By Jim Cuene

I’m lucky that, due to my job, I get to spend a lot of time with people that are on the front edge of change in organizations. They’re driving new operating models, bringing new techniques into their orgs, introducing new…

By Susan Rylance

Earlier this week, we had a conversation with a Fortune 50 healthcare company that is looking to be the leader of innovation in their industry. The head of HR shared that in order to be a leader in their industry,…

By Joe Ruekert

Building digital products and experiences that customers love and use is really hard. Reaching customers has never been more difficult. Consumer attention has never been harder to gain, and Amazon and Apple of reshaped their expectations from your digital experiences.…

By Brent Swanson

Companies that struggle with articulating why their products exist, what value they deliver for their audience, and how they are organized within the broader ecosystem will find themselves stalled at the starting line of innovation. I was recently brought in…

By Jim Cuene

TL;DR: Middle leaders (Directors, VP’s) who are driving digital change have really tough jobs, and need support for building their own leadership skills . We’re doing some research into the support leaders need.  Over the last few years we’ve worked…

By Joe Ruekert

Now that 2020 has shifted how and where the world works, it’s time to look at the things that can help digital product organizations thrive when everyone isn’t always together. It goes without saying – COVID-19 fundamentally changed how the…

By Susan Rylance

Practicing our own way of working Fahren is going into its fourth year of business, which means we need to get real serious about creating scalable processes in all areas of our business in order to hit our 3, 5,…

By Jim Cuene

I learned the term “management debt” from Ben Horowitz, but I only genuinely understood it when I realized I was responsible for a small mountain of it. As we’re building Fahren, I’m extra sensitive to the downstream effects of pushing…

By Jim Cuene

As more organizations are seeking ways to be more responsive and resilient to changes, lean/agile practices are moving beyond the IT department. Marketing, customer service and HR are changing the way they plan their work, prioritize their projects, and assess…

By Susan Rylance

Although 2020 wasn’t the year we expected, we learned a lot about ourselves, our teams, and what it means to be a true leader of our teams as we guided our teams through new ventures we haven’t experienced before.    As…

By Joe Ruekert

At Fahren, we have incredible data & analytics leaders that help our clients understand their customers, products, and the insights that data can provide. Being able to gather, process, interpret, and provide conclusions for decision-making are imperative skills for any…

By Joe Ruekert

No one will argue that 2020 has been a doozie on just about every dimension. Product leaders are starting to look to a fresh start in the new year, just like everyone else. What’s really ahead for teams, leaders, and…

By Jim Cuene

It’s an amazing time to be a marketer. With an incredible array of tools at our disposal, we can do so much to connect with new and existing audiences, creating brand meaning instead of simply collecting impressions. It’s never been…

By Joe Ruekert

I recently completed a ten-week product strategy engagement with a Fortune 100 client in the medical device space. We (Fahren) were hired to lead a 10-week voice-of-customer and product strategy engagement. The client was eager to become a customer-centric organization…

By Jim Cuene

If you’re working on your 2021 digital marketing plan, you how what a strange dilemma it is.  How can you plan that far ahead when there is so much uncertainty? Pandemic, social movements, election year anxiety, media fragmentation are some…

By Jim Cuene

If you’ve ever been in any sort of leadership position, you’ve probably felt at least a twinge of the imposter syndrome. It’s that feeling where you don’t really know exactly how to do the job, you aren’t sure of how…

By William Sepesi

In our increasingly technological world, digital advertising has solidified itself as the norm for a  majority of marketers. It has experienced double digit increases year-to-year in the past decade, with a 17% year-to-year growth from 2018 to 2019. Alongside this…

By Jim Cuene

Working smarter and leaner, adopting new marketing techniques and moving your business online used to be called digital transformation. A few years ago, it was something team leaders did to adapt to the future. Now it’s just called business. If…

By William Sepesi

Note: This list and the write up was done by our summer research associate, William Sepesi. William is studying Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence at Washington University in St. Louis. While there have been some pretty breathless…

By Jim Cuene

Kevin Bauer is, in some ways, a modern marketing unicorn. He has deep e-commerce experience, matched data and analytics experience, general management/P&L experience, plus intrapreneurial experience gained through starting new corporate ventures internationally. Now, he’s getting his entrepreneurial merit badge…

By Jim Cuene

Fahren was built to be a leadership solutions company that’s a key partner for organizations that are investing in, and innovating the ways they deploy their leadership. One of the planks of Fahren’s business plan is to focus on interim…

By Brent Swanson

How to Shift Your Funding Structure to Ensure You Don’t Run Out of Time and Money When leading your organization through an Agile-based product transformation, a key decision you’ll make early on in the process is determining how your products…

By Jim Cuene

Craig Pladson is a marketer and leader I’ve been following for years. I met him after he heckled me (in a good natured way!) at a MiMA talk years ago. We’ve been in an ongoing discussion about brands, digital, marketing…

