Stefan
Latest posts by Stefan (see all)
The Product Manager is the CEO of the product they are leading.
Who hasn’t heard this sentence as a PM. We all have. And we all love the sound of it. But I got news for you. It is bogus (in most cases). In most cases, PMs are a role in Tech, buried under layers and layers of Directors, VPs, SVPs, GMs, and a CEO. That is if you are a GPM, and that is already pretty high (at least in my company).
Product Managers are meant to listen to the users needs and translate this into meaningful (and valuable) products & features the company can bring to market with the technological meas & resources it has access to. So, in that sense, they are asked to do what CEOs are asked to do: build a viable business around a user’s needs. Viable can mean many things, like an acceptable return on investment (ROI), so the business is sustainable long term. It can also mean other things. For the corporate PM, it means a whole host of other things.
Corporate PMs are ‘somewhere in the middle’ of the stack. That comes with its own host of challenges, like the distance to higher-level decision making, the lag it takes for decisions to reach their level, and the general lack of connective tissue between users and the goal the company is pursuing.
Corporate PMs need to be aware of their users, of course. But they also need to be intimately familiar with what their Director-level, VP-level, SVP-level, and adjacent org parts are thinking. They need to be ‘dialed in’ to the corporate voices that are around in their organization. If they aren’t able to translate that, and ‘frame’ it in the right way to their team, they risk a whole new kind of failure: building for the user, but not for their org.
I am saying ‘new kind of failure’. But of course this isn’t true. Even in a small place, just arguing with user value wasn’t enough. But it was typically the majority of what the PM would work on. The other aspects were a ‘side show’. As a corporate PM, that is the ‘main stage’. Getting to a VP review is the main event of the year for a corp PM. Being able to articulate the users needs and how the solution drives the goals of the org as the main thing most resources spend their time on.
Here are the skills I believe are most valuable for the corporate PM:
- Manage stakeholders
- Please VPs & GMs
- Align across teams & orgs
- Listen up & communicate down the chain
It’s key to do those things well. For technical / non-political folks, I found the above to potentially be a bit more tricky. Bringing a misaligned team along, and restoring organizational trust is a lot of work. Some tactics which help PMs in this situation cope:
- Understand that these skills are part of the role, and that it will take up a lot of time. It isn’t a side show, or a shot term obstacle. This is part of the core role.
- Developing relationships is a key way to come to terms with the situation and get results. Everyone (roughly) in middle management is exposed to this. This can’t be won as a one man battle. Find allies, help them, share the struggle.
- Building or restoring trust is a key vehicle. Alignment is the main way to restore organizational trust. Leverage it. It is a powerful tool.
- Find mentors who understand the dynamics. Get help decyphering and diagnosing organizational issues. This is key. Find a trusted group which will help you understand what is a real fire, and what is simply on ‘the trajectory of changes’.
To be clear: this isn’t a bad thing. It is just a thing. And it for sure ins’t a ‘CEO thing’.
Take Action 🎬
📅 Book a private coaching session with me to grow your PM career. I will share my 15+ years of experience as a Product Manager, all my learning and pitfalls, with actionable tips and concrete lessons to model after.
📚 This is the ‘trust bible’ for business leaders, where Stephen M. R. Covey has built a framework on how to create, restore, and grow trust in teams and organizations. The Speed of Trust, is widely recognized as a landmark work in how leaders help drive success int heir businesses.
📚 A book which helped me is Dale Carnegie’s classic How to win friends and influence people. It truly changed me to my core, helped me build more meaningful relationships with others, inside and outside of work. It also helped me see how to become more humble as a person, something which had tremendously positive effects on my life and opened me up to learn a lot more.
📚 The Harvard Business Review Manager Handbook is an incredibly powerful ‘getting started guide’ for the modern manager. It covers a wide variety of topics, including how to build rapport with teams, how to create highly functioning teams, and how to lead teams.
