Product Management is not the Epicenter of the Business World

In the product community, there's a palpable enthusiasm for creating new roles within Product Management to make companies more and more product-centric. I find it exciting!

However, you will soon realize that along with the many different roles within Product Management, there are varying definitions of the product mission, depending upon the company maturity, market, and culture you’re in. This can be confusing, to say the least.

We correctly define Product Management at the intersection of various functions and departments such as tech, design, business, and marketing. However, we sometimes struggle in being able to distinguish between being at the intersection of and owning those same departments.

Here’s the rub: despite its involvement in crucial aspects of an enterprise,  Product Management is not the epicenter of the business world. If you believe it - you are mistaken. The business realm is tired from tolerating this arrogance, and it falls upon us, as product leaders and executives, to solve.

Our goal should be to simplify the complex world of Product Management whilst striving towards better integration with other enterprise forces to deliver more value and benefits to end users and the organization as a whole. Obvious, but often overlooked.

Let me share a few insights I've learned along the way.

Make Product Management simple, again

Modern Product Management has evolved in response to the escalating complexity of technology and the internet. It has demanded a structured and expedited approach to product development, giving rise to agile methodologies, design thinking, and customer-centric practices. The focus shifted from product creation to problem assessment, analysis, and solution ideation.

But the evolution didn’t halt here, and the spectrum of product roles expanded further, encompassing product manager (PM), owner, ops, marketer, builder, architect, writer, researchers, and many others. This diversity can be bewildering.

Today, the PM role excludes coding, market analysis, detailed stories, specifications, and testing. This raises the question, "What does a PM actually do?" 

I believe that spreading the PM's responsibilities across too many sub-roles diminishes its effectiveness, which makes crafting a comprehensive product vision quite arduous. 

Perhaps we could think of product organizations as products themselves as well, and as a community, we can champion the quest for its simplicity as we would do for a product.

As always, it begins with understanding your (real) customers’ needs and desires.

Love your users, marry your colleagues

Before you launch me into orbit, away from the product realm, allow me to emphasize that end customers and end users remain paramount. Hailing from Amazon, renowned for its customer-centricity, I wholeheartedly endorse this ethos. 

Now, shift your perspective and step into the shoes of a Chief Product Officer (CPO), adjusting your mindset accordingly. Here's the thing: end user benefits don't always reign supreme. The real challenge is striking the delicate equilibrium between end customer welfare and your company's bottom line. As Valentin Ménard, group Product Manager at ManoMano, aptly elucidates in a recent Thiga Tribune piece, business imperatives can sometimes take precedence over customer concerns.

Instead, envisage your product department as a product itself, and you'll notice that your mission isn't solely centered on resolving end user dilemmas; it's also about surmounting your company's challenges. Departments, teams, regions, and business units within your enterprise, each with their Profit & Loss (P&L) statements and objectives, rely on your products to attain their (financial) goals.

In essence, your product's capacity to resolve end user problems is crucial, as it underpins the company's raison d'être. However, it also equips your product to address your executive colleagues' predicaments, making them your "internal" customers.

Consider this scenario in a bank: Your product team just found a way to streamline the consumer borrowing process, also reducing customer acquisition costs. Impressive, right? But your team also found a way to decrease operating costs, by automating some back office processes invisible to customers. The quandary: which solution do you release first, and where? ? Do you prioritize the solution that solves user issues or the one that saves more costs? What if other countries would benefit better from different solutions? 

As a leader of product teams, you'll frequently grapple with this predicament—a tug of war between your product's market fit and its business fit.

Speaking business beats product jargon

In essence, P&L owners possess invaluable insights into what they need to achieve their goals. If you are not the owner of that P&L yourself, your responsibility is to understand their businesses as intimately as you understand user challenges. To fulfill this role effectively, it's imperative to forge close ties with P&L custodians, whether they serve as B2C Country CEOs or B2B Heads of Partnerships.

When I mention 'getting close’, I'm not advocating occasional vision-sharing or monthly coffee chats. Instead, I advocate deep immersion in their P&L dynamics—comprehending how they generate revenue, their strategic objectives, and how each internal P&L contributes to the company's overarching business strategy.

