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Wearing the “strategic” label in one form or another has been the Holy Grail for as long as I’ve been in the product management and marketing profession. But despite years of ongoing group therapy via blogs, meet-ups, associations, ProductCamp, social media, training courses and various other forums, the strategic-influence needle for product managers and marketers has barely advanced, if at all. Why?
It’s ironic when I think about how the profession has grown in recent years but I have a theory that comes from many years of observation, as both a practitioner and a consultant. The top three hurdles preventing product management and marketing teams from wielding greater strategic influence are the following:
1. Product Ownership is All-Consuming
Product managers with direct responsibility for one or more products have two chances of being strategic – SLIM and NONE. It’s not that product managers don’t have the knowledge or skills. There are simply too many issues coming from too many directions that suck product managers into a rat hole to the point of no return. It’s not enough to be strategic for a few hours here and there or for the occasional offsite meetings, sales calls or customer visits. To be strategic in a manner that’s valuable to the organization, it has to be a fulltime job for a select few.
2. A Growing Influx of Technical Skills
More and more product management and marketing professionals are coming from roles with strong technical backgrounds. While those skills are highly valuable, they don’t make for a “natural” transition into product management and marketing roles where there’s no exact science to most of the activities, extroverted type-A personalities are preferable, and soft skills such as persuasion and schmoozing are paramount.Consequently, teams overloaded with technical skills naturally gravitate to their comfort zone to deal with issues that are more black and white, the tactics. While tactics are an enormous part of the success factor, the macro effect on the organization is the lack of a unified grand plan that transcends all products. It’s a root cause of poor execution on all levels.
3. Strategic at a Product Level is a Misnomer
Strategy can only go so far at a product level. With very few exceptions, it’s difficult to solve problems that have broad strategic impact (as measured by your target buyers) with a single product because the scope of problems and the solutions are limited by the product. Furthermore, in B2B companies where many products target the same markets, the highest impact solutions usually involve multiple integrated products and address a broader set of related customer activities that go beyond the scope of a single product. Throw in the fact that product managers are motivated by product performance incentives and you have practices that simply aren’t conducive to identifying and solving problems that have high market value. The “product CEO” mentality flies in the face of a cohesive strategy that transcends all products. Result: a team divided!
It’s worth noting that these issues have little to do with the individuals in the roles. They’re more a by-product of organizations not changing the structure of their product teams to reflect larger, diverse and more complex portfolios. In one way, shape or form product teams have to be structured to be strategic beyond individual product strategies and unite the organization behind a common strategy that transcends all products. That strategy has to be defined at a more granular level than revenue, profitability, market share, etc. so that the entire collection of product and marketing initiatives create greater momentum together than they would individually while making the best utilization of resources. It’s a much easier way to meet the organization’s strategic goals.
What’s your take?
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John Mansour is the founder and president of Proficientz, a company that specializes in B2B product portfolio management. This article was originally published on the Proficientz blog in January 2012.