My first few weeks as a Product Manager

October 1, 2012 By in Agile Development, Building teams, Employees, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first month or so as a Product Manager for Sage 300. It has been quite eventful and occasionally stressful. I have learned quite a lot these past few weeks. Here are some insights from my new career to date:

1. A solid product is not enough to ensure a good release: Ensuring operational excellence on the go to market side is essential to build excitement. We could have done better with our distribution of the launch and exacerbated the problems with our messaging. We  wasted valuable energy on fire-fighting instead of celebrating the new features and functionality which dissipated some of the positive energy about the release.

2. I am no longer a member of R&D: My first major meeting with R&D as a Product Manager was eventful. I was literally and metaphorically “in the corner” grilled on the project priorities for the upcoming release. We had a robust conversation. I am under no illusion that I can expect challenges on changes to the schedule when they occur as they inevitably will.

3. I need to be decisive and accountable: The amount of waste due to the inability to make decisions in R&D is very frustrating. Many times there is no obvious answer. Priorities can often change which means a decision that was right a few weeks ago no longer seems so good. Naturally people don’t like to make decisions in this type of environment with predictable consequences to productivity. The team encountered a roadblock. We discussed the challenge, I heard the various recommendations and made the call. The team was able to move on and implement. I made clear that responsibility for the decision lies with me if stakeholders complain later. (Let’s hope I made the right call!) :)

4. Important disruptive changes are sometimes necessary: We had the opportunity to deliver new functionality that would significantly increase the value to customers on maintenance. It was a last-minute change that severely impacted R&D’s planning for the upcoming release. We made the change anyway. The people in R&D I have spoken with support the change now that they have additional information. The team is hungry to know more about the business and our strategy. I plan to explain the change to the entire team at the next sprint review. I want to help R&D understand how crucial they are to helping us achieve our business goals.

5. It’s very easy to spend my entire mired in operational tasks: Given the product was just released it is entirely natural to spend A LOT of time answering questions about the new product. It feels rewarding to help so many stakeholders. It is important for Product Management to think strategically and ensure the product remains commercially attractive in the market. I need to carve out time to focus on learning my markets and customers to better serve them. It’s very easy to not focus here especially when I have a strong counterpart in Product Marketing.

 

Change agents don’t give up!

July 30, 2012 By in Building teams, Change management, Leadership Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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I had an interesting experience with a key change agent at work recently. This person is an informal leader in our organization. He has no real power. In practical terms, this means he cannot require others to do what he would like. He must lead through influence to accomplish his objectives. This person commands respect on the floor. Some find him a little over the top and too zealous in his desire to get tasks accomplished. That said, we need his drive. He is a change agent. These folks are often thin on the ground in large organizations which have become overly bureaucratic.

His peers disagreed with him on an important topic. To accelerate progress he forced the issue. The team relented. They made his desired changes against their will and better judgment. It will prove  a short-lived win. His peers don’t support the change. Management will reverse it at an opportune time. His professional brand is temporarily damaged. His desired objective will be harder to implement as a result.

What should he do? Learn the lessons and move on. In matrix organizations you need to build coalitions to drive change. Change happens slower as a result. The wins tend to last longer  though when you get them. Was he wrong to force the issue? Of course! Is he right to be impatient at the rate of change. Definitely! It is an unfortunate reality that you can’t please everyone all the time if you are REALLY  a change agent. He must not give up though! We need that desire and drive to accomplish the results and turnaround we are so eager to achieve!

The Red Queen effect

June 17, 2012 By in Change management, Entrepreneurship, Leadership Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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As competition becomes more ferocious management typically try to cut costs and improve efficiency to remain competitive in the market. Although many companies and employees work harder results improve slowly or not at all. Why not? I first heard of the “Red Queen effect” from my professor Ian Hand in his operations module. We were discussing the benefits and limitations of benchmarking against your competition at the time. He was teasing some of our cohort about the Vancouver Canucks the local hockey team. Although they have continued to improve every year for many years the competition seemed to be improving faster than they were much to the frustration of the Canuck fans!

