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When is the Right Time to Get Strategic with Product Management?

The Importance of Product Management

As a Product Manager, or senior leader responsible for Product Strategy, it makes sense to take a step back and assess your approach to Product Management once in a while.

Every battle is won before it is fought

Sun Tsu

What might Product Management look like in an Early Stage Business

Early stage companies are typically led by strong founders with a clear vision of where they want to be – they are not afraid to take risks, they see the bigger picture and they have the ability to lead others to deliver their vision of the world.

These successful founders aim to foster an environment of innovation and creativity that will ensure that their vision is executed and that projects with the highest potential are prioritised.

To get initial investment the founder creates a clear business plan articulating the market opportunity, the competitors in their space, the problem or need the company is going to address, the technology they will use to solve this problem and how they will make money.

The founder will generally start by hiring a few engineers to deliver their vision. They might have one or two sales and marketing people but predominantly the company is focused on executing a defined product strategy.

What happens when the business starts to scale?

As the company grows the founder can sometimes move into a different role in favour of a “professional” CEO (often appointed by the board) or they may become more focused on general business development, with perhaps less time for defining the product vision.

In this hiatus, where there is potentially a lack of market strategic direction, one of Sales, Engineering or Marketing may step up to fill the void.

However, allowing any of these groups to dictate the product strategy brings risk:

  • A company that adopts an engineering-led strategy runs the risk of focusing too much on the “next cool technology” with little understanding of the needs of the market.
  • A sales-led strategy may simply focus on the needs of each individual customer leading to “bespoke” and “one-off” solutions and driving the company down a services route.
  • A marketing led strategy may focus too much on external messaging with little understanding of technology innovations or the needs of the customer.

When is the right time to adopt a more strategic approach to Product Management?

CEOs like Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple managed to scale their companies and remain involved in core product strategy. As their companies grew they ensured they played a key part in defining the “vision” for the product, whilst ensuring that they built a strong team that were equipped to address their core strategic vision. These CEOs knew that, without innovation and the right product vision, the company would die.

The success of early stage technology companies is often a result of a founder CEO who has managed to get the balance “just right” with product and market strategy. To ensure the product strategy meets their vision they maintain an active involvement in:

  • Articulating the problem they are trying to solve
  • Understanding the competitive landscape
  • Defining the market opportunity

They also have a deep knowledge of the technology that will help them to successfully address the market need.

Continuing to get that balance right as the company grows is crucial for continued success.

Although Steve Jobs was actively involved in defining the vision for Apple’s products, he recognised the importance of adopting a supporting framework to deliver on his vision so that he could also focus on other aspects of business development. He is quoted as saying:

“You need a very market-oriented culture… Lots of companies have great engineers and smart people. …..there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together.”

Steve Jobs

As the company grows and the CEO has less opportunity for acting as the  “gravitational force”, adopting a product management discipline is an important next step –  it is never too early to ensure it is part of the DNA of the company.

Successful CEOs naturally adopt aspects of the product management discipline from the moment they write their first business plan but ensuring it is engrained in the organisation takes focus and alignment across the leadership team.

As the CEO becomes increasingly involved in other aspects of business development, it is so important that they have adopted and resourced a framework for product management that will ensure their vision continues to be executed.

Rather than usurping the CEO, Product Management supports them by understanding their vision and ensuring that a product strategy captures and articulates that vision. They help the CEO to understand the market opportunity, they maintain oversight of the creation and delivery of the product through engineering and they support the positioning of the product to market through targeted messaging and sales execution. Product Management listen to many stakeholders and help the organisation to make decisions based on the “right data” – they are the “gravitational force” that pulls everyone together to drive the organisation’s strategic objectives.

Whether the CEO is the ultimate product visionary or whether this is driven from within the organisation it is essential that there is an established discipline for managing product strategy.

Finding and nurturing the right product management team will enable the CEO  to “get it just right” and to allow them to maintain the right level of engagement on product strategy.

To be really effective the relationship between the Product Manager and the CEO must be strong and bi-directional

  • The product manager must be able to understand and reflect the CEOs vision and objectives through a clear product strategy. They are a critical resource in supporting the CEO to deliver on their vision.

