Don’t let your organization leaderless unless you want to be jobless

For whatever reason you are distracted from your day to day duties (a merger, an acquisition, a family emergency) and you haven’t been in a position to attend to those duties. This is fine if it is a short hiatus (less than 3 weeks), but anything longer than that you need to make sure that somebody is tending shop. You have to groom your team to work without you for a while or designate one or more people to fill in your role. If you provide no leadership you are creating a vacuum where people are making decisions and launching projects because they sound good.


Let’s be clear, your team has to be able to function without you for short periods – and they should be able to provide their own direction (after all, their resumes do state that they are entrepreneurial, self-starters and self motivated). But the longer your absence, the more decisions start to pile up and change the direction; suddenly you have a new and emerging strategy that you are still accountable for.

Why not a short term strategy?

If you, as management, are not clear on the strategy and do not communicate it; How can your employees deliver? I am surprised how many companies ask their employees to read management's mind, find the right intentions in there and execute to specifications. It makes no sense. Is like having a neurotic spouse with the power to fire you. You want to succeed in business? You have to be clear as to your objectives. If those are not clear, nothing will please you and your company will sink (unless you are really lucky).

It is OK to have temporary strategies. We have them for emergencies, why not for times when life is not clear (is it ever?). Why do we feel that is not OK to have shorter looking strategies? Square was in the brink of collapse with their games. They set out to build their last game (after that they were expecting to close). They put all their effort into the game but with a pessimistic feeling, they called it: Final Fantasy. They wanted to bow out with a last great hurray. Guess what? The game was a huge success. As well as FF2, 3, 4,... They are now one of the most powerful and well recognized game development companies in the world (it is now called Square-Enix) and they are working among other things in: Final Fantasy XIV.  What worked? Having a finite narrow strategy: Make their last game great!

In the middle of a M&A or bankruptcy debacle? Come up with a short term strategy and communicate it to all employees. They'll appreciate the honesty and the direction. They may very well build you a Final Fantasy.

Stopping the launch of weak products

A weak Product Management function can result in features that are not introduced in response to customer needs but in response to internal wish lists (that may be out of touch with the market), or in cost structures that are not being revised strategically to enhance profit margins (like outsourcing vs. internal development). To change a Product Management function takes making an assessment, mapping out where we are today, where we want to go be and what are the best practices in what we need.

After the initial assessment and once you understand where you are and where you want to be. Choosing the right framework will be one key to your success. There are several frameworks about what Product Management should be, for example: the PDMA model has one, author Steven Haines documents another, and author Marty Cagan shows us yet another one. All frameworks list a set of skills and functions that every organization should have. But just using any of these frameworks will not work for a company, as with everything in life, each situation is unique and your framework should be tailored to your needs. Best product management practices will come from a consultant (you are hiring one, right?), current literature and studies on the matter.

Another big factor is if your company wants to change its culture – for example, is the organization willing to let a Product Manager team define and control the product? Or are they convinced that it is a function of the Marketing department? Whatever the answer to the culture question, it will mean a lot of changes to marketing, product development, service desk, platform development, etc. If your company is not willing to change the culture, the best way is to look for a framework that will reinforce current weaknesses and strengthen what is being done today.

Product Management & its strategic implications

Product management is a market-driven approach to develop and manage products or services:

• Defines what the product should be – is accountable to users for feature sets, navigation, quality, and overall experience

• Is a cross-functional discipline: involves strategy, product development and marketing

• Is accountable for overall product direction, key decisions, including in some cases full P&L control or at least budget control
  

• Ensures that the final product meets specifications

• Evangelizes product to internal and external stakeholders

The strategic implications of a robust Product Management function are many: from increasing the value of the company, understanding the customer today and in the future, ensuring that all possible revenue is being captured, guiding future product investments and controlling the current cost structure of the products, to name a few. For any organization, it is imperative that these and other issues are being taking care of in the Product Management function.

Use your longer term employees to fuel and drive strategy success

With low confidence in the economic recovery, a lot of companies are filling their work needs using project based employment and short term hires. For your short term operational needs, these are great sources of relatively cheap labor (I will discuss this in another post). But for strategic initiatives, you need people thinking about the long term success, not just next quarter or the end of the project. The incentives for short term work by their definition are not aligned with long term objectives. Why would temporary employees care about the welfare of the company three years down the road if their involvement ends in one month?

For strategic initiatives you need longer term employees - people who will face the consequences of their actions and decisions. They also provide cohesiveness from one project to the next, and make decisions based on the long range business goals and not only on the short term project objectives. They represent and transmit the culture of your company. They provide the history and traditions that have made you a success in the past.

Don't fail at your career strategy by choosing the now job

I have been having a lot of discussions about career strategy with people looking for jobs, and I am seeing the desperation setting in, the prevaling strategy right now is: "get anything, NOW!" If you have reached the end of the rope (no more savings, no extra income from spouse/partner/family), then by all means it has become an issue of survival and the right strategy is: "whatever it takes". But for everybody else, it is a very bad move to take that attitude. If you read beyond what this Forbes article is saying it looks like at the end of the day this recession is a career killer.

The downside to the quitters line of thinking is that you are adjusting your expectations and your search accordingly: are you looking for jobs at your level or lower? have you in your mind already taken a pay cut? are you thinking value or price for your services?

The decision of what jobs to pursue and what to take is not only relevant to this job now but to your career. If you take a 50% pay cut, do you honestly believe you will get it back next year? I can assure you that you wont. If you go two levels down, do you think your next position will resume where you were pre-recession? No, you will have to fight your way back up again - think about it as lost years.

Regardless of the recession, your value and your level of preparedness are what determines your strategy. If you have a strong war chest (or emergency fund or other income sources), you have to ride the storm. The income you aren't receiving is your opportunity cost. It will hurt in the short term but it will pay in the long term.

Pushing boundaries to grow

You don't notice, but your comfort zone is always shrinking. It behaves like an slippery slope... First, you are uncomfortable giving speeches to large groups, so you refuse. Then you are uncomfortable to talk to medium sized groups so you make up excuses to not talk or rush to finish. After a few years of this, you can't give speeches to groups bigger than eight to ten people without having nightmares the day before. This slippery slope can be public speaking, new ventures, new ways of doing business, or adopting new technologies (are you using social media?).

In the business world, we should be always push to expand our comfort zone - as in commercials every year we should be bigger and better or a new and improved formula. To make this happen just follow these simple steps:

1. Make a list of your strengths and your weaknesses
2. Have your mentor, significant other or trusted adviser review and help with the list.
3. Together, define what strengts and weaknesses you should work on
4. Set goals and exercises that you should do
5. After an appropriate time, review the results
6. Rinse and repeat

It is very important to work on your strengths as well as your weaknesses. For example, if you are a good public speaker become a great speaker. We setup aggressive goals for our portfolios, why should we be any  different with ourselves.

BTW, I am following my own advice, I will be filming three business segments for a business program tomorrow - this is something new and exciting.