Product Leadership

In today’s lightning-fast technology world, good product management is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage. Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it’s rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don’t?

This insightful book presents interviews with nearly 100 leading product managers from all over the world. Authors Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, and Nate Walkingshaw draw on decades of experience in product design and development to capture the approaches, styles, insights, and techniques of successful product managers. If you want to understand what drives good product leaders, this book is an irreplaceable resource.

In three parts, Product Leadership helps you explore:

• Themes and patterns of successful teams and their leaders, and ways to attain those characteristics
• Best approaches for guiding your product team through the startup, emerging, and enterprise stages of a company’s evolution
• Strategies and tactics for working with customers, agencies, partners, and external stakeholders

About the Authors

Richard Banfield is the CEO of Boston-based UX agency Fresh Tilled Soil. He started his career with MultiChoice, Africa’s largest broadcast, and web business. He left MultiChoice to become co-founder of Acceleration, an international adtech business HQ’d in London (now owned by ad giant WPP). Under Richard’s leadership, the firm has delivered digital product design and product strategy to 700+ clients around the world. Richard has published two other books, Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products, which he coauthored with C. Todd Lombardo and Trace Wax and Design Leadership: How Top Design Leaders Build and Grow Successful Organizations.

Martin Eriksson is a product management professional with over 20 years experience building leading online products all over the world, from small startups to global brands such as Monster and The Financial Times. He’s the founder of ProductTank, a global meetup for product people with over 50,000 members in 100+ cities. He is also the co-founder and Curator of Mind The Product–the world’s largest product management community, blog, and conference, with annual events in San Francisco and London. He also serves as a consulting Chief Product Officer, advising startups and enterprises on how to build successful product teams.

Nate Walkingshaw is the Chief Experience Officer at Pluralsight. He started his first company in 2004, where he revolutionized medical evacuation with Paraslyde, later acquired by Stryker Medical. He then built Brightface, a product development company that focused on mobile and web applications including Cycleface (acquired by Strava). He then became the Chief of Research and Innovation at Tanner Labs, where he built O.C. Tanner’s first human-centered product development team. Nate joined Pluralsight, the largest providers of online technology learning, as Chief Product Officer, and in Feb 2016, Nate’s role expanded to CXO to include development, content, and product marketing.