I was reminded the other day of the Dilbert cartoon above and it got me to thinking about what other stuff we might not hear around the office at a software company as product managers and product marketing folks.
I”m pretty sure I lost that deal because I was out sold.
If you are able to do this demo next week in Des Moines that would be great, since I really need to look busy for my boss and I’m only 30% of quota.
I’m sorry Mr. CTO, I’m pretty sure we can’t build everything and I hear there are already some good application servers out there anyhow.
I know it’s been in the backlog for a year, but we are probably never going to change the screens to chartreuse.
To be honest, I really thought it was a good idea to build the next generation platform, right up and until the migration process.
No, the client is nowhere near signing and I really have no idea if a discount will help, but you have to take a shot right?
Just to be clear, I’m pretty sure if I documented what I really thought we could make on this new product you wouldn’t have invested. Am I right?
No really, I’m not interested in writing specifications for the UI – that’s your job.
We probably won’t even get 1% of the market with this product.
Steve, this is Jeff, the product manager of product X, I’m just checking in to see if there are some upcoming demos you need done.
Cool, only 40 unread emails since I left yesterday. Today is starting off great!
No, I much prefer we launch 2 months later than planned
Since we’re agile now we should be able to get to that in 9 months.
I might have made a bad decision by deciding to launch with this minimalist feature set.
Good news! It does appear that there is nothing interesting in this release for buyers, so no collateral re-fresh for us!
Yeah! I get to do another custom presentation for a “big prospect”. Behind the scenes: Insert new prospect logo, search and replace customer name and create 1 slide based on my 2 hour overview from sales on this “unique” buyer.
I’m pretty sure the product manager just made up those revenue targets and market sizing numbers.
Shhhh, I just made up that stuff about seamless, enterprise class and scalable for the press release.
So how exactly should I positively message the fact we accidentally introduced a production down defect in the new release to the whole customer base?
No really, I look forward to sending those 4 emails to our customers this week, I’m sure they will understand how important our new release is for them by the end of the week.
Absolutely I’ll sit in on a qualifying call with your prospect, just in case they have some questions about our vision on the products.
Yup, I guess we did design that wrong.
It’s theoretically possible that our customers don’t think a migration is a good idea.
The leads y’all are bringing in are awesome!
I know you really needed that deliverable for your launch, but I just decided to ignore it – sorry.
I know you created some new slides, but I really just prefer using these ones from 5 years ago. Oh, the company name changed?
There’s no way that can be done in 2 weeks, even in Ruby on Rails.
I can get all that data and have the report for you this afternoon – does that work?
No rush on the presentation, we can do it next week.
I understand there are other salespeople which need stuff, let me know when you can get to it.
We just had our budget approved with no edits and the CFO gave us an extra 10% for FY2011.
Just tell me what to do, I like working here and I don’t even care if it’s a bad idea and tanks the business.
At this early stage in the game how about we focus on cash and not revenue?
You really think all the products are about the same? Hmmm, that might explain something.
I’m not even sure I can close this deal in Q1 2012.
Yes, I’m proposing we adopt a new code base because it’s the new cool thing. Did I mention we could do things quicker with “X”?
A 2 hour pre-call review is a great idea and I really think we should invite those additional 8 people who aren’t going to be on Webex with the prospect for their input to the call.
What other things would you like to hear around the office?
It’s Fall, time to start preparing for your 2010 annual planning sessions. That means aggregating data on 2009’s performance, making recommendations for 2010 and preparing lots of PowerPoint presentations. But for many companies, annual planning ends up being an exercise in futility. Here are some reasons why:
What Strategy? Strategy is discussed once a year, then it’s forgotten until next year. To be successful strategic planning and review needs to become part of the company’s management routine.
No Ownership. Most strategic plans fail for lack of ownership. It will be business as usual if everyone doesn’t have a stake and responsibility in the plan.
Day-to-Day Focus. Management and employees are too mired in everyday operating issues and not on the long-term.
No Communication. Everyone’s role in the plan’s success is not communicated down the line and many don’t understand how they contribute and why they’re important.
When do I sleep? The goals and actions that come out of the plan are too numerous for the organization to handle because people creating the plan failed to make tough calls and eliminate non-critical actions.
