---
title: "Advice for (new) head of product"
description: "Essential first 90 days guidance and key responsibilities for new head of product roles, including stakeholder management and strategic direction setting."
url: "https://www.rubick.com/wiki/product/head-of-product/"
---

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[Wiki](https://www.rubick.com/wiki/) / [Product Management](https://www.rubick.com/wiki/product/) / Advice for (new) head of product

# 🎯Advice for (new) head of product

Essential first 90 days guidance and key responsibilities for new head of product roles, including stakeholder management and strategic direction setting.

## First 90 days advice

This is advice compiled from other product leaders.

-   Meet with business stakeholders.
    
-   There is a lot more business stakeholder management than engineering roles.
    
-   Work with PMs on cadence for syncs, reviews of how Product and Tech support the business.
    
-   Measure product success against KPIs proposed at project inception.
    
-   Spend time with customers (users, buyers, or both)
    
-   Clarify product direction.
    
-   Communicate with org and make sure they’re aligned.
    
-   **Figure out the main and secondary controllers/influencers of product and strategy for your product(s) and the company**. Start building relationships with them and understand their perspective and motivation. Usually the places to start are founders, CEO, exec team, early employees, customer-facing leaders (not necessarily managers), and maybe the board.
    
-   **Assess the PM, Design, Engineering, DevRel, Product Marketing, and Docs teams + artifact quality**. Start making the most important changes in investment, approach, etc. that you see (assertively, quickly, with high leverage changes) in partnership with the leadership of any involved functions.
    
-   **Meet with as many customers as possible**, partnering with customer-facing roles.
    
    -   Speak directly with as many customers as you can
    -   Take at least one trip into the field with sales
    -   Hear out what marketing/product marketing think about your place in the market and product, meeting with at least one analyst if that is relevant to the product
    -   Spend a few days in customer success/support and hear out that group’s leadership (not just management) on the issues they see customers facing and that they face in satisfying customers
-   **Somewhere before the end of the 90 days share your assessment of the situation and what you’re doing to drive positive change**. This probably takes several forms for different audiences (execs, product team, design+engineering, rest of company) and can be a great way to build alignment and gather more info if done collaboratively.
    

## Things an eng leader might overlook:

-   Product direction setting and communication with the org.
-   Product marketing is important.
-   Rolling out new features post stability.
-   Validation of product impact.
-   You may need to do analyst or investor facing communication.

## Some product content you might follow

-   Lenny’s podcast and newsletter
-   John Cutler (may be a bit advanced)

## Some content useful for new heads of product

-   [One head of product describes their job](https://medium.com/venturehq/things-i-did-as-murals-chief-product-officer-ea5b33e894fc)
-   Melissa Perri’s blog/LI/podcast/books have a more process centric view and useful frameworks. Interview with her: [https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-create-a-winning-product-strategy-melissa-perri/](https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-create-a-winning-product-strategy-melissa-perri/) and [https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-product-operations-melissa-perri-and-denise-tilles/](https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-product-operations-melissa-perri-and-denise-tilles/) and potentially an overview of the CPO accelerator she offers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPK28cWzI9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPK28cWzI9U)