Breaking Into Product Leadership: Insights from Sahara Muradi

Introduction to Product Management Journey

Productside | 00:01.964–00:23.909

Hi everyone, I’m Nicole Tisch, your host of our segment, Trailblazing Women in Product Management. Today our guest is Sahara Muradi Vice President of Product Management at Office Space Software. Very excited to have her with us and share her insights and experiences into the world of product management. So welcome Sahara.

Sahara Muradi | 00:23.909–00:29.432

Thank you, Nicole. I really enjoy what you’re doing for the product management community, and I’m excited to be here.

Productside | 00:29.432–00:38.929

Great, I love it. We’re excited to have you. And we’ll get started with one of my favorite questions, which is just, how did you get started in product management?

Sahara Muradi | 00:38.929–02:22.029

To be honest, I feel like I’ve been product management since I was a child. My parents actually owned a breakfast and lunch shop at the bottom of an office building where they served meals to several companies in a corporate park. And as you can imagine, with an entrepreneurial family, they ended up putting all of us kids to work. So my job was essentially creating our menu, everything from the physical trifold menu to the display that was over our deli and also their online presence with their mobile website.

And at the time that was pretty novel because the internet was still an emerging marketing channel, especially for small businesses. It was during this that I really started to understand how certain types of representation of content really speak to consumers. And I was just enthralled and obsessed with fonts and the placement of imagery and even sub copy and how all of that sort of played into enticing consumer behaviors and

the types of meals that we were able to sell to my parents’ customers, as well as, I’m gonna just backtrack a little bit on that. I was really excited about how the representation of content was speaking to customers, everything from the fonts to the placement of imagery, as well as the sub copy text describing menu items, and how that essentially impacted consumer behaviors.

and helped us with growing their business. I got a chance to see firsthand the way that content or design considerations with their user-centric mindset could really, sorry, I’m like getting a little nervous. All right.

Productside | 02:22.029–02:26.125

You’re okay.

Sahara Muradi | 02:26.125–04:08.992

It was there that I got a chance to understand design patterns and how specific content being displayed in a certain manner impacts user behaviors and patterns. Everything from design elements in the fonts that you present to the images and placement that they have, as well as the sub copy that’s presented for different menu items. And this was all before I knew what UX and UI were.

And so as I started to understand these concepts, I carried that through with me to college. I decided to major in media studies at UVA. And there, I had a lot more understanding on the frameworks that were behind these in terms of ideologies that you are impacting as you’re presenting content across different mediums and channels, as well as being able to drive consumer behaviors and their inclination towards their purchase power.

all by segmenting as well as displaying and designing items in a certain way. So I really learned a lot of this growing up, even before I was presented the opportunity to be in product management. Coming out of college, I was a consultant. And at the time, were really honed in on, sorry. Coming out of college, I was a consultant and a business analyst. So was starting to take user requirements, aligning those into

specific use cases and prototypes prior to development and validating that the solutions that we were providing were meeting the needs for the customers as well as for the business. And I got a chance to get a lot more of the business acumen around this as well as I, okay, I’m gonna do this better. It’s so hard when you’re going off the cuff.

Productside | 04:08.992–04:12.077

Yeah, you’re okay.

Sahara Muradi | 04:12.077–04:57.777

And I took a lot of the learnings from being a business analyst as I started to enter into project management where we were managing resources and budgets across different projects to meet business goals and to drive revenue. So by the time I joined Marriott, I had a really good understanding on user centric mindset. I had already gained a business acumen from project management and I was already obsessed with

the customer journey and user persona mapping that we had already acquired, that I had already acquired from my consulting days. So I was leading a…

Sahara Muradi | 04:57.777–05:14.988

So following consulting, when I joined Marriott as a project manager, I had a lot of the background that I needed that were the underpinnings for a career in product management. By the time I was leading a project that was essentially executing on the stay experience, I’m gonna do this last time, promise, I got it.

Productside | 05:14.988–05:18.427

You’re good.

