Product Strategist: Time to Think

When did you as a product manager take time to think? No, not about this issue or that. I mean, stop the world, full-on visualization think. I know, it's not pragmatic enough for you. You come in after the dreams are realized, and milk the cow until the cost of feed gets too high.

The problems of the recession won't get solved on the small scale, so it's time to stop and think. That means getting proactive. See http://www.noozit.com/article/.ee84501 for a little help with that.

I play Go. I learned by playing Go, not reading about, not going down to Go club for the lesson, and not having a Go master walk me wordlessly through the way. I learned it on the gravel road of hint-free cluelessness. As a result, I'm only so good, plateau'ed I am, but I can beat the disrespectful 5 kyu player. I played on MSN GameZone. As a result, I play fast. The players at the Go club would always say "Slow Down!"

After hearing that enough times, I just had to ask, "And, do what?" Hell, if I know how to use that time that I'm not taking more effectively I'd already be playing slower. They came back and said to count my liberties. I don't always do that, but when I do, ah, the results!

Yes, I hear you, and think about what?

In the late market, in a recession, consumer goods companies turn to brand, to art, to the last place where they can differentiate themselves from their competitors. They spend money on advertising wars just to fly straight and level. If They don't spend, they crash. No, don't think about brand unless you have product marketing management responsibilities. But, brand is ubiquitous.

Now, a consumer goods company, unlike a software company, is always from day one in the late market, or in recession economics. Software companies get there soon enough if their category has uptake. Software companies get themselves into the tornado and compete to be the market leader. While they are at it, they create wealth. Then, the word of the market comes down, company A is the market leader, C is number 2, F is number 3, H is number 4, M is number 5, and the rest of you better M&A up, because we ain't buying your stuff. That's life. Hopefully, you've IPOed before that, because the premium just goes downhill from here on out. It goes down, because you have arrived at the price-based competition market. Wealth creation is at an end at this point. There is still some growth--just a little, a billion, a trillion, or just a few million, but the top of the mountain is within view. Hopefully, you won't commoditize before you get there. It is this price-based place where you become just like a consumer goods company. The MBAs enter in mass. The founder leaves. And, brand is king. We just won't tell the developers. That's your job. The developers are still king until the stock stall. And, yes, a stock stall is up ahead. Cost management, layoffs, and nightmares ahead. No. Don't think about those fears. Think around them.

At the dawn of the innovation embodied in your product, your product  sold without brand. Maybe a little later the company branded for investor relations. But now, Brand is necessary. Onset of the brand is a time to get the art guy. Now, getting an art guy might not sound like a challenge, but unless you were raised among the art guys on the SAAS side, which doesn't hire C++ slingers by any means, they will present you with questions you've never thought about. They are designers and all those design phase application architects and engineers are not designers. Aesthetics, you guys, no way. No, they won't think that not the smart ones anyway. But, the world changes from here on out.

In Marty Neumeier's new book "The Designful Company," shelved under the keyword advertising, he asks some questions like

• How do you keep the mystery in, and no not the will this user find a bug mystery? Which mystery is up to you.
• What vision do we need to break free of our current reality, a reality that we are just extending over the next few release cycles?
• How do we make our applications resonate with users--this beyond perception, reason, emotion? Get beyond the UI fundamentals.
• How do we build an ideology--us against who? Linux vs. Microsoft, Open vs. everybody--and no not join in, create anew? What do we stand for? Why would they stand for it?
• How do we achieve an interface that fills the obligations across Maslow's hierarchy of needs--this beyond messaging? How does the interface enable self actualization, or at a lower level, Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow?"
• How does a user sketch their outcomes before they finish the work? What feedback are they not now getting?

Ask the questions that you wouldn't dare ask. Ask the questions that you being you wouldn't know to ask.

Or ask, what elements of use could be performed by a third-party on behalf of the user? This is a demand side question, a follow the money question, a zooming in on the thin line to see it as thicker, a late market tactic to borrow from the dot bust.

Or ask, what is the value of each and every feature in our product? What will it take to move to value-based pricing?

Step away from the customer. Stop the voices. Think about where you will lead them. Think about the implicit, the stuff they don't know to mention.

Find time to think each day. We already have to find time to exercise, to sleep, to eat, to deal with dry cleaning. I know, who has time for those things we are shipping, oh, slipping in two days. Forty-five minutes of stairs to climb is forty-five minutes to think, to wonder, to get far ahead of today's highly structured grind.

And, as you work your program to achieve proactivity by doing the managing or knowing or learning,  by walking around, ask yourself, what latent talents does this product contributor have that might present us with a breakthrough, if only we knew him that well? Try to find a latent talent each week.

Ask a new question of yourself each day, spend an hour on it, shipping can wait.

Talk back. Leave a comment. Thanks.