Product Excellence: Insights from Award-Winning Product Management Leaders | Strategies for Success

Ask a room full of product managers to define their core responsibility and you will get a dozen answers. Maya Brooks, Product Manager at Klaviyo, gives one that resets the conversation: build a system where your team can thrive. In this Product Excellence clip, Maya explains why PMs lead through empowerment and what that looks like at the level of daily work. She identifies the specific activitie...

Jenna Gaudio, Co-President of Vydia / Gamma Distribution and Technology, walks through the sprint planning process she built for her team. Her approach changes when planning happens, who is involved before planning day, and how ownership is distributed during the sprint. By the time her team sits down to plan, the hard decisions are already made. The sprint itself runs differently too. Jenna descr...

Garrett Lang has spent over a decade building PlateRate, the only pickup/delivery app that credits diners for trying a restaurant's highest-rated menu items. PlateRate won the TPMAS (The Product Management Awards) award for Visionary Product of the Year 2019. In this Product Excellence clip, Garrett explains how he validated PlateRate by running beta events at real restaurants with real diners...

When you walk into a product organization as an interim leader, everyone knows you are temporary. There is no slow ramp to build trust. Credibility comes from one place: visible action that demonstrates genuine investment in the team's success. Harpal Singh has been in that position more than a dozen times. As an interim CPO managing teams of 10 to 12 product managers, he developed a philosoph...

What do great product managers actually do every single day? Maya Brooks is a Product Manager at Klaviyo leading Billing & Monetization (Growth), with over 10 years of PM experience, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a background as a startup founder and CEO. In this Product Excellence clip, Maya shares the three daily habits she believes separate great PMs from good ones: knowing your...

Many teams keep moving forward without ever slowing down to reflect. Over time, small frustrations pile up, problems go unspoken, and trust quietly erodes. In this Product Excellence clip, Maya Brooks explains why regular team retrospectives matter just as much as shipping. She shares how creating a consistent space to surface issues, talk honestly about workload, and reflect on team dynamics impr...

For years, product managers learned the craft alone. Each PM owned a piece of a product, optimized for local outcomes, and figured things out as they went. In this Product Excellence clip, Drew Falkman explains why that era is changing. As product teams grow and scale, coordination, shared language, and organizational alignment matter more than individual heroics. Drew reflects on how conferences,...

Daily standups are meant to create clarity. Over time, many teams discover they are doing the opposite. In this Product Excellence clip, Maya Brooks explains how standups lose value when they are applied uniformly instead of intentionally. She shares how her teams adjusted process based on the type of work underway and why matching rituals to risk and complexity restores focus, transparency, and t...

In this Product Excellence clip, Jenna Gaudio shares how accountability works best when it focuses on solving problems rather than blaming people. She explains why trust, safety, and honest retrospectives turn mistakes into learning and help teams grow stronger over time. 🎥 Already watched the full interview? This clip captures one of Jenna’s most important leadership principles. 🧠 Haven’t yet?...

Most teams talk about culture as if it’s a slogan. But the best product organizations build it through systems. In this Product Excellence clip, Harpal Singh explains how combining product-led and customer-led thinking creates a real culture of alignment. He shows how shared ownership across product, sales, and marketing changes how companies operate, turning culture from something aspirational in...

If you have ever felt drained at the end of a day in product this clip will help you understand why. In this Product Excellence clip, Drew Falkman explains the hidden emotional load PMs carry. PMs sit at the center of every conflict • design vs engineering • sales vs delivery • ideas vs reality Understanding this pattern gives PMs a clearer sense of what they are actually managing so they can appr...

Some product careers begin with a plan. Jenna Gaudio’s began with curiosity. In this Product Excellence clip, Jenna (Co-President & COO, Vydia) shares how she moved from marketing into product management by stepping deeper into the development process, asking questions, and learning everything she could about cross-functional teams and agile delivery. Her story is a reminder that product leade...

