Michael Oldach
Welcome to my website!
I live in Broomfield, CO with my wife, two kids (13 and 15) and dog. My passions include volleyball, reading and outdoor activities including hiking, biking, camping, and snowboarding.
By nature and profession, I am a leader: A leader of people, teams, projects, products, and change. I love solving problems and delivering outcomes. I do this by helping clarify vision and purpose, focus energy and effort, and by empowering teams and individuals.
I have led teams in Product Management, Customer Support, Engineering and QA. Although each role and challenge was unique, they all required me to apply a similar set of skills: the ability to learn quickly, collaborate well with others, and influence those around me to name a few. In each role, I gained a deep understanding of the objectives, got to know the people and products involved, worked collaboratively with stakeholders to identify possible solutions, and helped teams deliver with a bias towards action. A key contributor to my success has been my ability to build trust with my teams and stakeholders by acting with transparency, making clear decisions, being open to feedback, and being accountable.
I’m a firm believer in the greater good and putting team over self. I strive to inspire others and look to be inspired. I’m passionate about taking on new challenges and opportunities to expand my knowledge and experience. I thrive in difficult and uncertain circumstances and I love solving problems.
I found Product Management to be an especially fulfilling discipline and am seeking a role which will allow me to solve customer problems in ways that are technically feasible, provide amazing customer value and drive business growth. The discovery process of clarifying and resolving customer problems along with the complexities associated with the development of solutions presents an energizing and engaging set of challenges.
My experiences leading teams in other aspects of the SDLC informs my approach to Product Management.
- Working in Customer Support gives me a deeper empathy for the customer and a visceral understanding of the long term costs associated with failure to build an intuitive, supportable, and maintainable product.
- Leading Engineering teams has shown me the value of early input into the design process, the importance of controlling technical debt, and the criticality of understanding both short and long term objectives when evaluating architectural options.
- Having a Quality Assurance mindset helps me anticipate the edge cases and alternative workflows that may lead to confusion or unexpected results.
If you are looking for a strong and versatile leader to help overcome challenges and achieve organization goals and objectives please contact me at michaelpoldach@gmail.com .
My career path has been anything but linear. The trust I've earned with senior leaders has opened doors and given me the opportunity to take on challenges in new areas of the customer journey and the healthcare ecosystem. In each case, senior leaders facing one or more challenges trusted me to jump into the fire and lead their teams and organization forward. I have revitalized a struggling payer product, prepared the medical network organization for a major technology overhaul from on-premise to AWS, enabled rapid member onboarding to the Commonwell Health Alliance by establishing a scalable support and implementation team, reversed rising support cost and plummeting customer satisfaction for the RelayHealth patient portal, helped an engineering team for a physician ordering application increase their velocity and predictability through the use of Kanban. I have combined the use of methodologies like the Customer Letter, Agile Scrum, Kanban, and Six Sigma with my innate drive and energy to achieve milestones and deliver results.
Testimonials
“Michael is an excellent product leader whom I had the pleasure of partnering with to build one of Change Healthcare's payer facing solutions. Hosted Payer Services (HPS) serves over 200 payers using their member data to generate real time responses for eligibility, claim status and more. Michael has a gift for inspiring and motivating teams, and his work in driving HPS is a testament to this quality. He defined and evangelized the product strategy for Hosted Payer Services, and through his partnerships with multiple technology teams like Engineering, Implementation and Operations, he was able to deliver foundational and value add features to power long term business growth. He has a keen understanding of business and has the ability to make informed decisions that drive growth for the organization. He achieves success through careful planning, collaboration, and complete ownership of his work.”
Supri Babu, VP Engineering, Data and Analytics - LinkedIn - April 28, 2023
“Michael and I worked on large, complex projects while at Change Healthcare. He is rare in that he has keen vision, collaborates well, and he has excellent people skills. Michael hires smart, hard working people with great soft skills. That is very hard to do. He listens and helps advance and advocate for those who have interest in growing outside their skill set. He is very even keeled and thoughtful about how to proceed with difficult projects in a logical, time sensitive order. I will miss working with him. You are very lucky if he is leading your team or on it.”
Phil Young, UX Design Manager - LinkedIn - July 9, 2022
Stephen Younge, CTO - LinkedIn - April 25, 2023
“Upon taking a development manager role, Michael ramped up very quickly. He assessed his development team's strengths and growth opportunities, and began making adjustments to better handle the inbound workload. He reorganized the team (combining maintenance and new development teams) to increase bench strength and flexibility to respond to varying work volume. Michael also negotiated with stakeholders to create space for his team to become more effective.
Michael also solidified the team's scrum practices which improved the team's ability to plan and deliver on their commitments. He introduced Kanban for more controlled scheduling and completion of maintenance items. This resulted in reduced maintenance backlog, clearly communicated commitments and increased visibility into the progress of work items.
Michael coached one of his leads into a scrum master role, improving the team's ability to self-manage and also freeing Michael to take on additional responsibilities.
In his working with the team, Michael showed a strong servant leader mindset -- painting a vision for the team, seeking their buy-in, coaching them through creation of the action plan, and supporting them throughout. The end result was a much happier, effective, and predictable team.”
Additional Content
Ignorance: The unsung leadership trait
Written and published on LinkedIn in 2017 this article describes my experience leading a team of senior engineers despite having little coding experience myself.
When the Cats Away
Written and plublished on LinkedIn, December 2022 this article talks about how to create empowered teams
Michael Oldach
Problem Solver/Servant Leader/Outcome Manager
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