Working remotely

An important aspect of leading on purpose is knowing well the people you lead. For this to happen you have to know them, understand what motivates them, values their strengths and be aware of potential weaknesses. All of this requires face-time.

Product managers interact with many different people who most often do not report to them directly. To be effective in their work they must become leaders. Because of the nature of the work, it is vital that product managers treat their colleagues as true assets. Toward that end, a product manager must spend time with the team. This means talking with them, listening to their concerns and fears about the current phase of the project, and occasionally taking them out for lunch. A good lunch always motivates people.

Many product managers and other business professionals work from remote locations, away from the people who make up their teams. The primary reason for hiring remote workers — commonly cited by many companies that so hire — is to get the best people for the job, which makes sense. However, working remotely from the team diminishes the amount of time the product manager can spend with the team leading effectively.

Although working away from your team can be difficult, remote workers can and should still follow the same rules they would if they worked regularly in the same office. To work effectively from a remote location, try the following:

• Visit the team often: Plan to spend at least two weeks with the team at the beginning of a project (or job) and two days a month at the office working with them. Face time is important; the team needs to know their leader. Plan ahead to minimize travel costs.
• Hold regular meeting: Schedule meetings with the appropriate teams at least weekly. Talk to them and listen to their concerns as if you were present.
• Be accessible: Answer email and phone calls consistently and without hesitation. Use instant messaging or other media for quick and easy communication.

Although working remotely comes with its share of difficulty, it can be done effectively if both management and the remote workers spend the time and energy to make it work.

Take the time

There’s a somewhat famous quote shared in the product management community that goes something like this: “We never have time to do things right the first time, but we always have time to redo them.” The work or activities required up front (to avoid future problems) seem to take too long or cost too much to make them worthwhile. But when they don’t work out, the time and/or money will be spent to make it right in the end.

The reasons for this phenomenon are vary among different organizations. However, the solution is largely the same regardless of type of “things” a person or a company faces:

• Training: Spend the time and money to get the training you need. Take a training course to better understand your job or market.
• Tools: Use the right tools for the job. There are thousands of examples of projects that show the value of using the right software applications or the right hardware. Find out what tools work for the project and use them from the beginning.
• Time: This one’s obvious, but cannot be overstated. Set aside enough time at the beginning of a product/project cycle to make sure the important factors are considered prior to spending time going down a dead-end path.

Whether you do a product/project right the first time, or you go back and make it right, you will have to spend resources either way. Doing it right the first time will almost always cost less. Defining and designing a product correctly take time, but they are much less costly than fixing bugs after the product has released. Take the time — up front — to do things right.

Marketing and the Olympics

I, like many of you I’m sure, have been both captivated and distracted by the 2008 Summer Olympics. I’ve found it difficult during the past several days to focus during my “prime” blogging time because of all the great athletic events going on Beijing (check out this clever video clip for proper pronunciation). There’s just nothing like Olympic competition.

I’ve been trying to find a good way to relate the Olympic games to leadership and product management. I was pleased to find a post on Hubspot by Colleen Coyne — 8 Marketing Tips from an Olympic Gold Medalist. Colleen won a gold medal in the 1998 games and is now an inbound marketing consultant. She compares the work involved in successful marketing with the work it takes to train for Olympic events; she applies eight specific tips she learned while training for her event to marketing. She gives the following tips:

1. Don’t train harder, train smarter
2. Success is a decision
3. Plan the work
4. Work the plan
5. Be in position to be in position
6. Nobody cares what you want, they care what you do
7. Hang out with & watch the pros
8. If you are not getting better, you’re getting worse.

I recommend you read Colleen’s post to get the full content of her comparisons.

Act outside the box

We often hear the saying “think outside the box” (or the “bun” in the case of Taco Bell). This saying implies we need to think in different ways and see things through a new lens. Looking through the new lens helps us form a clearer picture of what we need to do to improve our situation. However, thinking is mostly passive and by itself is not enough; we need to act, or be active.

Acting outside the box means putting into action the things we think about when we think outside the box. As leaders in any capacity we need to act on the ideas we come up during brainstorming sessions and see them through to a successful end. I like how Timothy Ferris states it in his book The 4-Hour Work Week: “It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.”

Visual thinking

Much has been written about making things more complex than needed. I’m a fan of simplicity (though I don’t profess to be very good at it). One of the best ways to simplify things (e.g. designs, presentations) is with pictures…the right pictures. Guy Kawasaki, a leading entrepreneur and VC thought leader, shares this post on the art of visual thinking. He says:

The more slides and pages that you need to explain your business, the less likely you will succeed. Truly, the best pitches and plans require nothing more than one page or a picture to explain them.

We (product managers, etc.) will do well to follow Guy’s advice to use more visual thinking in presentations and other product deliverables.

