Product Manager – Strategic or Not?

Are product managers really involved in strategic discussions, or are we just order takers? Adrienne Tan has poked the beehive and started a great discussion with this article. Joining in from here, hopefully adding folks to the conversation. Check it out, and chime in here or on the brainmates blog.

Product Managers Taking Orders

Adrienne kicks off the discussion with a great post, including the following question : “why does a whole professional group continue to defend its right to be strategic? No one else seems to think that Product Management is the rightful owner of Product Strategy except Product Management.”

As I write this, there are half a dozen great comments on her post, including some powerful ideas:

• People don’t want to relinquish power – and “owning strategy” is powerful. Of course other people want to say that they “own” it.
• Product management is the business – we run into problems when the role is “tacked on” organizationally and not deeply integrated.
• There are two distinct roles – strategic planning and tactical support – and both have the same title (product manager), but if they are different people, you have problems.
• There’s too much for one person to do, but the responsibilities of people sharing the work must overlap, or they will become disconnected.

As Nick points out in the comments – Adrienne’s post is a productive one, not just a rant – since getting a “seat at the table” for strategic decision making is so hard, is it worth doing?

Product Strategy

Product strategy happens. It may be implicit, but it is probably explicit and intentional. Product strategy, however, is just a business tactic. Your company has a strategy, and someone makes the decision that “product” will play a role in that strategy. The definition of that role constrains what someone else should do with the product, in order to realize the product’s portion of the business strategy.

Most of the product management roles that I’ve seen fall into this model. There’s a “glass ceiling” for product managers – who are only given freedom to make decisions within this context. Those product managers are “doers” within these constraints – occasionally allowed to, but generally not encouraged to, and certainly not required to provide recommendations to change the business strategy.

Go Where I Tell You

If the CEO (the actual CEO, not the “CEO of the product”) is the rider, then the product manager is the horse – constrained to “go where I tell you.” The product manager is watching where he’s running to make sure he steps sure-footedly, looking around to see where the other horses (or wolves) are – basically responsible for the “running.” The CEO is responsible for knowing where to go, not how to get there. As long as the product manager doesn’t get the bit in his teeth, the CEO can make sure the horse goes where she wants.

What Does “Strategy” Mean to You?

The problem with words like strategy is that they carry a lot of symbolic baggage. Wikipedia tells us that a strategy is a “plan of action, designed to achieve a vision.” The question is one of scope – what level of “vision” are you trying to achieve? Google’s vision is so big that they don’t really articulate it – instead, they share the philosophy that shapes their vision and guides their actions. You have to pick one of the products, like Google Wallet, before you get an articulation of vision.

Product management (as a “named entity” in the organization), in the teams that I’ve been a part of, has “owned” the definition of the product strategy that enables the product vision – but not been invited to participate in the business strategy that enables the company’s vision. That strategy is primarily embodied in a product roadmap that articulates how (and when) the product vision will be achieved.

The product strategy and vision are components of a portfolio of strategies and visions that collectively make up the business strategy.

Command and Control

The weakness of this old-school command-and-control model is that the commander (CEO) only gets limited inputs from the commanders in the field (product managers). With this top-down model of decomposition of business strategy into products with specific roles, each product manager has specific responsibilities (take the town), often being expected to succeed with limited context (we’re sweeping around the enemy’s flank, but it is a feint). The product manager is only providing progress reports and possibly market information back to the overall commander. The product manager is not tasked with providing recommendations to change the business strategy.

The strength of this approach is that it enables a company to execute their business strategy.

As product managers, we know there is always “more to be done” – and like the metaphor of boiling the ocean, if one person tries to do everything, they won’t succeed.

In his recent series on product management roles, Rich Mironov calls out that the VP of Product Management is “making sure that the company as a whole is building and shipping and supporting the right products.” Not defining the business strategy, but rather determining which products should be components of that strategy, and what roles those products should have as members of that strategy.

Each product manager is responsible for defining the roadmap for their product, articulating how it will fulfill its role in the comprehensive strategy.

The Eye of the Beholder

Given this definition, is product management still a “strategic” role? It depends on where you’re standing in the organization. The CEO probably sees us as horses. But the teams that are building, testing, and supporting our products are operating on a shorter time horizon, with an even narrower scope. From that point of view, having a multi-release point of view about the product, and a deep understanding of the market (needed to make the right product decisions) is definitely strategic.

Should We Be Pushing the Strategic Product Manager Agenda?

Getting back to Adrienne’s original point, and a fantasic image from Geoffrey Anderson, “Sometimes I feel like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, and every tier of the swim is fraught with bears waiting to eat me.” – is it worth investing our time and energy in pushing the “product managers are strategic” message?

If any of these apply to you, then yes – push:

• I’m told what features to build, and I’m expected to just translate for the technical folks on the product team, so that they build it correctly.
• I’m not given the (business strategy) context that defines the role my product plays, so have no way to know if my product is succeeding.
• When I provide feedback about the feasibility or effectiveness of my product in its role as part of the business strategy, it is not valued and nothing changes.

If none of those apply to you, they do apply to some of your peers – so push.

In the past 10 years, I’ve seen each of the above situations multiple times, and they are in order of increasing frequency. What I see even more frequently these days is product managers getting pulled more and more into the operational, product owner role – shepherding teams through daily stand-ups and validating acceptance criteria – purely tactical execution roles. Those product managers are still somehow responsible for doing product management, even when not given enough time to do it. If that’s the position you find yourself in today, start winding the klaxon.

Attributions

Thanks capl@washjeff.edu for the bridle image.

Thanks Bryan for the wargame image.