How Product Teams Can Drive Real Business Impact
Reviewing Impact-First Product Teams, 2025, Matt LeMay.
I read lots of books about tech product management, but rarely take the time to write recommendations or reviews. This one deserves special attention.
The product management world is flooded with content about discovery practices—how to find the right problems to solve. Similarly, there's abundant material on delivery processes—how to build solutions efficiently and effectively.
What's noticeably missing is practical guidance on how teams can create measurable commercial impact. Matt LeMay addresses this critical gap with his 2025 book, "Impact-First Product Teams," which focuses on the essential question: How can product teams directly contribute to business results?
(For those unfamiliar with Matt LeMay, he not only successfully navigates the narrow space between being a fashion icon and maintaining business credibility, but he also happens to possess deep insider knowledge about product team dynamics and improvement opportunities.)
Several concepts from the book particularly stood out to me (all direct quotes from the book):
"Choosing to be an impact-first product team means recognizing that our responsibility is ultimately to contribute towards a successful business."
"'Treating' the obvious symptoms of low-impact teams by adding more layers and processes to cross-team coordination often makes the root cause worse."
"Impact-first teams recognize that their own operation comes at a cost to the business."
A powerful question teams should ask themselves: "If you were in charge of the company, would you fully fund this team?"
"The most meaningful team-level goals are no more than one understandable step away from the business' most critical measures of success."
The core message is straightforward yet profound: every product team must understand its direct business impact. If a team's activities don't clearly contribute to business outcomes — or if that contribution remains undefined — the work should stop because it's likely wasting valuable resources. Every task, feature, and initiative should demonstrably support actual business goals.
While this might seem obvious, the reality is that many teams operate buried under complex trees of cascaded goals until they lose sight of how their daily work connects to business success. Team members often struggle to explain how their efforts matter to the company's bottom line. Matt provides practical frameworks for establishing this crucial understanding and focusing on work that truly moves the business forward.
For product managers, engineers, and leaders who want their teams to have meaningful impact rather than just staying busy, this book offers valuable insights on connecting team activities directly to business outcomes. It helps bridge the gap between day-to-day product work and the commercial results that ultimately determine a company's success.
I have no financial relationship with Matt or his publisher - this recommendation comes purely from finding value in his work. I do not receive money for this recommendation.
What I read
As usual, I will list some of the best articles I read on the Internet. I will keep a list of the best articles (currently >800) at https://www.digital-product-management.com. These are today’s picks:
Changemaker's Skills Maturity Matrix: This development tool is designed to give change-agents inside organizations clarity into their path forward.
Manage Dangerous Actions In User Interfaces: Different strategies for preventing users from making mistakes.
Problem generation radar: A good representation for managing product discovery.