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.

[display_podcast]

—

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?