Stereophonic Product Management
You want to know what the REAL work of product management is? The day in, day out negotiation, communication, and alignment with your colleagues around the company isn’t sexy. Every day, product leaders are managing details that go both deep and wide, all while running the gauntlet of corporate governance and capital review meetings. It's not for the weak of heart, to be sure.
Over the years, through direct management of product teams and as an enterprise consultant, I’ve created a framework to help product people articulate where they are spending their time and focus and how that might need to adjust based on product, company, or team needs.
In examining the real work of product teams as they balance and synthesize the daily demands of the work, I’ve come to see the value of understanding product leadership as a role that turns the dial in a few key areas, to bring everything into harmony. When you, the leader, do this well, it creates an environment for optimal collaboration and planning.
This Stereophonic Product Management Tool
Consider these three areas of focus:
1. Input vs. Action — Are you collecting data or taking action on insights?
2. Vision vs. Detail – Are you focused on the forest or the trees?
3. Internal vs. External – Are you spending more time focused on the needs of your customer versus the needs of your business?
The framework I’ve developed includes more dimensions than these three, but these three are the most difficult for product people to understand and adjust.
With each of these areas, your dial will rarely be exactly in the middle. You’ll shift from one side to the other depending on the circumstances. It’s important to know that, as a leader of your team, you are the one turning the dial. You are the one who needs to have an eye out for shifts that need to be made. You are the one who needs to direct the activity.
Input vs. Action
Input includes data gathering, business insights, consumer interviews, app performance, fluctuations in calls, requests for changes, financial information and challenges, site performance, and so much more. It also includes gathering insights around where your data might be incomplete. For the analytical thinker, this is heaven. It’s where they want to live and breathe every single day.
Action, on the other end of the dial, is where you make decisions and implement them. It’s making the shifts that your data is directing you to make. Ideally, when you are doing product management well, you are taking action in small incremental steps, alternating with input of feedback and data.
Vision vs. Detail
Vision means knowing where you're going in the broader marketplace - what problems are your product going to solve for the customer, and how will you know if you’re doing it right.
Detail, of course, refers to the minutiae — all of that nitty gritty stuff that has to be designed and built and tested to make sure there's an absolute minimum of friction for your users and that the value of the product or feature can be realized.
It's really important for your team to have an eye on that vision to understand where you’re going in the broader marketplace. However, if you get stuck at that high visionary level you’ll never understand how to break it down into the building blocks that makes that visionary goal possible.
I see teams spin when there's too much focus on all of the possibilities, and there's nothing to anchor the team to what you should actually do. On the flip side, details are pretty irrelevant if you aren't building blocks towards a coherent, cohesive vision.
Internal vs. External
External focus is all about creating something that solves a customer's needs. Having an external focus ensures that the product is designed well, works well, and creates value for the user.
Internal focus is about ensuring that the products you design for your customers also work for your business. They are scalable, cost effective, easy to support, and fit into your technology and business ecosystem. An internal focus takes into account all the ways the parts of your business have to come together to really deliver the value your customers demand.
Most companies are ignoring the needs of their business in the name of customer obsession, and in doing so, are out of balance.
If you, as a product manager or owner, are able to fine tune your work to the appropriate balance points, your teams will be in a better position to cross-collaborate efficiently and effectively and do their highest and best work without surprising each other or getting in each other's way.
This is where big change can happen. When you dial in on internal focus to improve cross team collaboration, you aren’t disregarding customer focus. Remember, it's a balance. Finding that balance will ultimately serve to improve both the customer experience and the team experience.
Relationships are the Key!
Here’s the magic bullet. NONE of this – not a single thing – happens without relationships. Creating and nurturing relationships across the company is the very thing that will tell you, the leader, when the dials need to be adjusted, in service to delivering the right value to your customers, at the right time.
Want to learn more about these dials and the steps you can take to improve your cross-team collaboration? I recently recorded a session on this topic and I’d love to share it with you and your team.