PRODUCTHEAD: How to present to the Board with authority
PRODUCTHEAD is a regular newsletter of product management goodness,
curated by Jock Busuttil.
you and whose product? #
every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to
tl;dr
10-min Board prep: What do I need from this room? What’s my one-line recommendation? And what will they repeat without me in the room?
Culture, product and customer insight aren’t separate concerns, they’re interdependent
hello
As a product person at any level, it is demoralising to present your thoughtful and well-researched ideas and recommendations to the Board or the senior leadership team only to be met with glassy eyes and a muted response. It’s then especially galling to then listen to someone else make essentially the same points a few minutes later and be met with rapturous approval.
The more sanguine among us would take a modicum of comfort from knowing that the idea has taken hold, even if we’re not going to be credited with it. It gets us to where we need to go, we tell ourselves, it’s not about our ego, whatever lets us put the resentment to one side and move forward.
Dave Martin calls this phenomenon ‘signal drift’. He also believes we don’t need to settle for it. In an interview with Lily Smith and Randy Silver for The Product Experience, he talks through the common mistakes that product people make, and how to approach it differently with just a little preparation. Although he tackles the topic from a neurodivergent perspective, the insights and methods will hold value for anyone who’s felt their message just isn’t hitting home with the Board or senior leadership team.
Along similar lines, Kirsten Mann has combined her own experience, both presenting to and participating on Boards, with a series of interviews with product leaders to figure out product’s place on the Board, and how best to interact with them. In another interview for The Product Experience, she talks through what she’s learned matters most.
Speak to you soon,
Jock
what to think about this week
How to lead when you don’t fit in
In this episode Dave Martin makes the case that the advice handed to neurotypical leaders often fails the roughly half of tech workers who are neurodivergent. Standard guidance about authenticity and executive presence quietly assumes everyone in the room thinks the same way — and that assumption carries a cognitive tax that some people pay far more heavily than others.
What follows is a practical playbook for landing your message, leading the room, and progressing in your career without pretending to be someone else: the CALM framework, the signal prep exercise, designing your ideas for re-tell, and using AI as a “spell checker for influence” that supports your communication without doing the thinking for you.
Turn up and describe the outcome you need, not your working
[PDF] ‘The 20% Club: The Unspoken Rules of Leading When You Think Differently’, Dave Martin
[Dave Martin, Lily Smith & Randy Silver / The Product Experience]
How to influence at board level
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Kirsten Mann, former CPO at Prospection and now startup founder and board member, to discuss how product leaders can play a vital role on company boards. Drawing from her own board experience and a research series interviewing founders and directors [published on her LinkedIn profile], Kirsten explains why product, culture, and customer insight must be central to boardroom conversations.
Focus on the risk and return of the bets the product team is making
[Kirsten Mann, Lily Smith & Randy Silver / The Product Experience]
recent posts
Startup to Scale-up Club Q&A – 14th April 2026
For Startup to Scale-Up Club‘s April Q&A session, we covered topics including:
Structuring analytics for user engagement
Defining an MVP in the AI era
When to use genAI and when to use machine learning (ML)
Product differentiation in a crowded market
Implementing reusable components and designs
Free advice for startup and scale-up founders
[I Manage Products]
We’re all addicted to AI, but it’s going to be okay
We seem to stuck in a contradiction in which we worry about AI’s effect on our critical thinking, while finding it equally hard to resist using. Why is that?
[I Manage Products]
Canary in the mine: AAA game developers are unionising
Product management has had its own fair share of problems over the last few years. Nevertheless, there are early warning signs from AAA game studios that there may be another storm brewing in tech for us to weather.
Union-busting just isn’t a good look
[I Manage Products]
can we help you?
Product People is a product management services company. We can help you through consultancy, training and coaching. Just contact us if you need our help!
Helping people build better products, more successfully, since 2012.
PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from being on it like a rocket.
Read more from Jock
The Practitioner's Guide To Product Management
by Jock Busuttil
“I wish this book was published when I started out in product management. It gives a really wonderful overview of what product management is and involves on a day to day basis.”
— Keji Adedeji, product leader & coach
Jock Busuttil is a product management and leadership coach, product leader and author. He has spent over two decades working with technology companies to improve their product management practices, from startups to multinationals. In 2012 Jock founded Product People Limited, which provides product management consultancy, coaching and training. Its clients include BBC, University of Cambridge, Ometria, Prolific and the UK’s Ministry of Justice and Government Digital Service (GDS). Jock holds a master’s degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the popular book The Practitioner’s Guide To Product Management, which was published in January 2015 by Grand Central Publishing in the US and Piatkus in the UK. He writes the blog I Manage Products and weekly product management newsletter PRODUCTHEAD. You can find him on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.