NOTE: The following is a guest post by Shardul Mehta. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.

If you are considering introducing Product Management into your organization, or are the first Product Management employee hired into an established business, then tread carefully! Having twice done the latter, I can attest there are fewer professional situations more fraught with ambiguity, unreasonable expectations, threats from every corner, and high likelihood of failure for the Product Manager and the organization.

Why would a successful business decide to introduce Product Management into the organization at all? In one of the companies I had joined, the business had been extremely successful selling variations of essentially the same product for years and years. But with potential new clients drying up, the execs decided what the company needed was more “innovation” and their answer was to create a Product Management department. Other reasons could be:

• With everyone in the company focused on marketing, selling, customer service, managing operations, hiring, and a hundred other things, the organization finds no one is focused on growing the product portfolio.
• On the other hand, the product portfolio may have grown like wild fire, and now there are multiple versions of the product, causing customer confusion and inefficiencies within the organization. Time to consolidate.
• The product itself has become so “feature rich” that sales and marketing no longer know how to position the product to customers, customers cannot be serviced efficiently, and delivery dates keep slipping as each additional piece of functionality adds exponential risk to development and testing.

For any of these reasons, the company executives decide its time to bring in Product Management.

Buyer beware

Although these situations may seem ideal to introduce Product Management, they abound with pitfalls for the unaware. It’s important for both company execs and Product Management to be mindful of numerous land mines:

Unfounded unreasonably high expectations.Product Management is suddenly looked upon as the silver bullet answer to all the company’s problems.

Not all expectations are created equal. Expectations are also different across each department:

• Engineering/IT expects Product Management to write requirements, project manage the delivery, conduct UAT, manage defect resolution, and make release go/no go calls.
• Sales expects Product Management to be available for every sales call, produce sales collateral, do product demos, commit to product features that will help them close the next big deal, and have them available by the date they already promised to the client.
• Marketing expects Product Management to provide the content for marketing materials or, worse, wants nothing at all to do with Product Management.
• Execs expect Product Management to come up with the “next big thing,” have a solid business case behind it, deliver it on time, and ensure it makes a ton of money.

What does Product Management do? Most times folks don’t understand the role of Product Management and the value it brings to the organization. Let’s see…

• Salespeople close deals.
• Marketing does market research and advertising.
• Operations manages call centers and business processes.
• Account management manages client relationships.
• IT takes care of “all that technical stuff” the rest of the organization would rather not be bothered about.

Pretty straightforward. So what exactly does Product Management do? And here’s the fun part: even the executives of the company – the same folks who decided to introduce Product Management – may not be clear on what exactly it does!

Why do we even need Product Management? Infinitely worse is when folks secretly question the decision to bring in Product Management. This is typically prevalent at the department head and rank & file levels.

The thinking goes this way: “We’ve been successful all these years without it, so why do we need it now?” Product Management represents a disruption to tradition and the status quo. As such, it is seen as a threat. We human beings typically don’t embrace change so readily. In one company, IT had historically written the business requirements and the business was more than happy with this arrangement. When Product Management came into the picture, the battle lines were drawn!

The scapegoat syndrome: A popular way for other departments to deal with the threat is simply to blame Product Management for anything and everything wrong with the product. Suddenly Product Management is getting blamed for deals not getting closed, because the product does not have the features desired by the last “hot” prospect.

If the product has holes, Product Management is called to task for writing poor requirements. If customers don’t respond to marketing, Product Management is accused of not understanding the customer. If customers report bugs in the product, Product Management is asked to immediately identify fixes. Product Management becomes everyone’s favorite punching bag. It’s amazing how fast this happens.

The bottleneck syndrome: Somewhat related to the scapegoat syndrome, except this one is often self-inflicted. The new Product Manager declares, “Product Management owns the product.” And sure enough, soon he or she does indeed own everything to do with the product. All decisions, all issues, are swiftly sent to the Product Manager, who quickly gets swamped with putting out one fire after the next. Pretty soon, no department is getting the support it expects, the backlog piles up, delivery timeframes get jeopardized, the execs are still waiting on the product strategy, and everyone is pointing to Product Management as the bottleneck.

Eyes wide open

So before you introduce Product Management into your organization, or sign up as the first Product Management employee, be mindful of these traps. In my next post, I’ll share hard fought lessons on how you can avoid them and prepare for long-term success.

Have you ever been one of the first product management employees hired into an organization? Please share your story. I’d love to hear from you!

Shardul

Tweet this: Introducing Product Management into an Organization http://wp.me/pXBON-37M #prodmgmt #innovation

—

Shardul Mehta is a simple product guy whose passion for great digital experiences is only exceeded by his love for chicken curry. He is the Founder of ProductCamp DC, and his blog can be found here.

Related posts:

1. How to Create an Effective Product Management Organization
2. 5 steps to building a great Product Management organization
3. 5 Steps to Building a Great Product Management Organization
4. Guest Post: Measuring Product Management (part 1)

It’s been quite a while since I wrote a What’s the Deal piece.  The last one was called “What’s the Deal with Software Product Management?“. So it’s kind of fitting, that I’m following it up (albeit almost 4 years later) with one on Product Marketing.

Recently, there have been a few posts on other blogs related to the Product Marketing role and the viewpoints caught my eye.