In the software industry for example initiatives such a agile development, automation etc are supposed to help firms deliver new software faster and with higher quality. Who can argue with that? Many do argue though even though they have heard of great success elsewhere. After all change is hard. More importantly results often (rarely?) don’t match the bold promises made when these initiative are launched. Management and employees often prefer to spend more time and work harder at things they already do well instead. It’s easier to show case improvements in functions you already do well at the beginning but the long term consequences can be fatal to firms. What is needed is to work differently instead.

People prefer to stick what they know and trust though. Management and employees see the competition is getting ahead. They feel the urge to work on something, anything to catch up! This won’t work.  Consumers and businesses have better choices and higher expectations now than ever before. Building products that don’t resonate with the market is extremely  costly. The company has new code to maintain but the majority of their user base is not actually using it. Even worse competitors who take the time to truly understand their markets ARE delivering successful products that offer new value propositions to their existing and new customers. I saw a funny quote the other day ” which said something to the effect that “thinking is hard to do which is why so few people do it”. I see this all the time. People prefer to do rather than think. It really is a pity because to really drive change you need people to really work through the issues for them to bring their A game to work.

Are you personally stuck in a professional malaise right now? Is your organization falling behind the competition? Are you really connected to your customers? Do you really understand the value proposition of your products and services?  Do you know what it takes to deliver an extraordinary customer experience? If the answer to some of these questions is no, the time to think and work differently is now!  Working harder is no longer enough.

The Hot Yes!

June 10, 2012 By in Entrepreneurship Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I was asked for feedback on a cool new app that a couple of friends are developing back in Ireland. I can’t go into too much detail about what the app itself actually does as the owners want to keep the project under wraps until the product goes to market. I can share some generic thoughts about the process that could be of interest to my readers though.

On the positive side:

  1. They have a slick user interface that is very intuitive. This is absolutely essential. Empathy for the user experience is just as important as functionality these days. Consumers in the smart phone space are very demanding. Switching costs are typically very low as apps that do well are usually offered by imitators with a fast follower strategy fairly quickly. I would respectfully suggest that the guys are following this strategy themselves by targeting a new geographic market.
  2. They have a catchy name that resonates. It accurately captures how simple their solution is to use.
  3. They have sophisticated technology to price the service they provide that uses location-based functionality on the smart phone to connect potential buyers and  sellers.

They have more work to do to hit a home run though:

  1. They need to get a prototype on to their customers smart phones as quickly as possible to validate their design. Have they really solved their target markets problem? Are there hidden problems that are even more valuable to solve? They won’t REALLY know until the users actually use their product and provide feedback.
  2. Even more importantly is their target market willing to buy their app? They need a “Hot Yes“ to be confident their business plan is robust. If the users are willing to buy the app how much are they willing to pay? Those with a Hot Yes are willing to pay more and pay now! A significant % of the customers who try your prototype should be willing to buy the product. It’s easy to put craft a business plan with a hockey stick revenue projection. It’s much harder to determine customers willingness to pay to make the projections really accurate.
  3. Their target market is still too broad in my view. What segments can they serve better than the competition? It is very hard for a start-up to truly differentiate their product in a large market with a me too offering against established competitors.  An excellent product targeted at a specific niche will sell far better through recommendations by evangelists than a generic product supported by a large marketing budget in a crowded field.
  4. Buyers will only use the service if there is a substantial number of sellers willing to provide services. There are many reasons for the rapid decline of the Blackberry. One of them is the lack of depth to their marketplace for applications. This is another reason to start small and identify a niche that they can serve well quickly .

I believe innovation is a process. These guys are in their twenties and are already on their second startup. The more they practice the better they will get. I suggested they review “BlockBusters. The five key to developing new products.” It’s an excellent book that defines a robust process to deliver new products. The Hot Yes concept I discuss earlier is one of many interesting ideas I picked up from the book. We have recently started to follow these processes in our mid-market ERP & CRM division in Sage North America to accelerate our Connected Services strategy. It will be interesting to see if we can deliver on the promise of this process. I am confident we can!

