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Explaining Startup Challenges to a 6 Year Old

Product Management Challenges for Homemade Lemonade

Image: Unsplash-Charity Beth Long

I was once asked to think about how I would explain some of the startup challenges faced by a product business in a way that a small child would understand. I decided to use an analogy about making and selling lemonade – something I hoped everyone could relate to as so many of us had these little entrepreneurial ideas when we were children.

So hear goes, …

  • Imagine one day that you are playing happily in your garden with your friend. You are both thirsty so you grab a refreshing glass of homemade lemonade from the house. Your friend thinks it is the best lemonade they have ever tasted. You’re eager to make some pocket money. So you decide to ask your parents to give you some money to buy ingredients so that you can make more of it and sell it from a stall in your front garden. They are a little sceptical but they like your passion and drive so decide to invest!
  • You setup a little stall and your friends who live next door come and buy your delicious lemonade. You love spending time chatting with your friends and you are delighted that they love your new lemonade and are happy to pay you some money for it!
  • You quickly spend the money you have made and are eager to make some more. You know that there must be more people who would love to buy your lemonade! You just don’t know where they live, how you are going to tell them about your stall and how you will get them to come and buy some lemonade. 
  • You ask your friends, who have already bought the lemonade, to tell their friends and this does help to bring more people to your stall. You put a sign up in your garden to attract passers by.
  • Although you have more people who want to buy your lemonade, they all have ideas about how you might change the lemonade to suit their tastes a bit better. Some think that you should add some fizz, some want it sweeter and others just want it to be cheaper. You end up spending lots of time in the kitchen trying to do everything they are asking for. You no longer have any time to spend on the stall talking to your friends and customers. You now have to ask another friend to help you sell the lemonade – they of course want a share of the money you make.
  • The more customers you have for your lemonade and the more you try to please your friends the busier you become. You have made so many changes to your recipe that it is no longer quite as delicious as it once was. You forget that the reason everyone came to your stall at the start was the delicious recipe you made for your friend in the beginning. Some of your old customers are not happy with the changes you have made and stop coming to the stall.
  • Making lemonade takes a lot of your time and it is beginning to cost you and your parents a lot of money. By the time you give money to your parents for the ingredients and to your friends helping you on the stall there is very little money left over each day.
  • What started as a way to make a little pocket money has now made you so busy that you don’t have time for anything else! You have to ask more friends to help you in the kitchen but they all want a share of your small profits.
  • You are spending more and more time making lemonade and less time talking to the people who buy your lemonade!
  • One day, one of your friends talks to some of your customers in the queue for your stall. They realize that these customers are complaining about how warm your lemonade is! It has been left sitting in the sun. Your friend, jealous of your success, decides to setup a stall of their own. They use your original recipe but with one simple change – they add ground ice to the drink before serving. Your customers are curious and they head over to their stall to try it. They love it, the weather is hot and so they decide to buy from your friend’s stall instead.
  • You realize you were too busy in the kitchen to see this happen!
  • In order make sure your friends keep coming to your stall you now decide you would need to buy an icemaker. You ask your parents for more money and they agree to help you buy the icemaker.
  • But … it is coming into winter and the kid on the other stall has been watching her customers and realizes that they are no longer as interested in the cold lemonade. She chats with her friends as they play outside and she decides that hot chocolate will sell a lot better than cold lemonade in the winter. She quickly changes her stall and whatever customers you had left all decide to visit her stand for her lovely hot chocolate.
  • Your parents are fed up, they have an ice-maker in their kitchen that is not being used and they are not prepared to give you any more money. By the time you have paid all your friends who have been helping you make lemonade in the kitchen you have no money left over to buy the ingredients for hot chocolate or any other great idea.
  • You realize too late that if you had spent more time outside with your friends and customers, instead of being stuck inside making lemonade, that you would have spotted that the weather was changing and that your customer’s needs were changing.
  • You have learned a big lesson but it is all too late – but you are just a kid so how were you to know!

Startup Challenges – so what are the lessons here?

As adults and business professionals we

  1. Understand the importance of recognising and protecting our competitive advantage.
  2. We know that it is really important to get out of the business and validate that we have understood our customer’s requirements.
  3. We realise that capitalising on the market segments we are best placed to serve is crucial.
  4. We understand that as a Product Manager, paying too much attention to the technicalities of making our product and too little time capturing insights from our target market is not a good idea.
  5. We know that it is really important to think clearly about the potential return on investing in any new product idea and not all ideas are the right idea.
  6. We know that our investors will require a return on their investment and won’t be willing to fund everything we do – we know we need to make money.
  7. We know this isn’t child’s play and startups are tough but rewarding when you are focused and clear about what you are doing and why.
  8. We know we need the right people around us and we need to reward loyalty and hard work.
  9. We understand that goals may need to change when circumstances change but we know why we started the business in the first place and we know that our customers are our lifeblood so we have to stay close to them.

