I had an entire other post ready for this week. It was also great, so don’t worry; it’s coming soon. But this feels so top of mind that I need to share it.
I just left Croatia, where I spent 10 days with 15 entrepreneurs creating, building, growing, talking about business, and forming deep friendships while also jumping off of cliffs, swimming every day, having way too much gelato, all the grilled squid, hundreds of espressos, and so much chocolate cake.
I’m on the plane, missing all my new friends, and reflecting on the 5 incredible lessons I learned this week around intentionality, collaboration, and productivity that can be applied to building products and life.
The best product teams design the outcome and then work backwards
One of the core aspects that made this week so special was how intentionally it was designed. The group that put it together, Art of Mondays, had a really specific goal in mind for these residencies, and they started from that goal and worked backwards to design a week that would deliver on it.
I see so many leaders get this wrong, even with the best intentions. When putting together an agenda for an offsite or workshop, they usually start with the activities they want to do as a team. That’s an output-driven way of organizing. I always encourage leaders to think by starting with the goals they want to achieve (the outcomes) and working backwards from there to figure out what needs to happen (the activities). Thinking about it this way puts the outcomes front and center.
One of the intentional decisions they made was to do everything possible to build trust early. Just like with product teams, trust is paramount. I actually wrote a whole post on how product teams can build trust early — it’s here if you want to go deeper.. The way their facilitator masterfully did this was by going deep fast with trust exercises, games, and open conversations. He intentionally removed “what do you do” or “who are you in business” from the start, to create space for people to meet as people first. It wasn’t until a few days in that we really dove into business, and by then, trust was already there. He also created sub-communities and paired people up for 1:1 time, so everyone had space to really connect.
The result was new businesses getting started, people seeing completely new directions they could take their work, new products coming to life, and strangers becoming a community ready to lift each other up.
When you design for trust from the start, you make space for real connection, and that’s when the good stuff actually happens.
Proximity unlocks what Zoom and Jira can't
In a world that’s gone so remote, the magic of this week, with all its new ideas, inspiration, and next-level energy, was completely dependent on one thing: all of us being under one roof. It was like water-cooler conversations on steroids, because we weren’t just working together — we were living together, in a 16th-century Croatian castle.
The location was awesome, I’m not going to lie, but the real beauty lay in meeting the people and building real connections. You just can’t do that on Zoom. One of my biggest lessons is that some people are worth staying for, changing flights for, and getting on a plane for. And when you find those people—ideally in your team, the ones you’re building with—prioritize them.
When you prioritize being with the right people in person, everything gets easier. Creativity shows up more naturally. It’s also more fun, and a team that has fun together usually builds better things.
Shared vision, complementary skillsets
I mentioned how businesses were started, new products created, products transformed, and new directions found. Two core elements made that possible: a shared vision and complementary skillsets.
Everyone was “very similar but also very different,” and when you think about great cross-functional teams, that’s exactly what you want: people who are aligned on what they want to build and how they want to change the world but who bring totally different strengths and perspectives. Put them together, and they create things none of them could’ve pulled off alone.
In this house, we had marketing, sales, design, engineering, product, e-commerce, SEO, real estate, coaching, and community building. It was seriously an entire company under one roof, and it got me thinking of the best product teams I ever worked with and on: they all had this similar energy — the ones where every function was strong on its own, but together, the energy and output were on a different level.
The power of action
One of my favorite sayings, which I borrow from SVPG Partner, Christian Idiodi, is that every team does discovery. Some do it before they build, others after. One is a lot more expensive.
This week, I was surrounded by experimentation machines. It was inspiring to watch someone have an idea and immediately test it, and it encouraged me to do the same.
This week lit a fire in me to take more action personally and to keep pushing my incredible clients to do the same. They all deserve to win.
Action-oriented people—the doers—play by different rules. They feel like there’s no ceiling to what they can accomplish, and that energy is contagious.
When I think about the best product teams, they’re running experiments multiple times a week. There’s almost a fearless quality to it. Because they’re always testing and taking action, it’s like they can’t lose. With that many shots on goal, one is bound to land — and most of the time, one is all you need.
Go where you have energy
One of my favorite questions to ask my clients and then for them to ask their teams is:
What gives you energy?
What takes away energy?
There’s a reason for that. We can execute at a much higher level when we’re doing work that energizes and fulfills us. It feels like an unfair advantage.
I saw the power of this in action all week. People were working for hours, deep in business conversations, and it all felt easy because they were doing something that fueled them.
I felt it, too. I finally started building again, focusing on systematizing what I believe is the highest-leverage activity for any product leader. I met an incredible engineer who completely re-energized me. We clicked instantly and went straight into “founder mode”—jamming on ideas, creating flows, and building until 3:30 a.m. In just a few nights (while still working our full-time jobs and attending the full residency), we had an early prototype up and running.
A lot of people asked, How the hell did you manage to show up for everything, support your clients, and still build something — all on 4–5 hours of sleep a night?
The answer’s simple: because it gave me energy.
Both in life and when building products, there’s something different when we build with energy, so I constantly challenge my clients to understand what brings them energy and double down on those activities.
Here’s a bonus lesson that keeps coming up for me, especially after talking to my mentor, Martina Lauchengco: jump, and the net will appear. I always tell my clients that some of the most expensive decisions are the ones they don’t make and that not deciding is still a decision.
As I ride this wave of inspiration from all the collaboration and energy this week, I want to encourage you to take action. Make the move you’ve been putting off — the one that deep down, you know feels right.
For me, this move is about building systems that help my clients get even better results while also creating what I wish I had as a product leader: the suite of my dreams, built to make management more about coaching than bureaucracy.
Let me know if you are interested in knowing more or getting some sneak peeks 👀. Please leave a comment or send me a DM on LinkedIn!
Great stuff!!!