How to spot (and solve) your product team’s biggest problems - Vidya Dinamani (Product Rebels)
In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Vidya Dinamani, product veteran, coach, and Co-founder of Product Rebels, about how to tell if your team is truly product-led or just paying lip service. With over a decade of experience coaching hundreds of teams, Vidya shares her insights into the critical elements of product maturity, the most overlooked barriers to effective product work, and how Product Rebels' diagnostic framework is helping companies move from chaos to clarity.
Chapters
- 00:00 – The customer conversation gap
- 01:28 – Meet Vidya Dinamani and Product Rebels
- 03:35 – Why they built a diagnostic, not an assessment
- 04:45 – Mindsets, competencies, and the missing piece: resources
- 06:28 – AI readiness: the new fourth pillar
- 07:40 – What it really means to be product-led
- 09:59 – How teams are using the diagnostic
- 13:10 – Breaking down the four pillars
- 16:01 – Why access to customers remains a key obstacle
- 17:38 – Patterns, or lack thereof, in product maturity
- 20:26 – AI readiness in context
- 23:59 – A case study: product maturity at scale
- 27:52 – Final thoughts on assessment vs naming
What we learned from Vidya
- Most product teams lack customer access: 70–80% of PMs Product Rebels encounter say they’ve never spoken to a customer.
- Being product-led requires more than intent: It demands mindset, core competencies, supportive resources—and now AI readiness.
- Diagnostic, not assessment: Their tool isn’t about performance reviews; it’s a heat map that reveals where to begin your transformation.
- AI is not a bolt-on: AI readiness is most effective when integrated into the broader product maturity conversation, not treated as a silo.
- Start with one thing: Rather than trying to become product-led across the board, identify a single focus area and build momentum from there.
- Internal PMs need customer framing too: Even teams building internal platforms need customer advocacy and insight.
Featured Links: Follow Vidya on LinkedIn | Product Rebels
About the author
The Product Experience
Join our podcast hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver for in-depth conversations with some of the best product people around the world! Every week they chat with people in the know, covering the topics that matter to you - solving real problems, developing awesome products, building successful teams and developing careers. Find out more, subscribe, and access all episodes on The Product Experience homepage.