A 6 year old can’t know all that … they just like making lemonade!

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Helping Companies to think proactively about the “Paradox of Choice”

Why Market Segmentation and Prioritisation is Crucial

Paradox of Choice Market Segmentation Market Prioritisation
Paradox of Choice

I have been working as a consultant in Strategic Marketing and Product Management for many years now. I work with clients who are not just from the technology sector but from across a broad range of industries. I am seeing a common thread across many of these clients – the paradox of choice! How can market segmentation help?

Generally, as I start each engagement, we undertake a short capability assessment so that we can explore together where there may be gaps in the the company’s approach to what I call strategic marketing or commercial product management.

Invariably, when we chat about where they have challenges, and reflect on the capability assessment that captures all team members inputs anonymously, one of the key areas that is highlighted almost every time is lack of market focus.

Whether it is a startup or a more established business, they often are adhoc or scattergun in their approach to where they will find market opportunity.

What is a Paradox of Choice?

I have rarely come across a company that has not been relatively clear in describing the product or solution they have created. What they tend to be less clear on are the market segments that might benefit most from their product or solution. Generally, in each engagement I see one of two things happening:

  • The company has a product or service but they are struggling to align this with a clear need from a broad enough market base that will help them to drive meaningful revenue – i.e they have a product or solution looking for a market
  • The company has a product or service that could address many different market challenges across lots of different areas i.e. they are suffering from what I call a paradox of choice.

A paradox of choice might make us feel good because we think we have lots of opportunities to choose from. In reality having too many opportunities actually requires more effort. A lack of focus, jumping from one opportunity to the next and not targeting sales and marketing resources in the right way will not help us to maximise market opportunities that could be strategically very lucrative.

Why Market Segmentation Helps?

Taking time as a company to outline market opportunity and to assess this market opportunity through insight gathering and then through a prioritsation exercise can be hugely beneficial.

So who should perform this market segmentation and prioritisation exercise? In my view it is part of the role of a strategic Product Manager or a Strategic Marketer. The beneficiaries of this exercise are:

  • The CEO – they will have a way of aligning their strategic objectives (OKRs or KPIs) with defined market opportunities
  • Sales – the CEO can work with the sales team to assign realistic sales targets to validated market segments
  • Marketing – the marketing team can define compelling value propositions for each prioritised market segment and drive targeted marketing campaigns

In my experience, lots of companies avoid this activity because it does require some effort and focus and it does require some experience in doing it right. It is crucial to choose the right criteria to support segmentation, to implement market research to generate insights for decision making and to get buy-in from the full leadership team in prioritising market opportunity.

What are the consequences of not doing this?

From my experience, the key consequences of a lack of market focus are:

  • A sales team that are scattergun in their approach to revenue generation. Sales is an operational cost to the business and not ensuring that the sales team are focused and targeted at the right markets is a mistake
  • Revenue is coming from markets that are not really aligned with the strategic objectives of the business – perhaps leading to bespoke engagements to meet clients needs
  • Revenue is not being generated in a repeatable way from clients with similar challenges
  • Sales forecasting is really challenging as it is difficult to predict where market demand will come from

As a senior leadership team, take some time to help the business to achieve real focus by undertaking a market segmentation and prioritisation exercise.

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Real Leadership is Forged in a Crisis (Part 1)

This post has been co-authored with my business mentor and friend Steven Wikinson, founder of Good and Prosper

We met at the DCU Ryan Academy’s Mentoring for Scale – an initiative targeted at fast-growth entrepreneurs in the Dublin startup sector. We both act as mentors in these monthly breakfast speed-dating sessions, where each entrepreneur has 30 minutes to present their current challenges to three experts in succession and seek their advice. Each interaction is a high-concentration challenging engagement, with both the mentors and the mentee (business founders) needing to focus hard and respond fast to squeeze the most juice out of the morning.

We have spent a good many hours over the past two months bringing our experience and perspectives to bear in animated discussions around the current COVID-19 crisis and its consequential effect on consultants, business advisors and coaches – a subject close to our heart and of special relevance to so many now.

Our discussions have focused on a few questions around the consultant business model, charge rates and how consultants appear to be the worst culprits of not doing what they make a living from telling other people to do, often at great cost to their quality of earnings and life, not to mention their mental health and energy.

