How to lead when you don't have authority - Sean Flaherty (ITX Corp)

Influence without authority. That's the big buzzword in the product space. I figured out in some way how to codify that so that product leaders can get access to that science in a simple way and apply it. If you're just trying to make everything you're doing so predictable that there's no space for creativity, you squeeze out the freedom. How do you encourage autonomy or advise leaders to do that in a way which is beneficial to the team rather than sort of terrifying? You still wanna get the same outcomes. The outcomes haven't changed. But why are we making such a big deal about the tools we're using? Always been fascinated with code and the code of life. That's why I went from molecular genetics at the University of Rochester. And then after I graduated, I was writing software for Kodak. So I went in as a molecular geneticist and realized how much power software had to change the world. Evolution is 100% dependent on the environment. When the environment changes, the species that survives is the one that's most adaptable to that change. So Sean, welcome to the Product Experience podcast. How are you doing? Doing very, very good. Loving it. This has been a great conference and, really looking forward to the the podcast here. And we're here at industry conference. Mhmm. Both looking quite jazzy, I feel, and kind of matching. Yeah. You know, my wife makes she designs the shirts. We've Oh. Tailored that comes to our city. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, people have to catch us on YouTube if they wanna actually see the flare. There we go. So before we get into our subject, it would be great if you could give our listeners a quick intro to who you are and your experience with products. Sure. So I started building software products when I was, like, 11 years old. My father had the foresight to bring home a Commodore Vic 20, which had a whole 16 k of RAM at the time. And I learned yeah. Those it came with a book and a cassette tape drive, so you would you could store programs on a cassette tape. And, I learned how to code line number basic, from reading programs from a book and typing them into the computer and then saving them to the cassette drive. And that's how I learned to code. And I never stopped coding, so I went from there and through high school. I never took class in software, ever, even in college. But I went into the navy. I kept programming. I got out of the navy. I went to school for molecular genetics, because I've always been fascinated with code and the code of life. So that's That's it, code. That's why I went for molecular genetics at the University of Rochester. And then after I graduated, I worked for Eastman Kodak, which is the only corporate job I ever …