For product management to become part of the DNA of an organisation it needs the support and “buy-in” of the CEO from the start. 

 

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Building Bridges – Product Management

Product Management – Managing Up and Across

One of the more difficult challenges for any Product Manager is “managing up” or “managing across” the organization. The ability to demonstrate the soft skillsrequired to effectively communicate and work with multiple people in the organization is often an underestimted part of the product manager’s role. This is not about becoming the bosses best friend, it is about stepping through the sometimes subtle political minefield that exists in most organizations.

Few of us receive specific training on what is a very important part of what we do. We don’t often discuss the negative impact of this aspect of our role with others for fear of showing weakness and the training to deal with political interactions is often “on the job”, with many of us bearing the battle scars.

So what are my top 5 approaches for managing up and across (although like all of you I’m still learning!)

Build a relationship of trust with your key stakeholders

Difficulties in establishing a strong relationship with other stakeholders can stem from a lack of trust and a lack of understanding of the other person’s role. People can sometimes have a tendency to retreat to their trenches and adopt a stance based primarily on mistrust.

Making an effort to understand the value that each group in the organization brings is crucial. We all think we are brilliant and are clearly adding the most value but in reality we are all part of a bigger team. All stakeholders have the potential to add value – no man is an island, you need other people as much as they need you. In your communication with others show how you can support them in their role and how they can support you. Great companies are built with great people who develop strong relationships.

Understand your counterpart’s objectives and their management style

Conflict can often occur when you don’t understand or care about your peer’s objectives. Although we may be working to different team KPIs at the end of the day there must be some common ground – do we not all aspire to create successful companies?

Rather than going head-to-head with someone over a position they have taken, try and understand their motives and objectives. If you are new to the role, try and speak to others in the organization to understand the different “management styles” that exist in the organization. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes first – it can help to avoid conflict if you know what motivates the other person and what they are trying to achieve.

Take advice from others – work with a mentor

Product management is a multi-faceted role – it requires good communication, a strong focus on commercial aspects of business development, an ability to multi-task, the capacity to lead and above all the capability to deliver order from chaos. Often the product manager is a solitary figure with no direct reports but they communicate with and require support from many people in the organization.

I found huge benefits in working with a mentor in my early days of product management and today I find it hugely satisfying to mentor product managers in their role. Product Management can be a lonely place but it is an immensely rewarding role if approached in the right way. Take advice from as many other people as you can, especially those who have faced similar challenges to you. If you have a product manager in your team, ensure they are receiving the right supports from inside and outside the organization.

We are all on a journey of continuous learning – reach out to others who have made mistakes, learned from those mistakes and who can guide you in your approach.

Adopt processes that support better communication and interactions

Misunderstandings are more likely to occur when there is no formal process in place to guide how people work together. In the absence of a process for communication things can fall between the cracks and one side can blame the other.

Using something like the RACI model to understand who is responsible, accountable, consulted or informed for key projects can be hugely beneficial and can support positive cross-team interactions.

Keeping lines of communication open outside of your own group and establishing forums of communication can be hugely beneficial.

Understand your leadership team’s strategic objectives

It is important for product management to have a “voice” at the leadership table – they support alignment, guide decision-making and ensure everyone is moving in the same direction. As much as possible they try to reflect the CEO’s corporate strategy in their product strategy. Sometimes the leadership team may disagree with or do things that undermine the product manager’s strategy. Dealing with this situation can be a political minefield.

Managing up is such an important part of what we do and sometimes our passion for “doing the right thing” can override our ability to recognize that sometimes there are people more senior than us, who (for the best of reasons) may not agree with our vision. Product Management must tread a fine line between giving good counsel and dictating strategy. We have to ensure that we can see the bigger picture and that we recognize that there are often many contributory factors to good decision-making. As long as we enable our leadership teams to make informed decisions, with the right data, then we are doing our job. It’s important to realize though that we may not always agree with every decision that is made.

Although product managers may feel like they have no authority they do have the ability to lead and guide good decision-making and that is where they can add true value. Remember, don’t bring problems to the leadership team without some well thought out potential solutions.


