My posting, The Product Manager as MVP, offered my perspective on the potential for the professional in this role to have a material impact on a firm’s success.  I truly believe in the power of this function to shape firms, and for individuals and teams of Product Managers to serve valuable formal and informal leadership roles in organizations.

I’ve also seen some remarkable wholesale failures in Product Management—at the team and individual levels.  Truthfully, these failures often have their root causes at the top of the team or even elsewhere in the leadership or organizational design structure.  Nonetheless, the symptoms become visible in Product Management.

While we all love studying and reading about best practices and successes, in my experience, most of the best lessons come from studying the train-wrecks.  Consider these as cautionary tales.

The Case of the Team with Too Many Rookies

Mega-tech company would only staff the Product Management function with early-career professionals, preferring to keep salary costs low and use this function as a training ground and feeder for other parts of the organization.  Common hires included product testers and support specialists with a few years of experience.

While the notion of Product Managers moving into other valued functions in an organization is fine, the lack of experienced, market-savvy, battle-hardened professionals on the team backfired in so many ways.  The individuals and the functional group failed to earn the respect of stakeholders or customers due to their lack of experience and market naiveté.  Nature abhors a vacuum, so the Developers and Sales team filled the gap, with individuals in the PM role reduced to administrative tasks. Lacking proper process and the insights and organizational shepherding of professional PMs, projects failed and flailed, ultimately weakening the firm’s position against a key competitor.  Eventually, a new leader was brought in recognized the flaw in the approach and infused this team with experienced professionals and re-established needed processes.

The Case of the Product Manager as Dictator for Life—or at least for a few months

This situation actually flares up frequently, usually after organizational restructurings that suddenly pronounce, “We will become Market Driven.”  The symptoms are easy to spot.  Seizing the moment, the Product Manager anoints himself as the “Voice of the Market,” and proceeds to assert his newfound authority by shuffling priorities and stopping key decisions in mid-stream so that he can pass judgment.  After a few months of alienating just about everyone in the organization, this incarnation of the evil Product Manager fades away into oblivion.

The Product Manager as CEO of Managing Reduced Expectations

(Note: I have a good friend who is also a Super Product Manager to thank for this label and description.) This incarnation or phase of the Product Management function most often shows up during tough times when business is challenged and the product pipeline is clogged up somewhere in development, with no plumber in sight. During this phase, Product Managers split their time between attempting to get Development to do something different to free up the pipeline—usually to little avail, or being placed on the firing line by sales in front of customers, to explain why the product is late or will not include the needed features.   Clearly, there is something fundamentally wrong—lack of leadership in a number of places, too many projects, lack of strategy etc.  Unfortunately, it’s easy for the Product Manager to become the messenger and even scapegoat.

The Product that Will Change the Market—In the Next Version, No, I Mean the Next Version:

The business literature is filled with examples of leaders and companies that continue to invest heavily in projects and products long after they should have been scuttled. The persuasive and charismatic Product Manager, armed with market data, customer insights and a vision can be one of the worst contributors to “money pit” projects.  It’s counter-intuitive to stop something that a considerable amount of time and money has been invested in, and humans (not just Product Managers) do not like to face failure.  As a result, these revolutionary-someday projects continue to soak up bandwidth, propelled along at the end by the passion and personal integrity of the Product Manager.  This situation can damage even the most successful of companies by affording competitors time to attack while the firm is preoccupied with figuring out how to fix its disaster project.

Enough With the Tales—These are Leadership Issues, Not Product Manager Problems

OK, there is some truth in this header, but whether you are a Product Manager, a leader of Product Managers, or a C-something executive, it is important to recognize ways to mitigate or eliminate the risk of the types of missteps described above, by improving your management of product management.  My suggestions:

-Establish a clear Charter for Product Management.  Make certain that the organization understands the nature, scope, responsibilities and accountabilities of the Product Management function.   A clear and visible Product Management Charter will eliminate confusion and serve as a valuable check and balance vis a vis other functions, especially when the fingers start pointing.

-Create a strategic staffing plan for Product Management.  This function cannot work effectively on the cheap by recruiting just early career professionals and expecting them to grow into the job.  Blend the experience levels and ensure that the team has a mix of backgrounds both from inside the business and from the marketplace.  Ensure that early career PMs have clear development plans and are given assignments that will stimulate their rapid growth.   Require the more experienced professionals to serve as mentors and coaches along the way.  A relentless focus on identifying, recruiting, developing and retaining the right staff will pay dividends for years.

-Strategy development is an on-going process, not an event.  Continuously review your plans against changing forces in the marketplace, and develop the processes and culture to challenge current thinking and re-evaluate projects that have no end or return in sight.  Establish the culture and discipline to accept, learn from and deal with misfires and move on to the next opportunity.  Yesterday’s failure can provide the knowledge for tomorrow’s success.

The bottom-line:

There are a million causes of project and product failures, but the majority of them can be mitigated by some common-sense approaches to organizational structure, staffing and to providing visibility to the nature and scope of the role of Product Management.  One key issue… Product Management must have a seat at the leadership table.  It’s not just a task in development or marketing (or both), it’s a discrete, value-creating role that should be visible, as well as responsible and accountable for results.  Managed properly, the results can be remarkable.