Management Excellence Audio Interview: The CEO Perspective on Product Management
Filed under: Career, Fresh Voices, Leadership, Life and Business, Management Education, Marketing Yourself, Middle Management, Organizational Transformation, Product Management, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Talent Management, management excellence audio interviews
Notes from Art: I recently mentioned that I would be kicking off the Management Excellence Audio Interview Series, and I’m thrilled to be doing it today with Mike Mulcahy, a technology industry executive that has served as a CEO, a Founder of his own start-up and a Business Unit Leader inside one of the world’s largest organizations. Oh, and Mike just happens to be one of the best sales professionals that I’ve had the privilege of knowing.
Mike is also one of those all-too-rare top executives that consistently champions the cause of product management inside his organizations. I know this first-hand, because it was Mike that provided me with an early opportunity to build a product management organization from the ground up.
We recently reconnected and Mike highlighted his on-going challenges in supporting the development of great product management and great product managers on his teams. I invited him to share his thoughts and perspectives with the community in this inaugural interview program, and he graciously agreed.
A few last comments and then on to the interview.
- The audio recording tools that I used are new to me and there are some sound quality issues. Bear with me as I improve those in future interviews. Fortunately, the issues in this one are that Mike is very audible, and I’m a bit quieter. At least we got that part right!
- I took the opportunity to poll the very active pm community out on twitter (#prodmgmt) and asked what they wanted to hear from the CEO. I received some phenomenal questions and based on the volume was only able to tackle a few here during the interview. I’ve included the full listing of the questions below…and encourage all interested parties to share their thoughts on these important issues. They are great content for future posts and interviews as well.
- Last and not least, Mike has graciously volunteered to field specific questions about the audio interview here on the blog via the comments. Ask away.
With no further adieu, here’s Mike Mulcahy for 17 minutes offering his very experienced perspectives on product management.
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Summary List of Questions from Product Managers for “the CEO” Via Twitter (#prodmgmt)
Note: some great content for comments, questions and follow-on posts. Thanks!
- What is the most compelling problem the CEO faces that he believe a pm can help solve?
- How does the ceo believe he best connects with the pm team?
- Does the CEO see prod mgmt becoming commoditized?
- What metrics does he use to determine if PM is performing well?
- Does he trust PM to stop development on a dead product?
- His view on relationships between pm and company/depts.
- What are the driving metrics he seeks from product mgmt?
- How does he encourage continuous learning from product management?
- What is product management’ss role w. development if the company is using agile?
- Do you view product management as product focused or more product marketing?
- Is product management really the Voice of the Customer?
- Does product management have a seat at the leadership table?
- I am interested to know how he feels about compensation based on product revenue.
- What innovation initiatives/practices do they have in place? What is the role of PM in them?
- How important is domain vs functional pm expertise?
- How has he positioned the PM function in his org? i.e. VP level, stand-alone or within marketing or development?
- Does PM own the product /line of business at a P& L level?
Develop Culture Sensing Skills and Take the Blinders Off Of Your Career
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management, Sales, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Note from Art: at least part of this post was prompted by some truly brilliant product managers interacting on twitter. The true-life career horror story is all my own!
One of my greatest career misfires was accepting a role in a firm where I had failed to properly assess the culture. I was blinded by the allure of this successful and global firm and by the sharp people that I met during the interview process.
Had I interviewed from the perspective of assessing the firm’s culture, I suspect that I would have realized that this was a highly political environment with a command and control leadership style that was counter to my own style and preference.
It took 18 months to unwind that mistake.
Fast forward a few years to where I am active as an educator, trainer, consultant and coach, and I rarely miss an opportunity in a program on leadership, product or project management to describe the importance of developing effective culture-sensing skills.
Top Sales Professionals Get Culture Sensing!
Interestingly, some of the best pros at sensing an organization’s culture are top sales performers and lateral leaders like product and project managers will be well-served to learn from their sales counterparts. Yeah, I know. product and project managers learning from salespeople?! It’s like cats and dogs living together. However, it can happen!
Think about it. Great salespeople are expert at quickly assessing a prospect’s business issues as well as understanding an organization’s approach to decision-making. A sales pro wants to know who makes the final decision, who owns the budget, who the stakeholders are and what the dynamics are that will allow an opportunity to move from interest to close. The faster that he/she can understand how things happen inside an organization, the easier it is to plot a strategy.
Pay Attention: Your Culture-Sensing Skills Will Serve You Well!
I can think of few skills more important for product and project managers and other lateral leaders to develop than culture sensing. All of the expertise in the world in the science of project management or in the understanding of a proper product management framework is for naught if the individual fails to take into account and leverage cultural idiosyncrasies to achieve results and drive improvements.
While the topic of organizational culture is big and broad, my emphasis is on the practical aspects of understanding a culture. From the perspective of someone new joining an organization, here’s just a few of the key cultural attributes or dimensions that they need to understand:
15 (or so) Powerful Culture-Sensing Questions You Need to Ask and Answer:
- What is the organization proud of? Who are the heroes and what are the heroic stories?
- How do people feel about the teams that they are part of?
- How does work get done?
- How are decisions made?
- Is individualism rewarded and encouraged or is the team, silo or unit at the top of the food chain?
- Am I working in a culture rich in values or bereft of any?
- How does innovation take place?
- How do people talk about the leadership?
