ProductMarketing.com

Some Thoughts on Roles and Responsibilities — On Product Management

To be honest, I’ve struggled with roles, responsibilities and differentiation. I often think we fixate on titles and ownership versus roles and action. In The Strategic Role of Product Management, Steve Johnson states; “Titles are meaningless; actions are meaningful.”

via onproductmanagement.net

Ah, I love being quoted! Holland offers a new look at roles and responsibilities plus a quick tool to help you align activities with titles.

First step: focus

My daughter has started a business. She's seen a huge interest in homeschooling and is now focusing on it full-time. With a market of 3+ million families, she's got a target rich environment. Everyone we meet knows someone with homeschool kids.

The challenge? Focus.

As with any job she has more to do and only so much time. Where to begin?

I've given her a new rule: allocate one day per week to each of the Pragmatic 'P's. Problem, product, promotion, place.

Monday is for problems: Interviews, reading, reviewing existing research, planning new research. Honing her buyer and user personas.

Tuesday is for product: Updating, reviewing, assessing the products she offers.

Wednesday is for promotion: Participating on blogs and discussion forums, writing ebooks, evaluating promotional opportunities, attending trade shows and events.

Thursday is for Place (sales): distribution strategy, evaluating wins and losses, comparing the sales cycle to the buying cycle.

In other words, a product manager or entrepreneur should not spend every day in sales mode or development mode but be sure to spend time planning and researching too.

In my first job as a product manager, I was based in Virginia but my developers were in California. Once a month, I traveled there for a week of development planning and review meetings--what we'd now call demos and retrospectives. They'd show me what they were working on, solicit my ideas on the prototypes and initial designs; I'd tell them what I had learned from the market since my last visit. Updates on wins and losses, current revenue for the quarter, results of interviews and surveys.

And with that, I would leave them alone until next time.

In the remaining three weeks I'd allocate a week at corporate to work with marketing, support, finance, whoever and a week allocated for sales calls and customer visits. That left a week in my home office to do the writing part of product management.

Whether you do this on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, successful product managers focus on every aspect of the business of their product(s). Don't get caught up in sales support or working with development to the detriment of the rest.

What techniques do you use to focus on the business?

 

QOTD: Focus

Working on the final results from our annual Pragmatic Marketing survey and working through the verbatims for some great nuggets. 

• This company needs fewer politicians and more workers.
• The nice thing about our company strategy is that there are so many to choose from.
• Our VP of Marketing is an evil witch.
• Thanks for all the fish. 
• Strategy without execution is illusion. But execution without strategy is chaos!
• Strategy is less about choosing what you will do, and more about choosing what you will not do.

But the most common comment for the company president is: FOCUS! 

I bought a new MacBookPro and considered buying a new monitor to go with it. I found that Apple offers... ONE MONITOR. That's all. Pick any size you want as long as it's 27". Amazing. And I think it's great! Maybe the reason that Apple is sitting on a load of cash is that they sell lots of a few things instead of a little of many things.

How many monitors, printers, routers, accessories are available from other vendors? Maybe they need some focus too.

Maybe your company does too.

Use the Right Tool For The Job

First, let me speak to my fellow product managers:  You are not the right tool for finding solutions to problems!  Your job is to find the problems people are willing to pay for to solve.  You need to define what constitutes an acceptable solution and let the experts get to work.  If you're not talking to the market and finding out what your company should do next, who is?

via pmblog.perryzoo.com

Use the right "tools" and you'll be delighted with the results. Developers are problem-solvers; product managers and CEOs and sales people aren't. Nice post from "Tim The PM."

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Seth's Blog: What are you working on?

If someone asks you that, are you excited to tell them the answer?

I hope so. If not, you're wasting away.

No matter what your job is, no matter where you work, there's a way to create a project (on your own, on weekends if necessary), where the excitement is palpable, where something that might make a difference is right around the corner.

Hurry, go do that.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Opportunity is everywhere. Hurry. Go do that.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The Case for a Chief Marketing Technologist - Advertising Age

Yet most marketing organizations today lack the technical leadership to fully harness this power. Previously, technology management didn't need to be a core competency of marketing. It was sufficient to rely on a hodgepodge of the IT department, outsourced providers and vendor consultants. The translation of a high-level marketing vision into its technical implementation was considered largely "in the weeds."

Here are three reasons why marketing executives should reconsider such a laissez-faire approach to technology.

via adage.com

With technology is such a key part of marketing, it is surprising how often I find marketing people with so little knowledge or understanding about technology. Scott Brinker does a good job of examining this problem and proposes a new role: Chief Marketing Technologist.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Team, band, or factory worker?

In the basement, my son is recording an album for a local band from DC. (Go to www.alpineRed.com to learn more.) I'm listening to the guitar riffs and drum tuning and vocal scales as they warm up. And I'm thinking a product team is more like a band than a factory.

A "Dream Team" isn't just a great group of athletes, but a great group of athletes who play together well. The emphasis on "team," not "dream."

Yet look at how many companies start a new in-house project. They pull a few people together, show them a business plan or requirements document, and say "get started."

