{"id":1984,"date":"2017-01-19T08:49:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T00:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yibo.net\/?p=1984"},"modified":"2017-01-19T08:55:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T00:55:54","slug":"behind-every-great-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yibo.net\/?p=1984","title":{"rendered":"Behind Every Great Product"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first decided to start The Silicon Valley Product Group, I had just left eBay and had some very strong opinions about what makes great product teams, and great product cultures, and while there were more than a few important thinkers and leaders on these topics, one area that I felt was under-represented was the role of product management. \u00a0So one of the very first things I did was to sit down and write an essay about what I believed about this role.\u00a0 I titled the paper, \u201cBehind Every Great Product\u201d and it was inspired by the classic\u00a0Good Product Manager \/ Bad Product Manager<\/a>\u00a0by Ben Horowitz.\u00a0 The paper proved popular and helped many teams to get a better understanding of just what product was all about.<\/p>\n

Now, more than a decade later, I\u2019d like to revisit this topic.\u00a0 There are three main reasons for this:<\/p>\n

First, even though\u00a0I\u00a0personally spend a good deal of my time writing and coaching and teaching\u00a0about\u00a0product management, there\u2019s little question\u00a0that there remains considerable confusion about this role. \u00a0There are multiple reasons for this but it\u2019s simply too important to continue.<\/p>\n

Second, I\u2019ve learned a lot in the\u00a0years\u00a0since\u00a0I\u00a0first wrote about this. \u00a0I\u2019ve had the opportunity to work with many impressive teams and product managers from a broad range of leading tech companies, and this has helped me to get a better sense of the what is essential to the role, and to success.<\/p>\n

Third, I argue that the role is now more essential than ever. \u00a0I see this role as absolutely critical to success, and very often is the difference between success and failure.<\/p>\n

What has not changed is my overarching belief that behind every great product, there is someone, usually someone behind the scenes, working tirelessly, that is playing this critical role \u00a0They usually have the title \u201cproduct manager\u201d but they might be a startup co-founder or the CEO, or they might be in another role on the team and stepped up because they saw the need.\u00a0 The title is not important; the work they do is.<\/p>\n

There are essentially three ways for a product manager to work, and\u00a0I argue only one of them leads to success:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They can escalate every issue and decision up to the CEO.\u00a0 In this model, the product manager is really abacklog administrator.\u00a0 Lots of CEO\u2019s tell me this is the model they\u2019re in and it\u2019s not working. \u00a0If you think the product manager job is what\u2019s described in a Certified Scrum Product Owner class, you almost certainly fall into this category.<\/li>\n
  2. They can call a meeting with all the stakeholders in the room and then just let them fight it out \u2013 this is design by committee and it rarely yields anything beyond mediocrity. \u00a0This is very common in large companies, and in this model, the product manager is really a project manager and\u00a0roadmap administrator.<\/li>\n
  3. The product manager can do his or her job.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So my intention here is to show you great examples of this third way of working.<\/p>\n

    Normally\u00a0I do this by explaining the critical responsibilities and the necessary character traits and skills, but in this article\u00a0I will be taking a very different approach. \u00a0I want to instead introduce you to real people.<\/p>\n

    Anyone that\u2019s ever worked in product for any amount of time knows that creating products is never easy, but I selected these particular examples to illustrate the very difficult but essential contribution that comes from a strong product manager.<\/p>\n

    The products are all iconic, and everyone that reads this will know of every product I describe, but few people know the actual product managers\u00a0behind these products.\u00a0 And fewer still know the back stories behind these successful products.<\/p>\n

    I don\u2019t think these stories have ever been shared publicly before, and they are stories that I believe deserve to be told.<\/p>\n

    These stories\u00a0will hopefully\u00a0show you\u00a0several examples of product managers doing their job and doing it well.<\/p>\n

    WORD FOR MAC<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Martina Lauchengco<\/h4>\n

    In 1993, Word 6.0 was the biggest release, feature-wise, Microsoft had ever produced up until then.<\/p>\n

    In addition to all the new features, the team had another very large objective.\u00a0 Their code base had diverged and it was extremely slow and costly for Microsoft to be implementing Word separately for each platform: Windows, DOS and Mac.\u00a0 This code convergence effort was supposed to save Microsoft substantial development time, and also \u2013 they tried to convince themselves \u2013 improve the offering since Word would have the same features on every platform.<\/p>\n

