A Great Product Manager

May 23, 2012 by 2 Comments

Someone asked me about the importance of product management in my prior tech businesses. My answer was blunt. Great product managers see beyond customer requirements to the often unspoken needs, and they move organizational mountains to fill those needs.

If you’ve ever worked around, for or with a great product manager, you know this to be true. I’ve worked with a few who live up to this lofty description. Without them, there would have been less success. Maybe no success.

For those of you who aspire to follow in their very big footsteps, you need to think bigger about your role…about your cause. Learn to lead across boundaries…quit staring at your competitors so much and climb into the businesses of your customers, until you can feel their stress and pain and see their opportunities. And then do something about it.

A great product manager is a difference maker.

Filed Under: Career, Performance, Product Management Tagged With: ,

Next! Call for Interviews: Product & Project Managers & Organizational Integrators

August 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

When chatting with leadership author and expert, John Baldoni, on the Leadership Caffeine Podcast (published on itunes last week), I asked him which of his books was his favorite. I loved his response…“The one I’m working on now.”

I’m just a few weeks away from the publication of book #2 for me, a collection of essays organized into helpful…self-help sections for professionals striving to survive and succeed (Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development), and try as I might to resist the urge to do this again (right away), I have to have a book in process in my life.

Next!  Bring on the Organizational Integrators and Informal Leaders!

(This means you, Product Managers and Project Managers.)

I’ve been hanging around professionals who function as organizational integrators for most of my career. These people are more commonly identified as product managers, project managers, team leaders and any of a number of additional titles and roles where there is heavy responsibility for outcome from cross-boundary activities with little formal authority. I’ve referenced these people as “informal leaders,” and am good with that label regardless of the occasional jibe that comes my way on this particular use of both informal and leader in the same breath.

Regardless of label, these individuals who build coalitions, navigate the stormy seas of crafting successful team environments and think about (and act on) issues from both the big and little picture perspective, are the people making things happen in organizations large and small.  Yes, I have a distinctly positive bias on the value, and a distinctly negative view on how organizations are leveraging and cultivating these professionals.

For many of these integrators, the work is hard, the pay mediocre and the grief nearly endless. Oh, and then there’s the respect issue from senior management.

Interestingly, the skills required to lead complex projects and drive change across organizational boundaries are increasingly the skills required to compete in this distributed, always-on world, where complexity is the norm and time compression seemingly inevitable.

The skills employed by the best integrators are increasingly valuable…and those who have them and who work on developing them, represent outstanding pools of talent for bigger, bolder and broader leadership roles over time.

A Big Idea Here Somewhere…and It’s Time to Talk:

Whether I’ve articulated it or not, there’s a big idea here somewhere, and I intend on finding and sharing it. The focus is on the art of leading without authority…in pursuit of driving results across boundaries.

The line of questioning for product managers, project managers and other integrators will focus on the challenges that you face in navigating your role and in developing your career. Consider these three as a great starting point:

1. What’s working?

2. What’s not?

3. What needs to change to better enable you and your colleagues to succeed?

Yes, these are open ended by design. It’s early.  And no, the focus is not on project process  nor on product management steps or frameworks, but rather on organizational, cultural and leadership issues that either support or hinder the efforts of integrators like you.  Along the way, we’ll explore the personal professional development issues for individuals in these roles as well.

Want to Talk?

I have a well-developed network of contacts in these communities and will be reaching out to these professionals. However, I’m curious to hear from people who I don’t know in industries and groups I’ve not encountered.

If you or someone you know might like to participate in a non-invasive, anonymity guaranteed discussion on the challenges and opportunities you see in your work as a product manager, project manager or organizational integrator of any type, I’m all ears.

Drop me a note and we will find a way to connect. For those who prefer a survey approach, I plan on releasing one after the first round of interviews.

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management Tagged With: , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Supporting the Rise of the Informal Leader

March 28, 2011 by 18 Comments

Want to know where to find your best and brightest emerging leaders? Here’s a hint, you’ll have to use your peripheral vision to see them, because they are moving sideways at a high rate of speed.

The Rise of the Informal Leader:

While it’s unlikely that hierarchical leadership will disappear anytime soon from our long-standing organizational models, it is my opinion that we’ve entered an era characterized by the rise of the informal leader.

The ever-shrinking middle layer of management has been replaced by a variety of different individuals fulfilling roles as project and product and team leaders. Their titles say, “manager,” but the real meaning is something like, “tons of responsibility and no authority.”

These Informal Leaders are the ones busy getting work done through and with others by marshaling resources, building coalitions and cutting through the organizational crap that slows many functional leaders to a “protect my turf” crawl.

Informal Leaders are often on a mission to change the world and improve their organizations for the better.  They are organizational and initiative focused zealots with the passion and confidence necessary for success.

Existing leaders will be well served to cultivate an Informal Leader culture and class to cope with the prevailing market forces. The need for speed, flexibility and adaptability have never been greater, and the better your people are at traversing functional boundaries to “get stuff done,” the better your odds of success.

And for those seeking to strengthen and grow your careers, instead of looking up the organizational ladder, it’s time to rethink your view of success and start looking sideways as the best way to make a difference.

