Keith Cowing

Clarifying Ownership Between Product and Other Teams

LinkedIn

Flatiron Health

Goldman Sachs

Ex-CPO, VP of Product, and 2x founder/CEO.

List activities, artifacts, and decisions across the product lifecycle that need clear ownership.

Define the jobs to be done

How to conduct a productive working session with other functions to clarify ownership and reduce gaps and redundancies.

Remove gaps and reduce overlap

Implement new procedures that relieve tension across teams, with the support of your toughest stakeholders.

Make changes, with broad support

Leadership teams think they are aligned. Most are not.
Get CLEAR. ALIGN. GROW.

CEO, Board Advisor, and Creator of MtL

Unison

The Carlyle Group

Oracle

SAIC

Peter DiGiammarino

Professional CEO, Managing Partner, and Creator of Manage to Lead (MtL).

Cohort 2

When executives are asked what they offer, who they serve, and why customers choose them, their answers often differ.That misalignment leads to:Slower decisions Weaker messaging Confused teams Harder fundraising and growthThe bar for strategic clarity is rising. Investors expect precision. Markets reward focus. Competition is accelerating.You cannot afford fuzzy answers to basic questions.In this workshop, you will:Define a disciplined WHAT–WHO–WHY your leadership team stands behindUse your WHAT–WHO–WHY to define the true decision maker and refine your Ideal Customer ProfileArticulate why customers choose you over alternativesYou will pressure-test your WHAT–WHO–WHY against your website, board deck, and sales materials inside <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://throughline.intelliven.com/">your own Throughline Team Workspace</a>. AI-guided scoring surfaces gaps and suggests targeted upgrades to improve clarity, specificity, and integrity.You leave ready to use it in your <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://throughline.intelliven.com/">Throughline Team Workspace</a> to collaborate with your leadership team, strengthen alignment, and nail your ICP immediately.

Clarity is alignment reached jointly. Learn how to architect it across your leadership team.

Define a clear WHAT–WHO–WHY 

Identify your true decision maker and ICP

Diagnose misalignment within your executive team and understand why it occurs.

Score and upgrade your WHAT–WHO–WHY

Test your W-W-W against your website and pitch deck

Leave with a refined, consolidated WHAT–WHO–WHY 

Leaders of professionally financed portfolio companies

Owner-Operators-Founders in, or preparing for, a period of inflection.

Organization, unit, function, and initiative leaders.

Leverage our open-source Strategy approach, OpModel, and Scrum to avoid being a backlog admin; instead, become a strategic Product Leader.

Product Coach, Agile Coach & Trainer

J.P. Morgan

Morgan Stanley

NatWest

Barclays

Direct Line

Rickard Jones

Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with over 25 years of industry exp.

Class

The Scrum Alliance CSPO® is a globally recognised credential; most Scrum courses focus only on the Backlog. Ours gives you the Product Operating Model and Strategy patterns tools to run an actual product operation. ⏩ Stop wasting time on generic, hypothetical case studies. You will work directly with the group's own real product throughout the class, taking it from vision to backlog to value. ⏩ Escape the "feature factory" ticket-taker trap permanently. Move beyond textbook theory and leverage a proven, open-source Product Operating Model that delivers commercial value. ⏩ Say goodbye to post-course isolation and anxiety. Every booking includes a free, private 30-minute 1:1 coaching session with your instructor to handle your messy organizational challenges. ⏩ Stop guessing what your stakeholders want. Learn how to design clear outcome roadmaps and align cross-functional teams, so they deliver unquestionable value every single Sprint. ⏩ There is no exam to pass; you participate on video throughout, and you will receive the CSPO cert. It's all about the learning experience with other Product Owners.⏩ All our materials are open source; there are no restrictions. Use as you see fit!

Go beyond backlog outputs explore Product Value, Strategy, Innovation with Scrum

Explore a repeatable Product Operating Model for end-to-end outcome delivery.

Formulate empirical product strategies anchored to real outcomes of value.

Shift metrics from generic delivery outputs to measurable value outcomes

Validate product innovations using rapid discovery and fast feedback loops

Engage in the full life-cycle of Scrum innovation and optimization.

Product Owners &amp; Product Managers. Scrum Masters &amp; Agile Coaches. Aspiring Product Professionals &amp; Career Switchers.

Business Stakeholders &amp; Subject Matter Experts. Developers, Analysts, Engineers, Testers, and UX Designers.

Organisational leaders, managers, directors, and executives. Coaches, trainers, and external stakeholders.

Make high-stakes product calls with clarity to earn a bigger scope and influence

Product & Design Leader at Owtcome

Owtcome

Krasi Bozhinkova

Product & Design Leader, turning product success into repeatable growth

July 2026

The gap between mid-level and senior is not knowledge. It is judgment. The ability to make the call earlier, with less certainty, and explain why it matters in terms the business cares about.You may already have strong instincts, but instincts alone don’t earn trust. What gets your work second-guessed is not always that someone else is right. It is that they can connect the decision to adoption, retention, revenue, or strategic advantage more clearly than you can.This course is about closing that judgment gap. You will learn how to identify the real decision inside a messy debate, name the trade-off others avoid, and defend your logic before perfect data arrives. It blends product, design, and business thinking because role boundaries are disappearing and the expectation to make an impact has never been higher.The goal is to become the person leadership brings in earlier, trusts with harder problems, and gives a bigger scope.

