Technology roadmap, meet your higher calling.
Coaching teams to unite insight, design and software engineering to build products and experiences that matter.
Innovation. At-scale.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said ‘do things that don’t scale’ when starting a product or a company. Focus initially on solving the right problems, building the right things. Experiment freely. Listen well. Once you know your idea works… scale it up.
Innovating and scaling take different sets of company muscles and involve different risk/rewards depending on company stage.
Matters Coaching helps companies at all stages become innovation and scaling powerhouses.
We help you:
Discover you unique innovation culture and practice that drives your company today. Every successful company has an innovation culture (known or unknown) that is running the show for your entire company. Do you know what yours is?
As experts in modern product management and the product operating model, we help identify key ways to strengthen and improve your innovation “stance” so that your company is positioned to lead to your future, not follow.
Address the tough trade-off questions around innovation which often fall behind the curtain (even in the best innovator companies).
We coach companies to be strong product builders so that they build what matters MOST to the customer
(and their bottom line).
The hardest thing about building great customer experiences.
#1: What customers value and what you deliver must be deeply aligned — the product market fit. (Achieving this is incredibly difficult and why most startups fail.)
#2: Upholding consistent product market fit over time is deceptively hard. (And why many once-successful companies fade away to irrelevance.)
All of this is built from a place of clarity. Seeing yourself (and your company) clearly.
Building great products, services or experiences takes tremendous focus and discipline. It means saying no to thousands of good ideas in favor of a few truly great ideas. It means resisting the gravitational pull of external pressures that look logical (and urgent) on the surface but over time can dilute your focus.
Even the most successful product companies have at least one chapter of their history where they fell prey to building for external pressure (shareholder price, sales or investor pressure, hype-cycle trend). It is too easy to make this slow-motion mistake and drift off course. One decision leading to the next.
The customer suffers as a result. Your company drifts as a result. This is what good leadership is all about.
Good leadership starts with gaining self-awareness and clarity about yourself (and your company) — today.
Companies who build based on loudest-voice pressure are not innovating.
They are reacting, stuck.
Successful innovator companies move differently.
Strong innovator companies know:
The biggest risks are the blind spots they themselves have. They compete with themselves first.
Discovering key market and product insights takes C-level commitment to customer/product discovery as a way of life. They know key insights are rare and are the foundation for all good product decisions.
Having clarity about product vision and strategy (both) are vital for keeping the company focused. They resist being lured into too many short-term pressures or opportunities.
There is no sacred precedent. They ask ‘why?’ a lot. They challenge the norm, even their own norm. They know mimicking past success does not mean future success. They are wary of inertia and repetition especially as they get bigger.
Answers to the hardest problems are never simple. They focus talent on figuring out answers to the hardest problems and give them room to do that work.
The best product companies balance creativity with hard-core delivery. Muse and hustle.
We coach individuals/teams to:
Operate confidently with modern product thinking (the product operating model) and strong leadership skills (individual or team level)
Create value-focused product strategy and product vision (product vision sprints can be done as quickly as 5 days)
Develop continuous insight-driven discovery habits which drive effective product strategy (hint: no focus groups)
Foster strong innovation culture to strengthen your company’s unique potential in the market
Create healthy cross-disciplined team structures and crisp lines of responsibility cross-company
Shape company culture for unlocking innovation from your teams
Deepen CEO and C-suite relationships with the wider team to support optimal team effectiveness and consistent clarity of purpose
Shorten time-to-value for product and feature levels
How we do it. (We coach.)
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Exec Level Coaching
Being part of the C-suite tests every aspect of the human being in that role. No amount of talent can help you gain critical objectivity when you are swimming in too many details or facing major challenges you’ve never faced before. It’s not if a leader needs a coach but when.
Our coaching is aimed at C-levels in companies who seek an honest and company-neutral peer who has been in their shoes. A peer who understands modern software product management practice and can help them fill in skills gaps (we all have them).
As coach, we work with you to:
Identify/evolve your company’s core beliefs around innovation and work to uncover where they help/hinder the company’s direction
Craft clear roles/ responsibilities and ideal team topology (the team is everything!)