Yeah. Right. The mission, vision and value statements are not viewed as legitimate and supported by actions, so they and the rest of the plan never get buy-in. Don’t underestimate the importance of these plan elements.
My company. My plan. Company ownership/management runs the meeting(s) and others in the room are reluctant to contribute honestly. Prevent this from happening by hiring an outside facilitator who can gather honest input. It will be money well spent.
It’s not my job. Someone needs to be accountable and visible for each part of the plan otherwise deadlines and deliverables will fall by the wayside.
Ed Adkins has an excellent blog on best practices for strategic planning that can help you get going with your own strategic plan.
Send me a comment and share your thoughts what’s worked for your own strategic planning.
So with all the UN hub bub in NY a couple of weeks ago and Obama and Michelle’s plea for the Olympics in Chicago, it got me to thinking about the role of diplomats and in general diplomacy on the world stage. Then after a couple of beers I thought that on a much smaller scale that product managers are effectively corporate diplomats.
Ultimately, Product Managers are given some mission to drive forward, with little or no authority or ownership of the resources to accomplish a task which is kinda like a diplomat. PM need to do things like increase profit, revenue or “on time delivery” from bar napkin estimates and executive talking points. Kinda like taxation and political promises.
PM’s try to push agendas, negotiate the scope of product releases and define what is important for our stakeholders through release planning activities, roadmap development and corporate strategy sessions.
Granted not every meeting for a product manager is a positioning initiative or platform for moving the agenda of the business forward, but many are and the negotiation/tact required to deliver on the strategic needs of the product and/or business is often a negotiation. A negotiation where all you may have is the promise for a future feature or prioritized defect for the next sprint.
There are other ways to look at this negotiation, a friend of mine, Tim Davis over at Techlinks, used to refer to it as “horse trading”. A negotiation which if we aren’t careful ends up with poorly prioritized activities and features which may serve one stakeholder, but doesn’t deliver on the overall needs of the product – that’s the horse trading part. I’d probably use the horse trading concept, but as a political science undergrad I have a little more comfort in the diplomat comparison.
As corporate diplomats, when you get the opportunity to move a product, project or team right way it is often done with indirect authority and without direct ability to influence actions outside of the of negotiation/deal making. So when we get an opportunity to turn the dial a little we do, since those opportunities are not frequent and require some patience, not unlike diplomats.
I’m not saying all product managers are opportunist who take the opportunity to speak for 96 minutes at a general assembly, but we do try and take our 3-4 minutes where we can to try and impact change/drive the agenda forward and at times take a little liberty with the “All Employee” email lists.
Hold on a second, let’s baseline what a diplomat is since I’m bouncing around a little:
A person who is accredited, such as an ambassador, to officially represents a government in its relations with other governments or international organisms
(figuratively) Someone who uses skill and tact in dealing with other people
So under both items 1 and 2 it may be easy to associate a product manager to a diplomat. So the translation is fairly easy – government = company. So what diplomatic missions do Product Managers go on?
Accreditation Drives Influence
Product Managers should be by their very existence in a company accredited to carry if not the corporate strategy, at least the product strategy throughout the organization. The nations in which they travel are the internal cross-functional groups which are required to be successful in the marketplace – sales, marketing, support, development and the leadership. Product Managers are taking issues in the marketplace and relating them tactfully to the key stakeholders. The I realized, not all product managers carry the same charter or accreditation, I was reminded of this the other morning when I was a Starbucks with a friend that happens to be a CEO and the conversation went something like this:
ME: Blah… How was that last round of golf… blah
CEO GUY: Blah… Blah… We really need to get out on the course… blah… How’s the new gig?
ME: New gig is great, every place has a different view of product, so it makes it fun. Doing some real PM work again and strategy too.
CEO GUY: How many product managers do you think can actually drive strategy? What 1 out of 10 – if that.
ME: I think the better question is how many product managers have the charter? Do they drive strategy, P&L or even market requirements. In your company what titles do you have in product management”
CEO GUY: Technical Product managers, business analyst types or what they are now calling product owners. In fact we are going so far as considering product owner the new official job title. Then we have general product managers and the director of product management. The director is the only one who has the closest thing to P&L accountability, we don’t really have that skill in the organization, so we don’t really require it in earnest.