Make high-stakes product decisions with clearer logic, stronger conviction, and language that leadership can trust.

Frame the real decision behind a messy debate

Build for critical user needs without waiting for perfect data

Know when to improve, pivot, or rethink your roadmap

Connect every product and design decision to a growth loop

PMs, designers, and cross-functional leaders with 3-5 years of experience, working through ambiguity, trade-offs, and business outcomes.

Level of experience

Bring one live product, feature, or strategic decision to apply the course directly to your own context.

What to prepare

This course is designed for practitioners who want to make better product decisions in AI-shaped markets, not to teach a specific AI tool.

No technical AI background required

Mid to Senior level PMs stuck in execution mode who want to become the senior person leadership trusts to make the harder decisions

Designers who are strategic but can't articulate it and lose the argument when they don’t connect the decision to business impact.

Developers stepping up to own a product area, who need a repeatable way to make hard decisions with incomplete information.

Build great relationships with bosses and key stakeholders

Former Amazon VP; 70+ patents; led 800+

Walmart

Capital One

OpenAI

Ethan Evans

Former Amazon VP (15+ years); 70+ patents; led global teams of 800+

Cohort 1

Most high performers don’t stall from lack of skill — they stall because managing up and across is messy: a boss with a different style, shifting priorities, unclear expectations, and peers who don’t align. The result is great work that is misunderstood, under-credited, or derailed by surprises and politics.This workshop gives you specific, ethical, repeatable steps to build high-trust relationships with your manager, skip-level, and key peers — so you execute faster, reduce friction, and increase your influence.You’ll learn how to understand your boss (preferences, pet peeves, strengths/weaknesses) and communicate upward with clarity, brevity, and the right timing. You’ll run better 1:1s, ask sharper questions, separate fact vs. opinion, and give upward feedback without triggering defensiveness.When things get tense, you’ll handle conflict, emotion, and tough decisions without breaking trust: avoid surprises, manage expectations, set boundaries, and “quit and commit” when needed.You’ll also leave with tools to drive your growth, navigate remote work and frequent boss changes, and spot when managing up crosses into manipulation — so you stay effective and principled.

Specific actionable steps to create effective and ethical relationships with your manager, skip level, and peers.

How to work better with your boss and build a high-trust relationship

How to handle tricky (tough) situations without damaging trust

How to drive your professional development and create upward momentum

How to manage up to your skip level and peers to increase your span of influence

How to navigate office politics ethically

High-performing IC: Delivers strong work but struggles with alignment, visibility, and no-surprise updates across boss + partners.

New or stretched people leader: Needs a clean system to manage up, set expectations, give feedback, and navigate conflict without politics.

Cross-functional driver: PM/ops/finance/sales/eng partner who must influence peers + skip-levels and get decisions without burning trust.

Agentic AI

Coding with AI

AI Workflows

Claude Code

OpenClaw

Vibe Coding

AI Evals

AI Transformation

RAG & Search

AI for PMs

AI for Engineers

AI for Designers

AI for Marketers

AI for Founders

Product Sense

Product Discovery

User Research

Prototyping

Growth

Analytics

Tech Foundations

Strategy

Influence

Leadership

Career Growth

Machine Learning

LLM Ops

Context Eng

Security

System Design

Figma

Design Systems

Visual Design

Design Strategy

Automation

Content Marketing

Demand Gen

Go-to-Market

Product Marketing

Positioning

Social Media

Brand

B2B Marketing

SEO & AEO

AI for Leaders

AI Governance

Communication

Management

People Operations

Exec Presence

Storytelling

Goal-setting

Personal Brand

Fundraising

Everyone

Operators

Data Scientists

Business Analysts

User Researchers

Customer Success

Project Managers

HR Professionals

Sales People

Lawyers

Finance

Investors

Real Estate

Educators

Creators

Introduction and Welcome

Speaker's Background and Session Overview

The Future of Knowledge Work: Judgment and Leadership

Three Steps to Clarify Roles and Responsibilities

A Case Study from LinkedIn: Product vs. Product Marketing

The High Cost of Stakeholder Friction

Step 1: Defining the Jobs to Be Done

Step 2: Removing Gaps and Reducing Overlap

Step 3: Making Changes with Broad Support

Explaining the SPADE Decision-Making Framework

Synthesizing the Process and Next Steps

Q&A: Building Trust and Explaining Decisions

Q&A: Navigating Culture and Uncertainty

Conclusion and Final Remarks

Product managers who drive strategy, development, and launch of products.

Executives and senior leaders who set strategy, lead teams, and drive organizational outcomes.

Developing leadership skills — inspiring teams, building culture, navigating organizational complexity, and driving results through others.

Clarifying Ownership Between Product and Other Teams

What you'll learn

Why this topic matters

You'll learn from

Keith Cowing