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?
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3 comments:
Great to see you blogging! You present several ideas I had not thought of and articulated them well. Hope you're doing ok!
Chris,
I couldn't agree more. The plan is the plan until the plan gets changed. I believe the key is, as you've pointed out, is how you respond to the change.
I believe in these economic times, the companies that figure out how to embrace change and delight customers, while still delivering high quality software, are going to survive. Those companies who resist change and blindly stick with current processes will be left behind.
Chris, love your blog. I added a link to it from my site www.oracleutilities.com
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