Considering what your product management organization is tasked to deliver in the next 3-6 months, please indicate which of the following would help you the most by distributing 100 points to the options listed below.

Please take a minute and respond here - http://budurl.com/8yks.

Seams the medical profession is riddled with an abundance of specialists. At times he had to go through 3 layers of recommendations just to talk with one of those smart guys. While stalling to go out in the cold, folks ask questions like,

"Why is that?"

What happened to the old days when the family doctor knew all there was to know. He'd give you something he happened to have on the shelf, and that my friend was it; you either lived or died. I guess back then they didn't cure much cancer either - now did they.

Product Management is like this. It's becoming more complicated every day; with new best-practices coming out at a rate of more than 1 every 10 days. On a cold morning you could ask, "Why is that?" Normally, I don't have the time for this type of question and just deal with the consequence. Its only in the simplest of situations that one person is sufficient to carry product concepts successfully through the innovation value chain from start to finish.

Product Managers engage in a host of specialized tasks.

Market analysis                      Market segmentation
Nurturing focus groups           Creativity events
Market survey                       Arena analysis ...

These specialized tasks help to increase and maintain a competitive advantage. The complete list of specialized tasks is limited only by your definition of the innovation value chain. There are currently over 150 synergistic best-practices in Market Sensing alone. Each of these practices is supported by more and more specialists.

Why is that?  "To increase the quality of life."  

I don't have time for any other response. For now we deal with it as it is. There's no downsizing in sight. If anything, the recession is only fueling the fire.

Some Product Managers haven't realized their situation. They frantically do everything themselves. Others just don't finish. Neither is sustainable. Competitive Product Managers are more like the construction industry's general contractor. They work with sub-contractors to complete a project. The magazine editor pushes the next issue to market, but not by themselves. But even these examples are yesterday's Product Manager.

The Product Management profession is transitioning. Product Managers are finding themselves more in a leadership role than a management role. This is regardless of industry or particular job title. On some cold morning we'll think about,

"Why is that?"

For now we focus on leading the team of specialists, much like the cat herder of yore. For more on the team analogy check out "Product Management and the NFL".

The Product Management Community knows the value of leading specialists. They also know how Product Mangers can develop leadership capabilities. Meaningful steps toward steering the activities within the innovation value chain can be taken by leading not just managing specialties. Product Management must effectively keep the path straight. The good news is that those who wish to help Product Mangers lead the various specialties within the innovation value chain can play a constructive - perhaps decisive - role in keeping that path unobstructed.

Customers come to RYMA wanting to grow product management capability. They're frustrated because of the gap between theory and practice. The rate product management practices change makes this even more frustrating. I believe understanding a few trends can make it simpler for everyone. I've broken this blog into a series of four posts; a posting focused on each trend and one posting bringing the trends together.

Trend One: "Predictive" Product Management
Even before the ancient pyramids, there were architects and there were builders. The role of the architect was reserved for those with access to power and money. Power and money enabled decision making. The common citizen lacked both power and money to become the project architect. They found themselves building without much decision ability. Large projects were made possible by driving the builder's wages down to almost nothing. Those few architects, with enough power and money to make decisions, worked alongside of the builders throughout the product lifecycle. Decisions were made at every step of the effort; but they were made by an elite class.

As time passed, more and more people were included in decision making as citizens could retain larger amounts of power and money of their own. One of the fist things these people decided was that they didn't want to work for free. This forced large projects to search for other methods of economy. In those days the search was for a solution to a specific issue, not on improving the entire product lifecycle. Growth in the building processes came first because of the eminent need; the rising costs of building activities were diminishing returns.

A commonly accepted approach to this problem was to employee fewer builders, by finding ways for them to do the work of 10. They were paid more because they could do more. Along the way strategies such as standardization, mass-production, automation, re-use, and encapsulation have helped increase builder efficiency.