• What’s the difference between Product Marketing and Product Management?
• The End of Product Marketing
• The Rise of the Product Marketer

The “What’s the difference” article attempts to delineate the functions of Product Management and Product Marketing.  You should read the whole article, but here are a couple of snippets of the definitions of the two:

Product management usually “listens” to the market and then works with the internal team to develop products to meet the needs that are articulated.  They do not usually to interact much with the market on a day-to-day basis  in a direct way, but rather listen to feedback obtained by sales and marketing.

…

So if that’s product management in a nutshell, where does product marketing differ?  Well, product marketing is a more externally focused role. The product marketers “talk” to the market more.  They evangelize what the company’s product offers the world, and help the company focus their messaging to the market.

We need to get away from these “complementary opposite” definitions of the roles. i.e. one listens, the other other talks. One is inbound, the other outbound. One focuses on putting products on the shelf, the other focuses on getting products off the shelf etc.

The roles are are definitely complementary, but are definitely not opposites. These kinds of definitions, while short and easy to remember are incorrect and only help to further confuse those who aren’t clear on their relationship.

Now, in The End of Product Marketing, Dave Wolpert (guest posting on A Random Jog) describes a death spiral he sees happening to Product Marketers. Caught between Product Managers, Marketing and Sales, Product Marketers are losing responsibility for any strategic activities and are becoming tactical, siloed content creators.

At many companies, product management has already replaced the inbound function I described earlier. At others, product marketers have evolved into field marketers by focusing mainly on sales tools that are only used internally; development of externally-facing content marketing tools, like technical white papers, are sourced to others.

In what seems to be a bit of a rebuttal of Dave Wolpert’s piece, Josh Duncan (the main blogger on A Random Jog), states the following in the Rise of the Product Marketer.

In most businesses, there is a gap between marketing and product that must be filled. Without an audience, a great product has nowhere to go. Likewise, a great marketing strategy can’t save you from a woeful product. I believe that business success can be found when you match a great product with a great marketing plan and this is where Product Marketing can have the most impact.

So with that preamble, here’s my take on the situation.

1. Product Marketing is not dead, but it’s also not on the rise.

I currently work with some really good product marketing folks. I’m not saying that just to be nice or polite. I’m saying that because it’s true. But it’s not like that in many companies.

Part of the problem is that many companies don’t understand what Product Marketing is. So they define the role incorrectly, or hire the wrong people, or both. And what happens then? You have ineffective Product Marketing and little need to expand on it.

A lot of companies look at the role like this – product MARKETING. i.e. they focus on the second word and thus create conditions like those described by Dave Wolpert. i.e. Product Marketing becomes a tactically focused sales support role.

2. Product Marketing is usually ridiculously understaffed.

I’ve been in Product Management for a LONG time. And while most companies I’ve worked in have small Product Management teams, they have tiny, and sometimes non-existent Product Marketing teams. Ratios of 5:1 (Product Managers to Product Marketers) are not uncommon.  Why? Because companies don’t understand the role so don’t hire properly. Or they feel that the work can simply be done the “the Product Manager”.  Yes, it can be done, with the right people in place, but at what cost? Having individuals splitting time between all the different tasks of both Product Management and Product Marketing is simply a recipe for mediocrity at best, failure at worst.

3. “Marketing” is viewed very differently than it was 20+ years ago

The word “Marketing”,  if you look at the business school definition of it, is very different than how it is understood in most technology companies today.

Marketing used to be viewed as a strategic business function. Remember the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, Place)? Notice that “marketing” included “product”. Today of course, the term “Marketing” is mostly understood to cover only “Promotion” – i.e. advertising, PR, events, campaigns, awareness, lead generation etc. It has become specialized and focused heavily on demand creation.

Product Management has taken over “Product” and “Price”. “Place” — i.e. sales/distribution channels — has been taken over by Sales and to a lesser extent Product Management. Thus the “Marketing” part of “Product Marketing” is viewed in this context. Not as a strategic business function, but an outwardly focused partner to Sales.

Perhaps we need a new name for Product Marketing to better align with the changes that have happened in Marketing over the last 20 or so years.

So, what does that mean for “Product Marketing”?

In short, I see the clear need for what I would call “strategic marketing”.

This covers the basics like positioning and messaging, but also other areas where market, customer and product knowledge are required. This could include (but not be limited to) the following:

• evangelism
• analyst relations
• sales funnel analysis and optimization
• working on product, market or competitive strategy
• high value content creation

So where does Product Marketing fit within a company? This role does NOT belong in Marketing and definitely not in Sales. Product Marketing should be part of the overall Product Management organization.

OK, Product Marketers, hear me out before you think I’m out to assimilate the role into that of Product Manager. I’m not. In fact, I’m advocating the opposite.

I’ve written and presented on the topic of How to Structure a Product Management Organization as well as The Need for Differentiated Roles in Product Management.

The fact is that both the roles of “Product Manager” and “Product Marketer” are poorly understood and implemented in the industry.  e.g. There’s too much focus on what a “Product Manager” does vs. what “Product Management” does.

Far too many companies have Product Management organizations that are populated solely with people with titles of “Product Manager” at varying levels of seniority. e.g. Technical Product Manager, Product Manager, Sr. Product Manager, Product Management Director, VP Product Management etc. Is there any other department that looks like that? No.

All departments have a spread of roles that have particular complimentary (there’s that word again)  focuses (foci?) and that work together to achieve common goals.  Why should Product Management be different?

There’s little disagreement that Product Managers and Product Marketers should work closely together, yet for some reason, there is pushback (mostly from Product Marketers in my experience) to be functionally within the Product Management organization.