In a conversation with Fabrice des Mazeries, CPO at TheFork, he underscores the need to speak the language of business and understand its intricacies. “The CPO's objective is to ensure that all sub-product teams invest for the best ROI, akin to an investor managing a portfolio”. To him, the cost of the product teams represents an investment to be leveraged through business opportunities.

When product executives excessively focus on tactical product tasks and delegate the business aspects solely to business experts, neglecting to delve deeply into its intricacies, a disconnect emerges, widening alignment and expectation gaps.

So, how can you bridge the divide between product and business functions within a company? A valuable starting point is to shift your perspective regarding your colleagues.

Salespeople are allies, not foes

Having participated in numerous conferences and community events, I've observed that when the topic of sales arises, it often transforms into discussions on "why product and sales don't see eye to eye" or "how can we help sales better understand product."

It's almost as if some view salespeople as the enemy. This perception is misguided, of course.

Sales teams are engaged with their customers, on a daily basis, at each stage of the sales process. I believe that this continuous access is invaluable to us in product development, as sales serves as the perfect conduit for understanding and tracking the evolution of customer’s challenges and needs.

What's evident is that sometimes, product teams don't fully harness this unique customer access. Whether it's sales teams in B2B contexts or growth teams in B2C settings, we may mistakenly assume that conducting discovery and delivery is sufficient, and once the product is ready, sales can take over. However, this iterative process of building and selling products, nurturing comprehensive feedback loops, and making iterative adjustments cannot occur without sales team involvement.

Melissa Perri, world renowned expert in the product field, noted that “Product Management was never purely about tech and if companies were treating it so, of course, they didn't see the value of the role", highlighting the importance of going beyond products' traditional roles.

To me, there are simple practices that companies can adopt to bring product and business teams closer. For example, at Younited, sales teams organize prospective sessions where anyone can pitch solutions to prospects over the phone, aiming to spark customer interest and secure meetings. These sessions offer invaluable learning experiences and confront product teams with the reality of selling what they've created. 

Another simple practice is sitting close to key figures in your company. At Younited, I sit next to the head of partnerships, directly within the sales and partnership department. This provides daily insights into market trends and complements my tech team meetings.

When discussing the importance of sales in a product, it's vital to acknowledge the role of marketing in defining and launching products. Different companies have varying perspectives on marketing's role within the product team. Here's my take.

Product marketing is product, not marketing

The mission of Product Marketing is quite clear : “to define the right positioning  of your product, so that people get it, buy it, and love it”, referring to the words of April Dunford, a globally recognized leader in  positioning. This is complementary to performance or acquisition marketing, typically within the scope of local teams.

I believe that product marketing encompasses the first and last mile of the product process, from inception to adoption.

When exploring a new product or feature, the process of understanding market forces, competitor dynamics, value proposition, and customer insights constitute a crucial marketing exercise. This should be completed during the discovery phase and be validated before development can start — that's the first mile. 

In the meantime, you must effectively introduce this new product or feature to end users to maximize adoption and articulate it in sales pitches for future partnerships. Writing a tweet (an x.) or a mock Amazon-like PR release is a good initial exercise, but effective marketing is key to conquer that final stretch before launch— that's the last mile. 

To illustrate this further, envision yourself as a PM asking a product marketing manager the following questions: "What should I develop? For whom? What's the market? Oh, and what’s the value proposition, and how should customers understand it?". It’s inefficient, right? 

My viewpoint aligns with that of Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: "You cannot develop a product unless you can talk about the product." To me, product marketing functions reside within product teams, and to take it further, PMs should take on these responsibilities themselves.

To conclude, I would like to quote Ayman Jawhar, Product Management lecturer at the INSEAD's MBA program: "Product professionals contribute to shaping an organization's culture by defining its vision, values, systems, language, beliefs, and habits." Like him, I believe that an organization's effectiveness is not based on the processes or frameworks it employs but on the culture it instills within the company.

This is the cultural change we should aim for, and the sooner, the better.

Thank you so much for reading.

I am passionate about developing product teams and culture, with a goal to deliver the best possible user experiences. And I’m always open to collaborate, exchange and debate new ideas.

So please feel free to comment, follow, agree, disagree, reach out, and share