Overarching Ties
For those of you that are in multi-product environments, chances are you are working with more than 1 product manager. I want to get some thoughts down about effective methods to do this.
Now, to me, the most effective organizational structure is to have a Director of Product Management who then has a team of PM’s reporting to him or her. There may be some other groups that report in as well, but that’s for a different post.
There could be a scenario where you have a director, a VP above them, and disparate PM’s across the org. Now, as a PM you need to recognize that you must a) build indirect power and b) know how and when to use it. So, even if your are in a situation where you are a director with 1 associate PM and two other team members reporting to you, you still have responsibility to execute on the role of director.
I’ll leave out VP-level stuff for now, because it’s out of scope to get into things like managing a PM budget and stuff like that. Again, this isn’t hard folks. It’s easy if you think about it enough, employ common sense, and have a good team supporting one another in the company. But again, outside of scope for now.
So, as a director, you will have a team. PM’s should be good and focused on making sure they can be effective managers (because that’s just effective management, which has nothing to do with PM skills), and still be good PM’s. Directors also have the added layer of determining synergies across an entire line, or multiple lines, of products.
The key here, like all effective management, is delegation. You don’t need to get involved in gathering market data for the products the PM’s reporting to you are working with. That’s one example that would be bad. You REALLY don’t want to start telling them how to construct their roadmap. This is especially true if you have older, more experience PM’s working for you. I’m super touchy about my roadmap, and trust a certain group of people to provide input. This is because I OWN it. It’s mine. I’m responsible. I need to track it, modify it based on my hard-earned research, and flag higher-ups down when I know we’re not going to make a release or we’re going to slip a date.
You are asking for trouble if you start meddling, and telling other PM’s how to manage their product. Funny though, eh? This is just effective delegation. The task is, “manage this product” / “lay out a plan to manage this product, then execute.” Sure, you will want to review key deliverables and understand them — but that’s FAR different from saying, “here’s how to create a roadmap — do 1, 2, 3.”
One of the *key* director-ship responsibilities is identifying cross-product relationships. How can other product teams help other product teams? How can 1 product be more successful in the market if it were to work with another? As a PM director, you are in the spot to recognize this stuff, because it’s all feeding into you. If you are drowning in work, you haven’t delegated OR you need to hire additional help. If you are in a startup, there’s probably no budget to do that, so keep it kicked into high gear.
This all ties into milestone reporting, which I talked about in some other posts a while back. Sit down with your PM’s and identify milestones, and manage to those. You don’t need to be Jack Welch, or have 30 years in business to know how to do that. Communicate, walk over to their desks, discuss things, listen, hold team meetings, leverage one-on-one’s, etc… it’s just effective management. And those concepts take time to refine, but not understand or execute.
Also, you are at the higher-leve of air traffic control. You need to help your team leverage others in the organization if they have to. Typically, PM’s will make do themselves just fine. They should be personable, knowledgeable, and driven enough to get in there and get their hands dirty. However, monitor and ensure that if they need help communicating with Sales, get it to them. AND, if Sales isn’t getting the communication they require about a product, make sure they get it. Air. Traffic. Control.
Most of all, live it, love it, breathe it. I’m up late working and thinking about this stuff because of three fundamental things: a) I love product management. It’s a true passion. b) I love the products I work with. c) I have zero patience to restrain my ambition. I’m getting better at understanding it, but that doesn’t mean it’s hindered me from going 1,000 miles a minute.
I don’t know if any of this made sense — much if it I just wanted to write through as it helps me learn. Maybe Jeff will create a post on “If you want to be a BAD director of product mgmt, do all of the product management for your team of product managers,” or something. One thing’s for sure — it would be way more helpful than my ramblings here, I’m sure.
Air Traffic Control
I’m really lucky to have some really great and smart people around me all the time. I have been since I got into the work force.
One lesson I learned this week? Effective management is about air traffic control.
Getting information in, devising what needs to be done, delegating, and then following-up. I’m not starting to realize this what all those books mean that effective managing is all about delegating. I just never thought about it this way.
This kinda ties back to my post a long while back about status reports & checking in using milestones as a gauge. Once some of the folks on my team are comfortable with the direction we are headed in, I want them to be able to set their own goals within the vision of what we’re doing.
Then, any inbound requests to me related to what’s going on are simply routed their way to be handled properly, and I can then provide any necessary communication or guidance on how it can be handled (if necessary or requested). I’d hate to turn into someone that was always saying, “this needs to be done, so go through steps 1, 2, 3″. I just want to say, “this needs to be done. I don’t care how you do it, I just care it gets completed and at a high quality. Ask me for help, and I’ll check in with you for a status at point X”.