Take a look at the following presentation. I delivered it last year at ProductCamp Boston. In it I present my case for the various roles, the place of Product Marketing within overall Product Management, and the problems this structure solves.

Please take a look and let me know what you think.

Saeed

Tweet this: What’s the deal with Product Marketing? http://wp.me/pXBON-371 #prodmgmt #prodmktg

Related posts:

1. What's the deal with BizDev? pt. 2
2. What's the deal with BizDev?
3. Should Product Management and Product Marketing be parts of the same department?
4. Open Question: How did you get your first Product Management or Product Marketing position?

NOTE: The following is a guest post by Ninon LaForce. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.

I was asked  to formulate a 90-day plan for a new Product Manager role. This role was created to drive the strategy around the “right mix” of partners and solutions in a new emerging technology area. A 30-60-90 plan shows a potential employer how you plan to hit the ground running and can set you apart during a competitive interview process.  Here is my plan:

Before The Start Date

• Obtain all information relevant information I can find to get up to speed on what is happening with the organization (e.g. annual reports, website, press releases, internal contacts if I have them). Also get a good understanding of what is happening in the industry.

Day 1-30: Learn my way around and get to know the team

• Meet with my manager to identify top priorities for my department and what is expected of me. Set up a time for weekly status meetings.
• Meet with each member of my team to learn their role, challenges and opportunities. Find out what they expect of me and how I can help them.
• Meet with as many top influencers as possible and ask them valuable suggestions about my role and about navigating the
  organization.
• Learn the corporate systems, the internal workings of the company and read the company policies and procedures.
• Attend any orientation or training offered.
• Review the list of existing partners and study what is known about them, how they have been performing, etc.
• Subscribe to industry online news, thought leadership, and any other industry online resources.
• Go to lots of meetings and offer to help on small initiatives.
• Read as much as possible and study to continue to improve industry and product knowledge.
• Draw up the logical value chain (ecosystem) for the industry and find out as much as possible about each value step and how the organization adds value (or could add value).
• Listen and take lots of notes.

Day 31-60: Take ownership

• Meet with my manager for a first 30-day review. Ensure I am focusing on the right activities and adjust as necessary.
• Take ownership of some projects.
• Contribute my thoughts/ideas on how to streamline industry partners and programs.
• Make a list of activities/project that will contribute to meeting the department objectives and set up a plan to reach the goals.
• Go to lots of meetings and begin to run some of them.
• Continue to build relationships.
• Begin to write materials (drafts)
• Continue to learn and read as much as possible.
• By this time I hope to have uncovered some promising unexploited opportunities for growth and have begun to figure out how to exploit them.

Day 61-90: Begin to take on more of a leadership role

• Check-in with my manager for a first 60-day review. Discuss how things are going, review progress on projects I am involved in and offer new ideas. Reach agreement on how to move forward and secure sufficient resources to get things done.
• Obtain constructive feedback from team members on my progress.
• Start to recommend new partners.
• Use my integrative thinking and propose new solutions or better ways to add-value to partners or programs. Ensure the
  strategies I am proposing match the business environment.
• Share my ideas on developing new ways to reach out to partners and engage with them.
• Start making decisions.
• Take a fuller leadership role.
• Start being a resource to others.
• Keep a focus on problems/projects/activities that are priorities. Create some momentum in a positive and collaborative way.

I consulted the following resources for the formulation of my 30-60-90 plan. They are:

The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels
by Michael Watkins, Soundview Executive Book Summaries, 2004.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/09/06/leadership-pink-careers-cx_ag_0906ninetydays.html

http://www.thedailymba.com/2010/06/21/your-first-90-days-at-a-new-job/

Thoughts on my plan would be appreciated. Please do not hesitate to comment.

Ninon

Tweet this: A 90-day Plan for New Product Managers – http://wp.me/pXBON-34i  #prodmgmt

—

Note: This article was originally published on Ninon’s blog – Product Edge — in 2011.

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: Do you have a roadmap for your Product Managers?
2. Questions for Product Managers
3. Product Managers need time to breathe…
4. Do Product Managers need Domain Knowledge?

Note: This is a guest post by Fred Engel. If you want to submit your own guest post, click here for more information.

I was in the San Francisco airport looking for a book when I came across the Steve Jobs section.  I think I saw 5 books on Steve jobs. One of them “I, Steve – Steve Jobs in his own words” seemed like an interesting read so I bought it.  Quotes from Steve Jobs are always interesting.

The quotes inspired me from cover to cover, reminding me of how much I like to build products and how much my strength gets sapped in all the places that are not set up to build great products.  There are many companies that build great products and many that do not.

Here are 10 quotes that I found particularly helpful in thinking about what it takes to have a company that builds great products:

1. “You need a very product-oriented culture… Lots of companies have great engineers and smart people. …..there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together.”

It’s just so much harder to build  good products when the company does not have a culture focused on that.

2. “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.  But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas…”

Think of all the products that have way too many features. Do you know your customers well enough to be able to say no?

3. “Sure what we do has to make commercial sense, but it’s never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience.”

This is really a very challenging way to look at it all.  It takes a lot of support in the organization to get people to have the patience to work out the economics later.

4. “What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea… and the engineers go, “Nah, we can’t do that, That’s impossible.” … the manufacturing people…go “We can’t build that!” And it gets a lot worse… And I said “No, no, we’re doing this.” And they said, “Well, why?” And I said, “Because I’m the CEO and I think it can be done.” And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit.”

