Product managers and marketers have to make a lot of decisions - that is a key part of the job. As budding general managers, you are expected to be able to make decisions, and to actually make those decisions - quickly, decisively, and with staying power. Don't make a decision quickly if you don't have to (don't be rash - use the time available) but the world moves pretty fast, and sometime you will only have days, hours or minutes in which to make an important choice.
How you make decisions - the process you use to make an important choice - is a crucial measure of any PM&M person. There are many dimensions to this (maybe I will write about others in another post) but the single area in which I have seen the most mistakes made by otherwise very smart people has to do with how you use data vs. gut instinct when making a decision.
Many tactical and strategic blunders can be traced to errors in this thought process - which means either not using enough data, or over-relying on data. (Like a lot of issues in PM&M, this is a matter of balance and hard to draw a sharp line - how much is too much?)
Error #1 - not using enough data. There is a type of person who likes to make choices based on conceptual or qualitative criteria rather than numbers. In PM&M, that person is often someone who has had long experience in the field or domain of the product and therefore can make "expert" decisions.
That is not a bad thing in and of itself - experience and expertise is important - but anytime you make a decision without data, you are in effect saying that you (the decision-maker) are representative of the market, and that your decision is an accurate proxy for what thousands or millions of other people would decide if they were faced with the same choice. How often will that be true? Are you willing to bet millions of dollars and your job on that hypothesis?
Sometimes it is true - retailers hire merchanidisers who are a demographic match for target customers, so products and styles one likes would usually appeal to the other. But more often, it is not true - irrelevant personal preferences have a way of working their way into the decision, and whatever expertise you gained being an outside expert in your field started to "rust" as soon as you went to work for a product company.
Having a job that allows you to make important decisions is gratifying, but if you make decisions without data when data is available, you are probably guilty of either recklessness or outright ego gratification - both of which are career suicide, since general managers are expected to have sober judgment and to solve for the company's success rather than any personal agenda.
Using whatever data are available is a very good way to make sure your instincts aren't dead wrong before you spend a lot of money pursuing them. (And if your instincts are spot-on, having data will make it a lot easier to convince others).
... more on this tomorrow ...
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Being the CEO of your Product
One definition of the Product Manager role is that of a person being the "CEO" of his product or products. In my experience, that is a good definition of the role, but maybe not for the reasons you would think.
Junior product managers sometimes make the mistake of thinking this means they have unilateral or say-so authority about all issues having to do with their product, and get into relationship problems with others in the extended product team when they play the authority card too hard or too often. I have seen this happen many times, and will admit I made that mistake early in my career.
That behavior is a reflection of managerial immaturity or perhaps political naivete, but more importantly a misunderstanding of the CEO role.
CEOs don't have unilateral authority - they have to answer to their board of directors. As a PM, your board of directors includes your direct manager plus other senior people throughout your company - in Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Support and probably other functions - who can help guide you. Make sure you treat them as your product's "board".
CEOs don't spend a lot of time telling people what to do - instead they set an inspiring vision for the company, get the right people in the right jobs, then establish a management protocol to allocate the work and track the results. PMs generally can't control who is in what job, but they can influence that decision, can strongly influence the management protocol and "own" the product-level vision.
The CEO's role is properly understood as a balanced combination of several difficult tasks -- what I listed above plus being a good example for managerial behavior; advancing important relationships with executives at other companies; motivating and inspiring people throughout the organization ... the list goes on and on, and includes anything you can imagine that contributes to (a) creating and maintaining the company's culture, (b) enabling employees to organize in a way that makes it possible to do meaningful work, or (c) entrepreneurial opportunities for the company as a whole.
Those are the same behaviors product managers should aspire to for their products. Each of those activities has a direct parallel at the product level.
Outright directives should be rare. Any time you find yourself tempted to tell someone what to do, ask yourself which of the above things you haven't been doing that makes it necessary to issue directives.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Physics 2.0
If I'm not careful, every one of my posts will start with the phrase "Product management & marketing is a fun and challenging field for many reasons". But that statement is very true - I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of it in this blog - but hopefully without repeating those same words over & over.
One of the "many reasons" PM&M is endlessly fascinating and challenging is that PM&M revolves around issues of strategy, and strategy in the real world is a game that has very few rules. If you play basketball, you don't have to worry that at halftime someone is going to decide the second half of the game should be played with three balls at once instead of one. If you are a mechanical engineer, you don't have to worry that after you design a bridge, the laws of physics will change (force of gravity doubles) and makes your bridge collapse. But in PM&M, the basic rules and assumptions can and do change constantly. Customers change their thinking about what they want. Competitors do things you would never expect. New regulations or other non-negotiable requirements arise and have to be dealt with whether you like it or not.
A true test of PM&M capability is, how do you think about and deal with changes of this kind. Does the idea of a new regulation coming in from left field, messing up all your assumptions and blowing up your product roadmap make your blood run cold? If so, you need to think again.
At minimum, you need to be ready to respond - change is inevitable, and although you don't know what kind of surprises will happen, some kind of surprise always happens - be ready. The next level of mastery is to think about how the change creates new opportunities for you and problems for your competitors - move fast to capitalize on the change before anyone else can.
But true mastery requires you to look at the situation from a different perspective - instead of fearing disruption, or preparing for disruption, or responding to disruption - the master looks for opportunities to cause disruption. The opportunity to derail a competitor's plans, make his prior investment worthless, redefine the market in a way he won't be able to respond to - make him lose sleep and lose customers - that is the master's game.