The Essence of Product Management

Sahara Muradi | 05:18.427–06:36.472

Following consulting, I joined Marriott as a project manager and I was sitting in rooms with leads across global operations and digital and they were starting to break down specific user personas, everyone from a business traveler to a family traveler and dissecting every step of their stay experience and journey from pre-arrival to their in-stay experience to their post-departure.

and seeing ways that they can marry technology into facilitating ease in the travel journey. It was at that moment that I realized all the accumulation of my experiences in wanting to ideate and brainstorm on really innovative concepts and features that helped facilitate these tasks. So I took a chance in asking the director of the digital mobile and guest services for an opportunity and product. And it was there that I made the transition and I…

haven’t looked back. And I’ve had a really amazing opportunity on delivering industry leading products in travel and hospitality at Marriott, in meetings and events management at C-Vent, even Major League Sports at MLB, and now in workplace planning and employee experience at Office Space.

Productside | 06:36.472–07:16.987

I love that you just asked for it. Like you saw something that sounded really, you know, intriguing to you and you went for it. That’s great because you’re really showing how product management brings so much different experience from creativity to that business, acumen and the project management skills bringing that all together. And I think that’s what is really great to showcase in these episodes in the series is what

all can come together to make someone really successful in product management. So with all of that background, and now here you are, what do you love the most about product management?

Sahara Muradi | 07:16.987–08:48.118

What I love is being at the forefront of bridging user centric concepts with the business objectives and being able to deliver results. lot of times in project, or sorry, a lot of times in product management, especially at PLG organizations, we’re tasked with really understanding how we can help.

I’m going to get this right. And in PLG organizations or product growth organizations, we are tasked with bridging product functionality with business outcomes and making sure that we have sustainable growth in that. And in order to achieve those results, we get to work and orchestrate across different disciplines within the organization. I love being able to collaborate with everyone from sales to marketing leaders to client services and professional services.

to make sure that we are not only identifying the challenges that we’re seeing in our market and with our clients, but also being able to deliver and measure the impact that we have both for our clients and for our business. And it essentially grows you not only as a leader from a product perspective, but in every aspect of life. I use product management even in my personal life. You should see my vacation planners. I I go into everything in terms of ensuring that we’re constantly

know, ideating, measuring and delivering and then iterating.

Productside | 08:48.118–09:10.289

Yes, and I hear your heart for the customer and all that. So I love how you keep focusing on that customer centric, right? Marrying customer with the business needs for sure. So what’s really challenging in that? I’m sure there’s, as much as we love product management, what do you see that is really challenging in this space?

Sahara Muradi | 09:10.289–11:31.451

The biggest challenges that we run into, especially in a SaaS organization and a B2B environment, is the amount of input and requests that we get. And everyone really wants a piece of the roadmap. So as you can imagine, from senior leadership who have certain objectives and KPIs that they’re tied to in order to drive growth and to continue to maintain and grow revenue to our clients who have their specific demands to meet business objectives.

and our internal stakeholders. So when you look at all three of those specific discrete groups, each have their own interests and we have various ways that we can gather those inputs as well as validate them and ensure we’re objectively prioritizing them. So from a market perspective, it’s really important for your organization to always be ahead of market trends, ensure that you’re looking at different innovations, not only in just your space, but across different industries.

reviewing publications, everything from Wired or The Verge for more broad scale, but also industry specific items. In Marriott, we constantly looked at Skift for travel and hospitality insights, and we looked at Sports Business Journal when I was at MLB. It’s really important to see what emerging trends are so that you can ensure that you’re ahead as well as staying competitive with some of your competitors in that space.

For your clients, there are a lot of different ways to gather intel and inputs. We have a product portal where you can obtain requests and start to sort of see emerging themes there. You also have a lot of tools like Gainsight and Pendo that allow you to track how consumers are leveraging your platform, as well as get ahead on potential churn risk or expansion opportunities based on client sentiment that you’re tracking for each of those clients and their use cases on those platforms. And then for your internal stakeholders,

These are a true wealth of knowledge. They are your client facing teams, your field teams that are interacting with prospects and clients daily. And a lot of what they can provide is understanding some opportunities on product gaps, especially as it relates to prospects and what they’re looking for, close loss deals because of something that you didn’t have on your platform. You also have client services who are very interested in retention opportunities and ensuring that

