Product democracy doesn't work - Blagoja Golubovski (VP Product, Usercentrics)

What does alignment really mean in product teams, and why does consensus often slow everything down?

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver are joined by Blagoja Golubovski (VP of Product, formerly at Usercentrics) to unpack one of the most persistent myths in product leadership: that good product organisations are democracies.

Chapters 0:00 Product leadership is not about consensus 1:21 Introduction to Blagoja 2:48 From engineering to product leadership 4:47 What people think product leadership is 5:44 Creating clarity and explicit trade-offs 6:53 Why product organisations are not democracies 7:54 Input vs ownership in decision-making 8:24 Who is accountable for product decisions 9:50 Leadership, strategy, and prioritisation 10:02 How product leadership changes as companies scale 12:29 Why decision-making mechanics define product culture 13:27 Separating input from decisions 14:59 Committees vs accountability 16:16 Why alignment does not mean agreement 17:29 The three levels of product decisions 21:00 Diagnosing broken decision-making 22:08 Environment beats individual skill 23:19 What real prioritisation looks like 24:46 Hiring the wrong kind of product leaders 26:31 Low-risk vs effective communication 27:24 Communicating at different altitudes 30:36 How PMs grow without strong leaders 34:27 Why product teams still struggle to scale 36:02 Judgement, coaching, and support systems 38:12 Why frameworks don’t replace judgement 40:04 Final advice for product managers

Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.