Product Leader We Admire: Jude Hoffner

We frequently profile Product Leaders We Admire to inspire you and your team.?This month, we are excited to introduce you to Jude Hoffner.?

Jude Hoffner?is VP of Product Management at NaviStone, a company that helps advertisers turn their website visitors into direct mail customers. He works across the organization to ensure the development and delivery of quality products at a fair price to all clients.

NaviStone?and Jude were one of our first clients, and they have a special place in our hearts because of that. Jude is a great example of an operations professional moving into a Product Leader role mid-career, and has been a thoughtful, active participant on our?Product Leader Peer Groups?since they kicked off in March 2020. Here is our Q&A with Jude:

Favorite book

There are a few, but?Product Management in Practice, by Matt Lemay?is one I would recommend especially to anyone relatively early in a PM career or entering a new organization in a Product role. I read it fairly early in my career transition (though not early enough!) from a very different role into product management. It really helped me to think about what mindset to cultivate to have a chance at succeeding.?

Professional mantra or guiding principle

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

Best career advice you've ever given or received

Don’t be too proud to ask for help.?If in the course of a failed project you did not seek help, the project still failed.??

Favorite product launch you have been part of??

Pretty early in our startup journey, we added a turnkey media product to what had been our core audience-building product. It checked a lot of product-success boxes; addressed an expensive customer problem, opened up new potential customer segments to drive growth, user-friendly pricing, etc. It continues to be a high-impact addition to the portfolio.

P.S.?If you need more support building the skills in your team,?we’ve recently launched our?Product Innovation Accelerator program. In it we:

1. Quickly assess your organization’s best opportunities for new product innovation
2. Lead your team through a new product design sprint to quickly design and test a new product concept
3. Provide your team with a Product Innovation Toolkit to design, test and launch new products on their own

Please?email me?for next steps or further information.