Matt LeMay
Matt LeMay spent 13 years as a music critic at Pitchfork before becoming one of product management’s most influential voices. He’s consulted with companies from startups to Fortune 500s and authored two essential PM books, including Impact-First Product Teams. After watching countless product teams get laid off despite “doing everything right,” he discovered a harsh truth: most PMs are optimizing for the wrong things.
Career (separate track) Skills
The most effective way to ensure a product team's longevity is to view it through the eyes of a CEO and justify its cost through measurable impact.
"If you were the CEO of this company, would you fully fund your own team? Frankly, most of the people I ask that question to don't know the answer right away."
Planning & Prioritization Skills
Prioritization must move beyond simply finding 'defensible' features to building things that contribute to the company's financial health.
"I truly believed that my job was to find the next most defensible thing to build, build it, celebrate it, find the next most defensible thing to build, and so on and so forth. Rinse and repeat forever..."
Product teams should ensure their specific objectives have a direct, visible link to high-level business goals to avoid losing focus through multiple organizational layers.
"So the first is in setting team goals, no more than one step away from company goals. Don't let it get cascaded into oblivion."