Calling a product manager “the CEO of their product” is a great way to give the feel of the responsibility to a new hire in 5 words. And who really has time to sit down and talk for 5 minutes in today’s world where everyone suffers from attention deficit. Much easier to say… “Hey, you are the CEO of the product, want the job” compared to explaining the details of the job. It might make it easier to hire new people to the product manager role, after all, who doesn’t want to be the CEO of something. That’s one of the reasons startups pop up like mushrooms in the valley.
Oh, you think it’s because they want the change the world. No, it’s not. It’s because people want to be the CEO/founder and get rich. Such a brutally honest blog post this is. You are welcome.
The problem is, this phrase is a gross misrepresentation of what a product manager is and can do.
I believe the famous phrase is attributed to the “Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager” article by Ben Horowitz, penned a long time a good. Certainly, a good read, but, this one liner has certainly done more bad than good.
You are definitely not the CEO
The reality is, a product manager is not the CEO of anything. Not even close. While you may be considered responsible for the success or failure of the product, similar to how a CEO would be the single person where the buck stops if a company succeeds or fails, your authority and power to order people to do things just do not exist.
Employees of a company will almost obey everything a CEO asks of them. Engineering, marketing, order fulfillment, sales and other organizations will tremble in silence in the presence of a CEO. And when the CEO says “jump”, they will all ask, “how high”. Believe me. I’ve worked at many companies, from 30 person startups to 120,000 person legacy companies and everything in between.
You have no authority or power over people
The only authority over other people you have are your direct staff. Most product managers do not have direct reports. Just because you are managing the life cycle of a product does not mean engineering reports to you. Marketing is not going to jump on expediting your requests to market your product. Sales is not going to focus on your product compared to others. And order fulfillment is not going to try to assemble your product any faster just because you said so.
This is the main difference between a CEO and a product manager. You will have to find other ways to convince, motivate and lead the people in other organizations to make your product successful.
Responsibility without authority
Yep, that’s exactly what product management is. Get used to it. Of course, it’s not a great tag line that you can use when you are trying to hire for this role, but that is the reality. You are responsible for the vision, coming up with a new product, the product – market fit, the PRD, making sure the product is designed and launched on time, marketed properly, gets the attention from the sales team and eventually sells as much as you have forecasted.
So, the million-dollar question is, how do you get all this crap done when you have no authority, but you will be held responsible if it fails.
Lead and influence without authority
This is one of those fuzzy concepts. How can you make people do things when you have no authority to assign them tasks? If you think about it, this is contradictory to the general structure of companies. You have the CEO at the top. Everyone reports to the CEO. The Chief Product Officer, the Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Head of Sales and so on. It’s a tree structure that repeats. There might be a VP of Product Marketing and VP of Field Marketing under the CMO. Typically, sales is split according to territory, but they also might split it according to customer vertical such as cloud provider, service provider, enterprise and so on. But you get the idea. This tree structure repeats all the way down. Everyone does what their manager asks for.
So, what is this lead and influence authority gibberish all about?
This is not unique to the product management role, but it is certainly more pronounced since this role is at the center of all other functions. Even if you are reporting to a VP of Product Management, Director of Product Management or to the Chief Product Manager, you simply cannot go to your manager and ask your manager to get shit done for you if it involves another organization within the company.
You have to influence other organizations on why they need to do want you want them do to. But how? Well, there are a number of ways and you will have to perfect the approach that suits your personality. Here are a couple of approaches.
Use Your Credibility
If you have delivered a successful product in the past, then you probably have some credibility or political capital. This assumes that you have been successful in managing a product in the past at this company and there are people in different organizations who can vouch for your success. Even if for the next product you will not be working with the same people, through word of mouth, you prior success will have made the rounds and you will have most likely built credibility.
Use this to your advantage!
Mention how doing certain things in a certain way led to the success of the product. In this case, success might mean, sales numbers, branding or some other metric. Whatever the criteria are, there is absolutely no harm in mentioning (in a tactful manner, rather than gloating) how the structure and collaboration in the past led to success and you would want to either repeat the same actions or take a different approach if the new product necessitates it.