This gave rise to three separate but interrelated historical trends;

1. "Predictive" product management,
2. Polarization of decision making, and
3. Resistance to building changes.

Within "predictive" product management the architect specifies or "predicts" what the product will look like. The builders build.  If the finished product compares favorably to the "prediction" the product is declared a success. This practice has continued on into modern days.

In this "predictive" world, product functionality, cost, and delivery schedule is fixed prior to start.  There is little tolerance for variation. This trend fits well into the notion of keeping the decision making isolated to a few. It was discovered that the uncertainty of creativity was also contained this way. The unpredictable nature of innovation, creativity, and decision making is restricted to that upfront elite class. The building phase in the product lifecycle becomes predictable by pulling as many decisions as possible up front. The elite class no longer works along the side of the builder.

This trend continues to increase pressure on product management methods designed to predict market problems, customer values, business opportunities, competitive advantage, technical solutions, and so on. In this world, the best product management teams are identified by the better predictions.

Historically "Predictive" Product Management produces:

low-valued product releases,
missed aligned functionality,
product complexity, and
budget overruns more times than not.

What's been your experience? Is the elite class scalable?

How hard is it to predict the future?

Would you enjoy reviewing 5 years of statistical data over Christmas? How about sitting through three presentations of additional studies? Lop on top of that 4 more hours of rambling about:

Adolescent physiology,
Abnormal behavior
Motivational theory,
Relationship building
The laws of effective communication,
Effective teams
Parenting
Management theory ...

The Issue
Some teenagers embrace change and the opportunities they offer. These young people have clear aspirations for their future. They are strongly motivated, full of energy, and are optimistic. They have created realistic plans to accomplish their ambitions. However, many of their peers feel as though they're stalled. They hesitate to make the role commitments of parent, worker, spouse, or citizen. Adult life is put off till later. Have you ever met a 23 year old teenager?

All sorts of people show this type of hesitation.

Even some Product Managers hesitate when they should be motivated, full of energy, and optimistic.

I used to ask myself, "What's in portfolio management that scares so many good product mangers?" Why is she resisting strategic planning? What's scary about roadmap alignments? Shouldn't they be more excited about ROI analysis? It goes on and on. I suspect Product Managers and Teenagers aren't the only ones who hesitate looking into the future.

Just like my Holiday experience with the Teenager issue, this lack of commitment could come from not owning a serious purpose. A purpose can give meaning and dedication to a teenager. It can bring success and internal peace to a Product Manager. In my interviews and surveys, only about one in five Product Managers are able to express a clear vision of what their ideal activities would include today. Even fewer are able to define their desired activities in the future.

If you want to see a deer in your head lights,
ask a Product Manager what they want to accomplish as a Product Manager; and why.

The Solution:
The solution for the high school advisory board seemed to be helping teenagers find a path to purpose. Short-term desires come and go. A young person may desire a good grade on a test. They may desire a date to the prom. I've seen them trade hundreds of dollars worth of books for a cutting-edge electronic games. Some dream about a staring slot on the basketball team. Other teens may even think about admission to a prestigious college. But more times than not these are only desires. These desires reflect immediate aims that may or may not have longer-term significance.

The desires of Product Managers are driven to change at an hourly rate. A purpose, by contrast, is an end in itself. It's in the nature of purposes to endure at least long enough that a serious commitment is made. At least some progress toward that aim must be achieved. Change in purpose happens over years, not months and days. A purpose can organize an entire life. It imparts not only meaning but also inspiration and motivation for ongoing learning and achievement.

I suspect this same solution has relevancy in Product Management as well. Product Managers need to know what they really want. They need a purpose. The Product Management Community knows the value of purpose. They also know how Product Mangers can develop a sense of purpose. Meaningful steps toward steering the activities within the innovation value chain can be taken by using a sense of purpose. Product Management must effectively keep the path straight. The good news is that those who wish to help Product Mangers find positive purposes can play a constructive - perhaps decisive - role in keeping that path unobstructed."