Or for that matter, nothing illustrates this as clearly as the way companies do partnerships. Some executive signs a deal--for good reasons or not--and says "make it so" to the team. The expectation seems to be that this group of 5-10 people from two different company cultures can start producing results immediately.

Now let's look at how a musical group works. First the team members tend to be friends. They've played together as a group for years. Even so, when they get in the studio, they're playing differently, with mics and cables and a stranger at the console--they're not on stage or in their garage. They're facing each other instead of an audience, so they're standing or sitting in different positions relative to one another than usual. They're probably playing songs that are somewhat new, songs they haven't performed a hundred times on stage. Uh-oh, the bass player is out sick and they've hired a session player. Now there's a "newbie" in the mix. How do you get him up to speed quickly? Adding an outsider adds time to the schedule--he needs to learn the tunes as well as the style of this band.

Each of the people in the band brings a unique set of skills and experiences. The lead vocalist is mostly a singer and only an adequate guitar player. The guitar player can play great lead parts but can't play bass guitar. The keyboardist can also play synth but probably not anything else. Each has different experiences with the songs; surely the one who wrote the song will know the structure more than the others.

And although the engineer is quite familiar with the venue, he doesn't know much about the band: Who is the leader? Who plays too loudly or softly? Who is the difficult one? Who plays one take and who needs many?

How much does this sound like your development team?

A group of guys and gals who have mostly worked together before except for the new guy. It takes a while to get everyone synced, to get everyone on the same page. And the more we're strangers, the more we need to learn the language of the group.

Each of the people on your team brings a unique set of skills and experiences. Some will have more experience with the company's way of doing things, the services available from the infrastructure, the type of code or content that they prefer to work on. A senior person may be inclined to work alone while a junior person needs more handholding. One may be strong in user interaction while another is better with architecture. And some may prefer an agile approach while others favor a more linear way of working.

Sadly, many executives think of product development as factory work. The team meets at 0900, reviews the requirements, and then just starts writing. But writing code isn't factory work. You're not just adding semi-colons to pseudo code.

In partnerships and acquisitions, two different groups come together to try to create something new. They've never worked together and may have different views of how things should work.

(And the same is true for executive teams. I think we've all seen cases where the execs are strong individually but fail to work together. The sales VP doesn't know what marketing is planning; the head of development is working on stuff without thinking about the impact on other groups. While each is doing his own thing, the rest of the organization scrambles to fill in the holes.)

Start thinking of teams as groups of talented individuals instead of drones on the factory floor. They need time to gel as a team; they need to practice working together and learn to trust one another.

Perhaps the best way to create a team is to give them a project with a short timeline that isn't intended to be distributed. Give them a chance to discover their common ground and areas of conflict. Give them a chance to work together as a team before assigning deadlines and deliverables.

Dave Winer of http://scripting.com/ famously said, "When will Silicon Valley get the message that great products are created by people, not companies?" And not just individuals but teams of people, working together toward a common goal.

 

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Leadership, Trust and Pronouns | Rich Mironov's Product Bytes

A thoughtful choice between “I” and “we” and “you” is a reflection of the workplace emotional temperature: are managers and executives motivating line employees to do their best, or “throwing them under the bus?” Are we rewarding cross-functional cooperation and market impact, or angling for promotion and impressing our peers?

via mironov.com

What I listen for is "they" as in "they won't let me" or "they don't do that here." As if "they" aren't also "you and me."

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Video Thursday: John Cleese on creativity

Jason Z blogged about this wonderful ten-minute YouTube video with John Cleese. 

Here's my favorite quote:

People who have absolutely no idea what they're doing have absolutely no idea that they have no idea what they're doing.

In particular, he reveals the power of observation. Ideas do not come from your laptops.

So, have you observed a customer (or non-customer) lately? 

NIHITO. 

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Is it ethical?

There are lots of definitions of what is and is not ethical. I have one idea; you and your company might have another. 

HP documents suggest that employees pose themselves a simple test to decide whether an action is appropriate: 

"Before I make a decision, how will it look in a news story?"

So, it's not what would your company say before you take the action; it's what would your company say after it hits the news.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Tom Fishburne: this one time at Brand Camp: devil's advocate

The Devil's Advocate is a regular staffer in most offices. "Let me play Devil's Advocate" is a socially acceptable way to shoot down an idea. It's a guise that allows anyone to criticize an idea without offering an alternative. It's far easier (and safer) to tear down than to create. You can undermine what someone has just proposed without actually challenging them directly. 

via tomfishburne.com

Sometimes we need someone to see the bad side of an idea. How it will be mis-interpreted. How it will be abused. How it will conflict with other initiatives.

But first we need a team who will look for the good, will brainstorm the possibilities before everyone (or is it just the same someone?) starts taking shots at it.

Are you the one who plays Devil's Advocate? Are you a permanent nay-sayer? If so, please stop.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Video Thursday: on Positive Thinking

Acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking. 

View a video of her lecture at the RSA that inspired this animation.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

37signal's REWORK

I purchased, downloaded and read REWORK today. Good, simple advice for starting a new business or rebooting your existing one.