    It also meant that there was great pressure to get the release out so they could start to gain the efficiencies of a single code base.<\/p>\n

    At the time, Word for Mac was a relatively small market. It was only $60M vs. Windows which at that point was more than a $1B market.<\/p>\n

    If you remember back then, Windows machines absolutely dominated, and even the future of Apple was not a sure thing.<\/p>\n

    However, the Mac community was also very vocal, with passionate fans of their platform, and is also important to note that this community had very little love for Microsoft.<\/p>\n

    PowerMacs were just hitting the market, which had significantly faster chips and more memory.\u00a0 Most of the team were using those new computers because the Word 6.0 beta in it\u2019s early days was just too slow on regular Macs.<\/p>\n

    Of course, most of the Mac user base was not on new PowerMacs, they were on \u2018regular\u2019 Macs \u2014 hardware upgrade cycles were much slower then.<\/p>\n

    So when Microsoft released the most \u201cfull-featured word processor ever for the Mac\u201d that\u00a0crawled\u00a0on their Macs \u2014 we\u2019re talking literally two minutes to startup\u2013 the community immediately started posting in newsgroups that Microsoft was actually trying to \u201ckill the Mac.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Hate mail started streaming in from everywhere \u2013 including emails directly to Bill Gates who would forward them on to the team with messages like \u201cthis is depressing MSFT\u2019s stock price. Fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Enter Martina Lauchengco, a young product manager recently out of Stanford,\u00a0whose job it was\u00a0to help turn this around.<\/p>\n

    The team quickly learned that while it may be a worthwhile objective to get to a common code base, it\u2019s an empty victory if the product that results is not good.\u00a0 Moreover, users choose their devices and platforms because they value what\u2019s\u00a0different, not the same.<\/p>\n

    From the customer\u2019s point of view, they would rather wait a little longer and have a better platform-specific solution, than simultaneously ship a generic product on all platforms.<\/p>\n

    The team ended up focusing hard on performance, and taking advantage of what the Mac could do.<\/p>\n

    They looked at things like when and how to load fonts since Mac users tended to have so many more than Windows users,\u00a0and ensuring all Mac keyboard shortcuts still worked.<\/p>\n

    They focused on things like Word Count which is used 10 times a day by every press person to make sure that it was lightning fast,\u00a0as the press used the feature as\u00a0their performance barometer.\u00a0They even made it faster than the feature on Windows.<\/p>\n

    The result was that in a couple of months, they produced a 6.1 release that was sent to every registered user with an apology letter \u2013 signed by Martina \u2013 along with a discount coupon for future purchases.<\/p>\n

    The release succeeded in fixing the perception problems, but more importantly, it genuinely made the version dramatically better for the Macintosh \u2013 a product the Mac team could actually be proud of, and what the team felt they should have delivered to market in the first place.<\/p>\n

    This is a good example of how hard it can be to do the right thing for the customer, often in the face of pretty massive pressures, but that\u2019s exactly what strong product managers figure out how to do.<\/p>\n

    In subsequent years, not only did Microsoft once again decide to diverge the code base, they completely separated the teams into different buildings and business units, and had them fully embrace all things Mac. \u00a0Strategically it was a complete 180.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s hard to estimate just how important this was to both Microsoft and to Apple.\u00a0 Even today, more than\u00a020 years later, many businesses and consumers consider Word\u00a0and the rest of Office\u00a0absolutely essential to being able to use their Mac\u00a0for business and personal use. \u00a0What started then became a\u00a0multi-billion dollar win for both Apple and Microsoft. \u00a0There are more than 1 billion Macs and PC\u2019s running Office around the world.<\/p>\n

    Martina has gone on to have a remarkable career, in both product management and product marketing.\u00a0 From Microsoft she went on to Netscape, where she was responsible for marketing of the Netscape Browser, and then LoudCloud, and now I\u2019m happy to say she\u2019s been my partner at SVPG for over a decade, and she also teaches marketing at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n

    Let me also add that there\u2019s little as powerful as a marketing person that\u2019s also strong at product.\u00a0 The combination is amazing.<\/p>\n

