“Tell me about a time you had a conflict” comes up in behavioral interviews at every level. At the Director, VP, and CPO levels, it tends to probe something more specific: whether you optimize for your team or for the company. A lot of my coaching happens after clients land the role, on exactly these cross-org conflicts. In that work, I see escalation go wrong in 2 directions. Some leaders let a disagreement grind on for months. Others take every cross-functional disagreement to the CEO,...

When you prepare for analytics, metrics, or execution interviews, it can feel like you need to memorize how to measure hundreds of products. You don’t. Two mental models can help you reason through most of them faster: the funnel and the flywheel. A funnel helps you separate the outcome the product team can affect directly from the later evidence that the product created value. A flywheel helps you see when success depends on 2 sides reinforcing each other. A marketplace, for example, usually...

In the last few months, I have worked with senior AI talent interviewing at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft AI, including offers with annual compensation packages at $1.5M, $2.9M, and $3.6M. What we focused on was making the strategic judgment they already use at work easier for another senior leader to see. During one of our sessions, we had just worked through the same question twice. The first time, the client gave me the full explanation of the product: what it was, how it...

In a recent Product Sense session, I drew a 2×2 from the discussion and someone asked how I had gone from her “jumbled thoughts” to those 2 dimensions. The useful part was not the grid itself. It was the reasoning underneath it. For Director and VP interviews, I do not start by choosing a user segment and then listing pain points. I often start one level higher. First, define the product vision. Then identify the crux of the problem space: the fundamental tension most likely to determine...

A question like “Should Google offer fine-tuning as a service?” can produce a long list of reasonable considerations: market size, customer demand, competition, company strengths, economics, and more. The harder part is deciding which of those considerations should actually drive the recommendation. At the Director and VP level, a strong answer needs a clear rationale for why this investment makes sense for this company. Start by making a reasonable assumption about what the company is trying...

You give a product sense answer that is good by every measure you can point to. You clarified the prompt, picked a user, found a real pain, built a sensible solution. And the feedback still comes back that it wasn't quite at the level, or that you could be sharper, and no one can tell you exactly what was missing. By the time you are interviewing at the Director and VP level, a structured, complete answer is the baseline. Everyone in the running can do that. What separates people is whether...

"Tell me about a project you're most proud of." If you have a senior leadership interview coming up, you have answered a version of this before, back when you were more junior. The words have not changed. What makes the answer sound like a leader has. By the time you interview at the GPM, Director, or VP level, being proud of your work is not rare. You have led many teams and shipped many projects, and you were proud of most of them. So the question is not really asking for a project. It is...

To answer a product strategy question like "how would you 10x Google Gemini" at the GPM, Director, or VP level, you reimagine the product instead of improving it. Improving it means making the same product a little better, which competes with its immediate rivals and keeps you at a 2x answer. Reimagining it means asking what the user is really there to do, and competing with everything else people use to meet that same or similar need, which is where a 10x answer lives. A thorough 2x answer...

In the past week, multiple people have asked me how I have worked on my thinking. It took me days to figure out how to articulate it. The truth is that I did not intentionally work on my thinking. What happened was years of inner work, most of it was spiritual and learning on how to tap into my intuitive sense. I spent a lot of that time learning to read Tarot, sitting with what the cards were showing me instead of rushing to answer it, to stay with something uncomfortable instead of reaching...

A recruiter reaches out about a role a rung above your current title, or a mentor makes an introduction, or someone in your network opens a door to a job at the next level. However it starts, you are probably already doing the work of that level, if not all of it then most of it. Your scope has outgrown your title, even though the title has not caught up. So the interview is not really testing whether you can operate at the level you are targeting, because you already do, or you have strong...