How many CEO’s have the guts to do this? How many are good enough?

5. “There is a classic thing in business, which is the second-product syndrome.  Often companies that have a really successful first product don’t quite understand why that product was so successful. And so with the second product, their ambitions grow….[and] they fail.”

You really have to understand your customers.

6. “My model of business is the Beatles.  They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check…. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.”

Given all the negative spin on working in groups, I find this refreshing?

7. “At Apple we come at everything asking, “How easy is this going to be for the user? How great it is going to be for the user?”… Everybody says, “Oh, the user is the most important thing,” but nobody else really does it.”

How many products do you see that have really not focused on the user?

8. “Quality is more important than quantity.  One home run is much better than two doubles.”

9. “When we create stuff, we do it because we listen to the customer, get their inputs and also throw in what we’d like to see, too. We cook up new products.  You never really know if people will love them as much as you do.”

How many of the products you deliver do you really love? Are your chances of winning better or worse?

10. “The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient.”

I love the clarity of these comments.  It is worth fighting to get the organization to really focus on good products.

Fred

—

Fred Engel is founder and CEO of Westerly Consulting, a management and advisory consulting firm based in Rhode Island.

Tweet this: 10 Memorable Steve Jobs Quotes for Product Success http://wp.me/pXBON-33c #prodmgmt #innovation #apple #stevejobs

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: 5 Innovation Lessons from Steve Jobs
2. 7 things you’ll never hear Steve Jobs say during a presentation
3. The secret to Apple’s success?
4. Shop Talk Q&A with Steve Johnson

Tweet this: It’s that Product Owner (er…Backlog Manager) debate again http://wp.me/pXBON-2U3 #prodmgmt #agile

By Saeed Khan

There was a vibrant discussion on the Twitter Product Management Talk yesterday. The topic, a common one for Product Management types – the roles of Product Manager and Product Owner.

The discussion was lead by John Peltier who writes on Agile Product Management. Geoff Anderson who also participated, wrote a post on his blog – Tralfaz - about an exchange he and I had.

Geoff wrote about some of the issues he’s seen when companies add the Product Owner role.

These issues can be summarized as:

• Putting very junior people in as Product Owners.  How junior? They “almost need to ask permission to use the bathroom”.
• Organizational problems with Product Owners being part of Engineering. i.e. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
• The required frequency of communication needed between a Product Owner and Product Manager.

Here’s my take on these topics.

What is the right level of experience for Product Owners (or as I’ve advocated – Backlog Managers)

This one is easy. Put an inexperienced person in any role, and prepare to be underwhelmed. There is a trend to create junior “transition” titles — e.g. Associate Product Manager, Technical Product Manager — for people who are entering Product Management. Now there is nothing wrong with these types of titles, but the problems occur when there is a mismatch between the skills and the responsibilities for those roles.

Given the responsibilities of a Backlog Manager, such as ensuring the Eng teams stay focused on the right functionality, facilitating information flow, helping resolve problems as they are encountered, providing technical guidance when needed etc.  a junior person is the last person you’d want in this role.

The role needs a strong technical background, good judgement and decision making abilities, a persuasive attitude , and good communication skills. Doesn’t sound like a junior person to me. IMHO, the best person for this role, particularly in a company with a strong technical team, is an experienced ex-Engineer who wants to move into Product Management.

Where should the Backlog Manager reside

Without question, this role DOES NOT belong in Engineering. Plain and simple, it should be part of the Product Management organization, seated along with the corresponding Product Managers and Product Marketers who work on the same product.

Being part of the same team and sitting with them leads to the next point.

What is the right communication frequency

I’m always amazed at how much of a sticking point this can become in online discussions. What is the right frequency of communication between a Product Manager and a Backlog Manager? Well it’s quite simply the right frequency of communication. i.e. whatever is required.

Sometimes it could be several times in a day. Other times it could be a few times a week. Other times, it could be once per week or even less. The reality is that there is always ebb and flow with information demand. But the question is how mature is the Engineering team and what kinds of day-to-day decisions are they making? Immature teams need constant care and feeding. Mature teams with experienced development management can work without daily guidance.

I personally have worked with remote teams (e.g. team is in India with me in North America) and aside from a weekly synchup call, other communications were primarily handled via email or if needed, a mid week phone call. And guess what, those teams delivered great products and didn’t lose their way because of any lack of communication.

So in short, what can companies do to succeed when implementing a Backlog Manager (or Product Owner)?

Get the right people, with the right level of experience, in the right organizational model and communicating the right amount and everything will work out fine. Easy!

Saeed

Tweet this: It’s that Product Owner (er…Backlog Manager) debate again http://wp.me/pXBON-2U3 #prodmgmt #agile

Related posts:

1. Good Bye “Product Owner”, Hello “Backlog Manager”
2. The Scrum Title “Product Owner” must die!
3. A new (and better) definition for Product Owner
4. Why the “Backlog Manager” fits best for Scrum focused ISVs

Hardly a week goes by without seeing an article or opinion piece about how important it is to ‘delight customers’. And companies like Disney, Apple, Southwest Airlines and Zappos are regularly held up as shining examples of companies that succeed in this area.

But what do people really mean when they say that companies should “delight customers”?

Delight is not easily quantified, although you know it when you see it or experience it. But if you want to delight customers, the good news is that the bar set by most companies is really low. Look at virtually any telco or mobile provider, or many retail outlets to see exactly now not to delight customers.