It’s all very interesting. I love learning this stuff and then incorporating it into my behavior and how I work. It’s all a learning experience, and a damn good one.
Ask for Help
One of my challenges as I mature and grow-up (in the work sense) is knowing when to ask for help.
It’s really easy to want to take everything on yourself, but you will inevitably end-up bottlenecking something, and that slows down the machine / momentum. You don’t want to be the cause of that, although for those of us that eat and breathe ambition, that’s tough.
The last couple of weeks for me have been really fast-paced. But I’m really learning so much - especially about a) executing key product management tasks and b) management. I got caught off-guard when I went through a deliverable review this week as part of things my team is working on.
It was the cause of it not being done as completely as it could have been, and that pissed me off.
But, I now know (yes, from hard lessons learned) that I can’t let that stuff eat me up as it has in the past. That paralyzes you (me especially), and as such, work quality degrades.
So this time, I’m getting off my ass and actually letting it inspire me to do better. Management can be tricky; while the concepts are easy, the devil lives in the details. I’m not, and never plan to be, a passive manager. I love being involved and communication vision, and things like that. I just need to get better at paying attention to detail.
Ahhh, thanks for listening. Heh. As I was writing, I just connected the dots there in my head; wow, funny how that works.
One thing I have noticed before, and noticed it again today, is that throughout my time in the workplace, I advance by jumping knowledge / experience levels. And, it’s always a clear step for me. Not “title” or “salary” or anything like that, but having gone through certain things a couple of times and picking up on details.
I just made a level jump this afternoon, and thanks for hearing me out.
PM Traits
This is a fantastic article, and very well positioned. Recommended reading out there for not only PM’s, but those working / managing PM’s.
For me, the one that hit closest to home was point # 1. I still find it difficult to serve as this “hub”, but am working really hard on it to get my crap together.
I think it’s the personality switching, and how fast you have to turn certain filters / things “on” and others “off” based on who you are dealing with at any given time.
I recently had a conversation about this with a good friend. His advice? “It’s your job.” True enough, true enough.
Thanks for the post, Michael!
The Product Team
I’ve found that there is a distinct need to have a product team, and to work with them regularly. This is different from the actual product management team, and this post goes into some detail regarding building product teams and why they are crucial.
For me, I can’t work in a vacuum, and I don’t ever recommend that people try. It sucks. I’ve worked in scenarios where feedback is limited (both good and bad), and that lack of direct communication can really end-up leading someone down the wrong path if they don’t have enough experience.
This is why I like to make sure there is a strong tie / bond between a few key cross-functional leaders in a company, since those are the folks, along with the PM, that are driving product decisions. A product mgr can’t make all the choices, all the time, by him or herself. If you have a PM working for you that is trying to do that, I suggest you evaluate, and quick.
You want conversation and constructive discussion across the entire board. For me, I like to work with folks on a “product team” that are a) super-into what they are doing b) have bought into the vision whole-heartedly c) believe in me and what product mgmt is all about and d) have more influence in the company than myself.
That last one is a funny one because it’s truly not a matter of brown nosing, but a matter of realizing that in my scenario, even though I’m helping drive a lot of key things forward and sometimes my ego likes to think that I am a Director or operating at a VP level, the truth of the matter is, I’m just not. I’m not part of Senior Management, and probably won’t be in this job, and probably my next job.
So, in a company that’s as small as I’m at now, it’s key for me to have folks that really understand what I’m trying to do as a product geek, and support decisions I’m making so they can go to bat for the products themselves (not for me — I don’t care about that) and make sure other Senior Mgr’s understand why certain things are being pushed the way they are.
Plus, at the end of the day, I like have that team of people to turn to for support. When I’m not sure of something, it’s incredible to be able to get clear, concise, and above all else — constructive, feedback from them. It’s not, “you’re too young, which means you’re stupid. I’m going to school you now.” They recognize how critical the products are the companies success, and why certain things are the way they are.
And for what it’s worth, the trust you are doing your job, and you trust they are doing yours. And you come together to build out good recommendations to discuss with your CEO’s and your VC’s. And then you pray THEY recognize that the people involved in making product choices understand the task at hand, and are doing their jobs. Then it all starts to flow and work together.
So, thanks goes out to the product team I am working with now — you guys know who you are. Just know that you make my job a helluva lot easier, and I wanted to try and communicate that to other PM’s that could be reading this so they can start thinking about how a structure like this one can help them.
