Transforming Product Management from the Top Down
The missing piece to driving product innovation and success
“No. I won’t do it unless my manager tells me to.”
I had been coaching a junior product person, and this was maybe our third 1:1.
Their team was totally blocked, lacking any clarity on what they needed to work on next.
Despite being new to the role, the PM seemed to care and showed promise. Unfortunately, because they were mostly stuck in senior leadership meetings, they rarely met with their team.
And when they did show up, they were completely unprepared.
One level up
I managed to book time with the product manager’s super-busy manager.
A long-time company veteran, they boasted a strong track record with numerous industry achievements.
But when I asked about how they felt their PM was doing, their response was:
“The PM is spending too much time with their team. They need to have more face time with senior leadership.”
I tried to hide my surprise. When I casually brought up the PM’s lack of preparedness in leading discovery, they pushed back, saying they didn’t see it as part of the role.
While I appreciated their loyalty in sticking up for their person, the situation was costing the company serious money as eight people sat idle.
Weeks passed, and the team had nothing to ship and still didn’t know what to work on next.
Coaching
Finally, the manager relented, and I continued coaching the PM.
At first, we focused on building trust with the team. Next, we began taking the strategic context they were getting from business leadership and looking for ways to lay those priorities out over a product roadmap.
The hope was once the team had a better idea of longer-term goals, they could get unblocked and start accelerating discovery.
It took weeks of regular coaching sessions for the PM to finally start leading and longer still for the team to finally start delivering.
Had the PM’s manager understood the role better, we could have collaborated on a coaching plan earlier, unblocked the team, and gotten results far sooner.
The missing piece
Managers have the power to set the tone as companies evolve to accelerate faster flows of value to their customers.
But it’s hard to do that if they’re unaware of what the PM role entails. Worse, they may inadvertently (or sometimes intentionally) incentivize the wrong behaviors.
They can either coach these PMs to fast-track value delivery or limit the newly minted PMs’ effectiveness in leading their teams.
But there may be a very good reason why these managers may not have the time to learn about product.
They’re drowning and just trying to stay afloat.
How managers got busy
There’s been an ongoing trend of companies cutting away layers of middle management as they try to squeeze more out of fewer people to lift their stock prices.
The managers left behind have been steadily overburdened with hands-on tasks, budgets, Human Resources (“HR”) responsibilities, and countless other activities.
In addition, they may be managing anywhere from 10-50 people.
With no time left, these managers are unable to stay current with modern software development trends.
Transformation fail
In addition to everything else, these busy managers now have to deal with whatever “transformation” their organization may be experiencing—digital, Agile, or Product.
One of the first things that happens in these transformations is that people managers, Subject Matter Experts (“SMEs”), or Business Analysts (“BAs”) are assigned to become product managers.
Unfortunately, inexperienced product managers are frequently the weakest link in any transformation. After working the same job for years, they’re suddenly thrust into a new role with zero context. No one has told them how drastically their jobs are about to change. Worse, their managers haven’t been prepared for this change either.
So, both continue applying the same mental models and culture to the new approach.
Unprepared
That manager might have successfully managed SMEs or BAs to help their company succeed in the past.
But it’s unlikely they’re aware of how different making software under the new product model is, and the pivotal role product managers play in that process.
Great managers in the product model play a totally different role.
From boss to coach
“You can’t be a good manager without being a good coach”
Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach”
But a lifetime of putting out fires and managing “up” doesn’t prepare these managers to coach their people to fast-track client value delivery.
To be successful in managing product managers, your main job is to coach your people to excellence in the product role. In these product-driven environments, PM managers are judged by their weakest product manager.
Because this is where “transformations” fall apart:
Any software team will always be limited by the ability of the product manager leading them.
Product Coach to the rescue?
Experienced product coaches can help up-level PMs in discovery and delivery.
But those coaches will be set up to fail if they ask new PMs to go against their manager’s directions, as I was. You’ve created unresolvable tension between what they see might be a better way, and fulfilling their manager's expectations for their role.
And this is another way transformations fail. Despite the goal to move to product-driven development, both managers and their PMs resort to doing what they’ve always done.
And this isn’t limited just to product management.
The Product Model’s biggest shift
Perhaps the product model’s most significant mindset change is to move from “The Business” dictating down to subservient “cost center” functions, to having product, engineering, and UX interact as a collaboration of peers.
So instead of pretending they “know it all” and that everyone should just “do as they say,” they need to understand the crucial role product plays in leading collaborative discovery and delivery.
The role other functions & their managers play
However, shifting to a more collaborative model will also require engineering and UX professionals and their managers to adapt and change.
As we’ve seen engineering and UX have traditionally “taken orders” and “executed what they’re told” by “The Business.” For the product model to succeed, they must learn to interact with each other and end-user clients in new ways.
All groups will benefit from understanding strategic, insights-based, client-centric product principles.