ME: OK so you haven’t given them the charter to manage that way, I understand. Do you have Product Marketing?
CEO GUY: No, there is a enough complexity with managing the organization to understand product management, so we don’t need another not well defined or understood role. I Think only 3 people actually know what we expect from the director of product management.
So just as diplomats can execute on a topic or theme, they don’t have the charter to negotiate anything out of scope, so you sometimes just need to keep track of the chits. So not only are you the dimplomat your are responsible for remembering what favors you have out and which could be called in for the next real. So you ask yourself questions like – Are you up or down with support right now?
What you can do is as much predicated on the charter, as it is on the influence, credibility and trust you have with the other nations/cross-functional groups. For diplomats, there is a zone of acceptable execution and negotiation by the nature of your rank/title, the geography they cover and perhaps a functional/departmental definition – such as being associated with agriculture or energy if you were a diplomat. The same is true for product managers – if you are the product manager of old crusty shit, then you probably have less influence than the product manager of cool hope for the business shit. Multiply that by title or rank and you have some math result which means something like you have more pull on cool strategic stuff, than old declining revenue streams.
While I don’t have a pithy little close on this piece, I think the metaphor of diplomat has helped me understand that directional successes in product management are just as important as explicit success with metrics, revenue and general market execution. Thinking about it, without a focus on moving the organization directionally towards a goal the ability to have repeatable and scalable success is a challenge, so try a little diplomacy and chit management.
So I’m glad to be back from a 18 day run in Europe and I finally have a little “down time” to finish a post which has been in the drafts status since early August. With the end of quarter crunch that is all too common in software, I decided that I needed to move this post from draft to published now!
So I was listening to The Bert Show about a month or so ago and they had some clips on a debunked psychic which was fairly entertaining and I realized this could be a fairly interesting way to look at leadership. Ultimately this is a continuation of a series on Leadership personas which began two years ago – Stuck in the Middle. The series started mainly out of a series of observations from folks I had worked with over the years and a couple of traits I saw in myself even made into a couple of the personas.
The latest persona, The Colder Reader, is one of those people you run into who skeptics, such as myself, just kind of sit back, shake your head and generally ignore, but that is not the reaction for everyone. Everyone has a dream and a soft spot and the Cold Reader is good at sifting through his or her laundry list of generalizations to figure these out.
Where some people wish for things to be different and long for a different reality in an organization, the Cold Reader is a great novelty for an organization – at least for the first 9 months in a role, even for the skeptics – it provides for great “can you believe X thinks this is a good idea” discussions and provides for an interesting betting pool on “When are they going to fire the Cold Reader”.
HINT: It’s always longer than you think, because people generally always want to be doing something different and there is always someone misdirect blame to.
So what is cold reading anyhow:
Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, illusionists, fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do.Without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person’s body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.
So just like psychics who engage in a “vague but true” series of assertions and follow up tactics so does the Cold Reader.
If you spend enough time with generalities with a person/individual contributor/fellow executive they will give tells/queues for when your on the right track. The Cold Reader is a leader who uses career aspiration queues, optimistic short comings and people’s plain desire for something to be true to his or her advantage through a series of quick spun powerpoint decks and point quotes from analyst to validate their assertions and directional strategies.
CEO’s, VP, Directors and just about every station in corporations have folks looking for a little insight and are more than receptive to provide personal directional goals and organizational challenges in fairly short order – after all, that is how people collaboratively problems solve.
Executive Cold Readers often leverage small focus groups of smart folks in the organization to gain content, input and new slides which are then played back over time to slightly larger groups until he or she thinks they have the story right. Ultimately every one wants a good story and wants to be part of the solution – right? Plus the Cold Ready is always up for a roadshow, who doesn’t want a couple of days in SFO and Southern Cali after all.
Think of the air miles one can garner with new slides every quarter, million miler baby!
So at the end of the day everyone does like a good story, right up until the story is all about investment and patience….. The typical types of discussions:
Scenario 1: VP of Sales is not getting the traction in the marketplace with the story and the Cold Reader is the Marketing Executive.
