Key takeaways from 2013

2013 has been great. It was full of challenges, learning and rewards. Today at fag-end of 2013 what else could be better than writing about top 3 things that I did better in 2013 than in my previous years and have made be a better professional. While I have always believed and practiced these but in 2013 they came out loud and stronger than in past. So here I go with this simple post from my personal experience and practice.

1. I called a spade a spade; It is easier said than done, without hesitation and without worrying too much about consequences. I believe this helps in positioning oneself as a strong character, a no nonsense professional to whom organization can bank upon in tough hours.
2. Recruited people whom I believe are going to help me improvise further; created a team of performers, individuals who create healthy competition and created opportunity for me to improvise. It is important to have good company as it is this that defines your personality and character, so never compromise on people quality.  
3. Never compromised with expectations; things in past were always business driven, if business is 'ok' than the product is 'ok'. This year though was different as I refused to lower the bar, expectation were high and they remained high. Quality is first step towards success and only fuel to maintain success.

I hope to continue with my learning of 2013 and make 2014 a better year, more successful and more rewarding.

@mathurabhay

 

7 Things you must tell your manager

While the title itself is self-explanatory, I would like to add one  point here before you jump on the the numbered list. Your professional growth depends, not just own your accomplishments, but largely on how you communicate your accomplishments and how rest perceive your accomplishments as. Your image, or the mental model that people create of you could make or break your career. And if that person is your reporting manager, things become far more serious. So how do you control the negative influence or in other words how do you positively influence your manager, and help him  build a positive mental model of your personality. Objective is positive image and career success.

Here are 7 things that you must tell your manager on regular basis, as they happen and as you realized it happened.

1. I tried but I failed

Success is preferred outcome of an well executed effort, however it may not be the case always. Communicate your manager about your failures, does not matter how diminutive the task was. It sends a strong message about your character, you don’t shy away from mistakes or failures but you face them and state them. You can be trusted.

2. I learned that....

One thing that comes with both success and failure is learning. What did you learn from this experience of yours. Tell your boss and let him know that you have learned and grown with each project / experience. You are improving day by day.

3. I did this differently

doing is not enough, doing same task differently, or exploring newer ways of doing same old stuff shows that you take keen interest in your tasks and do not get bored too fast. You can be a person your manager will look upon in the difficult times as you will develop a habit of doing things differently.

4. I initiated .....

This is a really very strong positioning of yourself. This conveys straight message that you are a person who drives things and not just wait for directions. You are proactive, prudent and intelligent.

5. I prevented....

You once again demonstrated your prudence here. This statement will largely convey the message that how you ensured that productivity of many was not impacted (negatively) because you could sense something wrong and stopped it. A penny saved is a penny earned.

6. I appreciated....

Your are not arrogant, nor do you believe that you are superior than others – prove this, appreciated efforts put in by others and let your manager know that you do value your team and colleagues. You are a team player

7. Yes, that was done on time

Make your boss believe that the task assigned to you is considered done. You are his most reliable person.

Keep your manager updated, remember ‘you always have the power to influence mental models that others make of yours’. Practice this regularly and updated me on your next promotion.

@mathurabhay

Trait that creates a success manager – VI

Trait – build what customer like and not just what you prefer

A typical business challenge that a product manager is expected answer is “What will make my product most desirable by its target customers?”

Answer to this question is simple. solve customer problem, and they will love it. A straight question, with a simple answer yet we don’t get there.

Why do we struggle to offer customer what they value? Probably we as product owners at times get lost in our desires & dreams of our product so much that we forget that our prime responsibility is to build what customer will value. Bring value to your customer, either by helping him earn more or by saving his cost. Usability aspects like look and feel, easy to install, fast application etc are default requirements, you cannot sell your product just on these points

Build your product on values, categorize each feature that you add in one of the two categories mentioned below, and if it does not fit in either than drop it happily, there is always next time for those features;

1.    Features that increase revenue, this includes aspects like newer revenue opportunity, increase in usage, selling supplementary services, cross selling etc

2.    Features that save cost, this includes simplifying SOPs, improving productivity, reducing or eliminating third party license fee, saving on infrastructure / manpower etc

A success manager will always be focused on adding features that falls in one of the mentioned two categories. As @annua rightly mentioned in her May blog @productmantra “are you going feature crazy?” adding feature is not equal to improving product, it is important for you keep your product simple & lightweight and refrain from adding what you can live without.