Sahara Muradi | 11:31.451–13:22.162

we’re meeting the needs for their specific use cases. And then internal teams who also have their own needs for the platform, maybe to help facilitate professional services and implementation, setting up the platform. And as you have all of these insights coming in, the biggest challenge we have from a product perspective is how do we then validate them and tie them to actual tangible results, true KPIs, whether it’s driving revenue for existing logos and retention.

it’s prospects and new logo expansion opportunities, or it’s just efficiencies within your ecosystem and your current within your company and ensuring that you can stand up clients quickly. So what we have to do is really ensure that as we’re creating a framework to look at those requests relative to one another, it’s transparent. So what we do in product is we create our stack rank lists,

We qualify those opportunities through discovery. We’re working with clients to make sure that we understand their specific use cases. We review design iterations with them. We interview them and have them look through our prototypes. And then bringing all of that data back to our internal teams. It’s so important to expose that information so they can see what specific negotiations we had in order to align on the MVP scope.

they know why we decided to determine certain things would deliver incremental value faster. At Office Space, we have this amazing meeting that we started. It’s called the craft meeting. It stands for the cross-functional roadmap alignment and feature. Sorry. We started the craft meeting and it’s called…

Sahara Muradi | 13:22.162–14:47.968

At Office Space, we actually started a cross-functional roadmap alignment and feedback team, which we called the craft meeting. And what that does is it bridges together and brings individuals from sales, from marketing, from client services, as well as learning and enablement. And what we do is we review some of those problem statements that we’ve now validated in discovery and that we prioritize on our roadmap. And we start to gain some…

momentum in co-creating solution options with feedback as well as with insights that they share. We also qualify certain candidates for user research studies. And when we come back to the team, we’re sharing outputs on what we’ve discovered, what we’ve decided from a phase incremental delivery approach, and we’re building momentum in our go-to-market motions. Everyone is hearing these quotes and seeing the impact that this can have, and it’s starting to feed into their work.

They’re going to QBRs with more confidence in what we’re delivering from a roadmap perspective and able to speak on these features. We’re showcasing items for client services that they can reference when someone asks for a product enhancement request that’s already allocated on the roadmap. So these meetings really allow us to help our downstream partners feel confident in what we’re introducing on the roadmap, but also that we’re hearing them, seeing them, and addressing all of their needs from our insights and our discovery.

Productside | 14:47.968–15:06.577

It sounds like a great way to get alignment across all those teams as well. I love that cross-functional work that you’re doing there. Is there something interesting you can share that maybe you’ve learned from your teams or from any of your stakeholders lately?

Sahara Muradi | 15:06.577–15:19.633

Sure, so from a few things that we’ve learned across our stakeholder groups, would say, sorry I have to think about this one.

Sahara Muradi | 15:19.633–15:32.465

You think about it good.

Key Traits of Successful Product Managers

Sahara Muradi | 15:32.465–16:56.206

There are many things that we learn from our stakeholder groups, especially when we have this transparency and this collaboration on a weekly basis. It’s really important as we’re evaluating prioritization to have a lot of the objective information at our hands. And so in often cases, it’s hard to scrub through Salesforce or Gong to find out specific information on product gaps. And so what we’ve done is started to standardize that into

categories and our opportunities, which makes it much easier for an AE or a BDR to quickly go in and select from a dropdown, here’s a specific item that we’ve had challenges on. So that feeds into our metrics a bit more. Similarly with client services, when there are certain areas that they have challenges with, we want to make sure we can create themes that will then allow us to tackle these initiatives at a broader scale and see how much of this we can truly deliver.

and quantifying that to actual business results. So whether it’s the ARR tied to a specific deal or opportunity or understanding the churn risk that we will have from you know, client retention or contract value and ensuring that we’re continuing to maintain our ASPs. So what we do is we challenge those who come to us with requests to provide that data because that will essentially feed into our prioritization model. In many companies you use Rice, you could use Moscow or you could use Wishtif.

Productside | 16:56.206–16:58.629

Hmm.

Sahara Muradi | 16:58.629–17:53.144

We actually created our own at Office space because there’s so many key elements that go into understanding how we prioritize roadmap areas. It could be essentially whether this aligns with your growth transformation objectives and your MBOs, and that could be weighted at a certain percentage. The segments that you’re really trying to target, your churn risk, if you don’t deliver this feature, what will happen? Your competitive advantage, is this something that your competitors have already that you’re catching up on or something that’s really gonna differentiate you in the market?