    NETFLIX<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Kate Arnold<\/h4>\n

    Netflix is one of my all-time favorite products and companies.<\/p>\n

    But back in 1999, a then very young Netflix\u00a0based in Los Gatos with less than 20 employees, was on the edge of going bust.\u00a0 They had a couple experienced co-founders, including the now legendary Reed Hastings, but the problem was that they were stuck at about 300,000 customers.<\/p>\n

    They were essentially providing the same general pay-per-rental experience that Blockbuster provided, just an online version of this.\u00a0 There were, as always, some early adopters, and some people lived in places that didn\u2019t have a video store, but in truth there wasn\u2019t much of a reason to do this via the postal service when you could just stop by the local Blockbuster store.\u00a0 People would rent once, and then quickly forget about the service, and didn\u2019t seem very willing to change.\u00a0 The team knew that the service wasn\u2019t better enough to get people to change.<\/p>\n

    Even worse, DVD sales were starting to lag, and a Hollywood backlash further muddied the situation. Then there were challenges with fulfillment logistics, difficulty maintaining DVD quality, and trying to figure out how to do all this in a way that covered costs and generated some cash.<\/p>\n

    Kate Arnold was the product manager for this small team, and the team knew they needed to do something\u00a0different.<\/p>\n

    One of many tests they tried was to move to a subscription service.\u00a0 Get people to sign up for a month, and offer them unlimited movies.\u00a0 Would that be perceived as \u201cbetter enough\u201d to get them to change their media consumption behavior?<\/p>\n

    The good news was that yes, actually, this really did appeal to people.\u00a0 A flat monthly fee and all the videos they could consume sounded pretty great.<\/p>\n

    The bad news is that the team created some real problems for themselves.\u00a0 No surprise that Netflix customers wanted to rent mostly newly released feature films, yet these were much more expensive for Netflix to stock, and they would need to stock so many copies of these, that they\u2019d very likely run out of money fast.<\/p>\n

    So the product challenge became how were they going to make sure Netflix customers could watch a set of movies they would love, yet wouldn\u2019t bankrupt the company?<\/p>\n

    They knew they needed to somehow get customers to want a blend of expensive and less expensive titles. \u00a0Necessity being the mother of invention,\u00a0this is where the queue, the ratings system, and the recommendation engine all came from. \u00a0 Those were the technology-powered innovations\u00a0that\u00a0enabled the new, much more desirable business model.<\/p>\n

    So the team got to work.\u00a0 In three month\u2019s time, the team redesigned the site, introducing\u00a0the queue, the rating system, and the recommendations engine all in support of\u00a0Netflix being a\u00a0subscription service.<\/p>\n

    They also\u00a0re-wrote the billing system to handle the monthly subscription model (a funny little side story is that they actually launched without this as they had the 30 day free trial month, which bought them the extra time they needed).<\/p>\n

    With so many moving pieces and interconnected efforts, the daily stand-ups included just about every person in the company.<\/p>\n

    Between working with the co-founders on the strategy, validating concepts with the users, assessing the analytics, driving features and functionality with the team, and working with finance on the new business model, marketing on acquisition, and the warehouse on fulfillment, you can imagine the workload Kate faced on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

    Yet the team got the new service up and running and used this to power and grow their business for another 7 years, until they disrupted themselves again by moving aggressively to the streaming model.<\/p>\n

    Kate would be the first to credit a pretty amazing team, including some exceptional engineers, and the vision and courage of the founders, but I would argue that without a Kate driving for the technology-based solutions that could actually power this business, there\u2019s a good chance Netflix as we know it never would have happened. \u00a0This was also a great example of a product manager needing to work across the entire company to come up with not just product solutions but business solutions that work.<\/p>\n

    One other interesting little aside about early Netflix \u2013 when they were struggling for cash early on, they offered to sell themselves to Blockbuster for $50M, and Blockbuster turned them down.\u00a0 Today Blockbuster is in the dead pool, and Netflix is worth over $40 billion.<\/p>\n

    Kate is now a product leader at Shutterstock in New York City.<\/p>\n

    GOOGLE ADWORDS<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Jane Manning<\/h4>\n

    This next example is a favorite of mine.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m sure all of you have heard of Google\u2019s AdWords.\u00a0 You know that this product is what fuels the Google empire.\u00a0 To be specific, AdWords is currently 16 years old, and last year alone it generated well over $50B in revenue.<\/p>\n