7 Ideas for Cultivating Informal Leaders in Your Organization:

1. Give your people room to run beyond your boundaries. Hell, encourage them to run. Don’t create artificial silo or turf barriers for your people. You will succeed if your people are encouraged to create value and build coalitions across the organization.

2. Use your functional power to broker alliances with peers that pave the way for people and teams to tackle the big issues of the day. Actively encourage teams to work to solve problems across boundaries and you will be supporting the development of an Informal Leader culture.  Those with passion and skills will take the opportunity to grab these initiatives.

3. If your culture is already project centric, recognize that great project management has two components: the tools of the trade and the socio-cultural (people) issues. You can be mechanically sound and still fail. Invest in strengthening people skills to improve your chances of success.  Don’t assume that people know how to collaborate.  I see far too many cross-functional initiatives reduced to “debating societies” to be comfortable assuming that people truly get how to collaborate for results.  Provide resources and coaching to teach teams and Informal Leaders how to succeed.

4. Change at the top to promote growth across the organization. Current leaders need to learn what it means to effectively sponsor working teams.  Those at the top of the ladder (yeah, there is still hierarchy) need to consistently model the right behaviors for cross-functional and Informal Leader success.

5. Design developmental assignments to push people into informal leadership roles. Ensure that assignments challenge individuals to quickly form relationships and guide groups towards problem resolution.  Ensure an ample flow of feedback from participants and stakeholders, and provide a reasonable blend of skills development in areas such as: communication, negotiation, critical thinking and facilitation.

6. Engage Informal Leaders in the strategy processes of the firm. Too often, the people driving progress are simply “receivers” of direction. This devalues their understanding of talent, organizational capabilities and their tremendous insights and lessons learned along the way.

7. Create diversity in your upcoming Informal Leader ranks.  Far too many organizations create “project managers” out of just their technical professionals. While cautious to generalize, many of these same organizations end up with a project management culture that is mechanically excellent but truly weak on the soft, people side of the equation.  Draw from and build informal leaders in all areas of the organization.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The issue of building a powerful Informal Leader culture transcends the topic of project management. This is neither a functional nor a vocational issue as much as it is about building an environment that works effectively in this challenging and ever-changing world.

I see successes all of the time, although they tend to emerge due to the tenacity of one or more passionate individuals, rather than through a deliberate development process. The challenge now is to find ways to deliberately develop an Informal Leader class and quit relying on its emergence by accident.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change, Performance, Product Management, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , ,

Marketers: 4 Ideas to Avoid Falling Victim to The Felt Need

October 26, 2010 by 2 Comments

A Better MousetrapThe article, “The Felt Need” by Dan and Chip Heath in the November, 2010 issue of Fast Company is worth the price of the annual subscription for it’s reminder value alone.

The Heaths tackle a topic that just about all of us involved in selling, marketing or strategy have succumbed to at some point in our careers: the felt need versus the burning need.

“If entrepreneurs want to succeed…they’d better be selling aspirin rather than vitamins. Vitamins are nice; they’re healthy. But aspirin cures your pain; it’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a must have.”

The article speaks to our tendency to become enamored with our own ideas and offerings, and to make the leap that because everyone can benefit from this (a vitamin), they will jump at the opportunity to buy.  They provide a number of great examples from the publishing and technology arenas.

In my own experience, technology businesses do this all of the time, often as they race to either out-feature competitors or to blindly reflect the input of customers. Not that beating competitors or listening to customers are bad ideas, but both can lead you down blind trails if you’re not careful.

I know better than to fall victim to “The Felt Need,” yet, I’ve produced a number of vitamins during the past few years. On several occasions, I’ve invested considerable time in creating programs that I would take a bullet for as offering career-critical content.  While no one disagreed with me on the importance of the programs or the value of the content, they responded to them much like people respond to their gym membership in February.

4 Ideas to Avoid Falling Victim to The Felt Need:

1. Measure and monitor the success of your new offerings. Are they selling like vitamins or, are they selling like aspirins. If you’re listening to your clients properly, they will tell you loud and clear what level of pain that you are addressing.

2. Evaluate new offerings and investment ideas with the filter of “The Felt Need.” It’s not difficult to assess if your marketer, developer or product manager can substantiate true audience pain. Ask tough questions. I love people that are passionate about their ideas, however, I still advocate a “trust but verify before investing” approach.

3. Quality-check your “Voice of the Customer” processes. Many a well-intentioned firm or product manager has listened carefully to customers only to find out that the requests, while valid, were not material. Too much blind followership leads to a bad case of The Innovator’s Dilemma.

4. Cultivate the practice of social anthropology. Ensure that your people are out in the market and in customers’ businesses observing. Ask someone a question and you will get an answer, but watch them in their own environment and you will learn something about them.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Read the article and spend some time looking at your own mix of current and planned offerings. While as the article indicates, you might end up with some vitamins, you better have a good number of aspirins to address burning pain points.  Make certain that your primary strategy is not “follow the competitor” or, “the customer’s need is our command.” You need good systems and great people to observe, translate and mostly uncover true pain points that merit a cure.  And remember the Heath’s warning about building a better mousetrap. Most people aren’t interested in a better mousetrap. They simply want a dead mouse.

