About Me
I work to help people. While I enjoy the challenge of growing products and leading organizations, I get the most joy from assisting others in succeeding. I enjoy creating an environment where others can be their best selves and deliver results for the company. I’m a creator of cross-functional teams where multiple disciplines collaborate openly and daily to achieve product growth. I firmly believe in impact and the importance of a clear vision, strategy, and accountability mechanisms to enable empowered teams.
Top 5 Strengths: Strength Finders
DISC Assessment
Summary: I am motivated by achieving results and overcoming obstacles. Unlike other D styles, I appreciate data and accuracy. These strengths support product management well, Driving change and results in a measured way that impacts our business. I have to make the most effort to work with the S style, as by default, I do not take the time to build the relationship they are looking for and can get frustrated by the time they need to feel comfortable with a decision.
My working history
I have had the privilege of having a very diverse and technical background. While I have never sought career changes, I always said yes when leaders asked if I would help them with a problem within the organization. This led me to hone my ability to learn new skills quickly and efficiently sponge information from others. After learning, developing, and leading security, data engineering, data science, software engineering, and product management, I have developed the confidence and excitement to learn new industries and fields.
Working with Me
Below is an intro to what it’s like working with me. While these are my default behaviors, I maintain a growth mindset and understand that I may need to flex my working style to work with others effectively.
👨💻 My work style
Commitment and integrity mean a lot to me. If I or someone commits to having something done by a particular day, we will do everything in our power to meet that commitment. I have had many late nights due to poor estimation and firm belief in my commitment.
I care a lot. I care for the people and the company I support. I have high expectations that have been ingrained in me as a child. I often coach myself that I don’t own the company and must temper my passion.
I am honest in my assessment of situations and sometimes too black and white. If we are not hitting a target, we are honest about it and do our best to turn it around. If something isn’t where we want it, I don’t shy away from calling it out and taking responsibility for the gap.
For new ideas, my default way of thinking is questioning why? How does this align with our strategy? How significant is this problem? What's the impact on our targets? What's our confidence it'll work? While this can be a buzz kill, I do it out of care for our company.
I'm a stickler for organization. I believe in product teams using mechanisms to track and communicate their discovery work, not just their engineering efforts. I use a personal kanban to track all my tasks.
I'm a believer in expectation setting. I develop written career progression charts to help team members understand where to focus their development efforts to enable themselves to progress.
I am a disciplined goal-setter. I lead team members by setting quarterly goals and bi-weekly goals. We have discussions on progress and risks in each one on one to ensure we keep them on the top of our minds.
💬 My communication style
I'm an evangelist for open communications. This means only using direct messages when discussing truly sensitive topics. While I've learned this terrifies many individuals, I appreciate it when others hop into a conversion and contribute to making it better.
I slack a lot. Over the years, I have built muscles to juggle many contexts at once and do not quickly get tired or annoyed by shifting contexts.
I don't mind receiving messages at any time of the day. That said, I've learned that sending messages at all times of the day sets an unspoken expectation for the team. Because of this, I often use scheduled messages.
I am frank when working behind closed doors with my peers or team. I am not afraid to voice my concerns and recommendations, even in a public forum.
😶🌫️ Where I can be misunderstood
My default mode of assessment is to look for risk and where something could go off the rails. Sometimes it might come off as pessimism. It's rooted in my commitment to integrity. When I tell you that the team will be able to deliver, it's because I have dug through the plan, the risks, and the velocity, and I am confident that the team will deliver.
For team members I support, I ask a lot of questions. I ask these questions privately to give them input and allow them to learn with me and be successful together. I get into the weeds and look for risks. It’s easy to interpret this as a lack of trust, or team members can become frustrated when I identify items they missed. I reiterate to them that I only ask because I care about them.
I won't commit to the product, feature, bet, or delivery date until the experience is defined, architectural questions are answered, and engineering work is defined and sized. I commit to a delivery timeframe only when a team is confident in its commitment and has a consistent velocity. While this may frustrate many executives, the last thing I want to do is lie to them.
For large initiatives, like new product launches, I will set the team's internal time to revenue target dates. I believe in Parkinson’s law, and while it frustrates the team, it also forces aggressive prioritization and creative solutions and helps fight the gravity of product creation.
🫶 What I value
Humbleness. We are all developing and growing. We will all make mistakes and work together to success. By getting input from others, we are reducing the risk of having a blind spot. I struggle with arrogant team members who do not respect the perspectives or potential of others.
Integrity. Do what you said you were going to do. I quickly lose trust in individuals who don’t follow through.
Honest and open communications. I appreciate having the ability to watch teams work and maintain context on the value that each team member brings and the culture of the teams. I can also use this open communication to identify potential risks to the team members.
Team collaboration. I have seen some of the best product ideas from copywriters, engineers, and operations team members. I truly appreciate the different perspectives different roles bring to a product team.
Leadership transparency and collaboration regarding the challenges ahead of us. I feel most appreciated and empowered when senior leaders provide me with the context of our challenges and decisions and ask me for input.
💔 What I don’t value
Organizational silos. I've struggled with individuals with a firm agency mindset. This is where experts do work behind closed doors and deliver when it's complete. I value the magic that can come when experts work with other product team members who are not experts in that space.
Communication bounds in the leadership hierarchy. While understanding the need for hierarchy for scale and enabling effective coaching and management, I do not value artificial communication boundaries due to leadership hierarchy.
Complaining without action or recommendations. This behavior can lead to cultural cancer.
🤗 How I like to get feedback
Direct and early. I thrive to please and to improve. I am very introspective on feedback and my default question is, "how could I have done this better."
I prefer private feedback. While I will take public feedback gracefully and be quick to admit my shortcomings, I still prefer personal conversations.
I truly appreciate honesty. It's rare that I get this in feedback, and it's a real gift. I will ask very frank questions to open to door for honest feedback.
🎲 ☕ Personal Me
I have a fantastic wife who is also a phenomenal product designer. I wish I had her skills.
I love complex board games. I geek out on elegant and interesting mechanics.
I love supply chains. I always geek out on a board or video game about supply chains.
I’m a big fan of coffee. I’m planning to open up a board game cafe.
I enjoy painting and playing Warhammer. It’s a great indoor hobby for the long winter months.
I have two golden retrievers who are my children.
My wife loves to travel, and I love the memories we make on our travels.