The Product Manager's Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed as a Product Manager by Steven Haines

Author:Steven Haines
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2013-06-13T14:00:00+00:00

ENSURING THAT THE MARKET IS THE PRIMARY FOCUS

In Chapters 3 and 4, I defined the fundamentals of the market—the customers, the industry, and the competitors. Market focus is the key that stimulates innovation and drives team behavior. As I mention earlier, maintaining laser-keen focus on the development of market insights is crucial.

The basic idea behind cross-functional team leadership is to get people in all functions to march in the same direction because this sets the stage for the team to have a shared sense of purpose. With the understanding that the market is where focus should be concentrated, all team members must be able to know the current and past history of the market in relation to their product. This helps people to internalize and visualize what should happen and why. With this perspective, they will be better equipped to explain their function’s purpose in support of the product’s business. Last, but not least, cross-functional product team members need to feel their collective efforts produce positive outcomes and will result in some type of reward or recognition.

If you’re the only one on the team whose focus is on the market, this will pose a huge problem. You face the monumental task of getting everyone on your team to “think market first.” The challenge is for you to determine how you will encourage everyone to be market focused. Here are some possible ways:

1. Facilitate conversations. At a team meeting—say a project update for a current product in development—request 10 minutes on the agenda to share some interesting data you found through your market discovery process. Plan to ask some questions during your talk—a technique used by skilled facilitators. For example, you can ask, “Has anyone heard about this competitor’s product?” or “I read about some research being done on this technology, have you seen anything on it?” You’ll be surprised at the responses you’ll get. As you do this, you demonstrate your depth of market knowledge, while drawing people into the market conversation.

2. Seek cross-functional participation to plan and follow a market research project. Here is an interesting way to inspire people in other functions to think more about how their functions relate to the market, instead of the agendas of their functions. Get them involved in actual research.

Think about planning a “voice of the customer” visit as an example of research people can conduct together. You’d involve Sales to make arrangements, and you would ask managers of the functional team members to allow their designated people to join to you on the customer visit. Add to the list of potential visitors a Development person and an Operations person who would also accompany the group and share the presentations, tours, and other interactions with the customer. A post-visit debriefing will yield a treasure trove of insights that the participants never even imagined. Consider the effect if those in the visiting group came back so excited that they told others on their own team all about it—and spread the word to people in other departments.

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