By Brent Swanson

It’s highly likely that as you’ve worked through your transformation to an Agile-based product practice, you’ve been faced with this question: “what do we do with our project managers?” You likely have an experienced and talented group of people in…

By Brent Swanson

How to Shift Your Funding Structure to Ensure You Don’t Run Out of Time and Money As you continue to lead your organization through Agile-based product transformation, an important early decision that must be made is determining how your products…

By Jen Swanson

Whether you’ve created a new role or this is a backfill hire, the state of executive talent in the product space has been evolving quickly. The person you’re hiring now is coming from a very different talent pool than existed…

By Joe Ruekert

The project to product transformation is no different than any other change. It’s a multi-year journey, but one that is well worth the effort. Making this shift helps companies become more customer-centric, drives innovation, and accelerates speed to market. This…

By Jim Cuene

It feels odd to think about work when we’re all worried about the health and safety of our families and our community,  But, it’s also good to have an outlet  that is productive and creative, right? We’re all experiencing real…

By Jim Cuene

We’re now a couple years into growing Fahren and we’ve got a real business. We’ve got the first quarter of our 2020 plan squared away and we’re just a one deal away from getting the second quarter into the “win”…

By Susan Rylance

What a treat to attend the 2020 MSPBJ Healthcare Forum and hear from executives at some of the top healthcare providers in MN!   I’ve put together a recap of the common themes from the panelists including Children’s MN CEO, Mayo…

By Joe Ruekert

2nd Quarterly MSP Product Leader Peer Group On Wednesday, we were proud to host the 2nd quarterly Product Leader Peer Group. We were thrilled to be hosted by our friends at Livefront and had over 20 product leaders from companies…

By Joe Ruekert

Fahren is thrilled to announce that Jen Swanson and Rich Sharp are joining its leadership team as Principal Consultants. “Be Better Together” is one of our founding values at Fahren, and we couldn’t be more excited to announce that we…

By Jim Cuene

At Fahren, we work with great senior leaders who have communicated clear, compelling visions for their organizations. They want  their organizations to be – need them to be – more agile, more responsive or customer centric. But, they also need…

By Jim Cuene

This long weekend is set aside for reflection and thanksgiving. Even though there’s lot of traveling, plenty of movement and god knows too much consumption, it’s also a time to slow down and connect. So, it’s natural that the Fahren…

By Susan Rylance

During our recent marketing leader peer-group gathering, we had some great discussion with a multitude of marketing leaders ranging in size of companies and industries including; financial services, tech-start (backed by Bill Gates), manufacturing, consulting and SaaS. With a range…

By Susan Rylance

As I sit here and reflect upon the Leadercast Women event I find that I’m inspired by the theme of this event; Courage. It’s courage that makes us not only good leaders but great leaders! I had the opportunity to…

By Joe Ruekert

Product leadership has never been harder or more rewarding. Yesterday marked the first Product Leaders Peer Event in Minneapolis! The level of talent and conversation was fantastic. We wanted to help bring the product leader community together and have a…

By Susan Rylance

A Sustainable Leadership Hire Starts with Creating an Ideal Candidate Profile As you contemplate your next marketing leader hire, take some time to understand what you truly need for the next phase of your organization. By creating an Ideal Candidate…

By Joe Ruekert

When it comes to meeting with marketing leaders, one thing is clear. There is never a shortage of things to talk about. This was certainly the case at Fahren’s first Marketing Leader Peer Group. Yesterday we sat down with 6…

By Jim Cuene

At Fahren, we’re building a business that connects digital experts to growing organizations. We believe that an experienced leader can help ambitious organizations accelerate their digital transformations and play to win.  But, in a time where change is happening so…

By Susan Rylance

If you’re a growing organization and you’re not just looking for an average candidate, but someone who is going to make a major impact and contribution to your team and organization; check out our Top 5 tips to finding great…

By Jim Cuene

As Fahren grows, we’re building the methods and routines in our key practices: Executive Search, Digital Product Leadership and Marketing Leadership. Our goal is to make it easy for our clients to get to results faster when they need interim…

By Jim Cuene

When we started Fahren, we set out to create a leadership company. Our goal was to help companies compete and win during a time of rapid digital change. We knew there was a market gap we could fill: Interim roles…

By Jim Cuene

For folks in technology and digital marketing, it’s almost accepted wisdom that the smart devices like Homepod or Google Home are going to drive major change in how everyone (i.e. the mass market) will experience media, entertainment and get things…

By Jim Cuene

Fahren hosted a great lineup of speakers at our event on October 3, 2018, at the new Glen Nelson Center and Lunar Startups in St. Paul. Our speakers were sharing insights and lessons learned from designing voice apps for Amazon…