It's time to cut. "Everyone must do it." Today and in the foreseeable future the business objective is to cut costs. Business objectives change rapidly. Rapid change is the environment that Product Managers live in.

Reduce Costs!

Scott Anthony in his blog "Scott Anthony Innovation Insights"  post dated 28th Jan warned "Cut Customer Service? You'll lose Customers". Product Managers want customers ... Must keep customers ...

NO WAIT.

Scott states, "Companies might think that innovation and survival are discrete choices. They are not." This is an assertion that should have been better supported. Innovation and survival are discrete choices. Like all discrete behavior (that of an individual or organization of individuals), the question is about the time interval. If it appears continuous, shorten the interval. Eventually you'll see the beginning and end.

If this is true, you can cut innovation, and any other discrete event, and still survive. The question is how long.

Go Ahead, Cut!

"How long? What does that mean?" Scott might ask. "If you cut an arm off, it's cut. Can you say, FOREVER?" Companies without Customer Service die, they don't survive. That's a proven fact.

WAIT.

You've hit on something here Scott; arms are a continuous part of the body. It's part of the body's structure. Is there a way we can keep the organization process of Customer Service intact, while cutting the activities of Customer Service for a short periods of time? If so, Product Managers could throttle Customer Service activities to regulate costs. In this way we don't cut the arm off; just reduce blood flow for short periods of time.  We don't have to amputate when we get tennis elbow do we?

OK, Go ahead and throttle the flow!

Customer Service is critical to the survival of your company. How do you know how long the Product Manager can keep the activities turned off? This is a tricky and dangerous business. It reminds me of a video clip "Monkey vs. Tiger" I saw recently. The Product Manager would feel like the monkey playing with the Tiger's tail. Customer Service is just one of hundreds of discrete activities that the Product Manager manages across the innovation value chain. How do they know which activities to reduce, by how much, and for how long? These activities span across the entire organization, the product manager isn't even responsible for some of these things. There are teeth at the other end of that tiger you're playing with.

WAIT!

That's why activities across the innovation value chain should be instrumented with key performance indicators. These indicators have thresholds that are monitored by the Product Manager. When the business environment changes the business objective may change. If the business objective changes some of the targeted threshold values change. The Product Manager doesn't have to cut ...

Never mind - The BULLET just found you.

Your competitors were using Adaptive Product Management. All of the APM practices we're in place. All the KPI's we're being monitored by a set of dashboards. When their objective changed to reduce costs, within seconds, the Product Manager's activities were aligned to the new strategy. In fact, all the activities of the innovation value chain became aligned to the new strategy. They gained significant cost reduction in less than 30 days. While you were contemplating cutting off your arms and legs, they gained the competitive advantage.

Not only are their customers more loyal than ever, but your customers became tired of waiting.

The Product Management Community knows the value of Adaptive Product Management. They also know how Product Mangers can acquire APM capabilities. Meaningful steps toward steering the activities within the innovation value chain can be taken by gaining APM capabilities. Product Management must effectively keep this path straight. The good news is that those who wish to help Product Mangers gain APM capabilities within the innovation value chain can play a constructive - perhaps decisive - role in keeping that path unobstructed.

I figure the Lions are the noble creatures who focus on product sustainability. The Tigers are more aggressive, perhaps focusing on personal bonuses. The Monkeys can't have much decision making ability. The Dogs are much like in the Boston Group's quadrants; those Product Managers who are under performing with no hope of improvement. What do you think?

I was surprised to find out how many of Product Managers thought of themselves as "Dogs". Last weekend, at the Product Camp in Austin, TX, there was a panel discussion titled, "Product Management and Leadership within the Organization".  It was voted, "Best Session". This session was chaired by Mike Boudreaux of Emerson, Derick Workman of RYMA, and Larry McKeogh of Xilinx. The session summary said the panel would address "why leadership is so important for success in product management."  It was also going to discuss "how to exercise leadership to influence others in your organization".

