One of my friend posted this to Facebook in the last week:
“For twenty years I worked in an environment where the Company was better than
the Product. In the past 11 years, this has done a 180 for me. Interesting….”
He worked for McDonalds for 20 years, the last 11 have been
with software startups, including Exit41 where he and I overlapped by 6 years.
I found this one simple comment utterly fascinating and
insightful. As an ex-Product Manager I do have a particular axe to grind, and
that is that the product should meet the needs of the customers. No more, and
no less. If you have a solid customer value proposition, and deliver on that
value, sales & marketing becomes much easier. So much easier to sell a good
product than to be like a used car or snake oil salesman.
I have a couple of thoughts on why it is that he might have
had this comment. There are a few things that occur to me off the top of my
head as to what makes McDonalds so damn good (the company not the product). But
I’ll save that for once I’ve had a chance to pick the brains of some people
I’ll be seeing in the next week.
I was wondering recently about the backgrounds of the most
successful business leaders. I’m not talking the geniuses like Jobs or the guys
who were lucky, good, and in the right place at the right time like Brin, Page,
and Zuckerberg. I’m talking the normal people, the ones who get that first real
leadership job in mid-career and either wildly succeed, wildly fail, or are
just mediocre. Obviously there’s more to it than background: you have to have
certain personality traits, charisma, vision, and the crazy ego to think you
can go out there and kill it.
But here’s my own personal conceit: I feel like building a
good company is just like building a good product except that your ‘product’
becomes everything. Your employees. Your sales approach. Your web site. Your
marketing collateral. Your technical support team. Your partnership strategy.
Your contracts. But just looking at everything holistically – the customer
experience is broader than just the product you buy, it is everything from the
sales experience to the after-sales support. So I wish everyone had the
discipline of the product manager in terms of being able to understand what is
really required; the difference between a desire and a requirement, and how to
prioritise.
I also feel like everyone should work for a non-profit at
some point in their career. This teaches you how to be extremely creative in a
low budget-no budget situation. This is the best sort of lateral thinking you
can engage in. Rather than ‘oh gee, this customer has no budget too bad’ rather
‘this customer has no budget but they can provide something that would be very
valuable to us and might lead to a much longer-term relationship’ doesn’t take
a huge stretch, but it takes a different way of thinking about things, and a
willingness to be testing and exploring the waters.
I am finally now understanding how the lateral thinking and
negotiation skills I learned are actually one side of a coin and the other is
product management. Most negotiations are not fixed-pie one-time transactions,
most are part of a much longer-term and broader relationship where context
matters, trust matters, and being able to see the situation from your potential
partner’s shoes is extremely beneficial.
Where did I leave off? Sunday my parents left for Baltimore
to the south and I went with my brother to Burlington to pick up a rental car
and drive to my domicile in Dover, NH. On the way I stopped by the boarding school
I attended, St Paul’s School, to see Chad & Kathryn Green who now work
there. Kathryn is a teacher and Chad is Associate Dean of Students. It was an
all-too-brief visit but we caught up a bit, and unfortunately watched the
Patriots lose to the Seahawks. Boo.
I had quite a laugh that the head of house in the dorm they
were residing in, Simpson (where I had lived for my first two years there), is
none other than Mark Bozek. I went to school with Mark Bozek and not too long
ago I ran across a photo of him as a Third Former (he would have been about
14), standing in front of Ford with Jeff Giuliano.
Anyway, a dark drive without a GPS later I arrived in Dover
at my friend Matt’s house. Knocked on the window, scared him, and was informed
that I was lucky he didn’t leave his shotgun by the computer. Fair enough. Then
we went out to a bar and then home, and eventually to bed.
Now this is another person of whom I’m a huge fan and who I
see far too rarely. This guy has got to be more up to speed on world events,
politics, history, (read: better read & informed) than 99% of people I
know. Is he a software programmer? Business exec? Lawyer? Doctor? No, he works
in the NH state tolls, drives a cab, and does landscaping. He also has a
successful home vegetable garden, scavenges for free firewood which he splits
and stacks himself, has a small herd of laying hens, and is considering raising
lambs next year. One of the most interesting guys I know, and the most
creative, and the most real. You should hear his thoughts on the death penalty;
it’s hard to argue with them.
Moral of this story? Don’t judge a book by its cover.
I woke up the next morning all bright eyed and bushy tailed
but I had forgotten how long driving takes, as I finally got a SIM card for my
phone and then hit up Sichuan Gourmet for lunch with Rob only about 30 minutes
after my original scheduled arrival time. The weather was a bit crazy; nearly
70 degrees and overcast. Not that I was complaining, as fall days go this one
was to die for, and since I’m here for such a limited period I am enjoying
being stopped at every traffic light, just looking at the trees, houses, etc.
It is so beautiful here at this time of year.
One thing I don’t miss? The traffic. It was already starting
at 5:45am heading into Boston Logan!! Insanity.
- “Brady doesn’t run.” – Chad
- “Give me a call. I’ll talk you off the ledge.” – Kathryn
- “Any one of my fucking chickens would make a better President than Mitt Romney.” – Matt
- “I wasn’t paying attention.” – Ellie
- “I mean … how often does programming go wrong?” – Matt
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