The following are 5 rules to follow to delight customers, regardless of the industry your are in.

Make the Mundane Memorable

Let’s face it, most of the interactions we have with companies are forgettable. They are simple actions or transactions that we have everyday with virtually every vendor. And that fact means there is opportunity to separate from the crowd.

I’ve written about Disney previously. We visited Disneyland after visiting SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo. And while there were many memorable aspects to the visit, one thing that I noticed right away was how effortless the parking was at Disneyland, particularly compared to virtually everywhere else we had gone. I wrote:

First of all, strange as it sounds, I can’t sing enough praises about the parking garage at Disneyland. Yes, you read that right. Disney has made even the mundane task of parking, ruthlessly efficient. Disney staff direct incoming vehicles into successive rows of empty parking spots. Contrast this to other parks, where, like in a shopping mall, you hunt up and down rows for an open spot.

Another example is Southwest Airlines. You may have already seen the video, but if not spend a couple of minutes and listen. And note the passengers’ faces and reaction at the end. Do you think they’ll remember their flight on Southwest and tell others about it?

In both these examples, it doesn’t cost the companies any extra money to do these things, but the impact on customers is clear, the fact that they thought of these little details says to me that they will definitely care about the big things.

Don’t Be a Hypocrite

In the age of social media, the term “authenticity” is used quite often. In fact, search on Google for the words social media authenticity and you get over 5,000,000 hits!

Being “authentic” means being honest with your customers in all aspects of your interactions with them. In my view, the opposite of authenticity is hypocrisy. i.e. saying one thing and doing another.

One of the worst examples of hypocrisy occurs with call centers.  I’ve had this happen many times, perhaps you have too.

When putting me on hold in long queues to speak to “the next available attendant”, a recorded voice comes on regularly telling me “your call is important to us”. Really??? How important could it be? You’ve had me on hold for over an hour. If it was really important, you’d have enough staff so I wouldn’t have to wait an hour to speak to someone and once I do get through it wouldn’t be a poorly trained, unempowered person on the other side of the world who pretends he’s in a call center in Des Moines Iowa.

I could cite other examples like this, such as meaningless guarantees or refund policies, but overall, treat people with honesty and decency and help them get their problems resolved. That’s all that anyone really wants.

Customer Service, not Lip Service

Zappos is famous for their customer service. In fact, excelling at customer service is a fundamental part of their business strategy. They sell what are essentially commodity items — shoes, purses, clothing, jewelry etc. And so they’ve decided to differentiate themselves on their service e.g. free delivery and free returns. But Zappos goes well beyond these simple tactics and takes it’s dedication to service to it’s employees. There are lots of articles that detail Zappos’ culture etc. but one test Zappos has to see how dedicated their new employees are is known as “The Offer”.

Zappos offers all new employees who have finished their mandatory training $2,000 if they’ll quit. i.e. If you don’t think you want to stay at Zappos, here’s an incentive to help you make your decision. A small percentage take the offer, but the vast majority stay. By identifying those people who are less committed to the objectives of the company and accelerating their departure, Zappos ensures that those who stay are truly the ones who will help the company succeed. Simple but incredibly effective.

On the flip side, I wrote about a particularly bad customer service experience at a Canadian retailer — Future Shop — here. To make a long story short, all I wanted to do was exchange a defective clothes washer that had been delivered to me. I spoke to about a dozen “customer service” people who consistently failed at their job. During the ordeal, which eventually did get resolved, I came to the following conclusions about Future  Shop staff.

• They openly and consistently lie to customers
• They don’t know what the word “Service” means
• They are trained to show empathy over the phone but have a complete disregard for customer issues
• Beyond empathy training, they are not trained to read notes in a file and have no understanding of internal FutureShop processes

Comments on the blog from readers indicated I was not alone in my experience. Will I buy anything from Future Shop again? Unlikely.

And just to reinforce these points, I did 2 Twitter searches as I was writing the post. One for  the words future shop service, and one for zappos service. These are the most recent 5 Tweets each, completely unedited. Click on each to enlarge and read.  Case closed.

Kill the lawyers fine print

I don’t know about you, but I hate fine print. Yes, we live in a litigious society, but the only thing worse than letting accountants run a company is letting lawyers run it. But all fine print doesn’t come from lawyers. A lot of it comes from Marketing people or Product Managers.

Here’s a simple example. I got a coupon for a “Buy 1 get 1 free” admission to a movie at my local movie theater. There was a lot of fine print on the back, and I hate to admit, that my eyes have reached a point where I can’t read it without my reading glasses so I didn’t read through it. But, I decided to take 2 of my kids to see  Spy Kids one weekend.

We got to the theater, only to find out that the coupon wasn’t valid on Fridays or Saturdays. Darn. Should have read the fine print. OK, I said to my kids, let’s come back tomorrow, no harm. We returned on Sunday to buy our tickets – 1 adult, 2 children.

The theater employee informed me that the coupon was only good for “1 free General Admission ticket with the purchase of 1 other General Admission ticket.” You see, “General Admission” specifically means “Adult” ticket. i.e. she was saying I had to pay for an adult ticket for my child if I wanted to use the coupon. We argued a bit and worked it out, but my question is why? Why would that be a stipulation? Why does it matter that the ticket be an adult ticket? And then to use terminology like “General Admission” that is clearly misleading.

Needless to say, even though it was a small extra amount, I wasn’t too happy about the hassle of using a simple coupon at the movie theater. A pox on you and your lawyers Cineplex Odeon.