Cold Reader: So what is the biggest challenge with moving these deals through the pipeline?
VP of Sales: The story is just isn’t resonating with the reps or the prospects.
Cold Reader: Are there any reps which are seeing traction?
VP of Sales: Yeah, Geoffry and Augustine are moving things forward on several big deals.
Cold Reader: I’ve always liked Geoff and Augustine, strategic salespeople who understand solutions our solutions. Well, should we focus on training and skills for the rest?
VP of Sales: Sure we need more training and there are upgrade opportunities in the staff, but we really need something different that scales in the field and resonates with prospects who have problems and buy products.
Cold Reader: I hear you on building a more strategic sales force, rather than trying to train up the more tactical team members who don’t get it. I’ll put together a project on packaging with everyone and we may still want to consider upgrading the team to be more stategic.
Result: VP of Sales leaves the meeting thinking the colder reader has an action plan and everything is going right way, but in fact the Cold Reader goes to edit PowerPoints based on the discussion and begins socializing the latest version of the PowerPoint strategy.
Scenario 2: The CEO and the Cold Reader are having an ad-hoc discussion on the business, project status and general how are you doing stuff. The Cold Reader in this scenario is a development executive.
CEO: So what’s going on? We’ve missed another launch date and can’t seem to get traction with our products lately, thoughts?
Cold Reader: Well we are producing really solid technology and I’m not quite sure about market uptake on the products, but the pipeline appears strong. Things are going great in my group right now, we’ve implemented new processes and are improving our delivery cadence which will clearly help the product management team in release planning.
CEO: I know we have done a bunch of work in improving our processes, but that doesn’t mean shit if we aren’t moving product that sells. I’m very cool with improvements, but processes aren’t driving revenue and it appears that it is actually increasing costs according Kevin’s analysis.
Cold Reader: Kevin’s analysis while interesting doesn’t take into account the increased development velocity and quality, but that’s not what we have CFO’s for anywho. Ultimately we should look at prioritizing our development efforts against emerging opportunities and the current backlog of stuff per my team is mainly focused on improving our existing customers profitability, minimizing attrition, and add-on transactions which aren’t really going to grow the company.
CEO: Dude your right, we need think about growing the company by doing other stuff. This marketplace is more or less steady state and all we are doing is carving out customers from competitors. I like a good fight, but it gets old after awhile being a commodity.
Cold Reader: My team has seen some interesting trends around SOA and Analytics in the space which could generate some upside, but these aren’t the requirements we are getting to work on.
CEO: Yeah what we need is some sizzle and new acronyms. I read about SOA on the plane the other day and it seems like the newest cool shit faster, so you might have something here. Analytics will provide a little sizzle too.
Cold Reader: We have some items in the backlog, but the product group is prioritizing some product add-ons which are focused on incremental revenue and competitiveness in our current segment higher. If we could align our backlog to your vision we might be able to make some hay in the marketplace. I also read something somewhere about these technologies being differentiators and high growth market segments which could really change the company like you want to.
Result: CEO has a summit with the marketing group and recommends they look at re-prioritizing some of their items around this SOA stuff and Analytics sizzle that would make the company more relevant and key revenue wedge items are discarded.
So the Cold Reader in the right corporate environment can have a good time, hell some psychics even get their own TV shows, so there something to be said about that. In principle, a Colder Reader’s answer after listening and leading the folks being read is “put me in charge” and just with any new gig there are always low hanging fruit to address and declare a victory that’s why you should bet 24 months or greater typically in the executive dead pool.
The Cold Reader kinda starts to see his or her future in a mid-year Ops review which goes a little like the video below…
…and the person is just a little amazed it’s not working and that they don’t have an angle play. At the end of the day, you can’t think ill of those that want to believe in something better…
Let me see if I can do some cold reading…
Dear Cold Reader,
I’m thinking you recently updated your LinkedIn Profile with inaccurate information/titles. Something about COO/CIO… I’m sensing a “somewhat outmoded” executive team will received a full bonus payout and I’m going to get a bunch of $5 dollar payments in the mail or free lunches over the next quarter.
