Product Management Training for Modern Organizations

Strategic product management training and business acumen training for complex organizations

 

THE PROBLEM: The Multi-Million Dollar Training Mistake

You invested in product management training. Everyone loved it. But twelve months later:

  • Product revenue missed targets by 23% ($12M shortfall)
  • Finance rejected 60% of business cases for lack of financial rigor
  • Two strategic product launches failed due to weak market analysis
  • Three senior product managers left for companies with “real product leadership”
  • Your CEO is still making product decisions because the PM team struggles with strategic thinking

What went wrong?

The training developed knowledge, not capability. Your product managers can describe prioritization frameworks but can’t prioritize when everything is “urgent.” They know what business cases should include but can’t build defensible financial models. They completed the modules but can’t connect product decisions to P&L impact.

The gap isn’t product management skills. It’s business acumen.

Product managers are asked to make strategic decisions without understanding how the business works, how value is created, how investments are evaluated, and how tradeoffs are made across portfolios and markets. This gap costs organizations millions in missed opportunities, poor decisions, and organizational drag.

WHO WE ARE

We are a Product Management and Business Acumen Professional Development Firm

Sequent Learning Networks is the product management professional development division of Business Acumen Institute. For over 20 years, we’ve trained 30,000+ product managers across 500+ organizations in industries where complexity can’t be avoided, industrial manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, enterprise technology, and other B2B firms.

Founded by Steven Haines, author of The Product Manager’s Desk Reference and 11 books on product management and business acumen, Sequent brings together:

  • Deep research across industries and business models
  • Frameworks taught at major universities
  • Customized programs tailored to complex organizations
  • Proven methodology that develops capability, not just knowledge

We don’t train product managers to memorize frameworks. We train them to operate as business leaders.

Our programs help organizations:

  • Elevate product management from tactical execution to strategic business accountability
  • Build business acumen, financial understanding, and strategic judgment in product roles
  • Create a shared language across product, finance, technology, and leadership
  • Strengthen executive trust in product-led decisions

THE BUSINESS ACUMEN GAP

Why Product Managers Struggle (And How Organizations Can Fix It)

The problem isn’t that product managers don’t work hard or aren’t capable. The problem is they’re asked to make strategic decisions without the business foundation to make them well.

What’s missing:

  • Financial literacy: Understanding unit economics, contribution margin, CAC, LTV, payback period
  • Strategic thinking: Connecting product decisions to competitive advantage and market positioning
  • Portfolio perspective: Making tradeoffs across products, customers, and investments with evidence and rationale
  • Executive language: Communicating in terms of risk, return, strategic fit, and business impact

What happens when business acumen is missing:

  • Product conversations stay tactical (features, timelines) instead of strategic (value, positioning, market impact)
  • Business cases get rejected by finance for lack of rigor and defensibility
  • Executives don’t trust product recommendations and make the decisions themselves
  • Product managers become administrators instead of strategic partners
  • Millions in opportunity cost from missed markets, poor prioritization, and weak competitive positioning

The organizational cost:

  • Organizational drag: Weak business cases force engineers and others to do PM work
  • Missed opportunities: High-potential products don’t get funded because PMs can’t quantify opportunities
  • Career stagnation: Talented PMs leave when stuck in tactical execution roles
  • Leadership frustration: Executives lose confidence in product leadership

Sequent addresses this gap directly by offering business acumen training as an adjunct to product management development. We teach product managers and their teams to:

  • Build defensible business cases with financial models, market analysis, and strategic rationale
  • Think strategically and systemically, especially for complex decisions
  • Make prioritization decisions that connect to strategy and can be defended to executives
  • Communicate product strategy in the language of business outcomes
  • Think like general managers with P&L accountability

BUILT FOR COMPLEX ORGANIZATIONS

Generic training programs assume all product organizations are the same. They’re not. Sequent specializes in complex organizations where:

  • Multiple lines of business require coordinated product strategy
  • Regulated markets demand rigor and accountability
  • Long product life cycles require sustained strategic thinking
  • Global teams need consistent capability development
  • Products are central to the business, not an afterthought
  • B2B sales cycles and customer relationships are complex and multifaceted

Industries we serve:

  • Industrial and manufacturing organizations
  • Financial services, banking, and fintech
  • Healthcare, medical device, and life sciences
  • Enterprise technology and platform providers
  • Telecommunications and infrastructure
  • B2B companies with complex sales cycles

Why complexity matters: The frameworks that work for consumer apps don’t translate to regulated industries, long sales cycles, enterprise products, or multi-year customer relationships. We understand your context because we’ve spent 20 years working in it.