Related articles

Deliver products that resonate

June 2, 2012 By in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
  1. Get out of the office. Talk to buyers about their unsolved problems.
  2. Identify your buyer personas. Make sure everyone in your organization knows who they are. Know who and what you are solving for.
  3. Define your distinctive competence. Make sure everyone understands it. Everyone in your organization needs to understand what your firm does better than the competition and why.
  4. Make decisions data driven where possible. If you don’t have the data build prototypes to test your ideas. Laurie Schultz was famous for her desire to “referee with data”. She successfully transformed the Sage 300 & Sage 50 products in her tenure with a relentless focus on quantitative analysis.
  5. Talk about the problems your product will solve not what it does.
  6. Become a thought leader. Attract people to your products by influencing others in the industry with creative solutions to challenging problems.

There are many creative ways to address obvious problems if you are connected enough with your customers to truly understand what they are. Here is an innovative product I could use when guests are over for so many reasons…… :)

May you live in interesting times….

May 27, 2012 By in Change management, Leadership, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“May you live in interesting times” is supposed to be a Chinese curse from years gone by. The idea is the unfortunate victim of the curse will experience disorder and trouble in their life. It may not be a Chinese curse at all but the quote has captured many people’s imagination over the years. People struggle to deal with ever more complexity and relentless bad news these days from a variety of media. As the going gets increasingly difficult it seems to me that trust is breaking down at many levels of organizational life. This makes resolving the already challenging problems even more difficult. Let’s take a classic situation a CEO in a turnaround situation faces.

  1. The recent earnings report misses analyst expectations. The stock takes a beating. The pressure to act decisively and be soon to do so is enormous.
  2. The CEO promises big changes. Employees tremble knowing full well what this often means. It is usually very unpleasant in the short run. Surprisingly it often is worse for the employees left than those who leave.
  3. Partners are usually already unhappy at this stage. The company is making less money. Of course they are also. They can expect further pressure on their margins as the management team seek to restore the company to improved profitability.
  4. Many people are looking over their shoulder and living in fear. Who is going to lose their job? Who is going to have to lay off staff in their business? Few people want this.
  5. If the situation is really bad (and it often is if the problems have festered for years) a few people are actually hoping they will be laid off to get a generous severance payout. The work environment is fairly toxic at this stage.
  6. This negative feedback loop is hard to break with external and internal stakeholders reinforcing each other’s negative perceptions. Social media has really changed the game in this regard. Executives have far less ability to shield shareholders, analysts and employees from negative feedback. Twitter, LinkedIn, newsletters and blogs provide new forums for interested parties to hear the “word on the street”.

The situation I describe is surprisingly common due to the hugely competitive, rapidly changing and disruptive nature of the tech industry. If you don’t believe me check out the scathing commentary from employees in most large tech companies in retreat on glassdoor.com. Even wildly profitable firms like Microsoft have their challenges. How do once mighty companies lose their sense of purpose and loyalty of their staff? The reasons vary by organization. A couple of trends spring to mind though.

  1. Arrogance: Past success prevents execs from seeing the flaws in their business models or product portfolio. Look how quickly RIM has fallen from grace in the past few years after dominating the smart phone market originally.
  2. Politics: It is remarkable how executives with business units in constant decline or departments with huge amounts of waste are able to nominate others to take the fall for their mistakes. This breeds cynicism and a culture of form over substance. So much talking. So little results! So much destruction of shareholder value!  These leaders kill their organizations ability to rebound because employees don’t trust them.
  3. Executive turnover: Some companies seem  addicted to reorganizations. This can lead to a culture where employees follow instructions blindly. Survival versus excellence is the name of the game. Don’t rock the boat!  Pursuing strategies tried a couple of times already under different leadership really hurt morale as well.

It’s easy to identify and describe the problems. What about some solutions for CEO’s and their boards!