My favorite quotes: 

• When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. When you stand for something, decisions are obvious. 
• There’s a world of difference between truly standing for something and having a mission statement that says you stand for something.
• A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.
• You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That’s a warehouse.
• Don’t shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight it. Be proud of it.

and

• ‘Easy’ is a word that’s used to describe other people’s jobs.

If you often think that conventional wisdom isn't for you, you'll appreciate the practical advice in REWORK.

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

We or They

You know how you can tell a company is in trouble? When the employees refer to the company as "they" instead of "we." As in "They won't let us do it" or "They've always done it that way."

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Friday fun: Shiny New Thing

I've lately been enjoying Tom Fishburne's weekly comic panel as part of his Brand Camp series. My favorite so far:

Do your execs (and sales people and developers... and product managers) get caught up in the Shiny New Thing syndrome? (Can you say "Cloud"?)

Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The marketing power of giving!

When I started out in sales, a former boss of mine told that it was important to help as many people within our marketplace as possible.  He said these should be small, easy things – acts of kindness or help, which didn’t take too long to deliver – but were hard to forget.  It worked.  In fact, it worked extremely well and has continued to do so for the past 24 years!

via jimsmarketingblog.com

Jim makes a strong point about the value of giving--as part of selling and marketing. I've always believed in the power of Karma. Give now. It'll come back to you tenfold.

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

integrating two companies' products into a unified product suite

I was asked recently about the best practices in integrating two companies' products into a unified product suite. 

I posted a note to Twitter and got these replies:

@ditkis: Banks?  JP & Mutual, Wells and Wachovia for geo coverage & service diversification

@DavidWLocke No. I think the literature is very clear, M&As fail. Still the acquiring company does get to keep some things that work.

In http://hbr.org/product/m-a-needn-t-be-a-loser-s-game/an/R0306D-PDF-ENG

Three out of four acquisitions fail; they destroy wealth for the buyer's shareholders, who end up worse off than they would have been had the deal not been done. But it doesn't have to be that way, argue the authors. In evaluating acquisitions, companies must look beyond the lure of profits the income statement promises and examine the balance sheet, where the company keeps track of capital. It's ignoring the balance sheet that causes so many acquisitions to destroy shareholders' wealth

In a case I'm familiar with, two companies with complementary product lines merged. My product was the only one in direct competition within the two companies. I think we did the ideal integration, choosing the best features from each product to create a new superset suite. But it was an incredible political problem--not a technical one. Sales people got involved. The branding loonies did too. So did executives who hadn't seen a line of code in decades. Yeesh.

In the end, I spent most of my energy on getting the politics out of the way. The developers created the best-of-both with a clear path for our customers. And don't just think programs: many changes will require customers to convert data and scripts too. (Think of the reaction the world had to Office 2007. See "I Hate Office 2007" at http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.455976.20 ) 

People don't want better as often as they want consistency. Make the change painless to your customers and do your best to ignore the irrelevant complaints from within the building.

Customers come second

... employees come first.

Back in 2002, I read an interesting book called The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch 'em Kick Butt by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane Mcferrin Peters. The premise: If you take care of employees, they'll take better care of customers.

SAS seems to be proof of this. Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for SAS in Cary, NC, writes:

Satisfied employees stay longer, get better at their jobs, learn more about SAS products and the ways people use them, develop stronger relationships with our customers, and are ultimately better able to do the work that provides real value for our customers.

Read more in Fortune says SAS is the best company to work for in America.

What are you doing today to make front-line employees evangelists for the company and its products?

Converting Theory into Action

Product management leadership is all about action. It’s converting the theory of product management into sustainable methods. It’s organizing, guiding and enabling a team and teaching them a common language that builds momentum as a team, creates consistency in your activities and ensures product management maintains a level of credibility across organization and with executive management.

via pmtribe.wordpress.com

My friend Jim Holland hits the nail on the head: product management isn't about meetings and emails and artifacts; it's about learning from the market and turning those observations in action.

What are you doing this week?

Posted via web from Steve Johnson on product management

Tough Times Call For You To Fire Your Customers

Everybody (except perhaps sales people) know that some customers are just bad. They're difficult; they want special treatment; they expect a level of support far in excess of what they paid. They're like my father-in-law who wants Nordstrom support at a Wal-Mart price. Jim Anderson explores this situation in his article Tough Times Call For You To Fire Your Customers. He writes:

Dr. Larry Selden of Columbia University has written the book on good customers and bad customers (Angel Customers and Demon Customers: Discover Which is Which and Turbo-Charge Your Stock). What his research has found is that the bottom 20% of customers can drain your product’s profits by 80% while the top 20% can generate 150% of your product’s profit.

Wow! 150%!! Yeesh, that's some real difference. A PC maker told me that their profit margin only covers a few phone calls. My dentist "fires" bad customers periodically: those who frequently miss appointments without canceling and those don't pay their bills.

Can you afford bad customers! Read the article Tough Times Call For You To Fire Your Customers to help find and destroy bad customers.