Business Model Reveals True Company Priorities

Matt LeMay believes product teams must align their work directly to business-critical outcomes to survive and thrive, especially in today's economic climate where companies are cutting teams that can't demonstrate clear impact.

The core challenge is that many product teams focus on "doing things the right way" rather than doing things that actually matter to the business. They get caught in what LeMay calls the "low impact PM death spiral" – building small, low-risk features that don't meaningfully contribute to business success but seem safer to implement. Over time, this approach makes products increasingly complex and harder to maintain, ultimately leading to layoffs when companies realize these teams aren't driving meaningful results.

LeMay advocates for an "impact first" approach with three key steps: First, set team goals no more than one step away from company goals (e.g., if the company needs to grow revenue by $100M, your team's goal should directly contribute a specific portion of that). Second, keep impact at the center of every conversation throughout the product development process. Third, connect every bit of work back to that impact by estimating and measuring work in the same unit as your goals.

This approach requires courage – the willingness to tackle high-impact, high-risk work rather than playing it safe with incremental features. It means having difficult conversations about trade-offs and sometimes pushing back on executive requests that don't align with business-critical outcomes. As LeMay puts it: "Even if you are told to build a thing that the execs are really excited about, you're still gonna get fired eventually" if that work doesn't drive meaningful impact.

For product managers, this means shifting from seeing yourself as the "mini-CEO" who solely owns business thinking to being the person who facilitates business-focused conversations across the entire team. The most effective approach isn't saying "yes" or "no" to stakeholder requests, but presenting options with clear trade-offs and recommendations that connect back to business impact.

Interestingly, LeMay found that commercially-minded PMs were often happier than others because they accepted the reality that business success factors beyond their control would ultimately determine their fate. This acceptance freed them from the stress of trying to "do product the right way" in environments that didn't support it, allowing them to focus on making the best possible contribution within their constraints.

Practical Implications

For leaders:

• Ask yourself: "If you were the CEO, would you fully fund your own team?" If you can't confidently answer yes, you need to rethink your team's focus.
• When setting goals, ensure they're directly connected to company-level metrics with no more than one step of separation.
• Recognize that constraints (regulation, quarterly targets, etc.) aren't barriers to good product work – they're the context that shapes how you deliver value.

For ICs:

• Express impact in the same units as your goals when prioritizing work. Don't use abstract scores – translate everything to the metric that matters.
• When presenting options to stakeholders, always include a recommendation based on business impact, not just a neutral list of choices.
• Understand that you don't need to transform your company's approach to product development to drive impact – you can work within existing constraints.
• Remember that understanding your company's business model reveals its true priorities and ethical stance, helping you decide if it's the right place for you.