The PM Pivot – How to Align a Team Towards a New Direction or Goal

Learn tactical approaches to realign and redirect your team when faced with a reorganization, a strategy pivot, or a reprioritization.

About this event

When your company or organization takes a new direction, teams need to realign to tackle a new vision, roadmap, or goal. Learn how to quickly and successfully pivot your team’s focus while building trust across functions and partners. Join Cristina Fernandez, Product Manager Lead at Meta, for a primer on tactical approaches to realign, redirect and empower your team when a shift in your org, your strategy, or your priorities forces a pivot. Cristina is no stranger to the need to adapt and get everyone on board STAT – prior to her time at Meta, she served as an Associate Director at Wayfair, where she pivoted a 70-person team to a successful reorientation, and was a Product Manager at GitHub, working on improving the discoverability of projects – experiences that helped her develop a methodology for crowdsourcing team ideas, fostering a collaborative approach when facing a shift, and ultimately aligning her teams with overall strategy and vision.

💡Learn:

• Ways to apply workshop-style strategies around a pivot to get to alignment sooner
• How to leverage this new direction to build trust between functions, teams, and partners
• How to navigate ambiguity and define success while maintaining credibility both within your team and your org

📝 Then…

APPLY immediately! You’ll be paired in timed 1:1 chats with other PMs, to immediately practice what we learn. Meet other PMs also looking to realign their team in a new direction, and learn while growing your network of other ambitious women in product management.

📍Meet your Expert:

Cristina is an experienced product leader who has developed products for Facebook, GitHub, Counsyl, and Wayfair. She has degrees from Harvard and MIT Sloan and is passionate about driving an inclusive and supportive team culture that produces impactful product experiences for customers. Passionate about data-driven decision making and product development.

Currently, she is a Product Manager at Facebook where she is focused on building company-wide device and location platforms. As an Associate Director at Wayfair she managed teams that built the welcome experience for Wayfair through Navigation, Home Page, and Customer Identity teams across platforms and stores. She applied data and user-centered thinking to building developer tools as a Product Manager at GitHub, working on improving the discoverability of projects by combining user-generated Topics and machine learning. Her first job out of business school was as founder of a chemical technology startup.

📍Meet your Moderator:

Moderator Polly Yung, is currently a Product Lead at RBC Ventures and a co-chapter lead for the Toronto chapter of Women In Product.

Polly is an outcome driven product manager with expertise in building both enterprise and consumer products. Her career has spanned across multiple industries including Health Tech, Sales Performance & Incentive Compensation Management, consumer utility apps and more. Polly is passionate about building user-centric products backed by data informed decisions.

⏰ About Product Blenders:

In our Product Blender series, Hosts and guests offer key tactics, techniques or actionable insights in a brief kickoff session. Zero fluff, no ‘housekeeping’ filler, no drawn out intros.

Speed Sessions are followed by timed paired 1:1 chats to practice or discuss with other PM peers. After each match, you’ll have the option to swap contacts with a click.

Blenders will close with a group debrief and Speaker Q&A – you’ll be able to get feedback on your 1:1 practice. Each event covers new skills and topics – we hope to see you at more than one!