Kill the fine print, put the lawyers in the back office where they belong and make it easy for your customers to actually purchase and enjoy your product or service.

Don’t let bad judgement multiply

No matter what business you are in, problems occur that need to be addressed.  And if the problem is the fault of some of your employees, don’t compound their bad judgement with more bad judgement from those whose job is to rectify the situation. It can come back to haunt you in ways you never expected.

You’ve probably heard of the “United Breaks Guitars” incident. In short, a musician (Dave Carroll) checked his guitar as luggage on a United flight. He claims he (and other passengers) saw it being mishandled and dropped by baggage loaders. He alerted staff on the plane who ignored his words. When he picked up his guitar at his final destination, it was broken. United Airlines stonewalled him for months and offered no settlement. Then Dave, being the musician that he was, put out his story to the public via the following YouTube video. 10 Million views and counting!

It was a PR disaster for United to say the least. How simple would it have been for the flight attendants to listen to the passenger, or for United to compensate the passenger for his loss.

Now, some people might say, well, that would only encourage others to make false claims for damaged luggage and where would that leave United? But the fact is that the vast, vast, vast majority of people have no intention or reason to do even attempt this. Don’t create policies and rule based on exceptions and apply them to everyone. It not only penalizes all of your honest customers, but it creates a clear culture amongst your employees on how the company views customers.

In summary

None of these suggestions are new or revolutionary. But the companies that excel and are renowned for their customer service take simple rules like these and put them into practice. They instill them into their culture so that their employees know that this is the norm expected of their behaviour.

What’s surprising is that none of these really cost a lot of money to implement. OK, free shipping and returns a la Zappos does cost real money — but having dedicated service employees who are empowered to resolve customer issues doesn’t.

The question is why aren’t more companies doing these things?

Saeed

Tweet this: 5 ways to truly “delight customers’  http://wp.me/pXBON-2RU #prodmgmt #leadership #custserv

Related posts:

1. Do you treat customers fairly when things go wrong?
2. Customers – How to Work with Product Management and Influence our Product Direction
3. Tom Grant Kicks Some SaaS
4. Toronto Transit Commission – How not to handle bad PR

By Prabhakar Gopalan

Something very fundamental is broken  in large corporations.  The ability and spirit to experiment as a corporate function.  Managers are:

1. chasing short term results that improve existing operations with traditional strategies (cost cutting, outsourcing, value chain improvement, and the like) and/or
2. designing large 3 – 5 year plans and multi-billion dollar acquisitions, predicting where the markets would move (supported nicely by multi-horizon pictures supplied by management consultants) and/or
3. buying their way into successful experiments (=acquiring successful start ups) after the fact, not before – losing the ability to experiment from within.

I have a hypothesis on why experiments have taken a back seat:

The adoption of Henderson and Porter’s work (and by extension traditional management consulting work)  negatively impacted experimentation as a strategy discovery tool.

Bruce Henderson and Michael Porter are two of the most celebrated strategy theorists in recent times.  Much of corporate America, MBA consultants and academicians revolve around the Experience Cuve, Growth Share Matrix and Five Forces work the two published.

Henderson’s study of experience curves effects on business is about how mass production and the experience of it can give advantages to companies in cost for scaling production.  His growth share matrix is a 2×2 matrix that guides how managers should optimize their portfolios – dumping dogs, milking cows and riding stars.

Porter’s 5 Forces is about a static industrial organization theory set in the aftermath of how American companies became dominant industrial organizations – the rest of the world was still catching up after World War II in building a decent factory to compete (See W.E. Deming‘s work for details).  Neither theorist embedded the idea of experimentation or learning in their frameworks.  But consultants and managers at corporations have wielded their frameworks for much of the last 30 years.  The effects are telling.

Don’t agree with my hypothesis?  See Ngram below. Note the drop in the experiment line after 1960.

(click to enlarge)

Of course you are going to argue “correlation is not causation”.  My response to that is – go ask your executive leadership how many experiments they have conducted in the last 12 months at any scale and how much of management theory from Porter and Henderson they have employed during the same period.  I rest my case.

The problem with strategic intent is that you need to know where you are going.  The reality is, you can never be certain of that.  The experimental/learning school of strategy tells you that your strategy is mostly what you see in retrospection.  Not something you can deliberately design and execute, especially for a long period of time.

HP’s roundabout on Compaq and Palm are examples of how experimentation as a corporate function has been disappearing, and a case of failing big bets and fortune telling gone awry. (HP withdrew TouchPad after just 49 days on the market.  See HP’s lack of invention is why WebOS failed on Tom’s Hardware).

Steve Denning writes about how traditional management ideas lead to Why Amazon Can’t Make A Kindle in the USA.  If only managers at corporations  focused on experimentation as a strategy tool, employees would be on the path of continuous innovation across the entire value chain and not within the bounds of core versus non core activities or a set of disaggregated activities tied together by marketing and sales functions.

When was the last time you placed a little bet (i.e. conducted an experiment)?

Prabhakar

NOTE: Originally posted on Prabhakar.me

Tweet this: Strategy, Innovation and the Need for Experiments  http://wp.me/pXBON-2Rd #prodmgmt #innovation #strategy

Related posts:

1. Innovation Lessons from Scott Cook
2. Canada’s Innovation Gap (part 1)
3. Canada’s Innovation Gap (part 2)
4. Canada’s Innovation Gap (part 3)

Here’s another question for you. We all like to share don’t we?   So, let’s open up a bit  and share some lessons learned with each other.