The main points from this open session ended up being:

• Product management can't deliver products on its own. It's a cross-functional team effort.
• They can't use authority from their job title to get other organizations to do what they want.
• The value that each team member (development manager, marketing communication specialist, etc) gets from product management must be larger than the team requires.
• The pm's opinion is only an opinion unless it is backed by market evidence. Do your homework and others will have confidence in the decisions you make.
• Leadership styles should be situational. (Lot's of discussions on leadership styles)
• The "Texas Roadhouse" rule - be nice until it's time to not be nice.
• How can you exercise leadership to influence upper management? Lots of discussion on using pre-meetings to sell the project idea to each executive one-on-one. Get them onboard before the meeting. Create champions.
• Senior Executives are trying to make decisions. Empower their decision making and you will have more influence.

It seems Product Managers often find themselves trying to lead people with little or no authority. They see themselves as having all the responsibility for the product's success, but no authority to make the right decisions. You Lions and Tigers be grateful. Most of your peers feel lucky to even be a Monkey.

Speaking of Monkeys and Tigers, Monkey Video.  A funny video even if you've seen it before.

Mike Hopkin's blog, Lead On Purpose addresses the Leadership Issues of the Product Manager. It's certainly worth monitoring if you're a product manager looking for leadership insight.

One alternative which I recommend is Servant Leadership.  The definition of Servant Leadership on Wikipedia is one of the best. Wikipedia mentions the film The Emperor's Club as an example of what I'm talking about; certainly worth a watch. While you watch, you put it in context of Product Management.  Another example of Servant Leadership can be found in this short article "How hard could it be?" ; by Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fog Creek Software. 

Greenleaf.org is still the largest promoter of Servant Leadership. If you're looking for additional resources, you'll probably want to bookmark this site. Another interesting site focusing on leadership development is Leaders Direct. 

There are two useful and slightly similar PDF documents you can download, one titled "Practicing Servant Leadership" by Larry Spears who is the CEO of Greenleaf.org. The other comes out of University of Nebraska, and from what I can tell is not one of the GreenLeaf members. "Becoming a Servant Leader: Do I have what it takes?"

Books on Servant Leadership that I recommend, and pass out on occasion are listed here. Prices are for comparison, actual prices may vary.

"The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership" ; James C. Hunter; Crown Business; 1998; $22.00 

"Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness"; Robert K. Greenleaf, Larry C. Spears; Paulist Press;  2002; $16.47

"The Servant Leader: How to Build a Creative Team, Develop Great Morale, and Improve Bottom-Line Performance"; James A. Autry; Three Rivers Press; 2004; $13.95

"The World's Most Powerful Leadership Principle: How to Become a Servant Leader"; James C. Hunter; WaterBrook Press; 2004; $23.00

"Practicing Servant-Leadership: Succeeding Through Trust, Bravery, and Forgiveness"; Larry C. Spears, Michele Lawrence; Jossey-Bass; 2004; $27.95  

An authoritative book that will help Product Managers assume a greater role in their organizations, not yet published, but coming out I believe in Q2 of 2009, from Cambridge University Press is: "Power and Interdependence in Organizations"; Dean Tjosvold, Barbara Wisse; 2009; around $110.
Many universities in the US have formed "Alliances for Servant Leadership". Indiana State University is one. They have defined a set of principles to help the servant-leader address day-to-day situations.