Between us we bring decades of experience of consulting with scaling businesses or supporting those business to capitalise on their “business model”. Together we want to capture what we believe to be timely and hopefully encouraging advice to professional consultants to help you to use this time of crisis to do what you so rarely do systematically – to

Invest in your business, nurture and care for your most precious assets and prepare for the upswing through regrouping, refocusing and re-energizing yourself

There could not be a better time!

The cobbler’s children have no shoes

There is a well-known aphorism which states that “the cobbler’s children have the worst shoes.”, in other words…

Those in a particular trade tend to be most neglectful of themselves and their requirements in respect of that trade

So… butchers get the scraps not the filet, fishmongers eat hake and not salmon, doctors never take health advice, bankers have the least money and …

Consultants rarely take the advice they are paid well to dispense to clients!

Sound familiar?.

We can prove the truth of this.

In a recent comprehensive study of SME businesses looking at profit margins across all industry groups from chemicals to consulting, it was found that the difference in profitability between the top 10% and the average (including the 10%) was a staggering 7x or 700% if you prefer a big number.

Nowhere has the discrepancy between the top performers and the average been as extreme as in the consulting profession …

The top 10% of consultants generate a 34% operating profit margin and the average earn a paltry 2.5% – a 15x or 1,500% difference

If you further imagine that the distribution of the “rest” of the consulting is not equal amongst the other deciles, you will, without straining your math’s brain cells too much arrive at the inevitable conclusion that most or at least a substantial proportion of those whose job it is to advise others on the betterment of their operations – from IT to strategy – are the worst at applying that advice to themselves.

Consultants rarely take their own advice, they complain of high levels of stress, exhaustion and a feeling of being prisoners of their own particular hamster wheel – how can we change?

Running hard to stay in the same place

It is undoubtedly true that consultants are (with a few exceptions) first and foremost helpers whose strongest wish is to be seen as an expert and specialist in their chosen field. They want to be respected for their experience, problem-solving skills and influence.

In reality though they often feel that they could and should be generating more revenue for the effort they are putting in and that the risk-reward balance is often not where they would like it. They dream (literally) of having their clients refer more business to them and of being able to focus on projects that are intellectually stimulating.

Our experience of consultants from our business networks, especially those working as solopreneurs rather than in partnerships or small consultancy practices, is that they are running hard just to stay in the same place and often find it hard to differentiate themselves in a crowded and competitive marketplace. Those who have not mastered the art of understanding their value and finding opportunities that maximise that value for clients, are often too busy chasing and delivering on small and large projects, to be able to concentrate or devote much attention to the medium and long term strategic development of their business.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one

Consultants, mentors and coaches are by default some of the smartest people around. They have to be. They are paid for their ability to parse actual situations into models of the world that they have thought deeply about and to recommend processes and courses of action which will result in positive outcomes and increased efficiency and efficacy for their business clients. They need to have command of both theoretical and practical knowledge and communicate complex interdependencies in understandable terms, as well as quickly filtering out the important from the irrelevant when taking over a brief to get to the heart of the matter.

So why do we struggle to apply rigorous thinking to our own business challenges?

We understand why doctors don’t operate on their own appendices (although we have heard stories of ones that have), but it seems counter-intuitive that consultants would not utilise a small amount of their own medicine to help themselves cure their own ills.

Those who see themselves as experts in their field may be unwilling to seek advice from people who they perceive would not know any more than they themselves do. Perhaps doctors are the last people to seek medical advice for their own ailments? Perhaps coaches, consultants and mentors are not willing to seek advice from those they see as peers?

However, we all know that speaking with someone who is who is not influenced by our sometimes long held biases or beliefs and who can give an impartial view of our situation based on their experience and expertise can be invaluable.

Sometimes we are oblivious to what is staring us in the face until someone else points it out

When we get into firefighting mode it can be difficult to find time and space for what is truly important vs. deemed to be urgent … from our anecdotal experience of dealing with other consultants, mentors and coaches we came up with the following Business Cycle Adjusted Excuse Profile

As you can see, there is never a right time to make room for important but not urgent work! Before the crisis hit you may have had plenty of projects and be seen to generate lots of revenue but were you really doing work that was aligned with your business vision? Were you achieving work life balance? Were you chasing every new opportunity without focus? As we move into crisis mode do you find yourself gasping for air – fighting to keep your business alive.

We all know that this crisis will pass – what excuses will we all come up with on the other side?

There can always be excuses related to time, money, energy or need – depending on where in the business cycle we happen to find ourselves.

