ProductOrg: Unmasked

Guest: Martin Eriksson is the co-founder of Mind the Product, co-author of Product Leadership, and a former product partner at EQT Ventures where he worked with portfolio companies across Europe and the US. His new book, The Decision Stack, is about the gap between strategy and execution that he has seen repeat itself across hundreds of product organisations. He has been building products since 1994. What this episode is about: Most product leaders are called in to fix the execution. Martin's argument is that execution is rarely the real problem. What is actually missing is shared context - a clear, living strategy that connects what is happening at the top to what teams are doing day to day. In this conversation, Martin and Stephanie go deep on why strategy communication fails even when leaders do everything right, how to stop your CEO from overwriting priorities, and what AI actually changes for product leadership (hint: not what most people think). Chapters 🔥 2:34 - The existential crisis every product leader knows. Why a pony farm in Cornwall was always more dream than plan. 🔥 3:41 - Being a leader means enabling teams to do great things. Why the aha moments shifted from shipping to watching people grow. 🔥 4:44 - Most product problems are shared context problems. What Martin kept finding when he was called in to "fix the product team." 🔥 7:29 - The biggest surprise about the strategy-execution gap. 95% of your team doesn't know what your strategy is. And yet exec teams assume the work is done the moment the deck is finished. 🔥 9:09 - How to properly communicate strategy. Co-creation, principles, and why once you are tired of repeating it, people are just starting to hear it. 🔥 12:13 - Strategy is a living document. How to handle the fact that strategy changes mid-communication and what to do when people notice. 🔥 13:29 - Strategy problems are people problems too. Why there is no perfect answer to communication, and why the burden we put on leaders is often too high. 🔥 16:26 - To build a great product is to say no to more than you say yes to. What separates high-performing product orgs from struggling ones comes down to one thing: focus. 🔥 18:11 - How to stop your CEO from overwriting your priorities. Evidence over opinion, the post-it wall, and "not yet" as an alternative to no. 🔥 21:29 - Why some leaders struggle to say no. Psychological safety, the cost of always saying yes, and why Stephanie never had this problem. 30:13 - Sometimes you just have to build what needs to get built. The Cazoo story and the difference between product as the thing you sell and product as an enabling function. 🔥 35:07 - AI's impact on product leadership. Why getting drawn into building with AI tools is the wrong move, and why strategic clarity matters more now than it ever did. Links Martin's book: The Decision Stack (available wherever great books are sold) Follow Martin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martineriksson Connect with Stephanie Leue: LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/stephanie-leue

Tim Herbig is an independent product coach and author of Real Progress . He spent years as an in-house PM across publishing, marketplaces, and enterprise software before going independent so he could work across many orgs at the same time. He coaches teams at SMBs and large enterprises across Europe and has a cross-org view that most coaches do not have. What we talked about Tim Herbig coaches product teams across dozens of companies at the same time. Publishing, marketplaces, enterprise software, SMBs. He does not have one org that shaped his thinking. He has a wide view. And what he sees right now is not what LinkedIn wants you to believe. We talked about the teams that fall back into old habits the moment the coach leaves. About the feature graveyard no one talks about. About what happens to leaders who were already caught in a hamster wheel when AI made it spin ten times faster. And about why "outcomes over outputs" is so much easier to say than to do. What you will hear in this episode: 🔥Why the teams that actually change have ambition and refuse to become victims of the system they are in 🔥The incentive trap: how one owner-led company had the wrong metric baked into everything and what the team did about it 🔥Why "when is it done?" is the wrong default question and what to ask instead 🔥Outcomes over outputs in theory versus outcomes over outputs under real pressure from a CEO who just discovered vibe coding 🔥The hamster wheel spinning ten times faster and why leaders who were already reacting instead of leading are now burning out 🔥What Tim actually saw when he asked his team why they were building what they were building 🔥Why the fix for a strategy that only lives in your head is simpler and more embarrassing than most leaders want to admit 🔥The FOMO gap: why most AI content does not apply to product leaders inside established companies 🔥What the product community is getting wrong about AI and the next model release 🔥What Tim completely reversed on after years of coaching teams on method adoption _______________________________________ Connect with Tim Herbig on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/herbigt Connect with Stephanie Leue: LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/stephanie-leue