- Is the spirit one of “can-do” or can’t do because”?
- What is the fighting style? Can people disagree vehemently on an issue and then go to lunch, or are grudges long and deep?
- Is there dissonance between stated goals and priorities and where the focus is placed?
- What’s the accountability culture like?
- What type of individuals prosper and what type struggle?
- What role do customers and what power does Voice of Customer play in the working environment?
- Can people talk about tough topics openly, up and down the ladder?
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All of these and the many more that I could keep listing speak to various cultural dimensions that a lateral leader such as a product or project manager must understand to effectively execute on their roles.
Common misfires occur when individuals attempt to impose their own vocational dogma on a group that could care less what the PMBOK says or whether best practices in product management support the idea. The effective lateral leader doesn’t compromise his/her knowledge or best practices, but rather, learns to play and operate within the cultural dimensions to achieve the right outcomes.
As an executive, I never appreciated it when we were in project meltdown and I was confronted with a project manager highlighting how mucked up our processes were and how if only the team had listened to her guidance we would not be in this situation.
The same goes for Product Managers that I’ve known that would regale me with tales of tragedy and travesty at the hands of evil developers or manipulative salespeople as their excuses for why an offering had flopped or a customer had rejected the latest release.
While those examples underscore a number of shortcomings of the individuals, they also tell me that there was little understanding on their part of how to work within or to subtly and diligently help the culture evolve.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
My Product Manager friends have quite a bit more to say about what they are describing as the “anthropology of product management” and the importance of culture sensing. I’ve only scratched the surface of this topic, and suspect I’ll be back with more.
For now, my suggested take-away is for you to think consciously about understanding the environment you are working and operating in and leverage this knowledge to help drive performance improvement.
And for the large number of job seekers in the market, remember to apply these same questions to the firms that you are evaluating as part of your next step. A job is good, but 18 months was a long-time to reflect on my need to do a better job culture-sensing.
The Challenge and Opportunity of the Product Manager
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Management Innovation, Product Management, Professional Growth, Talent Management
Note from Art: this post came about through my on-going research with a colleague into best organizational practices in product management and product manager career development. For additional information on this topic, check out my recent podcast interview with Michael Ray Hopkin at The Product Management Pulse and stay tuned for future posts.
Product Managers face significant organizational challenges in their quest to expand their roles and increase their value-creating contributions to their firms.
Through a recent and on-going series of interviews with senior executives as well as product managers across a variety of technology and manufacturing organizations, it is becoming clear that more and more organizations recognize the potential for product management to create tremendous value. It is also clear that enlightened executives increasingly recognize that the professionals that work in product management roles are a ready-made source of high potential contributors and emerging leaders.
Consider:
- The Product Manager has the difficult and unenviable challenge of leading and influencing others across the organization without formal authority. The nature of the role requires the development of the lateral influence skills so critical to driving cooperation and execution inside organizations.
- Product Managers are charged with shaping market and offering strategies and are critical links to the Voice of the Customer. The best product managers learn to interpret and translate this sometimes confusing “voice” into offerings that solve problems and create value for stakeholders.
- All too often, product managers and product management organizations struggle to transcend the persona of taskmasters and move beyond the never-ending, highly tactical activities. Organizations that treat this function tactically are wasting remarkable opportunities to create value.
- The role of product manager is a remarkable training grounds for a firm’s future leaders. These professionals see the organization from all perspectives; survive and prosper on their abilities to educate, motivate and inspire action and are at the epicenter of driving strategy and execution.
It’s encouraging to see that some senior leaders and leadership teams are beginning to “get it” when it comes to expanding the involvement, accountability and authority of product management teams and professionals. However, from the school of “be careful what you ask for,” product managers also need to step up their game several levels in order to fulfill their expanding missions.
Part of the feedback that my colleague, Joe Zurawski, and I are hearing from executives is that that the core functional skills that product managers have honed over time must be augmented by the development and expansion of a set of senior leadership skills that will allow for increased contribution.
Senior executives are looking for their emerging senior contributors in product management to bring more advanced skills to the party, in the areas of: Leadership, Strategic Thinking, Executive Presence and Process Optimization.
Core functional/vocational skills are critical, but not enough to allow well-intentioned product management professionals to expand their contributions. Nor is the “make it so” mandate from senior management that has decided it is time for this function and these professionals to provide more.
To survive and prosper as senior contributors and emerging executives, product managers must:
1. Strengthen lateral influence skills (the ability to lead and motivate without authority and across the organization).
2. Develop the ability to recognize emerging patterns in the marketplace and translate that recognition into ideas (strategy & strategic thinking skills)
3. Improve their ability to articulate and command credibility with senior executives (executive presence).
4. Work relentlessly to improve execution and continuous improvement around value creation activities across the organization (process optimization).
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Developing the abilities and skills in those areas is no small task. A deliberate focus by executives and their high potential product managers on developing skills and gaining experience in those four areas is essential.
All parties must engage in a focused development initiative that emphasizes exposure to diverse situations and ever-increasing levels of ambiguity and challenge. Education and training are a part of the process, but mentoring and coaching should earn the lion’s share of focus. Only through deliberate and focused action will organizations derive top value from their high potential product management assets.
Anything less is a formula for same-old, same-old. In this economy, no one can afford to stand pat on the bad old practices of the recent past.
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