So what we do is we take all of those qualifying factors, they are all tied to numeric values that our field teams are providing inputs on, and then we have a specific weight and a formula that we use so that when we’re stack ranking those, we can see essentially what really will deliver value the soonest, as well as help us realize some of those benefits that we’ve asked each of those field teams to provide to us.

Productside | 17:53.144–18:30.545

That’s really interesting and that also puts that ownership on your stakeholders to do their research and do their work before coming to you as opposed to just throwing out requests. They really need to own what that impact, those outcomes are going to bring. So I love that approach. And so now I want to talk, Sahara, about you as the Vice President You’ve got a whole team of people I’m sure that you’re working with.

What do you look for? What do you really look for when you’re hiring a product manager? What stands out to you?

Sahara Muradi | 18:30.545–20:36.558

You know, there are a couple really key characteristics I look for in project management, especially for product managers who are either new to product management or kind of still trying to figure out whether or not they would like to grow into an IC or manager role. And I think there are some key characteristics that really stand out to me. One is a passion to solve problems. I think they really have to be one by nature, someone who understands and really wants to get to the root of what

workflows or challenges someone’s having while keeping their end goal in mind. It’s really important when they’re in sessions to be very cognizant of the fact that every single person, every user persona you’re interviewing has a specific task or achievement they’re trying to accomplish. And so they have to understand that problem to the core and the challenges and the sentiments and the frustrations and everything that they go through and empathize with those users in order to truly solve the problem.

The second thing I look for is for someone to be really curious and have a hunger. They have to be somebody who not only looks at kind of the more obvious paths to solving the problem, but are constantly brainstorming innovative ways, doing a lot of research. I mean, a lot of times I see product managers who are very sort of siloed in the types of programs they’re used to as a consumer. They use like a certain set of mobile apps or social media outlets, but they’re not doing that groundwork and that research.

in spaces both in their industry but across different mediums. Trying to get energized and also looking at creative opportunities where there could be different ways to solve a problem based on different mediums and channels. So it’s really important to have that curiosity and to be able to look at innovative concepts. They have to have a growth mindset. In product management, it’s very challenging.

not only in managing stakeholder expectations, but you might deliver a product that doesn’t get adopted, that doesn’t meet the needs of the client, that may fail. And if you’re able to learn from that, to fail fast, to really take those best practices and to know how to improve on those processes going forward, you’ll be a really successful product manager because you know there will always be items that we can improve on, both from a product perspective as well as a process and people perspective.

Productside | 20:36.558–20:53.726

Hmm.

Productside | 20:53.726–20:54.777

Absolutely.

Sahara Muradi | 20:54.777–20:58.807

I look for somebody who’s also very collaborative in nature. They have a lot of stakeholders there constantly, know, interacting with, but also gathering information from. They have to make stakeholders feel comfortable and confident, as we were just talking about, especially in stakeholder management strategies. And the last thing is a business acumen. With product management, we have to measure success, but we also have to know how that relates to our overall business.

Productside | 20:58.807–21:14.094

Mm.

Final Thoughts on Consumer-Centric Product Management

Productside | 21:14.094–21:20.943

Hmm.

Sahara Muradi | 21:20.943–21:39.702

and how we can ensure we keep all of our stakeholders happy and their interests, no matter who they are, from your leadership to your private equity company that may own you or to additional levers that you have with the clients. It’s really important to be able to speak very eloquently to every aspect of the business.

Productside | 21:39.702–22:16.347

And that’s where your project management experience came in so well with your role now. So I always love thinking about where product managers come from, right? And hearing that experience that they can gain in different roles or different divisions within their companies and then bringing that into product management is always really interesting.

And then for women specifically, I’d love to hear some advice that you have, Sahara, for women who want to break into product management. What could you share there?

Sahara Muradi | 22:16.347–23:01.44

I get approached by women all the time, especially being a senior leader in product management, both those who are interested in coming into product, but also those who have been a product manager for some time and are just trying to navigate their careers and deciding whether they want to truly lead and manage individuals, they want to get a more succinct area of the products that they own. So it’s really challenging, I think especially as we don’t see a lot of women leaders in product

What I tend to tell these women is to grow your network and really… Sorry. What I tend to tell these women is to… Give me one second. I got a little dry mouth for a second there.