Greater than yourself

One of the marks of great leaders is their influence on other people. Most of us can think of one or more people in our own lives who have helped us get to where we are today. Their ultimate goal is to help us become more successful and achieve more than they have achieved. It might seem like taking the time to help others be better than yourself would take away from your opportunities to improve (at whatever you’re working on). However, the very act of lifting and inspiring others improves the one doing the lifting and inspiring.The concept is helping other become greater than yourself.

Steve Farber, a leader and an author, recently started the GTY (greater than yourself) project. He’s looking for stories and videos about people who have helped others become greater than themselves; better writers, better singers, better speakers, better product managers (I had to throw that one in)…you get the idea. The way we can change the world is to help others to be greater than we are and help them catch the spirit to do it for others. Take a few minutes and watch Steve’s video where he introduces the concepts and challenge to find someone in your life to invest in as your ‘GTY’ project. While it will help the person (people) you choose, it will do wonders for you, for your success and your satisfaction with life.

Five stages of problem solving

I’ve been thinking about the importance of problem statements lately. Well-written problem statements help product managers communicate both the difficulty faced in the market and the potential reward for solving the problems. If you stop and think about it you’ll see that problems are actually opportunities. New features, new products and even new industries spring up from people who see problems and find ways to solve them. The key to successfully solving problems is understanding them. The following steps will help you express problems clearly and help you identify solutions:

1. Define the problem: Understand the nature of the problem and articulate it clearly so you understand its effects on the people you are trying to help.
2. Produce ideas: Make a list of things you can do right away to solve the problem. Be aggressive in finding the right solution.
3. Test the ideas: Discuss the best ideas with your team and test them with customers. Find out which ones resonate.
4. Choose among ideas: Choose the idea that will best solve the problem.
5. Plan for action: Write a plan to solve the problem. This plan will most often come in the form of clear product requirements that will guide the development, QA, marketing and other teams to successfully implement a product (or new product features) that solves the problem.

Well-written problem statements are an important communication tool for product managers. Adopting the five stages of problem solving to the writing clear problem statements — and requirements that solve them — will increase the success of your products and give you a repeatable process.

Note: I’ve adapted the five stages of problem solving to product management based on what I read in the book “A More Excellent Way” by the late Neal A. Maxwell, a great educator and religious leader.

Product portfolio

Many thanks to Jeff Lash for sending me another question from his Ask a Good Product Manager blog. The question he sent me is “How do you manage a product as part of a portfolio?” Take a look at my response and let me know what you think.

Know your market

Knowing the market and understanding customers requires getting out of the office. You need to listen to the people who are in the trenches using your product or perhaps your competitor’s products. Understanding their needs, their pains, their ideas for doing things better help product managers tune into the market. After all, it’s the people in the market who become the customers that pay for the products and services they need. To understand how products will be successful, product managers will know the target customers and what drives them to buy their products.

The work of interviewing customers is a critical aspect of knowing your market. Customers respond positively to one-on-one interaction with product managers. They appreciate feeling like they have a role in setting product direction.  They want to be innovative, and the act of a product manager taking time to listen to them talk gives them a feeling of empowerment that they are really making a difference. They also like to talk about themselves. Tuned in product managers take time to listen to and really understand their customers. They ask well-thought-out questions to lead the conversation, but let the customer do most of the talking. They listen to what’s being said and ask pertinent follow-up questions to confirm what they heard. They visit with customers at their place of business (and without the sales rep). Customers will gladly show how their company operates and how they use products if their input will be used, and if they feel they are not being ‘sold to’ by the people onsite (for this reason it’s best to go without the sales rep).

Leading from a distance

It’s becoming increasingly more common for companies to hire remote employees who work from home. This trend dates back several years. I’ve noticed, however, that companies are increasingly hiring managers and even executives that live and work remotely. This trend is not new for sales teams, but it is (or at least seems to me) a new trend in non-sales areas like product management.

As product managers we value face-to-face contact and communication, both with our teams and with customers. Leading a team from a distance is certainly not the ideal. However, getting the best person for the job — who may live far away from corporate HQ — might be the best thing for the company. The evolution of technology helps remote leaders manage more effectively. There’s a shift happening in the way companies work. Art Petty wrote a great post on living, learning and leading in an increasingly virtual world. He says:

One of the critical leadership skills of our time is developing comfort and competence at leading distributed teams. There are still some firms that insist on their managers and leaders being housed within a line of sight, but they are showing their lack of understanding of how the world is changing. The literature on leading remotely seems to offer superficial guidance from people adapting old models to new situations. I suspect that as time moves on, the profession of leadership will evolve to take into account the very distinct skills and approaches needed to lead effectively while never coming into personal contact.

I agree with Art that the world is changing and we need to learn to communicate all over again, even if it means leading from a distance.