Product Manager in Multi-product Org

There has been a growing trend for companies to call themselves Technology companies, irrespective of what these companies do. Market and investors generally support this move by rewarding these companies with a higher valuation. This helps tech giant’s ambitions stretch into many domains that touch human lives these days. Greg Bettinelli, Partner, Upfront Ventures quote is worth mentioning here.

“In general, tech companies are seen as faster-growing, so their marketability and perceived value are greater,” says Bettinelli.

But when we say a company is a tech company, does that mean they are selling tech, just like a healthcare company selling healthcare products and services. We know the answer. :).

Even though companies call themselves tech companies, no company can have an infinite number of products because of the number of resources it takes to keep things running. All companies manage a limited set of products and focus on the relevant segment of customers. Some companies call this failing fast culture. Google is a perfect example. There is a special google graveyard website talking about all the products google killed(1). Not many companies can afford a graveyard and thus focus on a single domain, calling themselves fintech, health tech, farm tech, etc. But does this lead to scope reduction? The answer obviously is no. There are 10k+ segments just in healthcare. This document is worth reading for getting amazed about the number of healthcare segments(2). In sum, the scope is infinite even with domain focus and there is a desire to achieve real-time implementation. It’s worth mentioning a quote from Harit Talwar, CEO, Marcus. Complete McKinsey article here.

“A digital-first philosophy means that decisions on new products and services happen quickly.” and “The real news is not that we did this, that we took just 72 hours from the time we realized customers needed help to when we rolled it out, we were able to do this because of our agile digital technology model.”

Increased speed and scope may look good from the outside. However, do impact things differently inside the company. This approach brings in a lot of confusion for the teams, and additional work, especially for the product manager whose key role includes aligning expectations across the company, and keeping the team motivated and focused on a goal. But how can a Product Manager be successful in such an environment? Some of the things product managers can do to make things happen:

• Product vision, strategy, and OKRs: Product-focused companies have a company vision, mission, strategy, and goals directly aligned with the product teams are focused on. However, for technology-focused companies, vision, strategy, and goals are broader to accommodate all possible products the company is working on now as well in the future. Since company-level vision, strategy and goals do not perfectly align with the work planned for the product, having a focused vision, mission, strategy, and OKRs help in keeping all the stakeholders aligned. And once product-level vision is accepted by stakeholders, it becomes a reference enabling quicker decisions. For example, for my previous company which was in the health tech space, the company’s mission was to create a remarkable health experience, freeing people to be their best. However, for the Clarity product, I was working on, our mission was to enable the right healthcare service at right time to the right patient. With our focused mission relevant to the product, all the teams were able to answer so many questions that otherwise may not have been possible.

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• Communication: Communication is key for any Product Manager. However, in the technology space, the frequency of communication and volume of communication increase dramatically as things move/ change quickly. Also, there are many internal stakeholders working on a different part of the product, the person left out becomes the weakest link from the product perspective.

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• Minimize surprises: With continuous changes happening both at the product and company level, it is the duty of the Product manager to understand what is happening around and keep everyone informed, not waiting for the right time to share information with others. By the time information is considered ripe for sharing, many team members may have made many assumptions and done work that does not align with the information, leading to tech debt/ rework/ frustration and low morale.
• Partners: Bringing surprises to outside partners is even worse than inside stakeholders. A live example is Google. Google, when came out with Google+/ Glass, many developers invested their time building apps for it. However, google all of a sudden killed them. This is currently impacting Google as not many game houses are investing their time and resources in building games for the Stadia platform as everyone is fearful that Google will give them another surprise.
• Prepare for the unknown: The Product manager needs to spend more time with the strategy team, identifying success and sunset criteria beforehand, so that the same can be shared with everyone.
• Confidence in work: Many times, with so many products getting sunset, engineering working on new products worry about the future of their work. At other times teams feel lost or overwhelmed. Having a continuous discussion about various scenarios and sharing the right picture, brings a lot of confidence and keeps the teams aligned.
• Alignment with Highest paid person opinion (HIPPO): In technology companies, since there is the freedom to conceptualize any new product, it becomes really difficult to manage these expectations, and saying no to the idea can ruffle some feathers. The only solution is to build relationships before they pitch their first idea. Show them the value of the current work the team is doing and what the pipeline look like. Hopefully, they will consider your situation before proposing these ideas.
• Update on Technology roadmap: As most technology companies have the technology and product roadmap, keeping a constant eye on the technology roadmap and understanding how it is going to impact the particular product can be a great way to see how developed technology/ infrastructure can be the best use for the product and how to plan for its implementation. This way, the product team can always remain ahead of curve.

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This article defines TRL1 through TRL9. The best-case scenario for starting product development is:

• Technology has been demonstrated (at or above TRL 6).
• Product requirements are defined and stable.
• Business objective is well defined and understood.

Lastly, Yes, being a Product Manager in a true technology company is difficult but at the same time it is bring in so many great memories, adding to the overall experience. Keep rocking!