How can you "change the laws of physics" in your market?
One of the "many reasons" PM&M is endlessly fascinating and challenging is that PM&M revolves around issues of strategy, and strategy in the real world is a game that has very few rules. If you play basketball, you don't have to worry that at halftime someone is going to decide the second half of the game should be played with three balls at once instead of one. If you are a mechanical engineer, you don't have to worry that after you design a bridge, the laws of physics will change (force of gravity doubles) and makes your bridge collapse. But in PM&M, the basic rules and assumptions can and do change constantly. Customers change their thinking about what they want. Competitors do things you would never expect. New regulations or other non-negotiable requirements arise and have to be dealt with whether you like it or not.
A true test of PM&M capability is, how do you think about and deal with changes of this kind. Does the idea of a new regulation coming in from left field, messing up all your assumptions and blowing up your product roadmap make your blood run cold? If so, you need to think again.
At minimum, you need to be ready to respond - change is inevitable, and although you don't know what kind of surprises will happen, some kind of surprise always happens - be ready. The next level of mastery is to think about how the change creates new opportunities for you and problems for your competitors - move fast to capitalize on the change before anyone else can.
But true mastery requires you to look at the situation from a different perspective - instead of fearing disruption, or preparing for disruption, or responding to disruption - the master looks for opportunities to cause disruption. The opportunity to derail a competitor's plans, make his prior investment worthless, redefine the market in a way he won't be able to respond to - make him lose sleep and lose customers - that is the master's game.
How can you "change the laws of physics" in your market?
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Getting Things Done
Product management & marketing is a fun and challenging field for many reasons. In my experience, the greatest challenge for many PM&M people (other than understanding your customers, staying ahead of your competitors, and trying to take an occasional vacation day) is time management. There are so many facets to the job, and so many individuals or groups who need "just a little" of your time. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks even when the individual tasks are small; and many of the tasks aren't small.
This problem isn't unique to product managers & marketers - the same could probably be said about any "knowledge worker" profession but seems to be especially prevalent for PM&M. I would go so far as to say time management is one of the absolute key success factors for anyone in PM&M - no matter how good you are at other aspects of the job, if you can't master time management, you stand a very real chance of drowning in the demands of the job.
After trying every time management scheme known to mankind (Franklin planners, paper to-do lists, electronic to-do lists, emails organized in folders etc.), three years ago I discovered what has turned out to be a silver bullet for me - a book and methodology called Getting Things Done (subtitle: "The art of stress-free productivity"). Stated briefly, "GTD" defines a simple but remarkably effective way to collect, process, organize, review and do all your work. The process is very practical - doesn't require you to change the fundamentals of how you work, any doesn't take a lot of time to operate.
I'm not the type of person who gushes about the average business book, but GTD isn't average -- I have found it to be nothing short of remarkable for my own productivity and especially in eliminating the "oops I forgot" factor for small but important tasks that might otherwise have been dropped on the floor. I buy a copy of this book for everyone on my PM&M team. Several team members have reported results similar to my own. If you are a PM&M person or a knowledge worker of any kind, I strongly recommend the GTD book and more importantly the discipline / philosophy it defines.
There is also an interesting story behind the book itself and its author, David Allen - see the article in Wired.
This problem isn't unique to product managers & marketers - the same could probably be said about any "knowledge worker" profession but seems to be especially prevalent for PM&M. I would go so far as to say time management is one of the absolute key success factors for anyone in PM&M - no matter how good you are at other aspects of the job, if you can't master time management, you stand a very real chance of drowning in the demands of the job.
After trying every time management scheme known to mankind (Franklin planners, paper to-do lists, electronic to-do lists, emails organized in folders etc.), three years ago I discovered what has turned out to be a silver bullet for me - a book and methodology called Getting Things Done (subtitle: "The art of stress-free productivity"). Stated briefly, "GTD" defines a simple but remarkably effective way to collect, process, organize, review and do all your work. The process is very practical - doesn't require you to change the fundamentals of how you work, any doesn't take a lot of time to operate.
I'm not the type of person who gushes about the average business book, but GTD isn't average -- I have found it to be nothing short of remarkable for my own productivity and especially in eliminating the "oops I forgot" factor for small but important tasks that might otherwise have been dropped on the floor. I buy a copy of this book for everyone on my PM&M team. Several team members have reported results similar to my own. If you are a PM&M person or a knowledge worker of any kind, I strongly recommend the GTD book and more importantly the discipline / philosophy it defines.
There is also an interesting story behind the book itself and its author, David Allen - see the article in Wired.
Welcome
The purpose of this blog is to share ideas, resources etc. about the practice of product management and marketing in the world of software. Like anyone who has been in the field for several years, I have developed a set of favorite tools, papers, thought processes and so on that help me do my job. In this blog, I will share those ideas and resources so you can benefit from them.
This blog will not be used to discuss anything specific to my employer. Inevitably much of what I say here will be in influenced or inspired by my day to day work at Sterling Commerce, but the audience for this blog is the world at large, and the ideas discussed could be drawn from anywhere. In other words, you won't know if my work, my team & my product line at Sterling Commerce is the good or bad example unless you work here!
This blog will not be used to discuss anything specific to my employer. Inevitably much of what I say here will be in influenced or inspired by my day to day work at Sterling Commerce, but the audience for this blog is the world at large, and the ideas discussed could be drawn from anywhere. In other words, you won't know if my work, my team & my product line at Sterling Commerce is the good or bad example unless you work here!
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