An interview with Stephanie Leue. Stephanie is a product leadership coach, and became CPO of MindEx since our interview. Previously she worked in a variety of roles after starting out at PayPal after being coached by Marty Cagan.
We talk about a lot, including:
- Her leadership coaching, being an invisible companion and sparring partner
- How she tries to set people up to not need her services, rather than continuously coaching them forever
- Her passion for hypergrowth startups, and the difference between a startup and an unsuccessful small company
- How a workshop with Marty Cagan left her realising that she had been a product manager all along
- How PayPal was a launchpad for her career, and some surprising information about their waterfall practices when she joined
- The challenges in transforming companies from waterfall to an agile product organisation
- How product managers might not be able to change the entire organisation but that their mindset is still key to drive transformation
- Whether lack of product thinking is the preserve of big companies alone, or if small startups can show the same behaviours
- The importance of making conscious decisions about the type of company you are - marketing-led, sales-led or product-led
- How she's not always been a good boss, thought she used to be terrible, and how she's using that to teach others to be better
- The impact of holding back too long and not making timely decisions
And much more!
Contact Stephanie
You can reach out to Stephanie on LinkedIn or Twitter.