  1. Be decisive and patient: Make big changes and give them time to work. Organizations with small groups of employees “disappearing” on a regular basis kills morale and breeds fear. If big changes are required so be it. Make them and move on! You cannot get the best from people who work in fear.
  2. Listen: People understand that bad results require tough decisions. It is important that key stakeholders understand the reasons for change. It is even more helpful if people can see the long-term pay back from the tough decisions taken now for future growth.
  3. Communicate: Blogs, intranets, conference calls etc are all valuable. Even better is to develop a personal rapport with people through more intimate forums like town halls, walking the floor or partner road shows. Context is key to help people understand strategy and direction.
  4. Lead from the front: In Japanese culture senior leaders make larger sacrifices than employees to give leadership. Huge pay raises to a select few while the majority get a minimal raise (if any) undermines leaders standing with their shareholders and employees. The recent shareholder activism against outrageous bonuses to executives in London & Wall Street is here to stay given the projected financial challenges over the next few years.
  5. Play to win: It’s hard to rally the troops when you typically play defence.

It is hard for organizations to differentiate themselves through extraordinary customer experience if many key stakeholders are having a very unpleasant one. That said, the best things in life don’t come easily. No pain, no gain! For better or for worse (and probably both) life is going to get a lot more interesting for most of us as 2012 progresses……

Great Product Managers

May 19, 2012 By in Leadership, Management, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

My employer posted a Senior Product Manager position for Sage 300 & CRM this week. Product Management is an area of the business that has always fascinated me. Although Product Managers (PM) have a lot of influence at Sage they have very little power to make things happen. Expectations remain high though to deliver results! Their job is even more challenging due to the matrix organization at Sage. There are a lot of stakeholders to manage with different and often conflicting opinions in multiple locations. It can be challenging to make decisions in a timely manner. This can negatively impact performance in the product delivery teams.

I have read a few books on Product Management & Strategic Alliances in the past year. I am currently reading “Software Product Management Essentials”. It is above average of a fairly mediocre list of books on the topic. One section I found interesting was the authors thoughts on the 7 habits of highly effective product managers. The list is worth sharing.

  1. Great PM’s know their product but also their limits: I definitely agree with this one. PM’s who know the product have far more credibility with the folks in R&D if they know the product. That said nothing infuriates R&D more when PM’s are pontificating on something they know nothing about. It is important clearly communicate the requirements and market\customer needs. If PM’s have evidence\data to support their perspective it is important to share it. Then it is time to let the experts in their respective fields UCD\BA\DEV\QA\UA do what they do best. In a nutshell PM identifies the right product\feature for the market. The experts make sure the product is built right!
  2. A great PM listens first: Simon Covey’s timeless advice in the 7 habits of highly effective people comes to mind. Seek first to understand then be understood. It is important to understand your various stakeholders needs so you can ask good questions. PM’s message resonates far more when it is tailored to their respective audiences.
  3. Great PM’s are curious: The ability to continue to ask why to uncover the real issue is invaluable. The best PM’s I have seen never settle for the obvious answer and strive to truly understand the problem to be solved.
  4. Great PM’s are decisive: Strong PM’s are willing to defend and debate their decisions. PM’s are often challenged publicly. It is important to encourage people to share their ideas and opinions with you and remain assertive and confident at the same time. Sometimes data is available to help guide the decision. Many times (more often than most organizations care to admit) it is not. If new information comes along that justifies a course correction so be it. In the interests of time a decision is often required quickly.
  5. Great PM’s are responsive: Once a PM loses respect in an organization it is very challenging to regain it. The PM’s with the best reputations I know are very hard workers. They are diligent about managing expectations and actively engaged with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
  6. Great PM’s are excellent communicators: The most credible PM’s are typically the best presenters. They tailor their message for their audience and simplify the data with easily understand graphs. PM’s need to inspire their colleagues to achieve their vision for the product. People want to believe their contribution counts in something important and tangible.
  7. Great PM’s are passionate: Marcus Buckingham often points out in his writings that your strengths maximized become a weakness. Passion is a great example of this. Why should their stakeholder’s care if the PM is not passionate about their product? That said the ability to get to win-win situations especially in a matrix organization requires a PM to keep a cool head while others resist or even block their initiatives.

Does anyone out there have other comments on what makes a great PM? If you are considering a switch to PM a friend of mine shared the following presentation. I highly recommend it. http://www.slideshare.net/guestfbb385/shreyas-doshi-how-to-get-that-next-pm-job-svpma-march-2010?from=share_email

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