Georgie Smallwood is CPTO at Moonpig. Before that, she was CPO at N26 (scaling from 600k to 7 million customers in two years) and CPO at Tier Mobility across 520 cities. She studied history and sociology before ending up in product, and she leads 16 product teams today with full ownership of product, engineering, and data under one remit. This is a conversation about what it actually costs to hold that much accountability and move fast at the same time. We talk about the Jekyll-and-Hyde tension of being CPTO, using AI tools to argue with yourself when you own both sides of the product-engineering debate. We talk about why Georgie only understood what cross-functional collaboration really means after she moved to a company where technology was not the product being sold. And she makes an admission about her time at N26 that I think a lot of product leaders will recognise in themselves. We also get into operating models, why romanticizing one framework is always a trap, and what the trust equation has to do with AI transformation. At the end, Georgie shares what she believed five years ago that she has completely reversed on. Her answer surprised me. What you will hear in this episode: Why Georgie's history and sociology degree shapes how she thinks about product and AI The Jekyll-and-Hyde tension of being CPTO and the real risk of moving too fast The Weekly Rap: how Georgie communicates with 16 product teams every Friday and why The trust equation (credibility + reliability + intimacy / self-orientation) and how to apply it to AI adoption The dual CPTO role: what it means to be an executive first and a functional leader second Why Georgie says product leaders in product-first companies operate with quiet arrogance How romanticizing operating models burns product leaders out "If you have no dissent, you are not deciding" What she completely reversed on after 20 years in the role

Eight years ago, Malte Scholz could not get a straight answer inside a product org to one basic question: what should we build next, and why? So he built a tool to fix it. That tool became AirFocus, raised $15M in venture capital, and was acquired by Lucid in 2025. But what Malte saw in thousands of product organisations along the way is that the problem was never the tool. Most product orgs don't have a working operating model. And in the age of AI, that gap is no longer just a productivity problem. It is an existential one. In this conversation, we talk about what actually makes a product org AI-ready, why context is the thing most teams are missing before they start automating, and what Malte learned when he went from being the CEO who makes every decision to the CPO who has to build alignment in a quarterly steering committee. Discover why the company that doesn't document anything today will fall furthest behind tomorrow, and what "updating the context window of your organization" actually means in practice. Podcast website - Newsletter

Most AI transformation stories are about moving fast, going all-in, changing everything. Claire Donald's story is more honest than that. She just recently left her CPTO role at Moo, the business cards and premium merchandise company, where the physical and the digital world have to work together every single day. She has been there for eight years, far above the average CPO tenure of two point three years. And for the last six months, she has been building things with AI in her own time, after hours, before she felt confident enough to share any of it with her team. She calls it the cardinal sin of product management. And she thinks most product leaders are doing the exact same thing. In this conversation, we talk about what it actually costs to lead product and engineering through genuine ambiguity, how to tell your CEO which plates are going to smash, and why the most useful thing you can do right now might not be the most visible. Discover why organizational maturity matters more than tooling, and learn what "meeting the organization where it's at" really means in practice. Podcast website - Newsletter

Most product leaders think AI is a tool problem. Install the right stack, run the workshops, measure adoption. Done. What if the real challenge is something AI can't touch at all? Ines is CPTO at Leadfeeder and one of the few product executives who has actually built an AI-native operating model from scratch. She started as a support agent at 16, became a single mother who couldn't afford food at the end of the month, taught herself growth loops before Lenny had a newsletter, and now runs one of the most AI-advanced product and engineering orgs in Europe. In this conversation, she shares what AI actually exposes about the gaps in your team, why she went from rejecting process to believing it is everything, and what keeps her up at night about the next generation of product managers. Discover why AI amplifies experience and cannot replace it, and learn what it really takes to lead a product org through genuine transformation. Podcast website - Newsletter

Most product leaders are stuck chasing frameworks that no longer fit their reality. What if real success comes from ditching the ideal, and understanding your unique context instead? Arne Kittler, a seasoned product leader with 12 years leading in Europe, shares how embracing a contextual approach transformed his leadership—and why it’s the secret to thriving in today’s chaotic tech environment. Discover why relying on outdated frameworks can hold you back, and learn how to pivot your strategy to meet your organization’s evolving needs. Podcast website - Newsletter

Real conversations with European product leaders about what it actually costs to lead a product org. Unfiltered. COMING SOON