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Marketing, Product Management, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

In Pursuit of Management Innovation in Marketing

October 20, 2010 by 3 Comments

Retro TV CommercialNote from Art: my view to marketing comes from 2+ decades in B2B technology firms large and small, foreign and domestic, as well as 4-years working with small to mid sized manufacturing and service businesses. While your own environment may be different than the one I still see in these firms, I‘ll wager lunch that there are more similarities than differences.

The practice of management has evolved at a snail’s pace over the past 50 years, and one of the core tools of management and a key issue for any organization, marketing, has lagged just slightly behind.

While the tools and technologies available to plan and promote are truly remarkable and changing daily, the treatment of the marketing function and the marketing processes remains in many organizations mired somewhere in a time when Darrin Stephens and Larry Tate were pitching advertising campaigns on Bewitched. (If you’re not familiar with this classic prime-time 60’s and 70’s show, a more current example of that era is Mad Men.)

9 Common Management Mistakes with Marketing:

1. Marketing is late to the game. Formalizing the marketing function and roles in start-ups often occurs once people recognize a problem with a the either engineering or sales-driven approaches that seem right one day and overwhelmingly wrong the next.

2. CEOs and top executives don’t know what to expect from marketing. Their view stops at the necessary but not the only marketing tasks of promotion (generating leads), managing events, creating sales tools and managing the web site and perhaps press releases. The executive view of Marketing is stuck in an “old rules” world.

3. No one knows how to measure marketing’s effectiveness, so the metrics are mostly created by marketers.  This is much like a sales rep defining her own comp package and quota. The numbers will be very, very good, relatively speaking.  They may not reflect anything to do with reality, but they will be good.

4. Marketing efforts are much more like World War II B52 Carpet Bombing than they are precision targeting.  Too many marketers fail to understand buyer personas and the results resemble flailing with the outcomes failing.

5. Some marketers have a warped view of their role..sometimes bordering on elitist. Yes, marketing is important. In particular the firm’s responsibility for MARKETING (all caps) in supporting Drucker’s purpose of an enterprise: “To acquire and keep customers,” is huge. However, this is not owned by a function. MARKETING is an enterprise function, not a siloed issue carried out by the chosen few.

6. The marketing systems are discrete and separate from the enterprise system. The most obvious example is the lack of connectivity in most firms between the lead pipeline (and refinery) and the sales pipeline. I rarely find firms that connect the two. This would be like trying to produce gasoline from crude oil, without having any idea what your source and supply of crude was at any point in time.

7. The role of strategic marketing is often absent. While I don’t want to add more fuel to any “marketing is more important than…” arguments, there most definitely must be someone somewhere looking out for core issues of market strategy, voice of customer translation, competitor monitoring, strategies for achieving meaningful differentiation and so forth.  The failure for anyone to clearly own these creates a great deal of strategic and operational drift in organizations.

8. Marketing is often run at the top by someone that came up through the pure marketing ranks…or, it is subservient to a sales professional. Both are wrong.

9. The deployment of product management often creates a separate, disconnected marketing role.

7 Suggestions for Strengthening Marketing In Your Firm:

1. Top management must broaden the view on the role of marketing and increase expectations and accountability.  It’s much, much more than leads, tweets and shows.

2. Cultivate marketing talent carefully. It’s critical to have functional experts…relentless promoters, great communications and event management specialists, and it’s critical to have broad-thinkers and experienced business people guiding and leading them.  Promoting from within is fine, but make certain that yesterday’s marcom superstars receive broad exposure to the firm through job rotation, mentoring and management development training before placing them in positions of marketing leadership.

3. Know thy personas! If the people driving promotions and visibility aren’t remarkably familiar with the hopes, dreams, problems, desires, issues and lives of the targeted customers, then money will be wasted.

4. Challenge sales and marketing to connect core systems and measures. Both roles and functions own the business pipeline at different stages. Make certain that systems, measures and accountabilities are clear and in some cases, shared.

5. Don’t relegate strategic marketing activities (as I described earlier) to committees or worse yet, to that growing list of “nice to get to when we have time.” Someone with strong business experience and presence outside of a functional silo must watch and act and engage in the core issues of strategic marketing.

6. Be careful with the implementation of product management. This powerful and critical role is easily and often misplaced and misdirected, creating islands or pockets of marketing expertise disconnected from the marketing system.

7. Don’t become enamored with the new tools. They are tools, not silver bullets. On the other hand, don’t ignore them either.  They merit extensive experimentation.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I love everything about serving well understood customers, creating meaningful differentiation, building value and visibility for my firms and frankly, I love crushing competitors or at least rendering them irrelevant. An effective, talented and broad thinking group of business professionals effectively wielding the tools of marketing will make this good work happen a lot faster and a great deal more effectively than most traditional deployments of marketing.

Is it time for an organization-wide marketing tune-up?

Filed Under: Leadership, Management Innovation, Marketing, Performance, Product Management Tagged With: , , ,
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