Product Management and Strategic Marketing - Blog

Creating Exceptional Product Teams

11/30/2020

One of the challenges of building a great product management team is making sure you have the right combination of skills and experience. How do you make sure your team is the best and has the right set of skills ?

Product teams are comprised of many product managers, all of whom have various levels of knowledge and abilities. One of the challenges product leaders face is having people who transferred internally from support or engineering into product management; they posses a good understanding of the domain and the product, yet they are not quite market-oriented. That raises the question: is it a matter of training, or perhaps not stating needs clearly?

It could be a combination of both: hiring managers seek people with domain expertise, assuming that by knowing a particular market and products, they understand what customers need. Those PMs may be able to improve your existing products, but may not understand where the market is heading in the next year or two.

So, is it a matter of not identifying the right skill set?
To understand your team composition it is useful to run a skill gap analysis which will identify areas where the team could be augmented. When you identify gaps and decide to hire new talent, make sure you, not HR, clearly write the job description and outline the skill set needed.

Assigning roles within the team
It is important to assign the proper responsibilities to your team members. Your less experienced product managers could serve as the product owners, working closely with development, where your more senior people would be those meeting with customers and driving the vision for the company. It is a good idea to establish some MBOs and encourage product managers to meet with customers on a regular basis. For your less experienced PMs, consider setting a mentorship program where you pair an experienced product manager with an upcoming product manager, or encourage them to join a local product management group. You would be amazed at the benefits they can reap from having an unbiased outsider advise them; since the mentor is removed from the company setting, their ideas will not be influenced by precedent in the company. This can be a critical factor in coming up with creative solutions.

Lastly, make sure your team is the voice of your customer. Encourage your product managers to attend a professional event at least once a month. Most product management associations offer great events, and there are other organizations within your area that would benefit your team.

Being Customer Focused

10/28/2020

Product managers should be customer focused, yet most are internally focused-- and not by choice. You have probably faced these situations yourself, when you want to be more strategic, but like many product managers you are caught up in tackling the latest issue/ bug/ release planning. How did this come to be the de facto state of product management?

The truth is all companies want to be customer focused, yet they do not clearly define what that means. Are you identifying market needs and testing your hypothesis along the way? Are you constantly testing your product against the market and pivoting as needed? When product managers have to juggle multiple responsibilities-- customer visits, requirements, and working with engineering/ support/ sales/ marketing to name a few-- their plate is full. Pragmatic marketing’s recent PM survey claims there is one product manager for every 5.6 engineers and 5.6 salespeople. This is part of the reason why so much of PM’s time is spent dealing with internal activities at the expense of customer focus.

So, how should one get a handle on the situation and become more strategic? One way I have used successfully was an MBO that required each product manager to engage with at least four customers per month. This task requires better time management, but allows for customer input and feedback. Ideally one should meet with the customer face-to-face, but in a time crunch a phone call or video conference would do.

As a product manager, set at least 20% of your time to understand the market. You cannot innovate from the inside out, so get out in the market and find what your customers need. Armed with that information, design the best solution and develop it. Keep checking back with your customers to make sure you are addressing their needs and don’t be afraid to change your product. In the long run you will save money if you focus on your customer, even if that means changing your product.

Is Product management a skill?

8/31/2020

Most of you are probably familiar with skills & expertise on LinkedIn. Among the many skills to choose from is product management. Being a product management professional, I have posted that on my profile and have been widely endorsed. But I was surprised to see that some of my colleagues who are recruiters, CFOs, VCs, sales people, etc. posted product management as one of their skills. That got me thinking, does one grasp what product management really is?

I strongly believe that Product management is not a skill, but rather a profession and as such is comprised of many skills such as: market research, market segmentation, competitive analysis, product planning, defining requirements and more to name but a few.
So why do so many other professionals list product management as one of their skills?
In my opinion it stems from not knowing what product management really is and confusing management tasks with product management.
A recruiter is managing job openings, a CFO manages the company’s finance, a VC manages investments in companies, sales people manage sales accounts, but that is not product management.

A product manager identifies needs in a market and designs* a solution (which can be a service, a product or a combination of both) to address those needs. The need is common among a particular segment of the market and the solution addresses that need.

So to all my contacts, colleagues and friends who claim to have product management skills, take a good look at your professional skills & expertise and ask yourself, does my title include the words product manager? If not, then you probably should not display that as one of your skills.

*The word design means coming up with an idea of how to address a need.

Smart, Simple, and Easy To Use!

7/30/2020

One evening while watching a movie, we decided to make popcorn to enhance our viewing experience. As we’ve done many times before, we placed a colored paper bag in the microwave with kernels, hit the start button and lo and behold-- the bag caught fire. As a person who plans ahead, I had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I attempted to use it when everything went haywire; I pulled the stopper off and pressed on the lever, and nothing happened. I kept pressing and pressing to no avail until my better half calmly grabbed a wet towel, placed it over the bag and quelled the flames.
Not understanding what went wrong and why I couldn’t get the extinguisher to work, my husband looked closely at it, and showed me there were two levers you had to push at once, proceeding to dirty my counter with the fine white powder.