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Mentoring: How to stay energised, be the best you can be and actually get results!

Product Manager Mentoring Product Management Product Strategy
Product Management Mentoring

Applying a market focused discipline is core to what Product Management is about. Product Managers should feel energised by helping organisations to find and prioritise market opportunities. Finding market challenges and then aligning their company’s products or solutions to address these challenges. As a Product Management mentor, I find that quite often the reality is a little different. Product Managers are often struggling and they don’t receive mentoring. They feel accountable for everything to do with the success of the product but they are struggling to manage the depth and breadth of the role. Most of them learn on the job and don’t really have mentors outside of the organisation to support them.

A lot of companies have attempted to establish a product management discipline in their organization. Many are struggling to make it effective.

The executive team understand that to be successful they need to:

  1. Create products or services that customers love.
  2. Ensure the organization is marching not just in the “right direction” but in the “same direction.”
  3. Work to a clearly defined business model.

They hire a Product Manager. They should be focused on influencing and aligning CEO, sales, marketing and engineering strategies to address market opportunities. However, they are often floundering:

  • Some are solely focused on the engineering side of the house – helping to prioritise product development.
  • Others get consumed with sales engagements – supporting the sales teams in closing deals.
  • Many become consumed in what is effectively Product Marketing – creating content that will drive leads into the business.

So, how do you ensure that any Product Manager you have hired hits the ground running? How do you ensure they receive the right level of mentoring. What elements of the Product Management discipline are most important for your business? How can you ensure your Product Manager balances strategy, marketing, technical and tactical?

What comes up in mentoring?

In my role mentoring strategic Product Managers, I have found that most often they want to talk about how they:

  • Influence at a leadership level – how can they align sales, marketing, engineering and the CEO when they don’t have accountability for those functions and they are not even on the leadership team?
  • Remain strategic and influence others if they are not on the leadership team?
  • Achieve the right level of visibility in the organisation?
  • Create a compelling product strategy? How can they align their strategy and roadmap with organisational goals? How can they get buy-in for their product strategy across the leadership team?
  • Stop the CEO or head of sales from undermining them by going directly to the engineering team to influence the product backlog?
  • Build trust with engineering and keep a market focus?
  • Stay engaged with the market and remain strategic when they need to balance the needs of lots of functional groups in the business?
  • Work effectively with other leaders in the business – managing their own and other’s behavioural styles? How can they learn to negotiate and influence?
  • Get the leadership team to be more market focused and to prioritise market opportunities using market data rather than being scattergun in their approach to revenue generation?
  • Ensure they are involved in strategic decision making in the business and are not just seen as receivers of the outputs of the decisions?
  • Positively influence leadership alignment around the goals of the company?
  • Drive a culture of strategic rather than tactical revenue generation?

These are just some of the areas that come up in our mentoring sessions. The importance of thinking about professional development skills was the reason I did an Executive Coaching diploma and why I now spend time teaching about the benefits of working on our emotional intelligence and leadership skills. Understanding the benefits of effective collaboration for Product Managers is why I became certified as a team coach. I don’t lead with these elements in my practice but they form part of how I offer support to the clients I work with in Product Management and Strategic Marketing.

Mastering leadership development and high performing team development skills, not just functional skills, is what makes some product leaders stand out from the crowd!

When I previously worked as the head of a team of Product Managers, I had access to an external mentor – someone who had performed the role before. This person was a safe sounding board for me as I developed in the role and they felt like a trusted advisor. Giving me time to talk about what I was really finding challenging. They didn’t judge! They gave me the space to explore how I was developing as a leader and to unpack some of the challenges I was experiencing.

I did not feel safe to be this open with anyone else at a leadership level and that made things a little lonely sometimes!

I didn’t feel the psychological safety to raise issues I was having and feared exposing what I perceived as my weaknesses to the leadership team.

Finding someone to mentor and coach your Product Manager, Strategic Marketer or any key resource in the business is so important. Give them the space to explore their approach to leadership. Help them to examine their role and their challenges in a way that feels safe to them – no matter how open your organisation is. Find opportunities to get insights from people who have been in their position before and who understand them best.

Product Management can be a minefield!

