Ready Steady Grow
The Essential Product Team Guide
Whether you’re leading a team or contributing as part of one, this guide offers practical advice, hands-on exercises, and case studies. Aligned with industry experts, it helps your team overcome misalignment and deliver quality results faster.
Building Better Products Together
Creating a More Empowering Experience for Teams
We’ve been there—one minute, your team’s making progress, the next, you’re buried in meetings, firefighting, and losing focus. When teams don’t have a clear plan, things fall apart fast—burnout rises, customer needs get lost, and momentum stalls.
Ready Steady Grow is the solution. No fluff, just real strategies that work. Whether it’s aligning your vision, keeping your team focused on customers, or executing with precision, this guide gives you practical steps you can apply today.
At its core, Ready Steady Grow is built on a framework honed through years of hands-on experience. It centers around six essential elements—Strategic Alignment, Customer Focus, Team Empowerment, Execution Excellence, Proactive Engineering, and Outcomes Driven. These seeds create the foundation for high-performing teams that deliver consistently.
As your team progresses through the five stages of growth, you’ll see how these seeds evolve, helping you navigate the ups and downs of product development with actionable, real-world advice.
- Strategic Alignment
- Keep your team moving in the right direction with a shared vision that evolves as your product and business grow.
- Customer Focus
- Make sure your product development stays centered on solving real customer problems that drive long-term success.
- Team Empowerment
- Give your team the ownership and autonomy they need to make decisions and deliver meaningful outcomes.
- Execution Excellence
- Build a culture of consistency and quality, where your team can deliver high-impact results every time.
- Proactive Engineering
- Ensure your technical decisions align with product goals, enabling faster innovation and adaptability.
- Outcomes Driven
- Focus on achieving results that matter, keeping your team aligned with business goals and customer needs.
Product Development Community Feedback
People Love Our Book
“Somewhere along the way, we lost touch with our end-users and it showed in our work. Ready Steady Grow helped us get back to listening to our customers and building things that mattered to them.”
“Ready Steady Grow helped our team bridge the gap between strategy and execution. By aligning our engineering efforts with the company's broader goals, we've not only improved efficiency but also delivered more meaingful results.”
“Ready Steady Grow is a must-read for anyone looking to build a successful product team. It provides practical insights and actionable strategies that can transform your team’s performance and drive business growth.”
What's Inside
Each chapter offers straightforward guidance, backed by real examples and hands-on exercises. You’ll find practical tools you can use immediately to help your team improve and apply the lessons in a meaningful way.
- The Need for a Growth Plan
- A clear plan helps teams avoid the common traps of misalignment and inefficiency, providing the direction needed to stay focused on what matters most.
- Sowing the Seeds of Success
- Great teams aren’t built by accident. Focus on the key elements that drive growth, empower teams, and create lasting success.
- Strategic Alignment
- When teams and company goals are aligned, work becomes more focused and impactful. A shared vision keeps everyone on the same page, driving results.
- Customer Focus
- Teams succeed when they put the customer first. By solving real customer problems, teams can create products that deliver long-term value.
- Team Empowerment
- Teams need autonomy to do their best work. Give them the ownership and trust they need to deliver meaningful outcomes.
- Execution Excellence
- It’s all about turning strategy into reality. Operational discipline ensures teams consistently deliver high-quality work at scale.
- Proactive Engineering
- Engineering decisions should always align with product goals. A proactive approach accelerates innovation and keeps teams adaptable.
- Outcomes-Driven Approach
- Focus on results, not just effort. Teams that prioritize outcomes over output create real value for customers and the business.
- Cultivating Sustainable Growth
- Growth requires continuous adaptation. Keep momentum strong by evolving your approach and building for long-term success.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Meet Your Product Experts
Decades of Experience, Boundless Passion
Lisa Hagen
Founder & Product Coach
With twenty years of experience building and leading exceptional product organizations, Lisa has a proven track record of transforming potential into performance. She’s guided teams across SaaS, services, and platform businesses through scale, helped them find clarity in complexity, and consistently delivered results that drive growth and customer value. Lisa’s passion lies in bringing out the best in teams—creating the focus, alignment, and momentum that turns good work into standout products and lasting progress.
Chris Kincanon
Founder & Technology Leader
With over twenty years of experience building and scaling engineering teams, Chris has a proven track record of helping companies turn vision into execution by aligning technology with business strategy. He has led engineering organizations through every stage of growth—from early-stage startups to enterprise transformations, consistently delivering systems that accelerate development and drive results. Chris works with founders and leadership teams to de-risk critical technology decisions, structure high-performing teams, and build scalable systems. His experience spans cloud infrastructure, AI-driven platforms, and cross-functional collaboration—ensuring teams can streamline execution and scale efficiently.