Impact-first Product Teams: Define Success. Do Work That Matters. Be Indispensable.

by Matt Lemay

Around the world, product teams are waking up to the same uncomfortable doing things “the right way” doesn’t matter if your team loses its funding or your company goes out of business.

Simply put, product teams can no longer afford to be disconnected from the business impact of their work. And well-trodden “best practices” from Silicon Valley behemoths can only provide so much guidance for teams working across vastly different business and funding models.

In Impact-first Product Teams, product leader and consultant Matt LeMay provides clear-eyed and reality-tested guidance for doing the work that matters most to your business. This concise and practical book walks you through the questions and conversation starters that have helped product teams across industries and geographies put impact at the heart of their work – and keep it there.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Professional Development

134 pages, Paperback

Published February 7, 2025

Reviews

[Aive · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so happy I had a chance to meet Matt and read this book. For me, this book aligns well with everything I believe in the world of digital product building. And it aligns with modern product management values. But it offers an interesting angle and touches on one of the hardest topics: what really is an impact-first product team?
One takeaway I'll continue sharing is that impact-first teams have goals that don’t depend only on them. I've received the question from developers a hundred times about how they can take responsibility for business results, and I've explained it a hundred times, but somehow this book gave it such clear wording.
I also love the emphasis on the importance of hard discussions. It's never so much about the 'right' answer but rather the team discussing the important things. In the age of AI, where we hope AI gives us all the answers, it becomes even more critical. The book inspires to build more impact.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely an interesting book, and the author raises some very good points. However it felt as though the core message could have been brought forward just as clearly in about half the number of pages. Personally I found that the same ideas were repeated very often, especially toward the end, and that the book tended to beat around the bush a bit too much.

[Julian Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't fundamentally have major disagreements with anything Matt LeMay says in his relatively concise book. As a product leader, I've been adamant with my teams that they ensure whatever they do has business impact, and that they think about this at all phases of product development. Even in B2B product management, where reliable qualitative data is often not available for the purposes of forecasting, it's still extremely important that PMs have a rough estimate of the financial impact of any of their initiatives, big or small. Financial literacy and the ability to speak in monetary terms to executives is a critical skill for PMs, especially beyond the senior PM level, because it increases a leadership team's trust in that PM. And as we all know, PM is very much a political job: how much rope you are given to hang yourself is a function of leadership's trust in you. But you also can't have a big impact if you don't have a lot of rope.

So why did I give this book four stars instead of five, given that I largely agree with the contents? Because I feel that Matt LeMay lets executive teams off the hook too quickly for frequently not holding up their end of the bargain. Even though LeMay states that this is not the remit of the book, and I suspect his writing it is as a result of running into one too many R&D teams who hew dogmatically to some academically "correct" way of doing product even while driving poor outcomes for a company, I think he minimizes the role of executives in creating, driving, and adhering to an outcome-oriented culture inside their firms. In my experience, this is in far shorter supply than Lemay gives credit for, especially in startups: many founding teams would not know how to define a business & product strategy even if one would hit them in the face, to say nothing of writing down realistic goals and outcomes to reflect such a strategy. This creates a level of ridiculous and unreasonable pressure on the PM team, who is held accountable to create order out of chaos. It's no wonder that many PMs go onto being founding CEOs of their own companies, because what PM wants to essentially do the CEO job for some naïve, first-time CEO who doesn't know what his/her job actually entails? (Hint: It's not just building the MVP, raising money on the back of that, and then putting one's feet up while the hired gun product team does all the work to make that CEO a billionaire.)

One only needs to look at the current generative AI bubble to realize that neither executives nor investors are guaranteed to act rationally (or using LeMay's own language, in an "impact-first" manner). Many of the current AI products on the market do not generate positive gross margins without incinerating large piles of VC cash to keep them going, and there is simply not enough value exchange between many AI product vendors and their customers -- even for the most interesting language-model based products -- to justify raising prices to a level that would create economic sustainability for those businesses. Yet to be an "impact-first" PM within AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Cognition, etc. must be a highly stressful no-win situation, for if those individuals were to be held accountable to actual business outcomes, they would fail, because the business fundamentals simply do not make any sense. And that has absolutely nothing to do with that PM's performance.

In short: There is nothing particularly wrong with LeMay's book if you are dealing with a situation where the leadership team is somewhat competent, has a reasonably well-articulated product strategy, measures financial outcomes well and truly makes data-driven decisions about investments on those bases (and not just "vibes" which is what is happening a lot in 2025). In such scenarios, it's perfectly appropriate to use Impact-First Product Teams as a cudgel to whip underperforming teams into shape. Unfortunately, to give this topic the fair treatment it deserves, LeMay needs to follow up with a book entitled Impact-First Leadership Teams -- which, given that he makes his living as a product consultant paid by leadership teams to "fix" product management teams, it's pretty obvious that no such book or even blog post will be forthcoming.

[Heather Lancaster Lo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical and to the point. Each chapter challenges product managers and leaders to ask the right questions to ensure what they are building will deliver real business impact. Grounded in practicality and full of framework and book recommendations to help readers continue their growth journeys this text doesn’t preach, it guides through real world examples. My two favorite chapters are the second, where the commercial relationship is brought forward to ensure user centric solutions align with broader business goals, and the last, where conversation starters and tips are conveniently organized by theme to serve as a quick reference. I have given copies to my team.

[Eric Novins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy a good common-sense book that offers valuable perspectives. This book does an excellent job of explaining the topic and providing guidance on achieving success. It also realistically acknowledges that every business and team structure is different. The key is to check in regularly and stay aware of changing conditions.

[Andrew Balyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Це книжка про очевидне, яке часто ігнорується: бізнес має заробляти гроші, а все, що робиться всередині команди продукту — від стратегії до щоденних тасків — повинно прямо чи опосередковано сприяти цьому

[Bernadette Elliott-Bowman · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I bought this book I hoped it would be full of realtalk. It is. You should buy it too.

[Starry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, concise and immediately useful. Especially valuable if you run product at a larger company that doesn’t “do it the right way”. Practical advice for the real world.