A priori, these “excuses” are just that, they may be valid – for instance in today’s environment who could fault anyone for holding onto their precious reserves? Who knows how long this Covid-19 lockdown is going to last? Will there even be a consulting market for anyone to return to when it is eventually over?

Are these genuine concerns or are they just excuses?

Excuses just mean that serious, life altering change is kept firmly under lock and key…

If you do what you always do, you will get what you always got!

Madness: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result

Albert Einstein

This cycle will come and go. The valley – be it U, V, W, L or S shaped – will be traversed and we will emerge, possibly exhausted, but still fit for business, on the other side and begin the long (or maybe even short and steep) march to recovery. The question we ask – and not rhetorically – is:

What will individual consultants and coaches have done to ensure that the next cycle does not end the same way as all the previous ones have done?

Can we all grasp this opportunity to practice what we often preach?

Will we use this Covid-19 crisis to invest in ourselves so that we are fighting fit for the upturn and ready to grow our reputations as reliable, professionally competent business people who showed strategic foresight during the hiatus?

“Physician! Heal thyself”?

Please leave a comment and/or re-share on your networks – we would love to hear your thoughts on this.

  • Do you take your own medicine or do you resonate with the premise that the cobbler’s children have the worst shoes?
  • Are you using this time of transition to focus on realigning your strategy for your business or are you simply chasing every revenue opportunity that you can?
  • What piece of advice do you give your clients that you never take yourself?

We would love to share our collective experiences and generate greater insights that might help us all as consultants, mentors and coaches.

Siobhan Maughan (www.integratedthinking.ie)
Steven Wilkinson (www.goodandprosper.com)

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Making sure you hire the best Product Manager for your business

When it makes sense to hire a Product Manager

As an ex Product Manager myself, I now work as a mentor with startups and scaling SMEs and one of the most common questions I get asked is:

When is it time to hire a Product Manager?

The answer to this is not necessarily straightforward and really depends on how you define product management. Product Management, although pretty widely adopted as a discipline in organisations is still quite misunderstood.

If your organisation has adopted an Agile development methodology then the engineering team will likely be pushing for the business to hire a product owner:

A Scrum Product Owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Development Team. How this is done may vary widely across organizations, Scrum Teams, and individuals.

https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-product-owner

The primary goal of the product owner is to maximise the value delivered by Agile Scrum teams. For this reason, they need to understand and be respected by engineering and quite often they have an engineering background or technology focus. Because product owners lean more towards engineering than marketing they tend to be quite inward focused. The majority of their time is consumed by the agile development process – attending to the backlog, supporting sprint planning meetings etc. They typically have very little time (or inclination) to focus on market analysis or strategy.

The problem is that once a business hires a product owner they often feel that they have product management covered. My view is that this is often not the case and let me explain why.

In many early stage businesses the CEO/Founder is often the person who understands the target markets better than anyone else. They will have clarity on the vision, the target markets, the competitors and market needs and they will guide product strategy. If there is an established agile process in the business they will influence the product backlog. As the business scales they will find it harder to work directly with the engineering team so will likely push to bring in a product owner to do this. In early stage businesses the CEO/Founder will also guide and influence strategic marketing and sales.

As the CEO/Founder becomes increasingly busy just dealing with the day-to-day requirements that come with being a CEO of a scaling business they won’t have the same capacity to share their market expertise with the senior leaders of the business.

So who takes on the role of delivering clarity on the vision, target markets, competitive landscape, buyer personas, market needs, etc. when the CEO is too busy to do this to the same level as before? Who provides clarity on direction to the sales, marketing and engineering teams?

Many believe this should be the product owner – but as we discussed earlier they are generally pretty busy just keeping on top of a backlog of product development requirements. They have little time to focus on elements of strategic marketing. I ran a Product Management function in a large software development company myself so I understand how challenging it can be for product owners to take on both the strategic and tactical elements of product management.

Fig. 1: Key Product Management Focus

So if your product owner is too busy or too technical to focus on strategic marketing, then is it worth considering a supporting hire that has the capacity and capability to do this?

Someone with the title Strategic Marketer or Strategic Product Manager could add real value at a senior level in the business. Although closely aligned with the product owner, this role would be more strategic and outward focused and would perform many of the strategic marketing tasks that the early stage CEO/Founder undertook – articulation of vision, target market segmentation and prioritisation, competitive analysis, capturing of market needs, articulation and dissemination of a value proposition, etc.