It can be challenging for a Product Manager to settle into a new organisation or for an existing one to be effective. There can be many political obstacles that need to be addressed. Professional development skills are crucial to help the Product Manager to navigate interactions with other leaders. This needs to be considered when a Product Manager is hired – how well do they balance professional development and functional requirements of the role.

Consider how clearly you have defined the role and ensure it takes into account the elements of strategy, technical, tactical and marketing.

The Product Manager has the potential to lean into one specific area of their role where they feel most comfortable. They need guidance and help to take a more balanced approach.

To help with getting the balance right, you might consider pairing a strategic Product Manager with a more technical Product Owner. This is not always possible in an early stage business as funding can be a challenge to resource two roles. However, be mindful that having one person covering strategic and technical can be really challenging and they will need guidance and support to pull it off!

What can help?

Many new and established product managers exist in a state of bewilderment and despair! Even Product Managers who have been with a business for a few years can feel like this. The enormity of their role can be overwhelming.

Underlying this is a lack of clarity on what is expected of them and where they can add value.

Sometimes the leadership team sets unachievable expectations or there are no expectations at all. Everyone is scrambling to understand how the discipline of product management applies to their business. The overwhelmed Product Manager has to juggle the demands of a sales and engineering team who expect their undivided attention 24/7.

This situation can spiral and the Product Manager can become increasingly disillusioned as the leadership team begin to dismiss the product manager as ineffectual.

Things do not have to be this way! Understanding how the Product Manager can add value in your organization is a starting point. Then clearly define the role and boundaries for each organisational function. Help the Product Manager to understand how their skills and capabilities will align with the other leaders in the organisation. Help all the leaders in the business to understand how they add value and the part they play together to achieve the goals of the business. Get outside help from others who have established a discipline of Product Management before. Make sure that whatever way you apply the Product Management discipline that it aligns with your company’s stage of growth.

Don’t assume your product manager will hit the ground running – ensure they have access to mentoring

The Product Manager is an important resource in your company but don’t assume they know it all! It is not just the Product Manager who can be struggling with the discipline of product management. I often see frustration from the CEO as they try to understand how to embed the discipline in their business. Just because a product manager has previous experience, don’t assume they will hit the ground running in a new company. Sometimes it can take time and support to establish the discipline and to build the trust and respect of other leaders.

It makes sense that the new Product Manager is offered mentorship so that they can hit the ground running.

In my previous roles in Product Management, I learned quickly that applying structure and discipline ensured myself and my team could work effectively. We can all read books or attend courses. These will give us a good grounding in product management. However, the application of this discipline and the understanding of what works in reality comes with experience.

Don’t wait until either you or your product managers have reached the point of despair! Seek the support and help of those who have done this before and who have been at the coalface. It makes sense to talk to someone who understands the demands of the role.

Irrespective of whether you are new to the role of Product Management or have been doing the job for years, look to get as much insight as you can from those around you. Product Management is a continuous learning path.

Contact me @ siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details on how I can support Product Managers or Strategic Marketers in their role!

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What’s the different between a Product Manager and Business Analyst ….?

So does title really matter? I find myself asking this question more and more lately as I come across people in technology organisations with titles and roles that, on the face of it, look similar but in reality are quite different.

Although I don’t think there is too much merit in getting hung up on titles, I do think it is important that anyone performing a specific role knows what they are supposed to be doing and clearly understands their responsibilities. Difficulties arise when you have a title that can be applied to a very broad discipline.

For example, I sometimes come across people in established technology companies with the title Business Analyst – they sit somewhere between engineering and marketing but their role descriptions can be quite vague. This really got me thinking about whether title really matters and if it does then what are the key differences between the roles of Product Manager and Business Analyst?

For many companies they only begin to adopt a product management discipline at a certain stage in their evolution – often they apply many of the principles of product management without formally recognising that they are doing it and often they don’t recruit a specific resource to manage the function – someone just evolves into the role. In some cases however, it may seem like a natural next step to hire someone with business analysis experience to manage the process.