One conversation with his manager at GE completely changed how Garrett Lang approaches leadership. In this Product Excellence clip, Garrett shares how his boss sat him down on day one and explained his leadership style page-by-page. It was direct, explicit, and transformative. That 30-minute conversation inspired Garrett to create his own leadership document, one he still uses with every new team...

What do you do when you join a team without a product process in place? In this Product Excellence clip, Maya Brooks (COO, IFundWomen) shares how she built a complete end-to-end product process from scratch, from ideation with the CEO to execution across design, research, and marketing. She walks through how to balance big-picture conversations with tactical sprint cycles, why every product needs...

Before leading product strategy and innovation, Drew Falkman started as a designer and accidentally became a developer when a project went sideways. That moment launched a journey of creativity, learning, and product thinking that still defines his approach today. In this Product Excellence clip, Drew shares how his curiosity for creation led him from building websites in the dot-com era to shapin...

What do you do when the product you inherit is unloved by users and stakeholders alike? In this Product Excellence clip, David Clements shares the challenge of taking over The Sun’s mobile app, a product that had low ratings, dwindling usage, and no support from leadership. He breaks down what it takes to rebuild momentum, regain trust, and turn around a product when no one believes it can be save...

Product managers don’t just ship features. They carry the weight of pain — pain they didn’t cause, but still take responsibility for solving. In this clip from Product Excellence, Jenna Gaudio (Co-President & COO, Vydia) shares what it means to feel urgency that others don’t see, to be the emotional translator for the user, and to see the impact on the other side of a painful wait. What You Wi...

Too often we point to blockers, dependencies, or someone else's delay. But if your name is on it, it is your responsibility to move it forward. In this clip from Product Excellence, Drew Falkman shares the best career advice he ever received -- a mindset shift that rewired how he approaches ownership, urgency, and progress. What You Will Learn • Why “waiting your turn” is a trap for PMs • How...

Startups often launch with vision but no roadmap. Founders know their business domain but lack the product and technical expertise to turn ideas into real apps. In this episode from Product Excellence, Drew Falkman, Principal at Moves the Needle, shares how his CTO work naturally evolved into product leadership. He explains how guiding founders through customer discovery, product planning, and bui...

Hiring the wrong product manager costs more than money. It can slow down execution, derail team alignment, and waste months of opportunity. In this episode from The Product Excellence Collection, Harpal Singh, CPO-in-Residence at Rothschild & Co, shares his proven approach for identifying high-impact product managers before they join your team. You will learn how to ask the right questions, sp...

In this episode, Harpal Singh, CPO-in-Residence at Rothschild & Co, shares how he transformed his mentorship approach, from status updates and problem-solving sessions to structured personal development. Learn how he helps product managers build clarity, confidence, and capability through personalized support, safe experimentation, and consistent feedback. 🔑 What You'll Learn Mentorship Mista...

In this episode of "Product Excellence: Insights from Award-Winning Leaders | Strategies for Success," Drew Falkman talks about the critical importance of prioritization in product management. Drew explains how having a numbered list of tasks, no matter how small, helps ensure that the most important work gets done. Whether you’re working in an agile environment or managing multiple deadlines, thi...

In this episode of "Product Excellence: Insights from Award-Winning Leaders | Strategies for Success," David Clements discusses the challenges of joining a new team and establishing credibility as a product manager. He also explores the common struggle of being confused with project management, especially when stakeholders expect product managers to be responsible for delivery timelines....

In this episode of "Product Excellence: Insights from Award-Winning Leaders | Strategies for Success," Jenna Gaudio emphasizes the growing need for product managers to understand big data, AI, and predictive analytics. She explains how to responsibly manage and interpret data to provide real value to users while navigating emerging technologies to enhance product experiences. If you'...

In this episode of "Product Excellence: Insights from Award-Winning Leaders | Strategies for Success," Harpal Singh dives into how personal development and team competency mapping are critical for high-value delivery. He also discusses the biases that can arise in leadership and hiring processes, explaining how he tackles these challenges by staying aware and adjusting his behaviors. If...