Airbnb’s changes to product management could be just what is needed in wartime or equally a retrograde step, while the discussion on Airbnb’s decision to morph its product management function into a product marketing manager role has thrown up an interesting debate.
Typical symptoms are a shift in the balance of trade-offs such as focus on big bets over smaller incremental improvements and risk aversion over a healthy risk appetite.
Wartime product leadership kicks in when there is a threat to the very survival of a company — or at least at the point the leadership team starts taking that threat seriously.
Discussions about productivity are often a proxy discussion for some other dysfunction while remote working is a particularly polarising debate because it aligns with the leader-employee divide.
Good crisis was the only opportunity to cut through the bureaucracy and make any kind of meaningful change.
Culture clashes often emerge in times of shift from ‘peacetime’ to ‘wartime’ product leadership.
Reports of product management's demise have been greatly exaggerated.
At a macro level, one can see a battle for the narrative around good and bad habits in the industry currently.
Successful games and products have a common attribute: they help the user become more skilled throughout their journey, which requires onboarding to be a continual process.
Demonstrating good practices and delivering good products is the key to building better and successful products.