    What I\u2019m guessing most of you don\u2019t know, however, is just how this industry-defining product actually came to be.\u00a0 And especially how close this product came to never happening at all.<\/p>\n

    The year was 2000, and the hardest part about the AdWords project was simply getting agreement that they could work on it.<\/p>\n

    The core idea had support from Larry Page, but the idea immediately encountered some pretty strong resistance from both the ad sales team, and the engineering team.<\/p>\n

    Jane Manning was a young engineering manager that was asked to serve as product manager for this effort to try to get it off the dime.<\/p>\n

    The new sales team, under Omid Kordistani, was off to a strong start selling keywords to large brands and placing the results at the top of the search results, highlighted as an ad, but still very prominent, much in the style that had been done in search results at other companies, including at Netscape where Omid came from.\u00a0 Sales was nervous that this idea of a self-service advertising platform would diminish the value of what the sales team was trying to sell.<\/p>\n

    And the engineers, which had been working so hard to provide highly relevant search results, were undersandably very worried that users would be confused and frustrated by ads getting in the way of their search results.<\/p>\n

    Jane sat down with each of these people to get a deeper understanding of their concerns.\u00a0 Some were just plain uncomfortable with advertising. \u00a0Others were worried about cannibalization.<\/p>\n

    Once Jane understood the constraints and concerns she was able to advocate for a solution that she believed would address the issues yet enable countless small businesses to get a much more effective advertising solution. \u00a0Jane also was able to persuade one of Google\u2019s earliest and most respected engineers, Georges Harik, of the idea\u2019s potential, and he helped to bring along other engineers.<\/p>\n

    The product solution\u00a0they ended up\u00a0with placed the AdWords-generated ads to the side of the search results, so they wouldn\u2019t be confused with the salesperson-sold ads which were displayed on the top of the results.<\/p>\n

    Also, instead of determining placement based solely on the price paid, they would use a formula that multiplied the price paid per impression with the ad\u2019s performance (click-through-rate) to determine placement, so that the best-performing ads \u2013 the ones most likely to be most relevant to users\u00a0\u2013\u00a0would rise to the top, and the worst ads would be unlikely to be displayed at all, even if they were sold at a higher price.<\/p>\n

    This solution clearly differentiated for the sales team, and also ensured quality search results, whether paid or organic.<\/p>\n

    Jane actually wrote the first spec for AdWords, and worked side by side with the engineers to build and launch.<\/p>\n

    This is yet another example of how there are always so many good reasons for products\u00a0not\u00a0to get built. \u00a0In the products that succeed, there is always someone like Jane behind the scenes working to get over each and every one of the objections, be they technical or business or anything else.<\/p>\n

    Jane took a break to start a family and is now back at Google once again, this time helping out the YouTube team.<\/p>\n

    BBC MOBILE<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Alex Pressland<\/h4>\n

    I have to admit to a soft spot for the BBC.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been around for nearly 100 years, but they embraced technology and the Internet relatively early.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve seen so many amazing product people have come from the BBC, and many are now all over Europe and beyond.<\/p>\n

    Back in\u00a02003, a full four years before the debut of the iPhone, a young product manager at the BBC, Alex Pressland, had just finished leading a product effort that enabled the BBC to be one of the first media companies in the world to syndicate\u00a0content. \u00a0Most people at the BBC had no idea why this was important or even desirable, but Alex understood that this enabling technology could be used in new and unanticipated ways to increase reach for the BBC,\u00a0a major part of the institution\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

    Because she\u00a0understood the potential for IP-based syndicated content technology,\u00a0Alex started searching for new and useful ways\u00a0to put\u00a0this technology to\u00a0use.\u00a0 She began by looking at people in the UK that were not being reached by the BBC\u2019s conventional broadcast media (TV\u2019s and Radios in homes and cars).<\/p>\n

    One such early possibility she found\u00a0were\u00a0city center venues\u00a0that had\u00a0these\u00a0large electronic billboard screens\u00a0that were\u00a0capable of video.\u00a0\u00a0But\u00a0she observed that these venues were just playing the same thing you could watch on your television at home, even though the context and audience was very different.<\/p>\n

    So Alex proposed a series of experiments where she would have editorial teams assemble specific tailored content suitable for specific venues and audiences, and then she would measure the audience reach and engagement.<\/p>\n