I believe that at a certain point in a business’s growth there are signs it is time to take on someone with a strategic and market focused approach – read on for my view on what these signs are …

“Inside-Out” rather than “Outside-In” Product Management

Is your business having ad-hoc conversations with the market – often in broadcast (sales focused) rather than listening mode (strategic alignment, capturing market needs)? Are these engagements typically driven by a a handful of the senior leadership team?

If so then it is likely that no one person has responsibility for feeding back what they are hearing to the product development team or for owning how this is captured and framed in a value proposition for sales or marketing purposes. It may be the case that your product owner may not even be aware of these conversations! As a result the engineering backlog is likely driven by hunches and an internal view of the world as this is the only view the product owner has.

Although your business may have a Digitial Marketer, a Marcoms team, a Website Developer – are these resources typically in broadcast mode and focused on lead generation? Are they taking a strategic focus to market development?

Does your business have a high level understanding of target or addressable markets but not enough detail at a competitor, customer or market level to support a focused and prioritised approach to sales and market engagements?

If the product owner is focused inward then in reality product requirements will only tentatively link to market needs and it is likely that your product is being developed in a vacuum.

Product Manager not aligned with organisational functions…

Where it was once easy to align everyone, is this now becoming increasingly difficult as the business scales?

If the senior team are travelling more and required to attend more external meetings to grow the business then they will find it even more difficult to align functions across the business.

Have your engineering, marketing, finance and sales teams grown organically? If so then they are likely operating in silos with little cross-functional alignment and it will have become more difficult to benchmark or measure the effectiveness of these teams.

If the CEO/Founder is finding it increasingly difficult to align the senior leadership team on a market-focused approach to driving the strategy then it may be time to find a supporting resource to help with this – don’t assume the product owner has the capacity to do this.

Hunches setting the product strategy…

As an early stage business you had no option but to focus on strategy. Investors demanded it! As the company has scaled, has it been all hands on deck to deliver project commitments and has strategy had to take a back seat to tactical delivery?

Are Senior leaders in the organisation making product strategic decisions that are driven more from personal hunches rather than a validated view of the market?

To drive revenue, are you chasing every business opportunity even if it only has tentative links to your strategic vision?

Is this leading to confusion and an unhealthy lack of focus? Are business priorities unclear and is there a lack of focus across different functions?

If this is the case then it is likely that a culture of  priority du jour has developed. If your business is evolving chaotically then it is likely that the product backlog is often re-scoped to suit tight deadlines or sales demands and key market-focused features may be omitted or neglected. This could have a direct impact on your ability to attract and retain broader market interest.

A tactical rather than a strategic approach to product strategy…

In order to win business have you been driven by customer demands and do you have a tendency to approach each sales opportunity as a tactical bespoke deployment? Are solutions tailored to each customer’s exact needs rather than being taken off the shelf?

If this is the case then you likely have a lack of repeatability across customer deployments and your service deployment team is growing.

As a consequence, your software solution may become difficult to manage across customer sites and the development team may struggle to manage an increasing number of customer quality issues. This could have a direct knock-on impact on your ability to service the needs of the broader market through regular quality product updates.

Your product strategy is failing to attract or retain buyer interest …

Many technical companies have a strong product development heritage. Although your company may have mastered the competencies to deliver a high quality and technically masterful product are you failing to articulate its value to the market? Do you find that your business is struggling to understand and speak to the challenges or problems that your target markets are experiencing?

It’s hard to be heard when everyone is broadcasting to rather than communicating with the market.

Research has shown that people spend 60% of conversations talking about themselves. And this jumps to 80%  when communicating via social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

Are you spending more time talking about your own business rather than your customer’s challenges? Is your message unintentionally encrypted for your target market?

Although it is so tempting to begin broadcasting about your products to anyone who will listen, it is so important to clearly speak to challenges your market can resonate with. You often only get one shot at making an impact when you broadcast – try and make it count by hiring someone whose job it is to understand your target markets really well and to support marketing and sales to create messages that will resonate.

Finding it hard to understand return on investment from Product Strategy…

If your business is winning lots of projects, are you assigning resources arbitrarily with little focus on “return on investment”?

It can sometimes be difficult to justify the investment in a project if the organisation cannot align it with a strong market demand.

Is your sales organisation chasing deals that are driving revenue but these deals are often once-offs and have loose ties to the overall strategic drivers of the business?

An active but misdirected sales team can consume organisational resources at a significant cost to the business.

