The six ‘rules’ of Product Leadership

Know your social Founder and Ferry Chief Product Officer Matthew Zammit listed, what he believes are, the six key principles in product leadership and management.

“I discovered that putting some rules in place enables product teams and product managers to be more creative, flexible, independent, and move faster,” he stated.

Firstly, he speaks of the importance of “giving teams problems to solve, not tasks to do.” While having an autocratic type of leader could be beneficial in certain situations, the majority of teams tend to respond better to collaborative styles where they get to work towards a goal together.

“Set principles and trust the team to act within them,” he suggests as a next tip while moving on to add that “being obsessed with your users and their journeys” is also beneficial and leads to better results.

Within the field of product management, Mr Zammit feels it’s also important to “think big, build small, experiment and ship fast.”

He also suggests “setting a vision and telling the product story” and insists on the importance of doing this “frequently.”

Finally, he also refers to how valuable it is for product managers to “listen to [their] teams” because “they usually know a lot.”

Apart from being the Founder of the Mellieha-based tech company Know your social, Mr Zammit is also Chief Product Officer at the Texas-based motor vehicle manufacturing company Ferry, a B2C mobile app for short-term leasing of electric vehicles.

Currently, he also provides guidance to early-stage and seed-stage startups on product positioning, prioritisation, road mapping, messaging, growth marketing, product management, and customer experience through his role as Startup Mentor at the worldwide network Techstars.

His prior roles included that Visiting Lecturer within the Marketing department at the University of Malta, Product Director for digital customer experience at Vodafone Malta, and Startup Mentor at YouStartIT Accelerator within the MITA Innovation Hub.