The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay

Aug 14, 2025 1h 32m 15 insights Episode Page ↗
Matt LeMay, a longtime product leader and author, discusses why product teams must align their work with business-critical outcomes to avoid layoffs and the "low-impact death spiral." He shares actionable steps for individual teams to drive impact, regardless of organizational structure.
Actionable Insights

1. Align Work to Business Outcomes

Proactively align all your work with business-critical outcomes to ensure your team is a clear investment for the business and to avoid being laid off, especially in a cost-conscious environment.

2. Stress Test Team’s Value

Ask yourself and your team: “If you were the CEO of this company, would you fully fund your own team?” If you can’t confidently answer yes, identify and make the necessary changes to ensure your team is a clear investment.

3. PM: Facilitate CEO Thinking

As a product manager, your job is to facilitate CEO-level commercial thinking across your entire team, rather than being the sole owner of that perspective. This leverages diverse insights from engineers and designers.

4. Understand Business Success Metrics

Be curious and actively seek to understand what success means to your particular business, whether it’s runway, next funding round, growth, profitability, or shareholder expectations, as this information usually exists somewhere.

5. Avoid ‘Work Around Work’

Do not assume that ‘work around the work’ or supporting tasks are critical to the business; proactively focus on opportunities with real, measurable impact to avoid being seen as expendable.

6. Set Goals Close to Company

Set your team’s goals no more than one step away from the overarching company goals, ensuring a clear and direct contribution that leadership can easily understand and value.

7. Keep Impact First

Maintain an ‘impact first’ mindset throughout every stage of the product building process, from strategy to daily tasks, to prevent goals from being cascaded into oblivion and losing connection to business impact.

8. Connect Work to Impact

Connect every piece of work back to impact by estimating and measuring it in the same unit of measure as your team’s goals, ensuring honest prioritization and a clear contribution to the business.

9. Embrace Constraints as Guides

View your business’s constraints (e.g., regulated industry, B2B, quarterly targets) as guides and opportunities, rather than restrictions, as understanding and working within them can be a huge commercial advantage.

10. Push Back with Options

When pushing back on ideas, offer multiple options with clear trade-offs and a recommendation, rather than just saying ’no,’ to help decision-makers understand the implications and maintain trust.

11. Don’t Overcomplicate Goals

Resist the tendency to overcomplicate goal setting, OKRs, or strategy with too many intermediate steps or abstract frameworks, as this can make things less effective and disconnect from ultimate impact.

12. Personal Accountability for Impact

Take personal accountability for your team’s contribution to business success, even if it means acknowledging factors outside your control, as this mindset fosters freedom and allows you to focus on what you can influence.

13. Quantify Resume Impact

When describing your contributions, quantify the impact with numbers and use direct language (e.g., ‘I delivered X,’ not ‘I helped Y’) to clearly demonstrate your value, especially for career advancement.

14. Learn from Successful Teams

If other teams are receiving positive attention or doing meaningful work, engage with them to understand their success factors and align your work, rather than viewing them with envy or disgust.

15. Reflect on Team’s Success

Ask your team: ‘What’s one sentence you’d want to be able to say at the end of this year that would leave you feeling awesome about this team’s work?’ This helps uncover shared perspectives and expectations for success.