What are the lessons learned?

1. Don’t use paper bags that have ink or color on them when you make popcorn in the microwave. Usually we use regular brown bags, but in the absence of one, we thought a colored bag would work as well. Clearly, it didn’t, due to the dyes and chemicals.
2. Keep a fire extinguisher on hand and know how to use it. Review the instructions in a non-emergency situation so you are sure you know how to operate it

But, the product manager in me is upset with the fire extinguisher manufacturer. When it comes to products, my mantra is: Smart, Simple, and Easy to use. As an emergency device, it should have been trivial for anyone to use under any circumstance (the kitchen was relatively dark when this happened). How come it didn’t?

Probably because no one ever thought about simplicity and ease of use. Sure, with no fire and plenty of light and time to review instructions, everything works as planned. However, one should plan for situations where everything goes wrong. That’s when your product should still be smart, simple, and easy to use.

The Importance of Mentoring

6/26/2020

June is when Masschallenge, matches mentors with startups, which made me think about the importance of mentoring. As you know, mentoring can have a profound impact on one’s career. I have been on both sides, as a mentor and as a mentee. As a mentor you are the sounding board, you are there to provide advice, critique, and help get your mentee to the next level; be it on the product side or on the professional side. As a mentee you need someone you trust to guide you through uncharted territories, someone who understands your needs and can help get you there.

One might ask, why is mentoring important for product managers? Product management is an up and coming profession that is just starting to get recognized. Since product management is practiced in a variety of ways, it is easier to consult with someone who has been there, done that. Experienced mentors who have worked at multiple companies can share their knowledge with their mentees, as they understand what it takes to get products from a concept to reality. They have tried and (hopefully) succeeded, and hence, can help ease and/or shorten that cycle for newcomers.

Mentors can advise on career development as well. When is it time to ask for the next promotion? When is it time to move on to another company and seek more responsibilities? Having a trusted mentor who can advise and guide you to your next career is invaluable. So if you are an aspiring product manager, seek a mentor. If you are an experienced product manager, please mentor someone. But don’t forget that you can always learn something new, so consider having your own mentor as well.

Why Product Management Should Be Its Own Department

4/29/2020

In my 15+ years in technology I have had the privilege of working as a product manager who reported to various department heads. In some cases I reported to engineering, in other cases to marketing, and more recently to the head of product management.

Why isn’t product management its own department in every company? What are the risks and challenges when product management reports to engineering or sales & marketing?

When product management is part of engineering, ideas and products are driven by technology. The product manager ends up getting involved in designing the solution rather than identifying the market needs. Engineers expect the product manager to be the solution architect, and as a result, the product manager’s job ends up being compromised. Engineers are the product experts; the product manager should be the market expert.

When product management is part of sales & marketing he/she ends up generating marketing plans, sales presentations or becoming the demo person. While all these tasks are important, they are not product management. Sales tools, sales presentations and demos should be handled by sales. Marketing documents and collateral should be handled by MarCom and/or product marketing.

All this confusion stems from the fact that the role of product management is not well defined. In companies that are market driven, product management is a department of its own. Product managers do the market research, identify the market needs, create the business plan and work closely with engineering to define a new product. They work with marketing to get the messaging and positioning correct and with sales to address their unique needs. Companies who place product management under other departments end up having a hybrid person that is neither a product manager nor anything else. Companies should strive to have a person doing a great job wearing one hat rather than a mediocre role wearing multiple hats. More is less.
So when evaluating your next position ask yourself, do I want to join a company that doesn’t understand the importance of the role of a product manager?

Product Management and Personality Type

3/31/2020

I recently read a book titled “Do What You Are” (by Tieger and Barron-Tieger) and it made me think: what kind of personality makes a good product manager?

Myers-Briggs define people by four dimensions of personality:
· How we interact with the world and where we direct our energy
(E) Extroversion ------Introversion (I)
· The kind of information we naturally notice
(S) Sensing----------------Intuition (N)
· How we make decisions (T) Thinking------------------Feeling (F)
· Structured/Making decisions or Spontaneous/taking in information
(J) Judging---------------Perceiving (P)

I have observed that most product managers are either ENTJ or ENTP and here is why:
As a product manager being an extrovert is a must—you need to be able to interact with customers, peers, and management, and that means putting yourself out there.
Intuition means trusting inspiration, leading new ideas & concepts and being imaginative. Intuitive types are oriented toward the future—another key attribute.
Thinkers are logical, tend to be critical and are motivated by achievements. They make decisions based on analysis and consider it more important to be truthful than tactful.
The other dimensions are where this gets a little fuzzy.

