158: Steve Johnson shares his wisdom on product management

158: Steve Johnson Shares His Wisdom

Steve Johnson, OG product management thinker

Steve Johnson is my guest on this week’s episode.

I’m sure you know of him already. And if not, you will after this episode. He’s one of the OG product management thought leaders, especially in the software world.

Many people got to know Steve during his long stint as a trainer for Pragmatic Marketing, which followed a career as a product manager, product marketing manager and product leader.

He’s now running Product Growth Leaders, a community for product managers, and a training company. In his courses, including The Fundamentals of Managing Products, intensives such as The Product Launch Intensive, and assessments, he uses the Quartz Open Framework, a process framework for systematically managing and marketing products. Quartz is a non-proprietary model for product planning created by industry thought leaders, including the founders of Product Growth Leaders.

In this episode

Steve is renowned as a storyteller, and in this episode you’ll hear a lot of them, starting with how he learned what product management is and how it interfaces with other roles in the organization, especially sales and marketing.

He’ll share the origins of his statement that agile has to some degree broken product management. And what he means by that.

And we’ll talk about the different challenge that is leading product managers. And why so many companies struggle with that?

I started by asking Steve about his origin story in product management, because, you see, he started his PM career in sales.

Contacting Steve

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