The craft of great product leadership
Laura Dietze
The architecture is clear, we need builders who can bring it to life, adapt & maintain it.
The summary goes vaguely like this: Things are changing fast (tech, competition, legislation you name it) therefore you need an organization that can adapt quickly over and over again. For that, you need self-organized, autonomous teams, and a clear bold objective that keeps them aligned, and then you need to iterate towards it in small increments whilst being close to your customer and being able to react to new insights on the spot.
What we need is builders who know how to bring this modern architecture to life.
It is about actually doing it. About mixing the mortar, putting brick on brick, making sure the walls are level, getting the place watertight and fitting it out. And then maintaining it against wear and tear, climate change, and rogue inhabitants.
The craft of leadership is about dancing the line between giving enough guidance and opening up the space for self-organized teams to thrive and about knowing how to course correct when you have overstepped into either direction.
It is about actually truly creating alignment and communicating it consistently through a growing organization so that when the direction changes every single person involved knows.
It is about empowering people, and helping them if they do not know how to yet.
It is about handling every single escalation in a way so that the next one won't come to you but so that a little part of the org has learned to handle it themselves.
It is about complete transparency so that no valuable information falls through the cracks and the experts in the teams can make the right decisions.
It is about consistently reslicing and rearranging to reduce complexity and dependencies and managing those that cannot be reduced.
It is an ongoing battle against the chaos that wants to creep in because things are changing all the time and humans have bad days.
My work the past two decades has been about exactly that the hands-on work of creating great product organizations and I love it - I am not an architect and I will not add to the canon of architectural blueprints but if you need a couple of additional pages in your how to builders guide you have come to the right place.
The Offering
Leadership Coaching
Want to become a better builder?
Coaching is a sacred space for you to reflect, learn, plan, and commit. I am here to help you see your best version of yourself, to help you sort your thoughts, and give you impulses from my decade-long experience. The coaching is about becoming a better leader but it also is about you. About doing it in a way that allows you to be in flow and enjoy the ride.
Organizational Development
Your organization needs some expert builders to come in clean up a little and train some people to run with it?
Inception+ is our preferred format to help organizations make a significant step forward towards their goal architecture. A lightweight, to-the-point approach to give your organization the nudge it needs in the given moment, create transparency, and enable future builders to master their craft.
Connection
Spaces for people to come together to connect and strengthen each other
Usually around the theme of leadership, female empowerment and flow these are spaces real or virtual where we come together to pause, reflect, understand a little more and empower each other to get back out there and do it refreshed and with a little more joy.