Essentially tap into people’s rational and intellect. Present arguments for the best choice of action based on organizational benefits, personal benefits, or both, appealing to people’s minds.
Use Data
Data is your friend. Use it wisely. How can data help in this situation?
When getting alignment with engineering:
(1) Show the number of customers you have spoken to
(2) Show how many of them of asked for which features
(3) Tell them the potential revenue the company can make if these features are delivered on time
(4) Show them what the competition has. This will neutralize engineers who come back to you with a “we can’t do that” type of answers.
(5) Show them a roadmap to prove that you have a vision for the product. Document and explain why you need these backed with data.
(6) Involve engineering from the beginning even if you know exactly what you want to do. Even if you know what they are going to say. You inviting them will make it look more collaborative and they will strive to make it a success.
Getting alignment with marketing:
(1) Bring the conversation to a higher level and rather than getting bogged down with marketing every single feature, explain the use case the resonates with the customer.
(2) Present how many customers fall into this category. This will motivate them particularly if they are motivated by generating marketing qualified leads (MQLs). This is particularly important as some marketing departments are only evaluated by the MQLs they bring.
(3) Similar to working with engineering, involve marketing from the beginning (whether you believe it will help or not) on collaborating what will you do together, consulting what ideas other people have, and creating alliances to understand who already supports you. Working together to accomplish a mutually important goal extends a hand to others in the organization and is an extremely effective way of influencing.
Getting alignment with sales:
(1) You need to make sure you develop products and add features that are relevant to your customers. So, you need to do your homework. Once you are sure you are doing the right thing, passionately present to sales why they will be able to sell this easily to customers. Which pain point does your solution solve? Put yourself in the position of sales. Do you want something easy to sell or difficult? Do you want to sell something that solve a serious problem or a nice to have? You get the point. You need to show that you have down your homework and pre-emptively address these issues.
(2) Show the competitive stance against your competitors. After all, sales not only has to convince the customer that they need your product, but, also why yours over the competitions?
(3) The more convincing you are to sales the more you will get your time of day and attention and they will put more effort to sell your product
I’m not going to cover every department right now, but you get the idea. Find what motivates the person you are trying influence and collet the data that gets the alignment.
Use Your Charm or Rapport.
I like this the least, because you may not have charm, or you may not have rapport with some people. Charm is hard to achieve. Rapport will develop over time. They can certainly be useful when trying to get alignment. You’ve seen it before in your life. Some people just are friendly with everyone and that is enough to get them through in life. Life is not fair, and you may be paired to work with people that you are not that friendly. Try to suck it up, get over it and put on a smile. I know it’s hard.
Which Influence Tactic is Right for You?
Ultimately, this depends on which one(s) you are more comfortable. You can work on sharping your skills and the suggestions I have provided here and use a combination of them as you feel you are ready. That’s what I do. However, before you jump on this advice that I suggested and start trying these jedi mind tricks, consider a few things.
Think. Why do you need this person’s support? What outcomes are you trying to achieve by influencing this person? Be clear about whom you need to influence and what you are trying to accomplish.
Always read the room. Know your audience. Understand your stakeholders. Each person that you are trying to influence will have special concerns, their own agenda and priorities. Different groups and people may require different approaches for influencing to get things done. This is not a one size fits all approach. Fine-tune and tailor your influencing tactic for each person.
You are not the CEO, but…
The product manager role does lead the way to the CEO more than any other role in the company. Leading without authority, data-driven mindset, finding commonalities with people to motivate them are skills that many CEOs possess.
By working in a product manager role, leading a product and interacting with so many organizations to make it a success is a sure way to garner a reputation for being a go-getter in the middle of an organization. Who better than a Rockstar product manager to become a CEO who needs to lead the same organizations?
Did you you find the advice useful? Would love to hear your thoughts!