Are you better off making decisions upfront based on info you have (J) or should you leave some options open to change (P)?
Are you product oriented (J) or process oriented (P)?
Do you set goals and work towards achieving them on time (J) or do you change goals as new information becomes available (P)?

Circumstances often lead us to behave in certain ways, particularly at work where decisions need to be made.

The bottom line is regardless of your personality type, you are the customer advocate and the product champion. Remember to use your personality to your advantage to connect with customers and colleagues alike.

Communication, Consensus building and Collaboration

2/20/2020

In aviation there is an acronym called the 5 C’s:
Climb, circle, communicate, confess, comply. All these are meant to assist a pilot who has lost orientation; they give you an opportunity to look at things from a different view - hence the climb and circle. However, if that isn’t sufficient, you need to admit you are lost and contact flight control where you communicate your situation, confess your mistakes and comply with their instructions.
This has prompted me to create the 3 C’s of product management: Communication, consensus building and collaboration. These three are applicable in various stages of product development.
Concept: when you are embarking on a new product idea communicate with all stakeholders so that everyone is aware of and understands the new road ahead. Build consensus between all parties so that you have a buy in from management, sales, marketing, engineering,and support. Finally, collaborate with all departments to make sure you are on the same track and supporting each others’ efforts.
Development: in this critical stage, communication is key. Address issues early in the process and prevent them from becoming major hurdles later on. Consensus is achieved when you know which features will not be part of your final product and collaboration goes without saying.
Release: your communication is outward facing; customers need to be informed of your product and what is included (as opposed to what was anticipated and may have been scoped out). Build consensus with your sales team as to how best sell the product, and collaborate by training your sales force and customers on how to use your product.
If at any point during the process things go wrong, communicate - make sure everyone knows what is going on, build consensus as how to proceed, and collaborate. With an informed team everything is possible, even turning a product around.

Product management and company size

1/31/2020

A couple of years ago I led a Product Camp Boston discussion about start ups and product management. That got me thinking, is it more important to have product management in a small company or in a large one?

Some of my entrepreneur friends claim that they are product managers. After all, they identified a need, did market research and built the product. But once VCs are involved, the founder has to manage them, so who manages the product?

At large companies product management exists, but more often than not customer needs are compromised for reasons beyond the product manager’s control.

My claim is that every company needs product management, regardless of its size. All companies need someone who will assess market needs, talk to customers, drive the strategy and define the product. The difference is in the execution.

Critical points:

·         Voice of the customer – Product managers should be the customers’ advocates. This is often achieved by visiting and interviewing one’s customers. Traveling and meeting face to face may be limited due to lack of funds at a small company, whereas a larger company may not face the same problem.

·         Vision & strategy – VCs often limit the expansion of the small company if it is not aligned with their view. Large companies often have a vision, but are too slow to execute.

·         Best practices – Small companies tend to do “true” product management, while large companies tend to stick with “this is the way we’ve done it before”.

So whether you are in a small company or a large company, the bottom line is make product management work. If you have limited travel funds, be creative—use online video tools to communicate with your customers. When vision is limited, bring data to support your findings and make a convincing argument. Finally, being a product manager takes effort, good communication skills, and above all, diligence. Remember, having a good product requires not only vision, but also a great product manager to drive it.

The fine line between appeasing your shareholders vs. your customers

12/9/2019

Many of my fellow product management practitioners are often placed in a difficult situation where customers request certain features for their products, but the product manager's hands are tied. It's not that they don't care about the voice of their customers, rather management's vision is different. On one hand, senior management makes promises to Wall St. or the investors, which appeases the company's shareholders, but neglects the opinion of the customers. How does a product manager ensure that s/he does not lose sight of the customers?

1. Look for common threads.

Ask yourself: will the direction my company is taking address my customers’ needs in the long run?

If you have done your homework as a product manager you should know what your customers expect from you. Look for a common thread between the customers' needs and the shareholders' interests. Sometimes they are in fact very similar.

2. What if there is no common thread?

Make sure your product offers something that satisfies your customers in addition to what was promised to your shareholders. There is always room for more customer features. It may be a hard sell to upper management, however it must be noted that the the consumers pay the bills. If you lose your customers' business, it will be detrimental to your shareholders. Have data to support this point; executives will agree with your reasoning if you have the numbers to support it.

3. You are overruled by the executives.

In the case that your customers' requests go unanswered, be prepared to discuss this with the customers. Being frank and honest goes a long way. If executive management is unresponsive, you may want to schedule a meeting between the customer and management so each party can voice its concerns. This step is especially important if it is a major customer who will be affected.

If after taking these measures management has not satisfied the consumer, be ready to concede defeat. Perhaps it is time to find a company that is more attuned to the consumers' needs.