We all make mistakes. And honestly, it’s only through mistakes, trial-and-error etc. that we learn lessons we remember. So tell us:

What was your worst job-related mistake and what lesson(s) did you learn?

Please answer in the comments below, or email us (onproductmangement@gmail.com) and we’ll add your answer anonymously.

The mistake could be anything from your interaction with others, to bad decisions you made on the job, or just something that hit you out of the blue, that in retrospect, you probably should have seen coming, or perhaps something else altogether.

I’ll get the  ball rolling.

Mistake: Not understanding and even ignoring the politics, dynamics and reality of a company when taking a PM job

I’ve had a couple of jobs in my past where I was more enamored with the job title and compensation, than with the details of the role, the politics, dynamics and market focus of the company. Neither of those jobs worked out well.

Product Management can be a transformational role in a company, but the conditions need to be there to allow it to happen. And more so I believe,  than any other group in a company, the success of Product Management is tied into the politics, dynamics and culture of a company.

If the company is focusing on a tiny, stagnant (or possibly non-existent) market, there is nothing you can do to make it successful. Likewise, if there are entrenched political factions in the company (e.g. Sales or Engineering etc.) that have significant influence on the CEO, there is (almost) nothing you can do to be successful, unless you have a mandate and support from the CEO to enable change. And even then, it’s an uphill battle.

Lesson: Titles and compensation are great, but go into companies with your eyes wide open and as clear an understanding as possible of the barriers to your success. If those barriers look daunting, think twice before accepting that position or you may find yourself wanting another job, or unfortunately, looking for another job in the near future. I made that mistake twice before it truly sank in.

So there’s my mistake and lesson. Please share yours.

Saeed

Tweet this: Open Question: Your worst job-related mistake and lesson learned. http://wp.me/pXBON-2Q8 #prodmgmt #prodmktg

Related posts:

1. Open Question – One thing you wish you had known when you became a PM
2. Open Question: How can Product Managers and Product Marketers work better together?
3. Open Question: Why doesn’t Engineering report to Product Management?
4. Open Question: Why did you become a Product Manager?

A favourite topic of many entrepreneurs, product managers, marketers and executives is strategy. You hear it all the time. People talking about company strategy, product strategy, marketing strategy, sales strategy etc.

The interesting thing about strategy is that there are so many definitions of it. If  you look in the dictionary,  you’ll see something like this:

Strategy n. a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result

OK…that’s somewhat obtuse to be honest. In essence, it’s says a strategy is a plan or series of plans to achieve a goal.

From a business perspective, the most common description of strategy seems to be tied to Michael Porter’s 5 forces that shape strategy. You can also see a video here of Michael Porter talking about these forces. Here’s another good video talking about competitive strategy.

And here, embedded for your viewing pleasure, is our own Prabhakar Gopalan, who gave an insightful talk about strategy at the recent ProductCamp Austin. (Make sure you watch Part 2 as well or click here for talk details).

So what exactly is Strategy?

My take is that strategy is more than a plan, and more than a set of guiding principles. A strategy is a framework for decisions and actions, that will help guide a company or organization to success.  It’s as much about understanding what you will NOT do (and knowing why), as what you will do. For a strategy to have a good chance to succeed, it has to have 4 essential components:

1. A clear set of achievable goals/objectives
2. An understanding of the major obstacles that could prevent you from achieving those goals
3. The actions needed to overcome those barriers
4. A means to measure the success of that strategy as time progresses

Before I explain each of these, let me say that if any one of these are missing from the strategy, it can quickly turn into fantasy.

Strategy is about executing within constraints. Those constraints are both internal and external. Internal constraints basically come down to your organization’s ability to execute the plan on time. Do you have the money, the people, the resources etc? If not, then your plan will fail. Similarly, the external constraints come from competitors, the economy, market trends, channel constraints and other factors that are usually beyond your direct control.

The key to a successful strategy is understanding those constraints, and defining the path that will lead you to your goal. And in business, that goal should be sustainable competitive advantage and clear differentiation in the marketplace. This could be by exploiting market trends, attacking competitor weaknesses (or strengths), or heading into new uncharted territory and defining and claiming new market space.

1. Achievable goals and objectives

Everything starts with having clear, ACHIEVABLE goals. I highlight the word achievable because the first mistake that most companies make is to set unattainable targets. These could be related to sales/revenue, market share, time to success or some other major business objective. If the goals are unachievable then the strategy will fail, without question. This is where the fantasy begins with a lot of companies.

2. Understand the obstacles in your path

Assuming the goals are achievable, the next step is to identify where the bumps in the road lie. i.e. the obstacles to success. Conversely, you can also look at what the conditions are for success. i.e. if an obstacle to success is the lack of a 3rd party developer network for your product or platform (in a certain timeframe etc.) , then a condition for success is the existence of that 3rd party developer network (in a certain timeframe etc). How you build it out is a different matter entirely.

You can look at it either way, but you need to ensure that those factors are clearly identified and their dynamics and importance understood. Another part of the fantasy occurs when companies don’t realize the obstacles in their path, or simply choose to ignore the reality of overcoming those obstacles. Most strategies look great when you ignore the challenges you’ll face.

