• Connect with Dima on LinkedIn
• Fireart Studio Website

Tolik Nguyen: Tolik is the CSO and Partner at Fireart Studio and leads the strategy team while solving the company’s end-user issues from an early idea stage.

Connect with Tolik on LinkedIn
Fireart Studio Website

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