Also, if product development activity is not carefully managed and aligned with a clear market strategy it can cost the business dearly. We would be foolish to invest in a large home renovation project, for example, without the guidance of an architect. We need their help to ensure our exact needs are met, to design the best solution and to ensure that the builders stay within budget. Product development projects are no different – strategic product managers ensure projects are well architected and align with market need. They manage and control investment in engineering development and work with product owners to ensure the business gets bang for buck!

Innovation is at a standstill….

Do you find that there is no clear process for capturing or prioritising new ideas?

Do you have a mechanism for gating ideas or preparing for what is beyond the next horizon? Does your business have the opportunity or capacity to seek out adjacent market opportunities and to fund blue sky thinking?

Every business needs time to plan for the future and to anticipate and react to industry trends and market needs. This requires foresight and investment and is a key part of strategic marketing.

Struggling to stand out in a competitive landscape …

Is your competitive landscape crowded and the market is finding it difficult to find compelling reasons to select your company’s products? Do you struggle to identify unique selling points for the products or solutions and it has become increasingly difficult to position your company competitively?

Although it is very difficult to maintain sustainable competitive advantage in a world where technology and market needs evolve quickly it is really important that every business focuses on what makes them great and what makes them stand out against the competition. Someone in the organisation needs to keep a close eye on the competitive advantage that your organisation can drive and maintain over time.

Although these indicators can manifest themselves to varying degrees in companies, depending on their stage of growth, they are a useful litmus test for the need to consider hiring someone who is focused on strategic marketing or strategic product management and who can support you to align everyone in the business around your vision.

How can IntegratedThinking Help you with Product Management?

Helping you to understanding what strategic product management or strategic marketing means to your organisation. Applying a step-by-step Insight2Value process that helps you to:

  • Create scalable and repeatable service, products or solutions that customers truly value
  • Drive future growth through the continued progression of innovative ideas
  • Remain focused – making sure everyone is marching not only in the “right direction” but in the “same direction”
  • Work to a clearly defined business model that meets corporate strategic objectives
  • Allocate your finite set of resources to the right projects and achieve maximum return on investment

It is so important though that you seek support when establishing the product management discipline – making any kind of change in an organisation requires alignment from the top down to ensure you draw a line in the sand and take the right approach moving into the future.

Contact: email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details


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Do you have a solution looking for a problem to solve?

Aligning your Product Strategy with Market Demand

How would Product Management answer if asked to explain how your product strategy reflects the needs of the market?

Does your Product Strategy start by introducing the features of your product or solution before you speak about the market you are targeting? Do you present architecture diagrams showing how your product can integrate into the customer’s network without first explaining who the customer is? Do you talk about the great things that your company or product can do and include a lot of technical spiel with a sprinkling of ‘ilities’ … reliability, flexibility, usability? Can you talk at length about how performant your product is, how well you support the customer when they find a bug and what a fantastic user interface you have?

At what point in your Product Strategy do you start to talk about the customer?

Many companies struggle to talk about the market that they are targeting and the key problems or needs that they are solving for that market segment. Often they have little understanding of the buyer personas in the target market – what jobs they do, what motivates them, the difficulties they have in doing their job.

So why are technology companies generally so poor at representing the customer in their Product Strategy?

In my opinion, it is because they feel more comfortable jumping straight to the “how” without trying to articulate the “what” and the “why”. Technology people just want to make things – they love to create new things and to apply cool technology in interesting new ways.

Technology companies are often not good at understanding or articulating the problem they are trying to solve for their target customers.

Even when companies do take a stab at describing the customer, they struggle to provide evidence that they have ever validated their hypothesis with existing or prospective customers. They rarely talk to customers about their needs or wants. They often operate in broadcast mode – selling the latest feature or attempting to upgrade the customer. If they listen to their customers at all it is often in a support role where the customer logs bugs or issues with the existing product.

“If you base your product strategy around incrementally adding new features to your product, without a clear understanding of how these features benefit your target customer segment, then you run the risk of having a complex product searching for a problem to solve!“

IntegratedThinking

Could your business benefit from clarifying the core market problem you are trying to solve, through a structured approach to insight gathering? Contact: email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details

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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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Product Management – how to be the best Product Manager!

Product Management Product Manager
Failing Fast @ Product Management

Product Management is a discipline that is gaining more traction in organisations over the last few years – more and more companies are saying that they have a product manager or at the very least are applying aspects of the discipline. In my experience there is still a huge amount of misunderstanding in the industry as to what product management actually is and its implementation in companies varies widely.

