In ROI-focused cultures like financial services, protect innovation by dedicating a formal budget (e.g., 20% of team bandwidth) to experiments. These initiatives are explicitly exempt from the rigorous ROI calculations applied to the rest of the roadmap, which fosters necessary risk-taking.
Address cultural issues by applying product management principles. Use surveys to gather data and identify pain points, then empower the team to propose solutions. Test these ideas like product features and iterate based on what works, making culture-building a shared, active process.
The ultimate sign of a product manager's influence is not receiving feature ideas, but being the go-to person for complex business problems. This indicates you are viewed as a strategic partner capable of diagnosing root causes, even when a solution isn't obvious.
The shift to remote work unlocked a global talent pool. For specialized roles, the advantage of hiring the best possible person, regardless of location, is far greater than the benefits of in-person collaboration. The leadership challenge shifts from managing location to enabling distributed top-tier talent.
A large portion of product work focuses on internal tools. Berkadia's CPO allocates a 70/30 split, prioritizing products for employees. The strategy is to equip them with superior information and insights, which directly improves their client interactions and presents a unified company front.
AI tools can handle administrative and analytical tasks for product managers, like summarizing notes or drafting stories. However, they lack the essential human elements of empathy, nuanced judgment, and creativity required to truly understand user problems and make difficult trade-off decisions.
A leader's personal time is a strategic resource. For disruptive shifts like generative AI, a CPO should invest significantly more personal focus than a formal '20% innovation budget' might suggest. This signals its importance, accelerates organizational learning, and recognizes that mental investment often precedes resource allocation.