@mathurabhay

Ensuring Success: Top 10 Priorities of Product Manager

Managing opportunities is top most priority of a Product Manager, and a professional who does this religiously wins success. While there are many aspects of taking care of opportunity, I suggest following 10 as most important pieces that will ensure a complete picture of success. Having continuous focus on these 10 points is a must for any product manager who wish to get branded as success manager.

1. Problem to address / solve (why customers need you)
2. Habit to nurture (get customer used to you)
3. Customers to win (your bread and butter)
4. Technology to bank on (your weapon)
5. Team to trust (your confidence)
6. Regulation that guide (cop that guides you)
7. Competition to beat (your source of improvement)
8. Positioning to lead (your deadly move)
9. ROI for investors (your dharma / religion)
10. Feedback to improve (for you - must)

While all that I have mentioned above is not directly owned by a Product Manager, but if you are a success manager you would not like to let any of these go lose. Own or co-own, a success manager will always have above mentioned 10 points in his to-do list.

Traits that Creates a Success Manager - IV

'To Err is human, To repeat it is idiotic'

This is true. We are human and so is success manager. We all are bound to make some mistakes in our decisions but what would distinguished a success manager from rest is that he takes his learning from mistakes and move forward while others might cry, some would find excuse and some start playing a blame game.

Understanding the situation and reason of your mistake so that you would not repeat it again is the imperative for success manager. You cannot effort to make same mistake twice, remember only idiots do that.

To ensure that you understand this correctly, first thing you must learn to do is that never try and get in defending or refusal mode. Accept what happen, you are success manager you own the situation and it's you who is responsible for failure / mistakes or success. So always accept the situation first and then evaluate it to understand where you went wrong. Step by step a complete retrospection of incidents that created the failure should be looked into. Ask yourself at least 2 question at each step;

1. Was the out come here was as per my expectation?
2. Was there anything that I could have done to ensure a better result at this junction?

Practice this, you know the answer which I am sure of. More as I learn.

Do you see the light?

In September 2008, I wrote a blog on ‘urgencies of getting ready for post recession’. Many were seeing light at the end of the tunnel then but were not sure of the distance though. Many were not able to see the light then but they could see it today and many are still in dark. What amuses me most is that there were people who had always seen light at the end of tunnel, be it start of recession or peak. There are two breeds of such people;

1. People who are close to ground reality and understand the economic dynamics
2. People who have no idea and understanding of economic dynamics. Flukes basically.

To be optimistic one must have right data of what’s moving and what’s stagnated. The trait of being a true social animal helps here. Your source of information could be anything, from sales, marketing, partners, customers, competition or even engineering. Being in touch would always help in getting you your most valuable asset, that is data. Tough times demands tough measures and need to be as close as possible to ground reality. Success then depends on how good you can interpret coming days and what strategy you deploy to get maximum out of it.

Happy hunting.

Traits that Creates a Success Manager - III

"Success Manager is truly a social animal"

In the very first post of my blog, I mentioned that one of the characteristics of a success manager is that he concentrates and advocates customer needs and opportunities. Now how and when do a success manager do it, in board rooms? No way...... board rooms for me are meant for sign-up and not for decision making.

Decision making requires a lot of offline efforts where you go all out to build conviction on any subject matter. You meet people and talk to them over coffee, in cubicle or cabin or in aisle. At times pool a van back home is also a good idea. Not once or twice but meet regularly, talk about your experience of customer meetings, your understanding of the market, and your idea of addressing available opportunity. Conviction are build when you talk opportunity at right opportunity. One cannot effort to leave everything to chance and start steps 1 2 3 in board rooms. It is always 9 10 and close in the board room.

If you are not getting social then you are not playing with a full deck. And who knows what you are missing on, may be an ace. And when do you think that people will start believing you or take you on face value? it's when you have an image of being accessible, acceptable and applicable. All these means lots of socializing, within company, within the delivery modules and within the market place. In the corporate jungle, Social animal services longer than any other know beast.

Start socializing before you extinct.

Traits that Creates a Success Manager - II

Winners make it happen and Losers let it happen

The trait of making things happen is tightly coupled with being proactive, and taking initiatives at right time. A success manager drives product, people and organization. His job is to take initiative, build conviction and then drive the initiative to a logical closure. Waiting for things to happen will only allow others to make it happen, it's like the teacher letting a student have his stick.