• Principle #1: Transformation
• Principle #2: Personal Growth
• Principle #3: Enabling Environments
• Principle #4: Service
• Principle #5: Trusting Relationships
• Principle #6: Creating Commitment
• Principle #7: Community-building
• Principle #8: Nurturing the Spirit

This may seem to be too much for some. Another very actionable approach to power that Product Managers can take is found in Dr. John E. Barbuto's paper from the University of Nebraska, "77 Ways To motivate Your Workers".  Exchange the "Workers" in the title with "Co-workers" and your off and going. He creates a framework based on five types of motivation;

• FUN
• REWARDS
• REPUTATION
• CHALLENGE
• PURPOSE

The 77 suggestions to motivate your co-workers, are placed into one of these five groups; i.e.;

REPUTATION contains 20 suggestions such as,

• Give workers lots of feedback about the way they are performing.
• Give praise in front of other people (the more people that know they did well the better!).
• Make sure that you give credit to everyone that contributes (never leave people out when they make an impact).
• Give unsolicited compliments and positive reinforcement to workers for jobs with which you are satisfied.
• Tell your workers that you appreciate the work they do.
• Consider starting an employee [product contributor] recognition system (employee [product contributor] of the month, department employee [product contributor] of the month).

Under PURPOSE, suggestions such as

• Communicate the purpose of tasks being assigned.
• Make sure the company has a vision and mission that it is pursuing.
• Communicate the organization's vision and purpose on a daily basis.
• Refer to the purpose of the organization and "why we exist" when outlining strategies and goals.
• Remind employees of who depends on this organization to succeed (families, communities, industry, producers).
• Discuss why (in terms of contributing to the mission) things need to occur.
• Remind workers how their efforts make a difference for the company in its pursuit of it vision.
• Make links between their work and the company vision so they can see how they fit into the bigger picture.
• Include workers in the visioning and strategic planning process so that they feel they have a stake in the organizational outcomes.

Bottom line; the difference between the Lion, the Tiger, the Monkey, and the Dog is not what and how you eat. It's all about the Product Manager's leadership capabilities.

The Product Management Community knows the responsibility of Product Management. They also know how Product Mangers can acquire authority. Meaningful steps toward steering the activities within the innovation value chain can be taken by granting authority to the Product Manager. Product Management must effectively keep this path straight. The good news is that those who wish to help Product Mangers gain access to power within the innovation value chain can play a constructive - perhaps decisive - role in keeping that path unobstructed.

They told me my exterior doors were worthless. "Get armored ones. Order bulletproof windows. Build a safe room. Install panic buttons. Upgrade you wireless security system. Get rid of the cedar fence in the backyard and put in a steel-and-concrete one. Screen incoming calls. Don't use the front door. Don't use the driveway. Vary the way I come home - and our entire family's schedule."

Pretty soon, we were talking over six-figure costs and relocation to Canada. And that was back when six-figures were a lot of money.  November 5th came and went uneventfully, but the experience taught me some important lessons about Product Management.

When security is at stake, there is no limit to fear or fortification.

The Al-Qaeda and the like have taken more from Americans than the IRS has. Think about the "extra half-hour" millions of airline passengers waste standing in security lines. The annual cost in lost work hours runs into the billions of dollars. Add to that the freight delays at borders, ports, and airports. Add the cost of checking money transfers as well as goods in transit, and the wages for beefed-up security forces around the world.

I say, "If fear starts like a tax,
behaves like a tax,
and produces results like a tax;
then it must be a tax."

This world wide "fear tax" represents the most significant victory of Terror to date.

Sun-Tzu in the Art of War states that "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Product Managers need to maintain a balance between how they react to their competitor's, and how they advance, much like the balance between strategy and tactics.

Fear of the competitor can tax the product.
Fear of the competitor can tax the process.
Fear of the competitor can tax the technology.
Fear of the competitor can tax the product management team
until there's nothing left to give.

Fear thrives on the unknown. You must to know the competitor if you want to reduce the fear tax. You must maintain a balanced response to competitive information. Building bulletproof products is not a balanced response normally.

Bold new strikes in the market place can come as much from reducing the fear tax, as they do from new innovation processes.

Fact is, less than three out of ten Product Management teams feel they are gathering sufficient competitive information. Even less feel they can adequately respond to the information they have. To me this means that the worlds Product Managers are paying too high a fear tax.

