In taking over as the Head of Products in an organization that had lost a great deal of its momentum, I determined that I desperately needed to rebuild trust in the product development function that is so crucial to the productivity of the teams and to the success of the business.
This particular product story would transpire over many months. The imperfect situation I inherited was not created overnight, nor would it be restored as quickly. Our company had been struggling to consistently deliver products to the market and more importantly, with achieving any real return on our ongoing product investments.
Existing customers had practically given up on expanding their use of our platform and internally, the teams had essentially resigned themselves to promoting, selling, and supporting a clunky and outdated offering.
Something had to be done to restore faith in the product itself and in the collective capabilities of the company.
What drove this decision
It would not be fair to pin all the troubles on my predecessor or any one team in particular. I still believe that many of our difficulties have stemmed from a real lack of focus - not uncommon for early stage companies. Years of straying from one attractive market to another, chasing irresistible deals, and trying to please too many audiences at the same time had accumulated for us a great pile of problems.
Something had to be done to restore faith in the product itself and in the collective capabilities of the company.
In somewhat desperate times like these, a company will often bring in new leadership. And in most cases, the troops respond positively and are optimistic, for a time, about the potential for improvement. In my experience, there is usually a brief window where that new person has to prove himself or herself; however, as the collective expectations about fixing what's broken are never realistic - at least in terms of timeframes, this can be a daunting challenge.
This is the environment I walked into 9 months ago. And it would take me at least that long to establish my own credibility and turn the tide for our products. I felt up for the challenge and would build on my previous accomplishments and the solid relationships I had already established throughout the company.
I was determined to make the company proud of our products again by making sure our customers were delighted to use them.
The decision: Consistently make good on authentic product promises by delivering more regularly and more reliably.
A large part of our problems stemmed from chasing product enhancements that did not come from the market but instead from individual customers or worse, from undecided prospects. This lead to all sorts of issues, not the least of which is that we ended up supporting a portfolio of misaligned or disjoint products. I had to stop that practice immediately.
We created another, even more obvious mess by committing to fully-finished features and optimizing our process around uncertain release schedules instead of establishing a delivery cadence that let us incrementally ship software more predictably. Years of bad practices had led to release dates that were constantly slipping which destroyed morale inside the company and frustrated our customers.
Authenticity is important to me as a Product Manager. Ultimately, I would have to prove to all the teams that we were addressing genuine customer pains. The (long) road back to credibility would be built by identifying real market-fit problems and doing the less-flashy work to deliver incremental solutions more consistently over time.
Plan of attack
So how does a new Product Manager turn things around in a situation like this? How do you get folks to believe in you and be willing to follow, if not fight alongside you? I know I didn't have a quick fix - and I don't think there is one. These kinds of problems aren't created overnight and it is foolish to think that they can be rectified quickly. I will describe the path I have been on for the past 9 months with the hope that it may also help deliver positive results for others.
Learn the product - thoroughly
We have a 10-year-old software platform with hundreds of features and thousands of ways to combine them to solve problems. Unfortunately, there is no accelerated way to ramp up on the entire product suite and no shortcuts to figuring out all of the nuances that have accumulated there over the years. And even after you pick up the core functionality, there is still so much more to learn about why it works the way it does which, of course, affects your ability to go back and tinker with it.
I was fortunate to have spent many months embedded with the Sales team, building and delivering product demonstrations to customers and partners and, combined with a natural predilection for tinkering, had become quite familiar with all of the ins and outs of our products. I could now hold my own with the Engineers which I found to be necessary when discussing the feasibility of future enhancements.
It also meant that I could understand and better empathize with all the folks who were struggling with implementations both inside and outside the company.
Build a modest plan and immediately begin delivering on it
The Product team had certainly rolled out roadmaps before I got here. Often, these plans were overly ambitious, had lacked any real cohesion, and could not be easily tied to familiar customer use cases. As the Plans' release dates inevitably slipped again and again, the company's collective confidence drained in both the roadmap and in the products themselves.
So I started somewhat fresh with a new roadmap approach. I borrowed specific roadmapping techniques that other Product people had found to be useful, but my true test would be being able to hit our new Product milestones.
In communicating the new roadmap to the troops, I emphasized that we would be backing down from the unrealistic goals that crippled the previous plans. I wasn't going to promise flashy or bodacious features (at least not anytime soon) that we all knew we could not deliver. I didn't try to dazzle folks with elaborate charts. But most importantly, I didn't explicitly ask up front for people to put their faith in me.
In fact, the early commitments on the new roadmap were the same ones we had already made, just with more realistic dates. We would finish the features already in progress IF and only if they could be tied back to legitimate customer pain points. I joined forces with the Head of Engineering who was also pushing for a more frequent and predictable release schedule and the updated roadmap clearly put us on the path to get there with smaller, more incremental product releases.
As we completed the first few milestones on the plan, I made sure to communicate our moderate and steady progress to everyone. And it was important that we celebrated these early wins as an entire company in events like the monthly Release Preview.
Make the unpopular short-term decisions that are hindering overall progress
As I have discussed before (see here, here, here, ...), there were a number of ongoing product-related problems that needed immediate attention. In some cases, I would be winding down, canceling, archiving, deprioritizing, or flat out reversing previous decisions. But in every case, I made sure I had a solid rationale for doing so and tried to stick to my convictions - any wavering would have undermined the entire effort.
Most of these decisions would be unpopular with at least one person or group in the company. To offset this, I sought to secure support from at least one camp as I went about making these tough calls. Every department had their own list of grievances when it came to the product direction. In making my weekly rounds with each of the groups, I was able to identify specific problems that were causing friction and made small improvements at each turn. Gradually, we put things back on track and were able to focus on the bigger problems as a more unified team.
Listen to others while I follow my own instincts
It has been my experience that everyone likes for their voice to be heard. So I attempted to speak with as many people as I could throughout the company. I listened to their many suggestions about how we could improve our products. I listened to the reasons they gave for where and why things had gotten off track. And I got more than one earful about what I needed to do to turn things around.
In the end, I incorporated what I could and filed away the rest. It was going to take me many weeks and months to prove myself to the company and over that period, I would have sufficient opportunities to directly address their individual concerns.
The impact
It's now been almost ten months and I can see things starting to turn around at the company. We have hit record sales numbers and our customers have been steadily raving about our products. The teams are now working well together to deliver positive outcomes for our users and for our stakeholders. The Product team has linked up with key allies in Engineering, UX, QA, Operations and Customer Success to restore confidence in our offerings.
Any immediate criticism I had received for some of those unpopular decisions has now been forgotten for the most part, overshadowed by the Product team's more favorable track record. It takes time to address these kinds of problems and to reverse an existing trajectory. Our approval ratings are as high as they have ever been though it was a slow, purposeful march to get to this point.
Look for more reports from theProductPath around the PM Role, managing stakeholders, and PM credibility here on PM Decisions.
To address one of the most critical problem areas for customers using our software platform, I decided to roll up my sleeves and conduct the fieldwork myself.
The Product Decision: Enlist the help of our User Research expert to coordinate formal interviews with a suitable group of administrators and end users from our active customer base.