SAP Concur

Responsible for business and AI product strategy for Concur's Expense product investments in the enterprise market globally.

Senior Director - Product Strategy & Operations

AI Focused product leader covering Concur's Expense Audit & Compliance portfolio including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) solutions globally.

Director of Product Management

Responsible for product and AI strategy for Concur's Expense Audit & Compliance portfolio including Machine Learning (ML) solutions globally.

Principal Product Manager

Leadr, Inc.

Brought on to oversee the transformation of an early-stage startup from proof-of-concept to a launch ready product.  Managing a small product, UX, and engineering team focused on product strategy and execution.

Chief Product Officer

Nintex

Senior product manager overseeing multiple initiatives as a part of the development, beta, and launch of the company’s next generation cloud-based enterprise SaaS product.

Senior Product Manager

Dell

Product manager and owner for Dell Software’s Microsoft SharePoint customization business collaborating with global engineering, UX, sales, and marketing teams.

Key Accomplishments:
- Lead product launch of Dell’s first-ever cloud apps in the Microsoft App store that helped Dell Software win Office App Developer Partner of the year from Microsoft.
- Successfully lead product through two rebranding cycles
- Successfully executed 4 major product updates
- Represented Dell software in multiple publications, webcasts, speaking events, and thought leadership campaigns worldwide.

Global Product Manager

Product Manager

Progressive Insurance

I oversaw the performance and delivery of 75-member IT control organization managing $750M annual IT purchasing budget. Championed cross-functional improvement programs digitally transforming contract lifecycle management and strategic vendor management processes.

Key Accomplishments:
- Spearheaded the identification and optimization of cost-saving opportunities cutting budgetary spend by $4.7M across three years. 
- Streamlined the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) process that spanned 6 separate business units reducing cycle times by over 50%.

Analyst IV

Developed and implemented software applications and hardware that served 400 Project Managers and 4,500 IT resources dispersed across 5,000+ IT projects.

Senior Software Engineer

Barker Software & Consulting

Established consulting company comprised of 1099-contractors focused on providing small businesses with custom web development and  technology consulting services.

Founder and General Manager

Chandler Group of Companies (Acquired by Healthsmart Holdings)

Lead developer creating EDI solutions to streamline healthcare claims from business partners in real time, improving data sharing between companies, hospitals, PPOs, and HMOs.

Crowe

Developer and architect providing consulting services and staff-augmentation to clients throughout the US for both infrastructure and enterprise application development projects. Supported pre-sales activities.  Promoted to senior consultant in 2002.

Projects included:

- Worked with Ranpak, one of the world's largest producers of packaging materials and Dell to design and develop product that interfaced packaging robotics that automated manufacturing and packaging processes. 

- Worked with Newell Rubbermaid to implement custom SharePoint and document management solution that promoted company-wide collaboration; also created new application that captured, processed, and imbedded e-signatures into PDF documents.

- Worked with Riggs Bank (now PNC Bank) to develop components that facilitated real time and batch banking transactions across variety of mediums, including Web and phone banking, wire transfer, ATM, and international exchange.

Senior Consultant

Kent State University

On university staff doing web application development while completing my 4 year degree.

Software Developer

Product and business strategy executive with experience building, launching and scaling multiple products within startup, midsize and enterprise companies.

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Senior Director of Product Management at SAP Concur!

Dan Barker

I am in year three of structured Ironman training.  I can’t overstate how important and impactful it is to have a coach in your life.   Whether it’s applied to your occupation or goals you have outside of work.  Having someone objectively review and critique what you’re doing helps you become aware of what needs adjusted.  These small adjustments applied consistently compound overtime. Sometimes you are going to hear things you don’t want to hear.  Sometimes you need to do things you don’t want to do.

But that’s exactly why you need a coach. to push you beyond your comfort zone and hold you accountable. It can be painful sometimes but that’s where growth happens. Especially when you’re doing hard things.

Below is a screenshot of a conversation with my Ironman coach. 

Everyone deserves a good coach!!

#coaching #growth #leadership

2024 reading list book #3 - TRANSFORMED by Marty Cagan 

Hot take. If you are a Chief Product Officer or VP of Product and you don’t read TRANSFORMED the company you work for might not be in business 10 years from now.  For some, it might be 5 years or less.  Best case your company will begin (or continue) to lose market share and fail to drive strong differentiated value in the market due to internal inertia, the pace of technology advancement and growing competition.  I realize that’s quite a statement to make but I believe it to be true. Companies who don’t live and breathe the principles used in the product operating model are going to struggle to compete and fail to maximize employee growth and happiness internally.

The book covers three key parts to a successful transformation.

