How do you manage a roadmap when company leadership cannot or will not provide guidance? (e.g. the C-team is all newly hired and don't know enough about the product or customers)

Thanks for the question! You, my friend, are in a coveted position. I would encourage you to shift your mindset and look at it as an opportunity to influence and educate your leadership team on what you know about your customers and create a vision and strategy for your product to share with them. Since the leadership team is new, you have the opportunity to show them that you are proactively thinking about the product direction and execution versus waiting for direction. So take a shot and give ...Read More

These are prime scenarios for a Product Leader, as they can use their own research and perspectives to help C-Suite understand the most beneficial bets to place. With a new leadership group, teams have the opportunity to reset on the legacy items that plagued them in the past. For example, upon taking over our Product Area in my current role, the first step that I took was to present a clear perspective on where our team could go. Because there was no leadership team from which I was taking the ...Read More

Managing a product without guidance from company leadership can be intimidating, but it also presents a valuable opportunity for a PM to establish themselves as a trusted leader. Below are some steps to work through this challenging yet exciting situation. Understand your customers and market: If you don't have a strong grasp on your customers or market, seek out stakeholders across the company you can learn from. Bounce ideas off them and get feedback to help you craft a comprehensive vision ab ...Read More

I know it's a cliche, but as PM you are CEO of the product. You shouldn't need guidance from the e-group. Their perspective can be useful, and they will bring knowledge and insights that can help you get to the right market driven insights. But you shouldn't outsource your job to them by relying on their guidance. If you're at a company with a new e-group that doesn't want to provide input into the roadmap, consider yourself lucky! This is your time to shine and show yourself as the market and c ...Read More

My strategy would be to either Give them enough context and try again for guidance Change the question So how do you do either of those? Instead of asking for guidance on the roadmap, you can try one or more of the following Is the roadmap too detailed for your C-team? Instead can you get feedback on strategy vs roadmap? Setup sessions with the C Staff where you can present qualitative/quantitative data and the resulting strategy. Encourage discussion and feedback. Then go back to the C-team for ...Read More

Since this question implies that there is already an existing product and customers that are using it, talk to your customers. Ask them what problems they have. Do research into the market you are in and see where the issues are with competitive products. Do what product managers do best! Understand the problems and customers, then create solutions. If leadership doesn't have a vision for where the product should go as an essential part of the company's vision, create one yourself. If you do hav ...Read More

In these situations it's important for product to lead with a customer-backed, strategic product opinion. If you aren't already an expert in what your customers want, and the strategic landscape your product is operating in, gather those insights and facilitate a conversation with leadership about a few options – with the potential benefits and tradeoffs of each. Even if the C-team is new, they'll have a sense of the business metrics they want to drive, and you can drive connecting the dots from ...Read More

If leadership isn’t providing guidance, you have to step in and fill that gap. That’s the job. There’s never really a moment where a PM can throw their hands up and say, “no one told me what to do.” You either already have enough signal, or you need to go get it. Then put together a clear, evidence-backed plan and bring it to leadership. Don’t ask “what should we do?”, instead ask “here’s what we think we should do, here’s why, do you agree?” Especially with a new C-team, they often want that. T ...Read More

This can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you look at it. From a negative lens, it can feel like you have thousands of decisions to make, and no direction and guidelines to help you make these decisions. On the positive side, you have full control of your roadmap and team’s resources. The world is your oyster!  To help keep you on the positive side of the spectrum, I would start by trying to get your C-team to answer one question, “What does success look like?” If you can get your C-tea ...Read More

Wow that is a great question and a tough spot to be in for sure! I would approach this by starting with the value prop of your product and asking yourself some questions. How are customers getting value from the product? Take Uber for example, their value to customers is a fast, reliable way to get transportation. What actions and behaviors do they need to take to get that value? Building on the Uber example users get that value when they search, book and complete a ride. What is preventing user ...Read More

I’ve been in this situation before—when leadership is new or in transition, and there’s a guidance vacuum. It can feel disorienting, but it’s actually a chance for product teams to lead from the middle. Here’s how I approach it: 1. Anchor in the Customer When top-down clarity is missing, bottom-up truth becomes your superpower. Talk to customers. Revisit past research. Lean into what you know about the problems they care about most. As Melissa Perri says, “Good strategy starts with a deep unders ...Read More

This is a tough situation, similar to one in which a C-team won't clearly articulate a company's strategy or its short-term objectives. A mistake I've seen some PMs make is to wait for a strategy to be delivered from on high, when it's clear from surrounding circumstances that this is a fool's errand. I prefer to look at this as an opportunity: you are the product leader that knows both the product and its customers, so you should take control of developing a strategy and a roadmap to match it. ...Read More

This is the role of the product managers to bring up what the users want to see built. This is usually not good practice to have the executive giving too much guidance. The executive should give the vision, and the product managers should determine the features on the roadmap based on the prioritization they determined with the users to achieve the vision. It could be an advantage when the leadership doesn't provide guidance as it prevents the bad top-down approach of product management. The exe ...Read More

The best scenario! This is your moment to shine. Build a concise view and communicate it succinctly using data. Include both how it aligns to a long term strategy and also what are the most important items to work on now. Critically include what we are not going to execute on. Before you know it you will be driving the entire company. Im a big fan of a narrative approach (6 pager) to accompany roadmap materials as this drives consistent alignment and lays out a logical approach to why roadmap de ...Read More