But as these groups collaborate more effectively, managers who don’t prepare and support their people to work in these new models will get exposed as the weak link in the accelerated value delivery chain.
The four things
There are four keys managers can use to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
It’s a set of principles for creating lasting change and bringing them, their people, and their organizations one step closer to accelerating value delivery through the product model:
Learn the basics of the product model and continuously upskill them
Define what great product looks like in their org & create a coaching plan
Make the 1:1 an effective way to match progress to the plan
Champion collaborative product management across the organization
Let’s dig into each.
1: The basics of Product Management
There are many great ways to understand foundational product management principles at the core of the product operating model.
“Essentially, the product operating model is about consistently creating technology-powered solutions that your customers love, yet work for your business.
From the financial perspective, it's about getting the most out of your technology investment.”
Cagan, Marty. Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model (Silicon Valley Product Group) (p. 7). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
To accomplish this, experienced product managers lead small, cross-functional collaborative teams in product discovery and delivery for solutions that drive outcomes: solving client problems in ways that produce business value.
At its core, delivering outcomes is about using client-centricity and strategy to influence client behavior something we accept is out of our direct control.
Client-centric discovery by the Trio
Client-centric strategy and discovery have made a decisive difference for the FAANG companies,
What is continuous product discovery? Teresa Torres defines it as:
At a minimum, weekly touchpoints with customers
By the team building the product
Where they conduct small research activities In pursuit of a desired outcome
Torres, Teresa. Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value (p. 21). Product Talk LLC. Kindle Edition.
The cornerstone is to uncover client needs through continuous client interviewing. Product leads the discovery process with engineering and design leadership in what’s known as “The Product Trio.”
When we approach discovery as an up-front collaboration of peers, we get the best of the Product Trio’s diverse points of view.
This allows the trio to cross-functionally work backwards from client needs, and innovate to address those needs.
2: Designing a model of great Product Management
Once they start working with the basics of product management, managers can formalize a model of what great product management looks like in their organization.
There are many standout frameworks and competency models. Two that I’ve applied successfully in my coaching include this one from SVPG and Petra Wille’s “PM Wheel” model.
Using those as a starting point, work to create a lightweight version of this for your organization.
Don’t formalize or run it through HR; it will never get done.
Start small and create a one-pager to start rolling out a high-level sketch for a set of PMs in one division of the company.
Assess against the model
Now that you have a model, you can run each PM against it.
This will identify gaps and form the foundation of a coaching plan.
Remember, the model will continuously evolve, especially as you bring on more experienced product managers who demonstrate success accelerating value delivery within your organization. See what they're doing differently than the other former BAs and SMEs.
At the same time, map out what these capable PMs may need to learn from the seasoned people within your organization.
3: Running great 1:1s
Now that you have an assessment and a coaching plan, the best mechanism for upskilling your people is through a regular cadence of 1:1 meetings.
If you’re going to be judged by your weakest PM, your role has now shifted to developing the PMs reporting to you. You need to bring everyone up to a baseline of leading effective discovery and delivery in the product model.
For these reasons, making time for 1:1s, properly preparing for them, following up, and nurturing each PM to competency against the new model is essential.
This will be impossible if you’ve got a mountain of tasks and 46 people reporting to you.
Working to delegate some of those tasks, prioritizing the PMs showing the most promise, and leading the company’s mission-critical products will help.
4: Championing Product Management more broadly across the org
As the product model starts to show promise, you can start to pick up and share from tons of excellent free product thought leader resources available.
Some great people to follow include:
And so many more.
Find videos or podcast episodes of people who effectively use product management to solve the problems your organization is trying to address.
As you start to get these ideas out across the company, they can be used to influence and improve your model of what great product management looks like.
Product isn’t only for product
Two other great ways to up-level the company in product management principles include Product Communities of Practice and Book Clubs, which can help share great information and break down silos.
The point is these sessions aren’t just for Product Managers – By encouraging participation and collaboration more broadly, you can build support for the product model from:
Engineering
Product Design
Product Marketing
Sales
Data
Quality
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (“GRC”)
Because it will require everyone’s collaboration to be part of the solution, getting the support, buy-in, and participation not just from the people within those disciplines but also from their managers can create strong momentum.
But it’s always easy to slide back into internal-centric, top-down, stakeholder-driven feature delivery, so mutual support and championing success stories along the way will be key.
Takeaways
As much of a difference great product managers will play in their companies’ success, it will be their managers who will ultimately play a decisive role in successfully transforming to the product model and accelerating value delivery to your customers.
Managers can address this in four ways:
Learn the basics of the product model and continuously upskill them
Define what great product looks like in their org & create a coaching plan
Make the 1:1 an effective way to match progress to the plan
Champion collaborative product management across the organization
While hard, the benefits of shifting to this model can be a far more effective tech spend, and building a learning organization that creates products customers love in ways that also create lasting value for your business.
This is a seriously meaty piece of work my friend. Nearly every section is with its own piece. It’s also probably the structure of a whole book. Well done.