[class enrollment by application only]

No lectures. What if you could practice the trickiest parts of being a product executive ahead of time and, in doing so, learn from an expert and your peers on other approaches? This class takes a realistic scenario and over 6 weeks forces you make those hard decisions and have those tough conversations.

You and your peers will play the CPO at a growth-stage software company. I play everyone else, from the CEO to a board member to C-suite peers to a PM reporting to you.

Instead of talking abstractly about what one might do, you're going to do it. We'll play it out and you'll get feedback from both me and your peers. In turn, you'll give feedback when someone else is in the hot seat: how might one do it differently?

Using Specific Scenarios for General Leadership Training

I don't believe we learn from theory nearly as well as do from practice. While the below 6 topics seem very specific, they are chosen to expose critical, and difficult, aspects of being a product executive. In working through these scenarios, you'll end up thinking through general leadership values and approaches.

What We'll Cover

In our scenario, you've just joined an exciting growth-stage software company. On your first day at work, the board announced that your business is merging with a competitor of similar size. Your new boss is the CEO of the other company, not the one who interviewed you. The new CEO has decided to keep you as the product leader and intends to integrate the two companies rather than run them separately. Now you have two product suites, two different teams with different cultures, and a whole bunch of new C-suite peers that you haven't spent any time with.

What You'll Have to Solve

1. Kick off as CPO at a new company with big strategic decisions looming, a roadmap is disarray, and a major acquisition just closed

2. Create a 30-60-90 day plan for the CEO

3. Handle fear and flight risk within your team around layoffs given the recent acquisition

4. Deliver a proposal to the CEO and CFO on a new structure + cost implications for your 60-person team (located on two sides of the ocean);

5. Decide how to handle a senior PM who's relationship with their team's engineering lead has gone bad

6. Handle a situation where a CxO peer is not performing and the lack of accountability is hurting your part of the business

7. Create an artifact to set expectations at the C-suite on product timelines; handle a CMO who is frustrated with your timelines and a VP of Sales who wants to control priorities.

8. Present to the board and/or individual board members, per the CEOs request

The Class

The class is capped at 10 people. We will meet for 75 minutes each week for six weeks, with an optional hour-long roundtable on Fridays. There will be prep materials to read going into each class, including the first one.

Who Can Take The Class?

You must be at one of the following levels in either prod mgt, design, or engineering: VP, Director, Principal, or GPM level (or about to move into one of those roles). Class is by application only.

There is a code of conduct below.