People are at the heart of everything we do, inside and outside of work. I believe that we need to do more than just modeling good behavior, coaching and caring. We need to authentically care about these things.

The only constant is change, and I anticipate and plan for the unexpected and meet each person on my team where they are in the moment. I lead with curiosity and questions, and start by assuming best intent. I know that one-size-fits-all is a fallacy when leading people. Each person will teach you something different if you are open to learning from them.

When managing groups of related products, I have learned that an essential component of success is to find ways that individual products can build momentum off of each other. It is foundational that my teams have clear OKRs, as these are a powerful force to align us to our common goals. OKRs will only contribute to the team’s success if they are concise, memorable and repeatable by all members. It is essential to make the investment up front.

Another critical component is feedback. Consistent, focused feedback from a representative range of prospective customers help the team evaluate whether our product is meeting the goals we’ve articulated in the OKRs. Teams that ignore customer feedback during development or focus too heavily on a small number of customers, do so at great risk.

Process should serve the team, not the other way around. It should be invisible as often as possible and where it impedes progress it should be questioned for necessity. Those parts that are visible should be easy to comprehend and predictable.

While organic process has a place, I’ve learned that teams cannot, and will not, function long-term in survival mode.