A new CPO's first instinct is often to "fix" the roadmap process. A better approach is to interview every functional leader to understand their perspective on product. This reveals the core issue—often a feeling of exclusion—and builds the necessary consensus for real change.

MongoDB's CEO attributes his business acumen as a product person to constant customer interaction. This goes beyond feature requests to understanding their broader problems, buying processes, and deployment challenges. This intimacy allows product leaders to anticipate market needs and build solutions that have a clear path to market, moving beyond the "if you build it, they will come" fallacy.

A new CEO’s first few months are best spent gathering unfiltered information directly from employees and customers across the business. Avoid the trap of sitting in an office listening to prepared presentations. Instead, actively listen in the field, then act decisively based on those firsthand insights.

True product intuition isn't just from standard discovery calls. It's forged by directly engaging with customers' most urgent problems on escalation calls. This unfiltered feedback provides conviction and data-backed confidence for decision-making.

In your first 90 days, resist the urge to be the expert. Instead, conduct a "listening tour" by treating the organization as a product you're researching. Ask questions to understand how work gets done, what success looks like, and what challenges exist at a systemic level.

A PM's first job is to earn influence, not exert authority. This is achieved with a 'listening tour'—proactively meeting key people in engineering, sales, and marketing to understand their challenges and build relationships before proposing any product work.

When you're hired into a leadership role, it's because the company needs something fixed. Conduct a "listening tour" specifically to understand the underlying issues. This reveals your true mandate, which is often a need for more innovation and faster speed to market.

Instead of immediately implementing a new strategy, a new leader's first priority should be conducting in-depth conversations with internal teams, external investors, and patients. Truly listening to these stakeholders is the fastest way to diagnose what's working and what isn't, forming the basis for effective change.

To lead authentically and effectively, especially during periods of change, leaders must be able to "lead by example." This means building prototypes and having practitioner-level opinions on design and product. Theoretical leadership is no longer sufficient to retain a team's respect in a fast-moving tech landscape.