Matt LeMay
Product Leadership Consultant & Author at Sudden Compass
Matt LeMay is a product leadership consultant and author of Product Management in Practice, known for his practical frameworks on avoiding low-impact PM work and staying connected to company goals.
Dimension Profile
Key Themes
Episode Summary
Matt LeMay tackles the uncomfortable reality that many PM teams are caught in a 'low-impact death spiral' of small feature work disconnected from company goals. He provides a three-step framework for becoming impact-first, warns that even following best practices won't protect PMs who aren't driving real business outcomes, and challenges PMs to ask whether the CEO would fund their team.
Leadership Principles
- → Set team goals no more than one step away from company goals — don't let them cascade into oblivion
- → If you were the CEO, would you fully fund your own team? If not, you have a problem
- → You can follow all the best practices but if your company goes out of business, perfect OKRs won't save you
Notable Quotes
"If you were the CEO of this company, would you fully fund your own team? Frankly, most people I ask that question don't know the answer right away."
— His litmus test for whether a PM team is doing impactful work
"The low-impact PM death spiral starts with adding little features here and there, making little cosmetic improvements until the next round of layoffs."
— Describing the pattern that leads to PM teams being cut
"We still have too many teams doing work around the work."
— Quoting Daniel Ek's Spotify layoff message about the PM overhead problem
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