The role of Product Management covers a breadth of functional activities in the organisation, encompassing product strategy, sales support, commercial ROI, pricing & licensing, support for release management, go-to-market strategy and so on. However, you may see titles like Product Manager, Project Manager, Programme Manager, Product Marketer and Business Analyst being applied to those who are carrying out these functional activities. The roles and responsibilities for each of these titles will often vary from company to company.

In reality I don’t think it is the title that matters so much as the function or role that we perform and the responsibilities associated with that role. It is important for all of us to understand the requirements of the job that we undertake – otherwise the title is meaningless. It is not enough to assume that if we have been given the title of Product Manager or Business Analyst that there is a clear definition of what this means for the organisation for whom we work. Having been a practitioner of product management in a large organisation myself and now helping organisations of various sizes apply the discipline, I know that the responsibilities of the Product Manager will vary depending on the stage of growth of the company.

So what if we take the role of Product Manager and Business Analyst as an example – is their a difference?

The International Institute of Business Analysis defines business analysis as:

…the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions to enable the organization to achieve its goals.

They go on to say …

Business analysis involves analyzing the business and understanding:

    • Why the organization exists
    • How an organization works
    • What are its goals and objectives
    • How it accomplishes those objectives
  • How it needs to change to better accomplish objectives or to meet new challenges

So if we were to substitute the word “organisation” above for “customer” or “market” then perhaps in reality there is not much difference between a Product Manager and a Business Analyst? – but in my view there are key differences:

    • Product Managers focus on understanding an external customer or market in great detail. They analyse the jobs the customer does, what problems or needs they have and what their goals and objectives are? Their aim is to find many customers with the same problems or needs – they seek out and define a market in which to position a product or solution. In this way they can develop a scalable business model.
  • Business Analysts are focussed more on the business needs of a specific organisation – typically the one that they work for or are contracted to. Their focus is more internal than external and they seek to find processes or technology solutions that will meet the business objectives of that individual organisation.

The IIBA identify many job titles for business analysis practitioners including business analyst, business systems analyst, systems analyst, requirements engineer, process analyst, product manager, product owner, enterprise analyst, business architect, management consultant, business intelligence analyst, data scientist, and more.

So, it may help to view the Product Manager and Business Analyst as practitioners of business analysis who adopt similar tactics in doing their jobs (stakeholder interviews, requirements capture and specification, user stories, etc.). Both are effectively conduits between the stakeholders from whom requirements are captured and the teams who will deliver on those requirements. Although they may adopt similar practices, at the end of the day they perform different roles – one more focused on “internal” organisational process and one on “external” customer or market needs.

Having said all of this, each of you may have your own view as to what a Product Manager or Business Analyst does. In reality, as long as the people who are performing the function know what they are supposed to be doing and are delivering against core objectives for the business then titles shouldn’t really matter.

Perhaps this is where the problem lies. In my consultative experience, I am finding that confusion around titles leads to confusion around roles and responsibilities.

Whether you are performing the role of Product Manager, Business Analyst or any other role for that matter, make sure that you get the right help in defining the role for your organisation and articulate clearly what the title means in your business. Don’t assume that everyone working in the organisation has the same view – you need to clarify.

After all, if unclear product requirements lead to poor products then … unclear job specifications will surely lead to poor employees.


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September 2014 – Scala CEO – Create High Value Companies through Great Products

Brochure CoverDelighted to be working with great companies as part of the Irish Software Skillnet’s  Scala CEO programme. This programme is targeted exclusively at the CEOs/Founders of Irish technology companies and focuses on product management driven approaches to help these companies to scale and grow.

Through this programme participating companies are learning how the application of a product management discipline across their organization can help them to:

  • Create scalable and repeatable revenues through products that customers value
  • Ensure future revenue growth through the continued progression of innovative ideas
  • Ensure the organization is focused and moving in the same direction
  • Ensure that the organization works to a clear business model that meets corporate strategic objectives
  • Prioritize the finite set of resources available and deliver the right projects

The programme incorporates a corporate capability assessment, two day workshop for the CEOs and two separate 1/2 day mentoring sessions with each individual company.

IntegratedThinking are delighted to be delivering this programme for ISA Software Skillnets and we are very much enjoying the interactions with the participating companies to date.

 

 

 

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