But hey, everyone says it is important to “fail fast” – to recognise when something is not working and move on – so here are some things that you may already be doing that ensure you have a better chance of failing fast at product management:

You let vested interests drive the product management agenda 

There will be many stakeholders in your organisation with an interest in “guiding” product management’s agenda. Sales might like them to attend every sales meeting or create snazzy powerpoint presentations to support their sales engagements … at the end of the day this can only help them to meet their sales targets and it will certainly keep the product manager very busy. Engineering might like them to “project manage” their activities or generally act as gofer in the product development process. After all, product management do “own” the product, so when there is someone needed to do some random task related to the product and nobody else wants to do it then who better to ask … right?! When product management become too busy delivering an agenda for one dominant stakeholder they will not be looking at the bigger picture and delivering on the organisation’s overall core objectives.

You continue to use hunches or “gut feel” to guide decision making in the organisation 

Allowing those who “shout loudest” or who wield the most power to influence decision making and ignoring market data, ROI calculations and other business metrics presented by product management will likely mean you are simply “taking a punt” and risking your hard earned money.  Continuing to manage your organisation as a bottomless pit of resources that you can just throw ad-hoc projects into will ensure you continue to have product releases that miss deadlines, products that miss the mark with regards to customer expectations and revenues that continue to flatline.

You don’t communicate business objectives to the product manager or provide any input on their role objectives

A product manager with little insight of corporate objectives will have to try and guess what it is the company is trying to achieve (this is always fun) so they will probably flip-flop between projects that delve into project management, innovation, programme management, product marketing, sales engagement, possibly a little bit of product development and really anything else that someone believes the “owner” of the product should be doing on any given day. Failing to communicate any corporate objectives to product management will often mean that the organisation as a whole will lack clarity and focus and there will be mis-alignment as to what the company is trying to achieve. If the product manager does not understand how they should apply the discipline of product management in their organisation and what the leadership team expect from the role then they are much more likely to fail to meet expectations.

You allow product development teams to pay “lip service” to product management requirements 

Hiring a product manager and assigning them to an engineering team as a glorified “backlog manager” runs the risk that they are just responsible for moving things up and down the backlog on the direction of the engineering team. This will undermine their responsibility for the overall strategic direction of the product and you will be allowing engineering to call the shots and decide what goes into each release. Engineers rarely talk to customers and will typically not understand the needs of a broader market base. Allowing a product manager to become consumed by the engineering process (the “how”) and not enabling them to focus on the strategic (the “what” and “why”) is more likely to drive your product further and further away from what potential customers and the broader market really wants!

You don’t provide mentorship or support for your new product manager 

Hiring a product manager and just letting them loose in the organisation, even though they have never performed the role before, is likely to set them on a path to failure. Not providing any guidance or training on managing up and across the organisation, on handling a portfolio of requirements and choosing the ones with the best ROI, on communicating with a leadership team and board members, on managing product strategic direction and on ensuring that the company remains innovative, can have serious consequences. We all know you need to get training and support for sales, engineering and leadership team members. Equally, product managers are not born knowing how to deliver product strategy, so failing to train, mentor and support them will result in a key resource who does not have the confidence to execute strategy.

I don’t think any of us want to fail at what we do. We definitely need to be able to recognise when things are not working well and do something that makes a positive difference. We just don’t have the time to sit around and hope things get better by themselves!

If you are interested in taking a diagnostic to help you to understand the gaps in your company’s adoption of the discipline of Product Management then contact me by email siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details.


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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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Product Management: How can you make sure investors love your strategy?

What Investors Care About?

Investors hate missing out on a great opportunity but equally they fear making a bad investment. For Product Management it is essential that they consider the needs of this crucial stakeholder.

So what are some of the things that investors think about when investing in product companies…

  • The challenge the product is trying to address and the evidence you have captured that this is a challenge the market wants solved
  • The size of the market opportunity
  • Any early traction you have obtained for your product
  • Your articulation of the value you bring to the market and how you will monetise this value
  • Why your business is uniquely different and how you compete with others?
  • Why you think people will be compelled to buy from you? Who your buyers are and what do they care about?
  • What team is in place to execute on the product strategy and how effective are this team?
  • Your strategy for marketing communications and sales
  • Your strategy for partnering with others to gain market traction or to execute on your product strategy

If this is what investors want to understand about your business, then how much attention do the leaders in your business, including Product Management give these areas?

As someone who has helped startups with their business plans and product strategy I understand that to capture the interest of the investor community it is hugely important to articulate the growth opportunity for your business through a business plan and associated Product Strategy.

Articulating the market opportunity and your value proposition for each target market is crucial. Clearly representing the challenge you address for your target market, capturing insights from this market and understanding how you will capture market interest to drive revenue growth is essential to ensure you get the kick-start of investment you need to scale your business.

