Navigating Product Leadership in Complex Industries with Fabio Brocca

Click to expand the mind map for a detailed view.

Key Takeaways

Speed Over Perfection: As a CPO, focus on execution and iteration rather than waiting for the perfect strategy.
Product Management is an Art: It involves managing opposites—thinking big while diving deep, balancing complexity with simplicity, and being customer-obsessed while moving fast.
Leadership is About Coaching: Empower your team, build trust, and focus on growing people.
Prioritization is Key: In scaling companies, prioritize ruthlessly and focus on the most impactful initiatives.
Customer Empathy: Great product management starts with deeply understanding and empathizing with customer pain points.

Fabio Brocca, CPO at Zeneta, shares his journey from Amazon to leading product teams in the complex shipping and logistics industry.
Product management is about managing opposites—balancing long-term vision with short-term execution, complexity with simplicity, and customer obsession with pragmatism.

Challenges as a New CPO:
- Understanding the Role: No clear guidelines or school for CPOs; learning through classes, certifications, and networking.
- Learning Beyond Product: Expanding knowledge in finance, sales, and product marketing.
- Identifying Gaps: Quickly identifying the biggest gaps in the company’s product strategy and addressing them.
- Delegation: Avoiding getting pulled into tactical work and focusing on strategic leadership.
- Feedback Culture: Building a culture where feedback is encouraged, even when it’s critical.

Speed Over Perfection: Early execution and iteration are more important than crafting the perfect strategy.
Three-Year Strategy: Articulating where the company wants to be in three to five years and breaking it down into actionable challenges.
Focus and Prioritization: Avoiding spreading resources too thin by focusing on a few key initiatives.
Documenting What Not to Do: Clearly stating what the company will not pursue to maintain focus.

Amazon vs. Zeneta:
- Structure: Amazon is highly structured with clear processes, while Zeneta requires creating structure from scratch.
- Prioritization: In scaleups, prioritization is even more critical due to limited resources.
- Decision-Making: In scaleups, decisions can be made faster with fewer layers of approval.
- Culture Building: In scaleups, product managers have to build the culture, whereas in big tech, they adapt to it.

Strategic Context: Providing clear strategic context to help teams prioritize and make decisions.
Experimentation: Encouraging experimentation not just in product features but also in business models and sales channels.
Delegation and Trust: Empowering product managers to own their spaces and make decisions.

Customer Empathy: Deeply understanding and feeling the customer’s pain points.
Obsession and Optimism: Being obsessed with solving problems and maintaining optimism about what’s possible.
Managing Opposites: Balancing big-picture thinking with attention to detail, complexity with simplicity, and long-term vision with short-term execution.
Product as Art: Product management is an art that involves continuous experimentation, iteration, and learning.

Industry Knowledge: Deep industry knowledge can accelerate career growth, even in less glamorous industries.
Learning Over Titles: Focus on learning and working with great managers rather than chasing prestigious titles.
Curiosity and Beginner’s Mind: Maintain curiosity and avoid taking industry norms for granted.

Speed Over Perfection: Early execution and iteration are more important than waiting for the perfect strategy.
Product Management is an Art: It involves balancing opposites—thinking big while diving deep, complexity with simplicity, and customer obsession with pragmatism.
Leadership is About Coaching: Empower your team, build trust, and focus on growing people.
Prioritization is Key: In scaling companies, prioritize ruthlessly and focus on the most impactful initiatives.
Customer Empathy: Great product management starts with deeply understanding and empathizing with customer pain points.
Experimentation: Encourage experimentation not just in product features but also in business models and sales channels.
Delegation and Trust: Empower product managers to own their spaces and make decisions.
Industry Knowledge: Deep industry knowledge can accelerate career growth, even in less glamorous industries.
Learning Over Titles: Focus on learning and working with great managers rather than chasing prestigious titles.
Product as Art: Product management is an art that involves continuous experimentation, iteration, and learning.

Liveblocks: A platform for adding collaborative features to products.
Amazon’s Internal Tools: PRFAQ, working backward processes, and other structured tools for product development.
Zeneta’s Tools: Custom tools for data aggregation, market benchmarking, and forecasting.

Zeneta: A platform transforming the ocean and air freight industry.
Amazon: Fabio’s previous employer, where he led global transportation technology.
MSC: The world’s largest container shipping company, where Fabio started his career.
Secro: A company building innovative products, led by Mikela Anria.