We work with organizations where products have:

  • Multi-year development cycles
  • Complex stakeholder ecosystems
  • Regulatory and compliance requirements
  • Enterprise sales processes
  • Long-term customer commitments
  • Portfolio interdependencies

Sequent’s approach:

1. Deep Customization

Before we start any program, we:

  • Research your company deeply: business model, competitive position, product portfolio
  • Study your industry: market dynamics, customer segments, regulatory environment
  • Conduct competency and organizational assessments: targeting key developmental gaps
  • Analyze your competitors: their strategies, vulnerabilities, your competitive advantages
  • Review your products, processes, and organizational structure
  • Meet with your executives to understand strategic priorities and capability gaps
  • Collaborate with your leaders to ensure that learning goals are understood

2. Multiple Workshop Categories

Customized Product Management Training to build foundational capabilities

Customized Business Acumen Training to fortify business and leadership skills

Customized Strategic Thinking Training to develop leaders to see things that others miss

3. Managerial Reinforcement

Here’s what we’ve learned from 20 years: workshops develop capability, but behavioral change requires managerial support. After workshops, effectiveness depends on whether managers:

  • Help people stop doing things they shouldn’t be doing (tactical firefighting and low-value tactical activities)
  • Coach and enable them to do things they should be doing (strategic thinking, fact-based business case development, and data-driven product strategies)
  • Create opportunities to apply new capabilities to real work
  • Provide feedback and reinforcement as people practice

We work with managers to ensure post-training support that drives lasting behavioral change.

4. Business Outcome Measurement

We don’t measure completion rates or satisfaction scores.  If your company utilized our competency and/or organizational assessments, we’re able to help you measure:

  • Pre- and post-program capability improvement (both knowledge and application)
  • Business outcomes: product revenue, margin improvement, decision quality, time-to-market
  • Behavioral change observed by managers and cross-functional partners
  • ROI based on measurable business results

Organizations that complete Sequent’s programs typically achieve 5-10x ROI within 12 months.

HOW WE CAN WORK WITH YOUR COMPANY

A Multi-Step Capability Development Model

Step 1: Assess the knowing-doing gap

If you want to develop business acumen for product managers, we use a business acumen competency assessment. If your focus is on developing product management skills for product managers, we use a product management competency assessment. Each instrument is designed to assess two areas: knowledge (what people have learned) and application (what skills people truly apply on the job).  These assessment instruments are used to identify skill and capability gaps and to use in customizing our training programs.

Step 2: Evaluate organizational enablement and executive support

We use a product management practices and culture assessment to evaluate six areas that executives must provide for product managers and their teams to be supported.  Each item is rated on two scales: performance (the degree to which specific practices are utilized) and importance (what leaders feel may be critical to success).

Phase 2: Design the Optimal Approach

Based on assessment results, we design:

  • Customized workshops for foundational capabilities, where managers will provide post-training reinforcement
  • Applied learning, deeply facilitated programs for capabilities requiring extended coaching and iteration

All programs are customized to your products, processes, competitive context, and strategic priorities.

Step 3: Develop Capability Through Practice

  • Product managers practice with your actual business (not generic examples)
  • They work on real deliverables (business cases, product strategies, roadmaps)
  • They receive coaching from practitioners with 20+ years of cross-industry experience
  • Managers are involved to reinforce new capabilities and create space for application

Step 4: Measure Business Outcomes

We track pre-and post-program capability improvement and work with leaders to assess improvements in product manager effectiveness, business results (revenue, decision quality, etc.), and behaviors that are observable by management. 

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