Productside | 23:01.44–23:04.145

Okay, that’s okay. You can take a sip of water.

Sahara Muradi | 23:04.145–23:12.335

We’ll do that.

Sahara Muradi | 23:12.335–23:43.534

I get, okay.

I get reached out to by women all the time, especially being one of the few senior leaders in product management in some of the most unique spaces. And they’re constantly wondering questions about whether or not they should move into an IC or a manager role, or how much they should speak up in meetings and challenge certain ideologies and question leadership. Sorry, it’s like going way down the wrong track. You asked me about growth.

Productside | 23:43.534–23:50.085

For women specifically, yeah, like advice for women.

Sahara Muradi | 23:50.085–25:01.583

I get reached out to quite a bit from women who are budding leaders in product management, as well as those who may be interested in transitioning into a career in product management. And what I often recommend is to ensure that you’re growing your collective network. I think it’s so important as women to ensure that we are broadening our scope beyond our current organizations and our close-knit circle group. And the reason I say that is because

it really helps you hone in on your leadership style and allows you to expand on opportunities and approaches. I’m actually part of a women’s leadership development community called Chief. And what has allowed me to do is essentially start to learn from other product leaders, those who are in technology and UX, and you have an environment where it’s a safe space to start to ideate on different approaches to solving problems that you may have, whether it’s growing a high performance team.

Trying to convince and negotiate with leadership on certain strategies that will help drive the business and also cultivating company culture and you know really

Sahara Muradi | 25:01.583–25:06.757

I got this. right.

Sahara Muradi | 25:06.757–26:34.168

What I tend to tell women is to ensure that they are not afraid to reach out to grow their collective circle. A lot of times we get very siloed in our organizations and we tend to look to our immediate circle and network for support. But the more that you broaden your scope, the more information you’ll be able to gain and learn, as well as really defining your leadership style beyond your current organization. It’s important to go to industry events.

anything from a tech week in your city or to a conference as you’ll gain perspective on what’s happening not only in market, but also being able to meet people from different areas and different organizations and industries that all have perspectives and ideas and it starts to help create your creativity. I also encourage folks to get involved in professional development communities where you can build relationships in different networks to help you understand

problems that they tackle, as well as just really getting to know individuals in a more safe space. You can test different ideologies or approaches that you have. You can have some discourse that really helps you gain constructive feedback on items that you may be tackling or grappling with in your organization. And it also gets you out of your comfort zone. I think Brene Brown really said it best when the true learning happens when you’re challenged outside of your comfort.

And I think this is really an area that women have an opportunity when they’re networking and they’re outside of their circles to gain more information, to learn, to grow, and to expand their mindset.

Productside | 26:34.168–26:47.672

Mm.

Productside | 26:47.672–26:54.553

That’s great advice. Thank you. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience today?

Sahara Muradi | 26:54.553–27:51.426

I would love to just say no matter whether you’re in a B2B or a B2C setting, it’s so important to index on your consumer. We learn so much as product managers being at the epicenter of an organization. We’re learning the business challenges, we’re learning the consumer and user challenges, and the more that you gain this information, it’s so important to document and to share it. Every single stakeholder within your organization can benefit from this information.

Insights that you provide can be added to a pitch deck, can be used to it in a QER, can be something that is promoted in marketing collateral. And all of that helps not only from a business results perspective, but also ensuring that you’re providing essential information to your cross-functional partners and helping them do their job. And it also makes sure that everyone in the entire organization has a stake in surprising, delighting customers, just like you do.

Productside | 27:51.426–28:05.179

I love that. That’s a great nugget to end on, the surprise and delight, which is always a fun aspect of product management for sure. So thank you, Sahara, so much for joining us. It was great to have you.

Sahara Muradi | 28:05.179–28:07.758

Thank you for having me, Nicole. I really appreciate it.

Productside | 28:07.758–28:27.505

Great. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, don’t forget to subscribe and stay tuned for more empowering stories from the world of product management. Until next time, I’m Nicole Tisch, and this is Productside Stories.

Sahara Muradi | 28:27.505–28:28.942

What did you think? Better?

Productside | 28:28.942–28:28.942

Good night.