Creating Product-Led Strategy with Oji Udezue

Oji Udezue is the Chief Product Officer at Parsible and was formerly the VP of Product at Calendly. Melissa Perri describes him as “one of the best product leaders I have ever met.” His extensive experience in both B2B and B2C companies, including Microsoft and Atlassian, has given him insight into how to set strategy, even in companies where there is none. He joins Melissa to talk about what it takes to implement a product-led strategy, and how to influence a culture shift in your organization. Here are some key points from their discussion: Oji defines being product-led as “increasing customer focus… It means infusing the entire company with this idea that it's more efficient for everyone… to really execute on a really great product that pulls itself forward. And if you can do that then your ability to make profit actually increases…” [2:40] The role of the CPO is to understand the company goals, vision, and mission and track an efficient product course to achieve that. The CPO’s biggest leverage is deciding what to invest in and what not to, Oji says. [6:13] A draft strategy is a lightning rod: it gets the discussion started. Oji uses the VMSO (vision, mission, strategies, objectives) framework to draft strategy. Melissa asks him to advise product leaders who want to start drafting a strategy. He urges them to write it down and then socialize it. He also emphasizes that your draft strategy should be good: people should see wisdom and truth in it. [13:10] Oji predicts that all enterprise companies will become B2C in 10 years. [22:05] Melissa asks what is product-led growth. Oji defines the term and explains what it takes: a good product with great market fit, a good brand, good word of mouth and virality. [27:02] You have to expand your addressable market constantly to stay in the game. [30:38] Oji and Melissa discuss how product leaders can help change their company culture. [33:00] Resources Oji Udezue on LinkedIn | Twitter | Medium

• Angel Squad
• Productinstitute.com

• Episode 177: The Evolution of User Research: A Conversation with Steve Portigal, Author of Interviewing Users
• Tackling Product Research with C. Todd Lombardo
• Episode 128: Scaling Product Operations with Blake Samic, Former Global Head of Product Operations at Stripe and Uber