Strategy is based on a differentiated customer value proposition. Satisfying customers is the source of sustainable value creation.” 

Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Strategy Maps)

Of course your Product Strategy needs to consider areas such as your mission and vision (with associated metrics of success), segmented market opportunity, your pricing strategy, your positioning of value for each target market, your competitive differentiation, any partnership strategy and a link to any sales and marketing strategies. You also need to highlight the key metrics that you will monitor to ensure product success – recurring revenue goals, customer acquisition rates, etc.

Everyone in the organisation needs to have sight of the key objectives (OKRs or SMART metrics of success) that the business is aiming to achieve at a high level so that they can define and align their own metrics of success to drive these corporate objectives.

A company that has captured initial investment through a clearly defined business plan and product strategy will move quickly to focus on the execution of this plan – hiring engineers, marketers and sales personnel. Keeping these resources aligned to deliver on the promises made to investors is now crucial!

It is really important that you can demonstrate to an investor that everyone in the business is aligned around the product strategy and that you can show how cross functional goals and initiatives are aligned. So it is important to define clear corporate goals and objectives that can be cascaded throughout the business. This ensures that you:

  • Create an aligned and collaborative organization that shares a common understanding of how the business will create value
  • Ensure the organization remains focused on corporate strategic objectives
  • Maximize ROI for corporate resources and ensure all resources are delivering effectively
  • Support decision making for all employees
  • Enable Sales and Marketing to clearly position the products and solutions to the target market and thereby drive revenue growth

How can you make sure you are investor ready?

Whether you are a startup or SME you should take the time to ensure that you have captured the right insights from the market to create a clear and compelling Business Plan and Product Strategy.

There are so many things that Investors care about but you need to focus on what is key in the context of your industry.

I have recently spent time running strategic insight gathering and value proposition workshops with companies across multiple industry sectors. The exercise has been enlightening for everyone – particularly those companies that have spent a lot of time focusing on the “execution” rather than the “strategic” side of product management and for those companies that have a requirement for near term investment. These workshops support the company with the insights that are needed to create a compelling product strategy.

Contact me siobhan@integratedthinking.ie for more details on how your business can capture market insights to drive future opportunity.


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Mentoring – Why it is so important for your Product Manager

Product Manager Mentoring Product Management Product Strategy
Product Manager Mentoring

Many companies over the last few years have made the bold move to establish a product management discipline in their organization. Mentoring and coaching the Product Managers accountable for Product Strategy in your business is not always a priority for the executive team.

However, 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.

This requires someone to hold it all together and keep the company focused. As Steve Jobs said

“You need a very product-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

Initially, when the company is small, the CEO or CTO will fulfil this role. As the company begins to scale it is important that the CEO looks for support. Adding a product manager to the team is the right next step, but …

What exactly does this product manager do and how will they integrate with the existing team?

Often there are many political obstacles that need to be addressed as people’s roles change and the organization settles into a new way of thinking.

Consequently, the new product manager has a myriad of functions that they “could do”. Depending on their background they main lean towards technical or strategic. They will rarely do both well. In my experience you need to hire a strategic Product Manager and pair them with a more technical Product Owner. Having one person perform both roles is really challenging. A strategic Product Manager will focus on helping your business to stay focused on the right markets. As a result they will be well connected with your customers and understand their needs well. They will present clear business requirements to the Product Owner.

So, how do you decide which aspects of the product management framework make sense for your new product manager?

Well, it depends on the stage of your growth as a company. I think it is best to start with a “lean” approach to product management. Don’t overwhelm yourself and your new recruit from day one.

Many new and established product managers exist in a state of bewilderment and despair! The enormity of their role can be overwhelming.

Product Managers can have an unclear definition of the role. Unachievable expectations are set by senior leadership. Even worse, sometimes no expectations are set. There is no clear prioritization of projects. They have to juggle the demands of a sales and engineering team who expect their undivided attention 24/7.

This situation can become a cycle of despair. The product manager becomes increasingly disillusioned and the leadership team begin to dismiss the product manager as ineffectual.

Things do not have to be this way! Understanding who does what in your organization is a starting point. Then clearly define the role and boundaries for each organisational function. Once the product manager’s role is defined, apply a structure and discipline to product management that 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. I often see frustration from the CEO and the Product Manager as they struggle to understand the role of product management. They find it difficult to see how it can be applied effectively in their organization. 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. Often, it takes effort to work effectively with all stakeholders in the organization.

Therefore, 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.

“Seeking help is not a mark of weakness, but of power”