1. Changing how you build.
2. Changing how you solve problems.
3. Changing how you decide with problems to solve.

These components drive a company's ability to respond to threats and take advantage of new opportunities. To me TRANSFORMED is really about leadership.  As the legendary coach Bill Campbell used to say: “The company cares about what the leader cares about.”  

As an example, If your leadership style is very reactive and short sighted, your teams will operate that way.  Adversely, if your leadership style is grounded in principles, values and a clear vision for the future, the entire company will follow suit. 

In the product model, product teams exist to solve hard problems for your customers and for your business, in ways your customers love, yet work for the business. This requires a high degree of TRUST because doing so essentially pushes the decisions and responsibility for finding the best solution to the problem down to the relevant product team, and then holding that team accountable for the result. This is why new product competencies are needed to work this way.  Product leaders must lead with context, not control. But they also need to hold teams accountable for outcomes. That requires trust and strong leadership.  

I realize there is no single book silver bullet to a successful transformation.  As a result there are 3 other books I feel go really well with TRANSFORMED that I want to call out from my experience working for enterprise B2B companies.

1. The need to move beyond past success and inertia: 
Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past by Geoffrey Moore

2. The need to identify poor strategy and replace it with good strategy:
Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumlet

3. The need for senior leadership to take complete ownership:
Extreme Ownership by Jacko Willink

Transformation is hard but I will end this post with one of my favorite quotes:  "Don't be upset by the results you didn't get with the work you didn't do.".  

Read the book and get started!  Be the kind of product leader your company and customers need.  

#leadership #productmanagement #strategy #prodmgnt

This paragraph jumped off the page at me.  As a father of two children, this is a great reminder.  This can be applied to leadership at work as well.

“Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating.  Youngsters need good role models more than they need critics. It is one of a parents greatest responsibilities and opportunities.  Too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up making a living they forget to make a life.”

- Wooden

#Leadership

2024 reading list book #4 - It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be by Paul Arden

Repeatedly reading content that gives you positive & practical guidance can  give you the confidence to achieve the seemingly unachievable!

This book is a concise guide to making the most of yourself.  If you want a pocket "bible" for making the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible, this is a short but great read.  Here are a few quotes from the book that highly resonated with me.  

If you can't solve a problem it's because you are playing by the rules.

The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything

Don't look for the next opportunity, the one you have in hand is the opportunity

Getting fired can be a positive career move.

Don't be afraid to work with the best

You don't have to be creative to be creative

You can make your company great!

#growth #leadership

2024 reading list book #5 - Wooden by Coach John Wooden

If you could go back in time and be a part of any team in history what would it be?

Two teams come to mind for me.

The first team would be the one led by NASA flight director Gene Kranz commissioned by President John F. Kennedy  to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.  The amount of trust, discipline and teamwork needed to safely land a man on the moon for the first time is hard to comprehend.   

The second team would be on one of Coach John Wooden’s NCAA championship teams. Coach Wooden accumulated a 664-162 coaching record, and was named NCAA College Basketball Coach of the Year six times.  

During that span his UCLA teams accomplished a number of remarkable outcomes including:

- Winning 38 straight NCAA tournaments
- Winning 88 consecutive games 
- Winning 7 straight national championships
- Winning 10 total national championships
- Completing 4 perfect 30-0 seasons 

I can only imagine the amount of character & discipline I would have learned under his coaching. Thankfully he wrote a book describing his leadership philosophies that anyone can read and apply.  

A few key takeaways I want to highlight include the definition of success based on what you have control over; your preparation and effort. This effort must be total, and when it is, he believes you have achieved personal success.  You have success when you work your hardest to become your best.  Preparation is the prize! If you prepare properly, you may be outscored but you will never lose. A successful journey is the destination.  

All we can control is how we prepare. Success isn’t winning. It’s preparing to win.  Even when we are outscored, we can still have success.  

This reminds me of a quote from another great coach, Bob Knight.  

“The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win.Everyone wants to win but not everyone wants to prepare to win.”

I also learned a valuable lesson about adversity.  In the 1966-67 season the NCAA rules committee outlawed the dunk. For a 7 foot player like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar this was a huge setback.  Coach Wooden told Kareem this adversity would make him a better player.  He would have to work even harder to develop his shoot near the basket without dunking it. This adversity is what allowed Kareem to develop and perfect the sky-hook.  Once Kareem got to the pros, the sky-hook became one of the most difficult shots to defend and a foundation to Kareem becoming the NBAs most prolific scorer until this year. What an incredible story of turning a short term setback of adversity into a long term strength.

The book concludes with a framework that Coach Wooden meticulously created called the Success Pyramid that lays out the personal qualities necessary for achieving success per the definition above.  If you are interested in a strong foundation for achieving your absolute best, this book is a must read.  

#fundamentals #leadership #growth

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