See yourself more objectively when it comes to leadership style and effective communication (both with your team and your C-suite peers)
Refine your own product management and leadership skills, taking lessons from the world’s best innovator companies
Grow your own professional confidence in a safe space, free of judgement. (Leaders are human first and we all need a place to safely learn and explore.)
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Product Coaching
The Next Big Idea without action (someone to capture it, put it through its paces, champion it through to release/learn cycle)… is just a great idea said over a sandwich.
Great companies know how to discern “good ideas” from “great ideas” and routinely take action in time to capture the market.
Enter the Product team: a cross-functional team of engineers, product managers, and designers/researchers that are the song-catchers, insight-drivers and hands-on builders that deliver on the great ideas for your company.
Done right, modern product management is THE difference-maker between companies that thrive or die.
As coach, we help your cross-functional product organization to:
Builds what matters. Find product market fit and maintain it. Expand on it.
Build a resilient culture of continuous discovery where you discover strong solutions to hard customer problems. The customer is always evolving. So must the product.
Manage the investment. Optimize for efficient code writing where cross-functional teams of engineers, designers and product managers collaborate to addresses costly risks BEFORE a single line of code is written.
Structure the team for greatness in strong product discovery and delivery.
Cultivate a coaching/always-learning mentality across the company (regardless of title). Great ideas come from everywhere. The role of Product is to listen, encourage and, ultimately, act upon the greatest of the great ideas.
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Facilitation and Research
One thing that Product people are great at is facilitating productive high-stakes conversations, keeping things productive and forward-moving and synthesizing lots of complex information into a cohesive whole. (Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo calls this trait her “hip pocket skill” and I am lucky it is mine too.)
I love doing this work and I am topic agnostic.
Hire me for:
Facilitation of high-stakes conversations where you need a neutral facilitator, adept in business, leadership and innovation cycles.
Summarizing complex concepts into plain language briefs that can help your team jump forward to an informed decision point.
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Not a tech company? Did you know we work with nonprofits, charities, NGOs, and a range of not-tech organizations as well? Innovation helps all organizations, regardless of mission. The principles we teach in innovation are translatable across many industries. Reach out for a chat.
Hi, I’m Kristin.
I started Matters because I am fascinated by genuine innovation. As an experienced technology and company builder, the products that impress me today are ones that prove their value quickly and with minimal customer effort. Achieving this “simplicity” encapsulates the entire craft of good product building.
I believe:
Innovation is the foundation of any successful business. It is what creates products people love and customer experiences that have people coming back for more. It is what gives great companies a competitive edge and an organically good brand. Every organization requires fresh innovation to survive.
Good innovator companies also innovate themselves. They seek to continually find better ways of operating and growing that align with their objectives. They cannot help it… finding better ground is just who they are.
Real innovation is un-fakable and is utterly charming to shareholders, markets, funders, future and current employees and most of all, to your customers. It is the thing we are all drawn to (especially when delivered through a great go-to-market plan).
It is the best way to recruit and retain the talent. People bring ideas. The more talented and fearless your people, the better the ideas in your company. Create a culture that supports deep talent expression and you create a place that talented people want to work. It’s a benevolent self-perpetuating cycle.
A mountain climber starting a big climb will inevitably face “the crux” somewhere along the route. (The place on the climb that is terrifying, make-or-break, but must be faced down to summit successfully.)
Sure, they can go around it (and if there is a simple way to do so, it’s not a real crux and they should!). But usually, the crux is unmistakable. It is unavoidable without a huge, deceptively risky, costly (and often shortsighted) workaround.
I see this as a great analogy to a company connecting to their genuine ability to innovate.
At some point in creating great company, you face the crux. The scariest, riskiest passage — the innovators dilemma moments. It happens more than once to a company of any success and tenure.
Innovation (that elusive muse) seems to know this universal truth and rewards those who face the crux head-on, rather than contorting to avoiding it.
Matters Coaching is a product and innovation partner for companies who wish to (re)prioritize their ability to innovate and face their own crux.
Matters Coaching brings clarity, modern product management technique and leadership insight which can help your company climb.
Kristin Darrow, Founder and Principal
