OK, I will write it down for all to see right here: I am a product manager. Sometimes I cry at work. There are restrooms on both coasts and in Europe into which I have retreated and cried, looked at myself in the mirror, and somehow convinced myself to step out that door and keep on going.It’s not that unusual really. I have come close to crying at work when I worked as a teacher, as an artist, a temporary file clerk, and as a waitress. So why shouldn’t product managers cry?
I guess what seems odd to me is that after all these years I am in an occupation for which I possess experience and qualifications (unlike the days when I tried my hand at construction, astrophysics, phone sales, or fortune telling) and I believe I have reached have some level of maturity and ability to put things in perspective, and yet I occasionally just lose it.Maybe it has something to do with being in a role in which I have very little control, and yet I feel responsible for everything. It’s a role in which I have to get involved in the detail of everything, yet I cannot claim to have expertise in anything. It’s a role in which I have to try and work well with everyone, and be prepared to deliver bad news to everyone as well.
Three constituencies
The three key constituencies I work with every single day are Sales, Engineering, and Executives. Their goals are in conflict with one another. Their working styles are very dissimilar. They often don’t trust each other. I have the privilege of working with all of them, listening to them, and trying to give meaning and direction to their work.
It is easy to imagine that if the engineers ran the company, we would have the most perfect product ever, but it would be several years late to market. If the sales force ran the company, we would give every customer exactly what they asked for, and end up with 1,000 different products. But since the executives do run the company, they give the product manager the impossible directive to “just get it done, get it done right, get it done faster, have the foresight to change direction in midstream and still get it done on time.”
In order to have a rewarding job amidst these kinds of challenges, it is important to develop effective relationships with all three constituencies, and to balance the needs of each group. We all have skills and ways of working that come natural to us.
Some of us are naturally drawn to the sales team. It’s where the energy is, where the highs are high and the lows are truly way down low. Some of us prefer to hang out with the techies, grapple with the tough problems, find elegant solutions, and revel in that great sense of accomplishment that comes with breaking new ground. Others are very skilled at inspiring executives and investors, at painting a vision for the future and distilling vast amounts of confusing information into nuggets of great wisdom, which can create unique opportunities. Yet, no matter how masterful we are at working with one area of the company – it is inevitable that another area will feel shortchanged.
Product Management Type Quiz
To help all of you assess how effective you are in working with each constituency… I have developed an inventory of Product Management types. It’s a bit like the Myers-Briggs Test, but just for Product Managers. If you are one of these people who immediately reaches for a pen - the moment you see a 10 question quiz in a magazine, no matter how crazy the topic – you will enjoy taking my quiz. If you are a product manager torn in many different directions.. give it a go and see how your score compares to the types I’ve come up with:
For each question, choose the ONE answer that best describes how you work as a product manager.
1. A nearby elementary school is having Career Day. Your job is to take 7 10-year olds on a tour of your company’s offices. Where do you take them first?
a. The R&D Area where they can see the equipment and the whiteboards full of drawings and writing
b. The large conference room where they can sit in swivel chairs and play with PowerPoint
c. The sales area, where they can see the awards and the map with a colored pushpin for every customer location.
2. Your company is in the process of acquiring a firm in Oregon. You will be going there for a one day Due Diligence visit, together with one of your colleagues. The schedule calls for a red-eye flight home. This means that you and your colleague will be spending 7 hours together at the airport. Who would you prefer to travel with?
a. The head of Technology
b. The head of Finance
c. The head of Sales
3. You just had a great phone interview with the CEO of a newly funded startup. She is looking for someone to start a Product Management team. She asks you to send her a sample of your work immediately – she wants to show it to the investor who has urged her to bring on a Product Manager. A sample that you have readily available, and that illustrates your work is.
a. A Product Requirements Document
b. A Business Case showing revenue and profitability projections
c. A PowerPoint showing a Product’s features, benefits, and competitive position
4. You have spent 3 days at a trade-show. You’ve been in non-stop meetings, demos, and press briefings. It is the last day of the show and you have 3 hours free time before you need to leave for the airport. What do you do?
a. Visit a bunch of booths and collect neat giveways so you can hand them out to the engineers back home
b. Swap badges with a colleague so you can attend the closing keynote. Corner the speaker and convince him to co-author an article with your CEO.
c. Crash a competitor’s sponsored breakfast. You are sure to meet customers who are open to switching vendors, given the competitor’s dismal financial results last quarter.
5. You and your boss are waiting for a plane. She pulls out today’s newspaper and offers you a section. Which section do you ask for?
a. Science and Technology
b. Financial News
c. Sports
6. You are expecting a call from an industry analyst who wants to interview you for a study he is doing about your product and products like it. You take a few minutes to review the analyst’s firm’s website where you notice that they have recently written a brief on a brand new company that has released a product that sounds a lot like the product your company is developing. You go to the company's website to find out more about them. There are 3 links on the company's front page. Which one do you click first?
a. Technology and White Papers
b. Investor Relations
c. Customers and Case Studies
7. It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You’ve enjoyed a nice lunch and you are about to craft your Out of Office message, when the head of sales stops by to show you an RFP she’s received. There are two other people available to help complete over 300 questions over the holiday. You glance over the questions and are quite positive about your company’s ability to win this business. You volunteer to answer the section on
a. Product Architecture
b. Corporate Information
c. Pricing
8. It’s hard to believe in these difficult times, but you find yourself with two job offers. Both jobs offer similar base pay and benefits, and both jobs provide a very good fit for your career goals. Your gut is already telling you which one to go for. Clearly, you are drawn to the job that offers
a. A chance to work with really cool technology
b. Preferred stock options that could be worth a lot when the company goes public or is acquired
c. A great big bonus if your product meets is revenue goals
9. Your favorite nephew has borrowed money from his roommates and started a business. You are very eager to see him succeed, and you agree to spend an evening here or there helping him out. As a first step, you offer to
a. Create a website for him
b. Setup Quickbooks for him
c. Listen to his sales pitch and help him fine-tune it
Let’s look at the score
OK, that’s it for the quiz. Now let’s count number of times you answered a, b, or c and plot your answers along the three axes shown below.
