“I have no product leader and great ones sure are expensive!”

I will join the leadership team as a Chief Product Officer with the intent of making myself redundant in an agreed-upon timeframe.

For a deeper dive on the many benefits of bringing in a fractional leader instead of a permanent one at a time of rapid change, please read this excellent blog post.

I will spend my time on the most critical enablers of the company’s enterprise value growth, including but not limited to:

• Auditing and creating strategy

• Working with other leaders to highlight and eliminate any cross-departmental gaps

• Auditing and setting up product development processes and practices

• Hiring critical missing roles, including my potential replacement

• Establishing the correct organizational model between Product Management, Engineering and Product Design

• Auditing existing team quality and managing out underperformers

• Representing the company in the customer interface as needed

• Participate in board and leadership team meetings and other high leverage activities

• Coaching Product, Engineering and Design team members

“I have R&D leads, but they are not executive level leaders.”

I will coach senior R&D leads (eg. VP, Director, Head Of) to rise above their level and work with the founder(s) / CEO to level up the existing R&D team in its strategy, operations and execution.

The key goal is me being a force multiplier to what the current organization can achieve. Bringing me in as an executive advisor will give extra mileage to a team the CEO had already been thinking of replacing or allow them to hire slightly below the level they thought necessary.

Responsibilities performed include

• Hands-on coaching existing leaders, including CEO

• Leadership team support and guidance

• Supporting with strategy auditing and creation

• Hiring missing key roles

• Ensuring the current top ranking people in R&D can operate independently as a “Junior CPO”

“I’m hiring a new leader, but it will take some time and I need someone at the wheel right now!”

I will support you and your team in the transition to a new leader to ensure you find the exact right one and cut their onboarding time to a fraction of what it would otherwise be. Ramping up as a new leader is incredibly difficult unless guided by someone who’s done the same job before.

I will generally be performing all the relevant day-to-day duties of a product leader (see #1 above) for business continuity, but my main focus is on these responsibilities:

• Supporting your hunt for the new leader: interviewing, scorecarding, providing feedback on the decision.

• Creating a quick start dossier to ensure the new leader gets up to speed in 3 weeks rather than 3 months.

• Being the new leader’s onboarding support for their first month.

“I’m not sure if my R&D team is doing things correctly in my company’s context."

I will conduct extensive research on the operations of the existing R&D team to highlight its strengths and weaknesses, in terms of structure, operations and bench strength.

I will conduct interviews, observe key meetings, review materials and comb through data.

As the final deliverable, I will provide a thorough confidential report to the leadership team on what I’m seeing and what my recommendations are for changes, including detailed instructions on how to follow-through.

I will also work with key individuals to ensure the changes are implemented correctly. Aftercare sold separately.

“I don’t know if I have the right people on the bus."

I’ll interview your Product Management team, including its leaders and some of their key partners / stakeholders to form a clear view of the quality level of your current staff in Product.

I will deliver a final report indicating where people are in their optimal seats, aligned with their strengths and weaknesses.

With the report, I can provide recommendations for refactoring the organization—and if necessary, managing out underperformers.

“Things are going ok, but I could use periodic second opinions.”

I will be available as-needed for executive leaders in the company to advise and coach on critical decisions, strategy, and presentations.

This can include weekly or bi-weekly review calls or periodic in-depth working sessions for an expert outsider’s voice at important moments.

“We are doing too many things and we don’t know what to focus on.”

I will run a cross-departmental data analysis and segmentation initiative that targets the discovery of the correct ideal customer profile for the company.

I will then conduct qualitative research and an attachment rates analysis to provide a better understanding of what parts of the current offering are the most valuable for this customer segment to ensure the company is aligning all its resources behind efforts that will yield the highest possible returns in the near-term.

The outcomes will be:

• Newly defined ideal customer profile

• High-level product roadmap revision, prioritized by target customer needs

• Opportunity-solution tree specific to the target customer

• Go-to-market strategy recommendation