    While this might sound obvious today, at the time this was a very foreign concept to the BBC\u2019s\u00a0broadcast\u00a0journalism culture, and there were a long list of obstacles in trying to push the BBC in this direction, not the least of which was editorial and legal.<\/p>\n

    Editorial wasn\u2019t used to the model where content would be created and then delivered in different contexts.\u00a0 This gets to the heart of the BBC editorial culture, and required considerable persuasion to show why this was a very good thing for both the BBC and for the audience.<\/p>\n

    Legal wasn\u2019t used to distribution via IP enabled devices.\u00a0 Imagine the stack of content licensing agreements that would need to be updated or renegotiated.<\/p>\n

    The results of Alex\u2019s experiments and early successes gave Alex the confidence to propose to the BBC leadership a new product vision and strategy which she called \u201cBBC Out Of Home.\u201d<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s important to note that she did this as an individual contributor product manager.<\/p>\n

    This work ended up fueling a dramatic shift at the BBC from broadcast content to content distribution, and this work dramatically impacted reach, and soon became the basis for BBC\u2019s Mobile efforts. \u00a0Today more than 50 million people around the world depend on BBC\u2019s mobile offering every week.<\/p>\n

    This is not just a story about applying technology to solve problems, but it\u2019s also a story about the power of force of will.\u00a0 Especially with large and long-established institutions, it is never easy to drive substantial change, but this is exactly what strong product managers figure out how to do.<\/p>\n

    Alex went on from the BBC to have a terrific career at several tech and media companies, and now runs product for Bauer Xcel Media in New York.<\/p>\n

    APPLE ITUNES<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Camille Hearst<\/h4>\n

    I\u2019d love to introduce you to another very strong\u00a0product manager, Camille Hearst.<\/p>\n

    Camille was a product manager on the iTunes team at Apple, and as you might imagine with such a disruptive and ground-breaking product, she experienced and learned a great deal during her formative product years at Apple,\u00a0especially as she was there during the years moving from the iTunes original DRM-based music, to DRM-free, was critical in helping iTunes to become truly mass market.<\/p>\n

    Moving beyond early adopters into mass market involved many different efforts, some product, some marketing, and some a blend of the two.\u00a0 A good example of this blend was the relationship the iTunes team engaged with the American Idol program.<\/p>\n

    This turned out to be one of the most dramatic and visible \u2013 yet challenging product efforts for the iTunes team.<\/p>\n

    During 2008, American Idol was a cultural icon \u2013 watched by more than 25 million people twice a week, with a level of repeat engagement that was largely unrivaled.<\/p>\n

    Apple saw in this an opportunity to expose an ideal target market to the power of iTunes and digital music.\u00a0 Not just by selling the music from the contestants featured on the show, but by making iTunes an integral part of consumer\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

    However, while the potential was substantial, the challenges were significant as well.<\/p>\n

    The VP of\u00a0iTunes,\u00a0Eddy Cue,\u00a0and others made the business deal, but\u00a0Camille worked as product manager on many of the integrations to help figure this out.<\/p>\n

    As just one example, the American Idol program is all about voting, and Apple quickly realized that sales of contestant\u2019s music would very likely be strongly indicative of voting results, and while normally iTunes was designed to show trending music and highlight popular titles, in this case it was important to use extreme care to not influence the voting.<\/p>\n

    This was obviously critically important to the Idol producers \u2013 it would reduce or even eliminate the suspense to learn which contestants would continue to the next week.<\/p>\n

    The integration also allowed the team to target a very specific persona, and work to drive up engagement with this group.\u00a0 One of the keys was to make it easy to get to iTunes for those that didn\u2019t yet have the app installed.<\/p>\n

    By tackling these and countless other challenges head on, Camille and her team were able to come up with technology solutions that complemented the American Idol experience, yet also injected iTunes as a key component of fan\u2019s life. \u00a0This contributed to what was in 2014, before the move to streaming, a roughly $20 billion business.<\/p>\n

    To me this is a great example of how great product managers work to find creative solutions to very difficult problems.<\/p>\n

    Camille went on to join the YouTube team, and then lead product at London-based Hailo, and now I\u2019m very happy to say that she\u2019s the new CEO of NYC-based startup, Kit.<\/p>\n

    ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Lea Hickman<\/h4>\n

    It is worth noting that so far,\u00a0all\u00a0of these product managers demonstrated exceptional results as\u00a0individual contributor product managers \u2014 no Director or VP titles.<\/p>\n

    For startups or smaller companies, often all it takes is a strong product team with a strong product manager, but in larger companies, in truth it usually takes more than that.\u00a0 It takes strong product\u00a0leadership, in the best sense of the word, including providing a compelling product vision and strategy.<\/p>\n

    One of the absolute hardest assignments in our industry is to try to cause dramatic change in a large and successful company.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually easier in many ways if the company is in serious trouble and they are feeling big pain, because that pain can be used to motivate the change.<\/p>\n

    But of course great companies want to disrupt themselves before they\u2019re disrupted by others. \u00a0The difference between Amazon, Netflix, Google, Facebook and the legions of large but slowly dying companies is usually exactly that, product leadership.<\/p>\n

    The story I\u2019d like to tell you about here is of a product leader, Lea Hickman.\u00a0 In the year 2011, Lea was leading product for Adobe\u2019s Creative Suite.<\/p>\n

    She had helped Adobe to build a very large and successful business for itself \u2013 on the order of $2B in annual license revenue \u2013 with its desktop\u2013based Creative Suite.<\/p>\n

    But Lea knew the market was changing, and the company needed to move from the old desktop-centric, annual upgrade model, to a subscription-based model supporting all the devices designers were now using \u2013 including tablets and mobile in all their many form factors.<\/p>\n

    More generally, Lea knew that the upgrade model was pushing the company to take the product in directions that were not good for Adobe customers and not good in the long-term for Adobe either.\u00a0 But change of this magnitude \u2013 revenue from Creative Suite was roughly half of Adobe\u2019s overall $4B in annual revenue \u2013 is brutally hard.<\/p>\n

    Realize that every bone and muscle in the corporate body works to protect that revenue, and so a transition of this magnitude means pushing the company far outside it\u2019s comfort zone \u2013 finance, legal, marketing, sales, technology \u2013 few in the company would be left untouched.<\/p>\n

    You can start with the typical concerns:<\/p>\n

    The finance staff was very worried about the revenue consequences of moving from a license model to a subscription model.<\/p>\n

    The engineering teams were worried about from moving from a two-year release train model to continuous development and deployment.\u00a0 Especially while assuring quality.\u00a0 They were also concerned that responsibility for service availability was now going to be much higher.<\/p>\n

    There were also big concerns on the sales side, it was expected that this transition would change the way the Creative Suite products were actually sold.\u00a0 Rather than a large reseller channel, Adobe would now have a direct relationship with their customers. \u00a0While many people at Adobe generally looked forward to this aspect, the sales organization knew that this was very risky in that if things didn\u2019t work out well, the channels would probably not be very forgiving.<\/p>\n

    And don\u2019t underestimate the emotional changes \u2013 to both customers and sales staff \u2013 of moving from \u201cowning software\u201d to \u201crenting access\u201d.<\/p>\n

    With over a million customers of the existing Creative Suite, Lea understood the technology adoption curve, and that there would be a segment of the customer base that would strongly resist a change of this magnitude.\u00a0 Lea understood that it\u2019s not just about whether the new Creative Cloud would be \u201cbetter,\u201d it would also be\u00a0different\u00a0in some meaningful ways, and some people would need more time to digest this change than others.<\/p>\n

    Realize also that the Creative Suite is, as the name implies, a\u00a0suite\u00a0of integration applications \u2013 15 major ones and many smaller utilities.\u00a0 So this meant that not just one product had to transform, but the full suite needed to transform, which dramatically increased the risk and complexity.<\/p>\n

    It is any wonder that most companies refuse to tackle something of this magnitude?<\/p>\n

    Lea knew she had a tough job in front of her and her teams.\u00a0 She realized that in order for all of these inter-related pieces to be able to move together in parallel, she needed to very clearly articulate a compelling vision of the new whole as greater than the sum of the parts.<\/p>\n

    Lea worked with Adobe\u2019s then CTO, Kevin Lynch, to put together some very compelling prototypes showing the power of this new foundation, and used this to rally both executives and product teams.<\/p>\n

