Welp, I'm Head of Product Now

Adventures in pretending to know what I'm doing

"I'm on the fence about sharing this at all because it's so early days," I told my engineering bestie, gesturing at the barely functional interface on my screen that looked more like a placeholder than an actual product.

"Share it anyway," he said. "We're telling our engineers to build early, share early, and bring people on the journey. Let's do the same."

That moment crystallized something I'd been wrestling with since my recent promotion to Head of Product: How do I continue to lead authentically when everyone is suddenly watching me differently?

What feels like just a heartbeat ago, I was an accidental product manager who'd stumbled into tech. Now I have "Head of Product" in my email signature, and teams are looking to me to set the cultural tone. The promotion came with no manual, no script—just the expectation that I'd figure it out. I mean, I totally will, but that doesn't mean I'm not feeling the pressure 🙃

It's my improv journey all over again. I guess George Lucas is right!

In improv, we practiced endlessly to make spontaneity look effortless. The audience never saw the hours of trust-building exercises or the countless failed scenes that built the foundation for what appeared to be "making it up on the spot."

Leadership works the same way. The problem is, most leadership advice I've encountered skips right to the polished performance part and ignores the messy rehearsal process. And honestly? That's just not how I work.

Getting this type of promotion comes with immense pressure (is it self-imposed?) to suddenly appear more polished, more certain, more... leaderly. I felt it immediately (again, self-imposed?). The urge to clean up my communication style, to have all the answers, to project confidence even when I was figuring things out in real-time.

Except….this is the exact opposite of what got me here.

My unconventional path isn't a liability. It is my superpower. It started all those years ago of helping confused library patrons find "a book about horses," teaching me the real skill isn't knowing all the answers; it's getting comfortable with not knowing and still being helpful.

So when challenged to share our not-ready-for-prime-time AI assistant, it wasn't just about product transparency; it was about modeling the kind of culture I wanted to build and participate in.

Building Culture Through Unfinished Things

This is what "building in the open" actually means. Not waiting until something is perfect, but sharing the messy middle where the real learning happens.

Here's what I've learned about when and how to do this:

Share Process, Not Just Outcomes

Instead of only presenting polished quarterly reviews, I share the decision-making frameworks, the debates that took place, the options we didn't choose, and the reasons why. This approach turns stakeholders into collaborators.

Make Learning Visible

When I don't know something (which is often), I say it out loud. Then I make the learning process transparent. "I need to research this, and here's how I'm going to approach it." It permits others not to know everything either.

Create Safe Spaces for Half-Baked Ideas

Product has a lot of the "messy middle". The place where things are in progress, opinions are changing fast as we learn and experiment. Teams need to be able to share what's in progress without the pressure of having it all figured out. The feedback is always more effective when people see the thought process, not just the conclusion.

The Anti-Thought Leadership Approach

To be authentic, I won't position myself as the expert who has it all figured out. I want to be the person who creates space for others to figure it out alongside me.

I find this runs counter to most "thought leadership" I consistently come across. The retrospective wisdom is presented as if it were always apparent. But authentic leadership happens in the uncertainty, in the moments when you don't have a playbook.

My improv background taught me that the best scenes come from genuine curiosity, not from trying to force a predetermined outcome. The same applies to building product culture: you can't manufacture authenticity, but you can create conditions where it naturally emerges.

In improv, we have a principle called "Yes, and". Accept what's given and build on it. I'm applying the same principle to leadership: Yes, I'm now Head of Product, AND I'm still the person who thinks in analogies and admits when I'm getting lost in the deep recesses of Kubernetes.

The promotion doesn't mean I have to be a different version of myself. It means scaling the qualities that made me effective as an individual contributor.

The more willing you are to show unfinished work, the more people trust your finished products. The more you admit uncertainty, the more confident people become in your judgment. The more human you are as a leader, the more people are willing to follow you into the unknown.

The script for being Head of Product doesn't exist. But that's not a bug, it's a feature. It means I get to write it in real-time, with input from my team, building on what works and pivoting when it doesn't.

Just like improv. Just like product development. Just like everything worth doing.