If you ever happen to read the article, "who drives your organization" you will better understand what I am saying here. Success manager must earn the stick to drive, and the only way to earn this stick is to instigate the habit of making things happen in his nature. It is this habit which will help him in driving the organization and makes him best fit to take on the competition in the market place. The trait of making things happen is a trait of success.

Remember, for Success Manager, losing is no option.

Traits that Creates a Success Manager - I

‘how high you go, depends upon how deep your roots are”

This one trait of going deep into the requirements, customer expectation & engineering process takes product manager & product to greater heights. As a success manager, you are expected take the bull by the horns. So how do you manage these expectations. The only way forward is to get deep into the expectation, neck deep, deeper than anyone’s imagination and then, hold your horses till such time that you are ready to bounce back on top of the market.

Inject this habit of digging deep in your character, this will rally round you with ample of opportunities, success and respect.

More traits, as I learn.

Escalation that wasn't

Escalation that wasn't - is a false alarm. Raised by customer and escalated by friend’s next door (customer care) to top executives as business critical bulge. This falls as lighting on engineering, who then keep aside all planned activities to look into this. Although engineering maintains limited buffer for such unplanned activities, and most of the time ensures release on plan but lighting like this leaves certain impact that results in loss of productivity, compromise on quality or if nothing else then at least causes distractions from roadmap. And worst, engineering assessment of escalation is a known limitation or a known issue with version that customer is using, probably an workaround solution is already covered in release documents.

While engineering may struggle to find an answer to such situations, it is up to the Product Manager to minimize such distractions. The mystery of escalations that wasn’t is solved by ensuring proper programs on educating the users (end user, Tier x support, marketing, and customer care) on product usage. So how different it is from regular NPI process. Why and how could this objective be achieved?

Well, the training (as part of NPI or independent process) is largely held either during a product launch, or when a new deal is signed / renewed or on could be on customer request. Most of the times these trainings have contents like videos, audios, large documents etc which probably are never referred again or simply not good enough to highlight Do's and Don'ts or Is, Is Not of the product usage. Emphasis on trivial things gets lost in understanding the solution set.

Educating the users (periodically) has two very important advantages;

1. It reduces pain points for engineering
2. It improves the product image
   

Some of the ways to ensure proper product usage or educating the customer could be;

Insulate Installation:
Make software installation more robust. Let the installer be intelligent enough to check for exact pre-requisites, eg Service Packs, specific driver version etc. and conflicting application, if any.

Product tips on login:
Customer should be advised with tips as and when he/ she logs in to your application. Such tips are optional and can be turned-off by user. So you as a Product Manager need not to worry of customer complaining of annoyance.

Quick reference note / do's and don'ts:
They are available on end user machine and can be popped through your application on a single click. Whenever a user hits an issue / error situation, he gets a pop asking to refer specific section in help file or a release document.

Bench marking:
Eg. The software takes 60 secs to launch when connected to internet and 30 secs when your computer is not attached to a network. Such benchmarking helps setting the right expectation. These are important as they directly impact the user response behavior and product image. They also improve moment of truth for your product / service.

Escalation tools:
Ensure that you have clearly defined escalation path. Escalation is accepted only with some bare minimal information such as OS flavors, Service Packs, logs, registry information etc. Make your tools validate the escalation content first before it goes to top. For eg. Software ver 3.5 is certified only on Windows XP and Mac while software version 4.0 is certified on Windows XP, Vista and Mac. Now if an escalation is raised for 3.5 on Vista the tool manages on its own.

You as product owner can possible think of more and better options to manage such escalations. While whatever may the method be, Product Managers must always remember that your users (customers) can be your best salesman. Educate them and keep them informed on regular updates.

Success Managers

What do Product Managers manage, Product, LOB or an Opportunity? Product Managers profile is most commonly misunderstood as someone who manages the product roadmap, requirements for a release and owns a delivery. While these definitely are some of the key tasks performed by product managers, but these are not all, product management is lot more than these KRAs.

Successful product managers are those who have well understood the difference between managing a product and managing opportunities. While most just end up managing a product, others go a little ahead by managing a need or demand (they are good at collecting, consolidating and prioritizing requirements) and few lead ahead when they start focusing on opportunity, thought process and market, in this process they create demand. They don’t manage product but use product to manage these opportunities. I call them success managers as they not only bring the success but also ensure that it remains with them, with customers they serve and with organization they live.

Some of the key distinguishing factors;