Product Strategist: Becoming Proactive

I came across this post today, at Requirements Defined, http://requirements.seilevel.com/blog/, "5 Ways To Create Successful Projects With Fewer Resources , " http://requirements.seilevel.com/blog/2008/12/5-ways-to-create-successful-projects.html.

Point 5,  Strengthen interpersonal relationships, both horizontally and vertically, captured my attention, as it addresses the issue raised by Jeff Lash in his "How To Be A Good Product Manager" blog, http://www.goodproductmanager.com/.

Jeff offered his advice on communications in http://www.goodproductmanager.com/2008/11/20/reinforce-your-product-related-communication/.

Strengthening interpersonal relationships is advice we hear often enough. Jeffrey Fox tells the aspiring CEO to go to lunch with anyone, except your direct reports. Tom Peters says that the person with the thickest Rolodex wins, and tells us to make it a weekly assignment to add five people to that Rolodex a week. Are you too busy? Are you too reactive? Are you eating lunch at your desk? How can I get this situation under control?

In my earlier post, Product Management as a Product, http://www.noozit.com/article/.ee8439e. I talked about what happens when you just got the job. Inevitably, you are in the middle of a launch, and a bug list; desire, and realtiy. If you are new to the role, you think, "I can make this happen." How?

I mentioned how you have to answer the questions ask of you, even if you don't know the answers yourself. You have to decide. You have to decide, not in the, oh, I can change your mind later way. No, you have to decide, as in set in concrete, as in I'm god, as in permission be damned. You may fry later, but that's why they asked you. They do not intend to fry later. You'll get forgiveness, so what's to worry. But, how do you avoid forgiveness?

Believe it or not, you get these situations and issues under control by going to lunch. You don't have direct reports, so you don't have to worry about what they think about Fox'es advice. Go to lunch with an executive that can tell you how we do things here. Go to lunch with the CEO and find out what we absolutely do not do here. Go to lunch with the copywriter and find out how the marcom gets baked. Go to lunch to get information. Go to lunch to get influence. Go to lunch with people inside the company to get a thicker Rolodex.

Don't do more. Go to lunch.

Find out how people do things. Find out why they do them that way. Find out if they have pain. Find out what it would take to get rid of that pain.

Discuss where the company is going. Is it going somewhere the product won't go? Discuss where the company is on the technology adoption lifecycle (TALC). Discuss the timelines for TALC-related market transitions. Discuss value-based pricing, just not with people from sales. Discuss the future. Those discussions influence. Have these discussions over lunch.

If a person is "in-offer," then they know things about the offer, and they control some part of the offer even if they are just staff, rather than a functional unit manager. You need to take them to lunch.

The deeper your relationships, the deeper your knowledge will be, the better your answers will be, and the more willing people will be to grant forgiveness if it ever comes up. The more decisions make without waffling or delay, the more valueable you become to those that contribute effort towards your product's success. Go to lunch to get influence.

Influence is the point of proactivity. You don't do next week's report today, so you won't be reactively doing it five minutes before the deadline. That's proactivity without influence. Influential proactivity would be revising the requirements, so that they were crystal clear, which eliminates errors, review cycles, and the opportunities to insert new defects into the product. Influential proactivity would be establishing some UI standards, so the UI wouldn't need the needless revisions. Influential proactivity would be letting the lawyers review screenshots of the UI before its problems end up in the documentation. That documentation has to pass legal review as well, so having the UI correct eliminates an avalache of problems. Getting the documentation reviewed earlier moves it from the critical path. Getting the marketing messages communicated to the rest of the team helps integrate the messaging into the product deliverables. This being something you wouldn't think about at all if you were stuck in reactive land.

All those processes between inception and launch are your battlefield, your opportunity to gain influential proactivity. It all starts with an empty Rolodex, and an empty calandar. Lunch to Launch!

Let me know what you think. Leave a comment. Feed readers email your comments to dlocke44000@yahoo.com.

Thanks.

David W. Locke