Making an impact as a product manager: Is it as easy as it sounds?
Triggered by recent conversations and a personal experience, the realization that this question has popped into the product managers’ mind at least once in their career hit me. In an ever-changing digital environment, where product managers represent the user, we run into older practices that block our purpose.
Companies stuck in an old mindset are making decisions based on the business impact, often ignoring the user needs. For a product manager this practice can be very frustrating, especially when they want to make an impact and ensure that the voice of the user is heard. But is it as easy as it sounds?
There are certain steps that need to be taken into consideration:
· A company must be ready to embrace a change, and so does the leadership team. Without that realization, you’ll soon find yourself trying to make an impact alone. Having people that share the same view and are willing to support your mission, is more than important.
· Field knowledge from the decision makers is necessary. If they are stuck in outdated digital practices and the financial results are more than adequate to keep a company afloat, then your journey may become trickier.
· Team expertise. When the green light is given, it’s important to ensure you surround yourself with people that embark your vision and have the right expertise to help you deliver on the promises made. Without the right team, your mission will soon turn into a one man show, and put your initiative at risk.
Let’s all agree that product management, as a few of us have had the pleasure to experience it, is mostly applicable to the tech companies, those companies that came to the digital landscape with a very important goal: to disrupt the digital ecosystem. Those are mostly the Silicon Valley startups or scale ups which understand the need of reinventing their offering and re-evaluating their competitive advantage as needs evolve and behaviors change.
These are the companies that understand the need of putting the user in the epicenter of their activities and are using advanced frameworks to identify their needs and pain points, aiming to address and solve them via the solution that is offered. Data is the driving wheel behind their decisions, and validation is the way to move forward. In a nutshell, the user and data are simply part of their DNA.
However, most companies aren’t in that stage. There are a few companies that understand what product management entails, why it’s so important and therefore, choose to support the mission of the profession. Most companies, especially the big corporations, are lost or stuck in older practices and at the end of the day, not willing to embrace a change. And this is our starting point.
Step 1: A company must be ready and willing to embrace a change
A change in the way of working, organizational design or even type of KPIs set, can fall under this category.
Step 1 isn’t as easy as it sounds. A company’s leadership team need to realize and admit that the current ways of working aren’t addressing today’s needs or accept that the company is falling behind in a digital world. That translates into acknowledging their weaknesses and being open for advice by people that have implemented such a change in the past.
All companies have personal interests to maintain, and if those are to be threatened, resistance immerges. When someone is about to lose control, either due to lack of knowledge or because the status-quo is threatened, then they become resilient. The problem becomes way more complicated, if those people are C-level or hold an important position in the organization. Then, chances are you’ll not be able to advance, or if you are, you’ll only be allowed to take baby steps and therefore let the digital gap grow bigger.
Personal interests can come before a company’s interests. That is an unfortunate reality. If someone cares deeply about the company, believes in its mission or cares about simply doing their job well, then chances are you’ll do your best to help this company move forward.
How to overcome personal interests
That is a tricky one to solve. It requires time and patience, and most importantly support by your manager. Focus your energy on getting more influential allies, people that understand the need of change, support the same goal and hold positions which can influence more people to join your mission, and further elaborate on the importance of this change. It’s worth putting an effort on explaining the need of change to those who feel threatened the most, and allow them to embark on your journey.
Step 2: People must have the field knowledge to embrace improvements
Let’s assume that step 1 is accomplished. The most important stakeholders have given you the green light to make the changes that will result in quick wins. You still need to sell a new idea that is going to complement your initiatives and bridge the gap in the current way of working.
I will use a personal example here. I was recently pitching the importance of Conversion Optimization and its benefits to an eCommerce fashion company. To my surprise, that company hasn’t invested at all in Conversion Optimization, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to show in a short time a sneak peak of the advantages it can bring.
My audience was the leadership team, and I started off the meeting with high expectations, thinking that people would be too crazy to say no to an idea like that. I was excited, collected a few case studies, showed some numbers, and I was ready for the win.
It didn’t take long before I was confronted with the reality. The leadership team knew nothing about Conversion Optimization, and were heavily skeptical to introduce it to the company. Although the advantages were clearly presented, they didn’t think it was ‘fast company’ material.
I was surprised. It felt like walking up to a company, asking them if they want to increase the conversion rate, improve the user experience and as an extension increase revenue, only to get a big fat NO as an answer. It sounds crazy, right? No matter how crazy it sounds, it happens more often than expected.
How to overcome the knowledge gap
Just persevere. Re-invent yourself, calibrate and identify what you can do alone. In cases like those, it may be difficult for people to understand the value, because they haven’t seen it applied in the company, the can’t put the pieces of the puzzle together and envision the full picture, and the benefits that can bring. Once you start taking initiatives yourself, and collecting some data from the company itself, then be assured that the same people will start knocking on your door, asking you to scale up your initiative and therefore contribute to the company’s success at a bigger scale.
Step 3: Finding people with the right knowledge
Let’s summarize: You have managed to break through company politics, get your initiative approved, and now you are about to scale up. Which is why you may need a team to help.
With initiatives that are new to a company, you will definitely need some expertise that will help set up and educate the rest of the team.
Focus on the processes and strategy, and identify the absolutely essential roles you need to hire for. Keep in mind that you have made commitments on the impact of a new initiative may have, and as such, you need to ensure you will deliver against those.
Don’t only look for people that are at the desired level of expertise. Look for professionals that show potential, and interest in making an impact. This is by default a very important professional incentive, which people are willing to fight for.
How to find people with the right knowledge
There’s no need to jump into hiring your team directly. There’s a great network of expert freelance professionals that would be happy to help as long as your budget allows for it. If your budget is limited, then start by reaching out to your network to recruit those you know will be ideal for the role. Don’t feel the urge of filling in the available roles right away, but only do so when you find the right candidate.
Conclusion
Don’t let temporary obstacles get in the way of making an impact. We live in a fast paced world, and as such we need to show agility and identify those short-cuts we need to take that will help reach the end goal. Making an impact, as difficult as it may sound, is possible. Being part of the change making group isn’t easy, but I can rest assure you it’s very rewarding when a change is achieved.