If you have a clear preference for working with just one area, your graph my look like this:
And if you have the rare ability to work with all three, your graph will look like this:
Please note that the quiz results are not a reflection on your skills or experience, nor do they reflect where you spend most of your efforts. Your results show your natural tendency to work with one area of a company vs. another. They may also show where you are most comfortable in times of pressure.
Expanding your comfort zone
So now that you know where you are most comfortable, it is worth your while to consider how you can become more adept at working in areas where your natural talents and style are not as effective. A great way is to try and get just one step in front of people and ask them simple questions… When everyone seems to be flinging their questions and quandaries at you – just step aside for one minute and ask them something in return.
If you find yourself completely overwhelmed by a CEO who constantly forwards you press releases and articles – just ask the CEO what she thinks about these articles, how she has learned to sift through so many different viewpoints and distill out of it what is important today, and what to track with an eye toward the future. You may find that this endless stream of information wasn’t meant to overwhelm or discourage or distract you … It could be that all she expects you to do is organize it, and pick out one or two ideas or trends each week that simply capture your imagination.
If you find that the engineers’ endless requests for more detail and more precision create an insurmountable amount of work for you, take a step back and think of ways to provide the engineering team with new insights and inspiration. Sit down with them and provide them vivid examples of how the product is used by real people. Tell them users’ names, tell them about their interests, their ambitions, their frustrations. Before long, you will find that the engineers are able to make better decisions and require less detailed specifications – because they have a better idea of how the product is going to be used.
If you are having a hard time responding to requests from sales, first remember how fortunate you are that there are people out there selling the product. Even if they ask for things that are nowhere on your roadmap, acknowledge their input. Schedule regular feedback sessions with sales and let them know about the direction of the product. Provide them with talking points they can use at customer meetings, and questions they can ask. And make the time to go on calls with them, when you can. This allows you to talk to customers without being in selling mode, discover opportunities, and gain feedback. By working together you can align the customer’s plans with the product plans, and avoid those difficult situations where you have to commit to developing one-off solutions.
If you work in a team of product managers, you have a great chance to learn from each other and shamelessly copy the other team members’ techniques. If you are a manager and have a chance to put together a team, look for product managers with different backgrounds. Put a hot-shot MBA side by side with an experienced engineer-turned-product manager. You will end up with two very well-versed product managers.
And most importantly – look deep inside your SOUL
Back in 1972, the legendary Temptations struggled with their product management careers. Dennis and Melvin both worked for a company that was acquired, and found their products being discontinued in favor of the acquiring company’s offering. Richard’s product was months behind schedule, and everytime he tried to get consensus on a new release date, the engineers presented him with more bugs and requests for clarifications to the spec he had written. Damon spent many sleepless nights trying to come up with ways to tell customers that he would not be able to deliver all the features they had been promised. And Otis found himself just short of getting his product to profitability and dreaded the day he would have to tell his team that the company had chosen to stop all further investment.
The Temptations turned to a great source for product management advice. They turned to their mothers.
Here is the advice they received
It was the third of September.
That day I'll always remember, yes I will.
'Cause that was the day that my product was cancelled
I never got a chance to launch it
Never heard nothing but bad things about it.
Mama, I'm depending on you, tell me the truth.
And Mama looked at me and said,
"Go work it like a rolling stone.
Keep moving all around, expand your comfort zone
(Cause when you do) you’ll never be alone
"Go work it like a rolling stone, my son.
Keep moving all around, expand your comfort zone
(Cause when you do) you’ll never be alone
Well, well.
Hey Mama, is it true what they say,
that sales folks never work a day in their life?
And Mama, bad talk going around town
saying that sales folks slash our profit with a carving knife
And that ain't right.
Heard some talk about engineers endlessly coding
Talkin about refactoring while our margins are eroding
Finding more bugs, regressing in the name of the Lord
Mama looked at me and said,
"Go work it like a rolling stone
Prioritize the work and don’t postpone
(Cause when you do) your product team will hold its own."
"Go work it like a rolling stone
Prioritize the work and don’t postpone
(Cause when you do). your product team will hold its own "
Uh!
Hey Mama, I heard investors are seeking a buyer on the street
Tell me is that why I had to sign that non-compete?
Folk say accounting is doing due diligence and not paying the bills.
Hey Mama, folk say our CEO does not care about the product
Would rather outsource work or find some other construct
Mama, I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.
Mama looked up with a tear in her eye and said,
"Go work it like a rolling stone. (Well, well, well, well)
Ask questions anytime, to eliminate unknowns.
(Cause when you do) all roadblocks will be overthrown."
"Go work it like a rolling stone. (Well, well, well, well)
Ask questions anytime, to eliminate unknowns.
(Cause when you do) all roadblocks will be overthrown
This material was first presented at Product Camp Boston, Feb 28 2009. I am thankful for the participants who provided feedback.
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