Episode description

Today’s Lesson in Product Management comes from Jonathon Hensley, Co-Founder and CEO of Emerge Interactive and Author of Alignment: Overcoming Internal Sabotage and Product Failure. When I first heard about Jonathon’s book, I ordered it immediately. Alignment is one of the hardest parts of my job as a product manager, and I’ve enjoyed putting his advice and frameworks into practice. In this conversation you’ll get to hear the origin story that drove Jonathon to write the book, how to build the foundations of alignment in your own company, and the pitfalls that you should be aware of as you do. And Be sure to grab the link to Jonathon’s book in the show notes before you close the podcast app.

Here's what we discussed:

1:18 Johnathon's Introduction

2:24 Origin story of Alignment

4:34 How Jonathon defines Alignment

6:45 The importance and definition of vision

8:35 How to build the foundation of alignment

11:05 Three themes of the book: Assumptions, Communication, and Strategy

13:24 The difference between reality and truth

17:30 The danger of the “fail fast fail often” mantra

19:57 The pillars of good strategy

25:08 Product Management hack to get unique customer insights

30:45 The four levels of alignment

32:00 Where alignment falls apart

38:30 The impact of written communication and documentation

43:00 Grab Jonathon’s book Alignment: Overcoming Internal Sabotage and Product Failure

Grab a copy of Alignment on Amazon

Connect with Jonathan and Emerge Interactive