Just like what my mother used to teach me about the play ground, good competitive analysis can help avoid fights. But that's not all competitive analysis can do. Most Product Managers view competitors as a threat. While competitors can be threats, the right competitors can strengthen rather than weaken a product's competitive position.

"Good" competitors can serve a variety of strategic purposes that increase your product's competitive advantage. Accordingly, it's often desirable to have one or more "good" competitors. See Michael Porter for more on that. Competitive analysis should be a part of every Product Management process. Even a little will go a long ways in reducing the fear tax.

Access to good competitive analysis is essential to the Product Management team. The correct response to that information is the Product Manager's responsibility.

At the end of the day, if your product management team is paying too much fear tax ― have a talk with your Product Manager.

The Product Management Community knows the value of competitive analysis.They also know how Product Mangers can develop correct responses to this information. Meaningful steps toward steering the activities within the innovation value chain can be taken by using competitive information.  Product Management must effectively keep the path straight. The good news is that those who wish to help Product Mangers better utilize competitive information can play a constructive - perhaps decisive - role in keeping that path unobstructed.

In times when people are reducing staff and cost cutting, it would seem odd that I am about to highlight another required role. I want to highlight an article to support a problem that I am seeing in medium to large sized organizations. From Pragmatic Marketing: Software Product Architect Job Description

"As Product Architect, you will lead the design effort on a variety of projects in a highly collaborative, fast-paced environment. Your role is to design innovative solutions to real market problems. You will work closely with product and marketing managers, user interaction designers, and software engineers to develop new product offerings and improve existing ones. This position reports to the VP of Development."

Consider this situation... Two product managers who are based in different offices, organizationally on separate teams and each own one product. Both products are typically bundled and used at a customer site and except for the rare integration scenario neither product manager collaborates with the other. Imagine if you will, each Product Manager receives a separate enhancement request from a different customer asking for the same thing. Separately, they each run through basic sensing techniques to determine the pervasiveness of problem and articulate the problem statement for their product. Awesome! Now what?

They have documented a problem for their product that should potentially be solved in one and only one of products. The challenge at this point, how do they recognize that they are on the verge of writing requirements, getting estimates, passing it through various validation stages for the same problem, in essence duplicating effort? This becomes a bigger problem if the development team builds the solution twice.

In practice, we want one of the product managers to identify a problem, document it and the other product manager to identify a problem and recognize that the problem already exists. Technology can help, at least you will have a central repository for searching, but still required is discipline to collaborate, strong writing skills to ensure they are communicating in the same language and responsibility to do the right thing (make the right decision).

On the development side of the organization there is usually an architect type role that binds everything together, someone who is ultimately responsible that the technical designs are consistent and within the existing framework to ensure efficiency on the development side (no one is duplicating effort). I think the Product Management teams need this role too (or someone with this responsibility). I want to think of this as a Product Management Architect. This is someone who has overall responsibility for the quality of the problem statements, someone who is responsible for the best solution for those problem statements, someone who holds the big picture for the product portfolio and someone who has the potential customers in the front of their mind, not the technology.

The simplicity of my scenario doesn't really do the problem justice but if you start to think about a 15 member product management team that parses maybe thousands of inputs into hundreds of problem statements how pervasive this problem can be.

At the end of the day, as technology providers, operation efficiency is paramount to our success and maybe even a differentiator. Duplicating effort is the opposite of efficiency. The market sensing and problem identification is the bread winner of product management and the key to efficiency begins at the point of problem statement concept.

Last point, for the smaller groups I'd like to see you begin to have problem statement regular (weekly) review sessions on a regular basis. No harm can be done by reviewing the problems experienced by your customers.

A few people have responded to the survey I posted, asking about problems facing Technology Product Management, but we need more of you to participate.

We need the collective input of the community and from there we can move forward to try to address some of the issues that you raise.

Read the rest of the post here.