Mironov Consulting brings deep, hands-on experience to a range of product management and product leadership problems including:
Coaching and Mentoring for Product Leaders
VPs of Product Management and Chief Product Officers (CPOs) have some special challenges: finding collaborative approaches in complex organizations; hiring and mentoring new product talent; defending the product roadmap without being rigid or dogmatic; building credibility with adjacent functional groups. Product executives are scarce and peers are hard to get time with. Rich Mironov provides one-on-one mentoring to product management leaders, and a sounding board for complex or sensitive issues. Intestinal fortitude and office heroism don’t have to be the only answers. Let’s talk.
Client-Side Search Success for CPO/VP Product Roles
Many companies don’t have deep experience defining product leader roles (Chief Product Officer, VP Product Management, Director of Product) or struggle to appraise and hire real product leaders. They may have lost several candidates, hired poorly fitting VPs, had trouble getting consensus on candidates among executives, or left key product exec roles open too long. Often interview teams aren’t aligned on what they want.
Rich has helped fifteen companies (so far) succeed at hiring the right product leaders. Working with the client’s internal talent acquisition (TA) team or outside search firms, he drives an assessment of product leadership needs; clarifies job specs and selection criteria; assesses candidates; trains interview teams on how to evaluate candidates; and coaches the newly hired product leader. Read more about this service
Excellent product leadership can be make-or-break for your company: important enough to warrant expert help.
Product Due Diligence for Investors
Venture and private equity investors do technical (engineering) due diligence alongside their sales, financial and market due diligence when considering investments in software/tech companies. They are now starting to do product due diligence as well, bringing in product management experts to evaluate team structure, product strategy, economics, packaging/pricing, discovery/validation, and prioritization. Rich is available for these quick-turn assessments, delivering pithy observations and insights to potential investors.
Organizational Assessments of Product Management Groups
How should a product management group be organized, and how should you divide responsibilities? How many product managers do you need, and how do they relate to development teams/program managers/product marketers? What are the symptoms of poor prioritization, strategic confusion or chronic understaffing? Every company is different, but guidance from a product management thought leader can quickly cut through to the issues.
Rich provides in-depth, confidential product team assessments based on extensive personal interviews with product management and key stakeholders. What’s working, and what’s not working? How are we resolving inevitable conflicts over resources and priorities and commitments? What is motivating the product and engineering and marketing staff, and delivering great products/services? Are hiring and training/mentoring approaches delivering capable product folks? Find out what works, and how other companies have solved similar problems.
Call or email us to talk about your specific situation and needs.