3.  Actions for overcoming the obstacles

Tied closely with #2 above, it’s important to articulate HOW the barriers will be overcome. Some people would view this as a set of tactics, but understanding HOW to overcome barriers (and the required assumptions) is still about understanding the constraints and the conditions for success.  Using the 3rd party developer network example from #2 above, understanding HOW that network will be created is critical. Some key questions to understand would be:

• What exactly is that developer network? ‘
• Why is it needed?
• What does it look like in 6 months, 12 months, 24 months etc?’
• How will members be recruited?
• Why would people join the network? Why wouldn’t they?
• How will members be retained and grown over time?
• etc.

These kinds of questions are fundamental to bringing a dose of reality to any key objective tied to a strategy.

4. Measuring success along the way

Let’s say you’ve implemented the strategy. How do you know it’s working? Are you on track for success, ahead of plan, behind plan? How do you  measure it, particularly in the face of a dynamic market? Objectives that looked good 6 months ago may be completely irrelevant today because of external issues beyond your control or required changes in assumptions you made.

When defining your strategy, identify a few simple ways to track it’s progress. What are the best (simple) indicators that can be used to track the success of various aspects of your strategy? These will help you identify and address problems quickly, if they arise.

For example, with the 3rd party developer network, simply tracking the number of developers joining the network (and total overall) will tell you roughly how well you are doing against your goals. But tracking their development plans and target dates for releasing applications or products for your platform will give you a much better indication of how successful the network will be.

A real life case study

Now I’m going to pick on HP for a bit, because the recent EOL of the TouchPad and WebOS is a great example of how even the most sophisticated companies can believe a fantasy. Listen to this interview of HP CEO Leo Apotheker, from June 2011 (less than 3 months ago) as he discusses HPs strategy with WSJ’s Walter Mossberg.

As you listen to Apotheker, (key points about WebOS start at about 9:00 & around 24:00 into the video. Also note the answer to the question around 34:30 about lessons learned from RIM’s Playbook experience!!) and given recent actions by HP, ask yourself how much of what Apotheker said was fantasy, and how much was strategy based on an understanding of reality, constraints and ways to overcome obstacles. He spoke about consumers, enterprise, cloud, developers, security, connectivity, WebOS on every PC, on printers, and end-t0-end ecosystem etc.

And finally, here’s a link to an article (posted Aug 19 on ZDNet), where Apotheker and HP CFO Cathy Lesjak describe why they completely changed their strategy just 7 weeks after the launch of the TouchPad. A little more discussion about focus and constraints than the video above.

Saeed

Tweet this: There’s a Fine Line Between Strategy and Fantasy http://wp.me/pXBON-2Qu #strategy #prodmgmt #innovation

Related posts:

1. Strategy, Innovation and the Need for Experiments
2. Worth Repeating: Devil’s Dictionary for High Tech
3. Addressing Market Shifts or Why RIM is not down and out just yet
4. Releases, Roadmaps and Visions

Congratulations on creating the product marketing roadmap. Congratulations on discovering and creating metrics that show how you are progressing on that roadmap. But, now you have to communicate this information. The roadmap has no value if it is not shared.

The delivery of the roadmap is a critical element to illustrating the value that product marketing brings to the table. But, if you deliver this “document” by email, hoping that the various readers will a) take the time to read it thoroughly and b) understand the content without expectation, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

Communicating your roadmap requires collaboration. Your roadmap first needs to be shared with the product management and marketing teams. If the product marketing roadmap is the bridge between the directions developed by these groups, start by sharing your guide here. Look to these teams to validate your information and challenge your metrics. If one team has made changes on their plans, this is when it may first surface to you and you should make the adjustments. These two teams are your friends, their approval and support will go far.

Once you have the support of product management and marketing, take it to your leaders. But, don’t send it over email. Email is not a good communication method for sharing and discussing strategy.  Since the concept of a product marketing roadmap is new and may require some background information presented, email is definitely not the right tool.

The best way to introduce this new item is to do so through a regularly scheduled leadership meeting, whatever it may be called. Ask to get on the agenda for 30 minutes. Request the time on the agenda so that you may “share the value of product marketing” with the leadership. Since this is not a typical item on the agenda you will most likely get the time requested – if not for any other reason than curiosity. Whatever the reason, when it is accepted, take the time!

During the meeting, start your leadership presentation by explaining what the product marketing roadmap is and how it was created (briefly and not in detail) through using the product roadmap and the marketing plans. Then proceed to show the dashboard you have created which illustrates the movement of the items on the roadmap. Finally, close with the commitment that you will update your dashboard on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly) and would like to come back to the meeting to share the updated information. Ask for feedback on the dashboard. Are these meaningful metrics? Any additional metrics that they would like tracked? By including them and asking for input, they are accepting your roadmap.

If product marketing doesn’t stand at the table and show strategic value, no one else will do it for us. Strategy is difficult enough for organizations to see and touch. Through developing a product marketing roadmap, you have delivered a strategic tool. If you don’t share this tool properly, disappointment will set in when you don’t have a successful adoption of what you shared. If that happens, your commitment to making this a strategic asset will fail.

Jennifer

(Please share this on Twitter, LinkedIn and even Google+:  “@jidoctor: Share your Product Marketing Roadmap, but Share Smartly http://wp.me/pXBON-2MU #prodmktg #prodmgmt #marketing #roadmap #leadership”)

Related posts:

1. Measurement, Validation and Numbers, Oh My!
2. Get Some Rhythm
3. Guest Post: Measuring Product Management (part 1)
4. Guest Post: Measuring Product Management (part 2)