    Lea then began a sustained and exhausting campaign to continuously communicate with leaders and stakeholders across the entire company.\u00a0 To Lea, there was no such thing as over-communication.\u00a0 A continuous stream of prototypes helped keep people excited about what this new future would bring.<\/p>\n

    Due to the success of the Creative Cloud \u2013 Adobe generated more than $1B in recurring revenue faster than anyone else has \u2013 Adobe discontinued new releases of the desktop\u2013based Creative Suite to focus all of their innovation on the new foundation, and today more than 6 million creative professionals subscribe to, and depend on, the Creative Cloud.\u00a0 Today, thanks in large part to this transition, Adobe has more than\u00a0tripled\u00a0the market cap it had before the transition \u2013 the company today is worth roughly $50 billion.<\/p>\n

    It is easy to see how big companies with lots of revenue at risk would hesitate to make the changes they need to not only survive, but thrive.\u00a0 Lea tackled these concerns and more head on with a clear and compelling vision and strategy, and clear and continuous communication to the many stakeholders.<\/p>\n

    This is one of the most impressive, nearly super-human, examples I know of a product leader driving massive and meaningful change in a large and established company.<\/p>\n

    There\u2019s no question in my mind that Adobe would not be where it is today without someone like Lea working tirelessly to push this change through.<\/p>\n

    Lea has moved from Adobe to leading product for a rapidly rising star in our space, a company and product line many of you know and love, InVision.<\/p>\n

    SUMMARY<\/h4>\n

    Now in every case I just described, each of the product managers went out of their way to emphasize to me just how amazing their team was, and how in no way was the success due to their efforts alone, but hopefully these examples help make clear to you the true and essential contribution of the product manager.<\/p>\n

    The big points I hope you take away from this are:<\/p>\n

    1) Product Management is absolutely distinct from the other disciplines.\u00a0 It\u2019s clearly different than the contribution of the designers, so please let\u2019s stop having all the misguided discussions of overlap between those roles. \u00a0It\u2019s also clearly not a project manager. \u00a0There is some amount of project management\u00a0inevitably involved just as there is for all leadership positions, but to characterize this as a project manager is to completely miss the essence of the role.\u00a0 The role I would argue that the product manager is most similar to is the role of the CEO.\u00a0 But with the obvious difference that unlike the CEO, nobody reports to the product manager.<\/p>\n

    2) Like a CEO, the Product Manager must deeply understand all aspects of the business.\u00a0 The Product Manager needs to ensure a business outcome, not just ensure a product gets defined. This requires\u00a0a good understanding of the many inter-related parts and constraints of the business \u2013 financial, marketing, sales, legal, partnership, service, the customer environment, the technical capabilities, the user\u2019s experience, and figure out a solution that works for the customers as well as the business. But don\u2019t think this means an MBA is required \u2013 actually not one of the impressive product managers I described has an MBA \u2013 or that you need to have all these skills yourself; you must simply have a broad understanding of how a product can affect a business, and work with people from your team and across your company to cover everything that\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

    3) I hoped you noticed that in literally every one of these examples, the winning solutions didn\u2019t come from users or sales; rather great products require an intense collaboration with design and engineering to solve real problems for our users and customers, in ways that meet the needs of your business. \u00a0In\u00a0each\u00a0of these examples, the users had no idea the solution they fell in love with was actually possible.<\/p>\n

    4) Like a successful CEO, the successful product manager must be the very best versions of smart, creative andpersistent. By smart I mean using new technologies to reach new audiences or enable new business models. Bycreative, I mean thinking outside the normal product box of features to solve business problems. \u00a0And persistent \u2014 as in pushing companies way beyond their comfort zone with compelling evidence, constant communication and building bridges across functions in the face of stubborn resistance. \u00a0Being a great product manager means having extraordinarygrit.<\/p>\n

    5) Finally,\u00a0I hope you can see that true\u00a0leadership is a big part of what separates the great product people from the merely good ones. \u00a0So no matter your title or level, if you aspire to be great, don\u2019t be afraid to\u00a0lead.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019ve shown you 6 examples of strong product managers at work as they created products that literally changed the world.<\/p>\n

    If you want to create ground breaking products at your company, I\u2019m hoping their examples show you just what your job truly is, and what a difference great product management can make to a company\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

    The article is from:http:\/\/svpg.com\/behind-every-great-product\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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