Leader Spotlight: The evolution of ‘influence without authority,’ with Jennifer Moore

Jennifer Moore is a seasoned product executive. She has built and launched customer-centric, data-inspired solutions for over 20 years within B2B SaaS and financial services. Jennifer began her career as a technical writer at a Series A startup, Oakley Networks. She then transitioned to project management at Wells Fargo and Zions Bancorporation before moving into product management and the B2B SaaS industry. Most recently, she led product and design teams at companies such as Workfront (acquired by Adobe), Pluralsight, and various startups.

Jennifer shares her career journey going from a technical writer to a product leader, as well as what inspired her to work in product. She also discusses what it means to “influence without authority” and how that style of leadership is evolving.

Moving from technical writing to product management

To start, can you tell us how you arrived at a career in product management?

I was an English major in college with an emphasis on technical writing and editing. I began my career at a startup as a technical writer, and I was responsible for writing procedures. In general, I was really excited to be working in tech and started out wearing many different hats.

I reported directly to the chief product officer and was able to do a variety of tasks like writing patent applications and redesigning the website. I was working directly with the co-founder/CEO and head of marketing. I remember sitting in our big boardroom where a lot of the product strategizing and roadmapping happened. This environment and the general scrappiness of building a startup was my first exposure to product development.

I moved from writing procedures to developing processes at my next company, Wells Fargo. I re-engineered a lot of our existing processes, and, after that, moved into project management. I focused on transformational programs and major changes, and began leading large teams. Eventually, I thought I would reach a ceiling in my career, so I needed to get closer to the revenue and customers. I made the jump to product management while I was still in financial services.

I realized, while partnering with fintech companies, that traditional banking was becoming an outmoded industry, so I moved into SaaS. I wanted to move into a role that reflected the future of tech, and I was determined to switch to a very agile company. That led me to Workfront, which Adobe acquired in 2020, and more tech companies following that. Recently, I’ve been in consulting and doing fractional work as a chief product officer.

In your first job as a technical writer, you worked for a very intense and high-stakes company. Could you talk about that experience and how that inspired your product management journey?

One Sunday, I was sitting in church when my boss urgently emailed me. He asked me to come into the office ASAP to rewrite our procedure. It was extremely pressing because our software helped the government go after terrorists, and I needed to rewrite the procedure so that it could be followed in 30 seconds or less. After that, I began to think that I shouldn’t be writing procedures at all — that software should just be easy to use and not require instructions. It helped me more deeply consider the user experience.

There’s a clear bridge between your desire to be closer to the revenue and your interest in improving processes. How did you envision those goals converging toward an overarching goal?

I’ve always been curious about what happens before and after I finish my part of the process. I want to know why things don’t work as well as they should and what I can do to make things easier for people. One of my favorite quotes about product management is by Francis Brown, formerly from Alaska Airlines, “At the heart of every product person, there’s a desire to make someone’s life easier or simpler. If we listen to the customer and give them what they need, they’ll reciprocate with love and loyalty to your brand.”

More so in B2B than B2C, that reciprocation of love and loyalty can be very personal because we develop relationships with the customers that we interact with. We learn things about their lives, like if they’re getting married in a couple of months or going through a rough patch professionally. I love being able to impact people in a way that’s not only about making money — I want to create software that helps them thrive at work.

Product leadership is fundamentally about the people we serve.

Influencing without authority

When building and launching products, you have to ‘influence without authority.’ What does this mean to you?

The days of “command and control” style leadership are very much over. Even if you have authority, you have to be an expert influencer. The younger generations just don’t respond to authoritarian leadership styles. We’ve seen the result with things like quiet quitting, lack of engagement, and the Great Resignation we went through a couple of years ago — all of which ultimately lead to a loss of productivity.

Leaders are being held accountable with employee sentiment surveys, attrition numbers, how many people are leaving their teams, and why. We’re being evaluated based on how we’re behaving and showing up as leaders.

You don’t need to have people reporting to you to be a leader. Leadership is inherent

in each of us. We can all lead without authority as long as we’ve established trust and respect,

created a safe and inclusive workspace, and oriented people around solving customer problems.

Serving both the business goals and customer goals

It’s important to make the lives of those using our products easier. How do you get those building the product to understand the customer more deeply?

From a product management perspective, two things come to mind. The first is the need to understand the customer’s daily life. This goes hand-in-hand with determining how much of that day you can own and therefore influence and support.

For example, if I’m in edtech and helping a learner to upskill, I want to own more of their day. So providing high-quality video content isn’t enough. I also need to help them understand what they need to learn and in which sequence, evaluate their level of mastery, and pass a certification or other credential so they can get promoted or progress in their career.

The second is product-led growth and variations of it, such as product-led sales, as a trend that helps you to make someone’s life better. Sometimes we forget that there’s both an acquisition factor and a retention factor to growth — it’s not just about building cool stuff. How are people finding you, trying your product out, and getting the product in their hands as quickly as possible? How are they getting value from it as quickly as possible, and then what’s making them stick around?

This trend is so critical because people are looking for convenience, and this mentality can serve you bidirectionally. It serves both the business goals and the customer goals, which makes it such a thing of beauty.

You’ve mentioned trends and evolutions over the past few years. As we enter the second half of 2024, what are you most excited about?

I’m most excited to start something new. I love seeing what’s going to spark next, who I can serve, and what solutions they need. That’s what keeps me motivated.

I’m also excited about generative AI. I think it’s one of the coolest technologies to come onto the scene; I use it every day. When it comes to creating innovative products, generative AI has vastly improved my work day because it helps me to get things done in minutes instead of hours. So much of my job as a product leader is gathering qualitative information, and when I’m able to distill that down to the insights and share them using an AI assistant, it’s magical.

There are issues and it has a long way to go; you can’t just blindly pass things off to generative AI. With that said, it’s not something to be scared of either. It’s not going to take our jobs. I truly believe it is going to make us all better.

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