Product Managers as agents of change
January 9, 2012 | Product Development, Service Development, communicate the value
As Product Managers we are involved in change on a permanent basis and it is a central requirement of our role to act as change agents. We may not be referred to as “change managers” but it is a central aspect of product management to introduce change. The level of change may vary from revolutionary new product development to the more common introduction of a new release with new features and potential changed features and process.
Change is hard and human beings are not great at managing or taking part in change within organisations. This may be simply because we have not developed well enough to work in offices! Not withstanding and developmental debates we have to handle product change and also roadmap change.
We can learn from change specialists and researchers such as Kotter’s well respected models described in his books ‘Leading Change’ (1995) and the follow-up ‘The Heart Of Change’ (2002)
Dr John Kotter’s research over the last 30 years has shown that 70% of organisation change efforts fail. Kotter’s eight-step change model can be re-interpreted into the product management sphere as follows:
- Increase urgency – we have real competitors in the market place, gather the team together and share with them examples of competitor actions, mergers, great products to inspire colleagues to move into an action model of thinking, discuss make team objectives specific, measurable, real, achievable and timely (SMART).
- Build the guiding team – although we cannot always pick our teams, we can ensure that we have the right structure with a mixture of product managers who will design and manage product, guided by a steering group. It is essential to get the right level of emotional commitment along with skills and ability levels.
- Get the vision right – a team can only homogenise around a common vision and theme. Keep it simple and be clear on the strategic end game. To make this real, describe what life will be like as the team get closer to the end game.
- Communicate for buy-in – share information widely in many different formats to tap into different team members preferred communication methods. See the team in a very wide sense, as it can include the whole company. Consider company wider training activities and briefings as part of this to ensure wide product buy in from Sales, Operations, Marketing, Technology, Finance.
- Empower action – make it easy for those people you want to act to implement change to get on with it. Empower them to make decisions and remove barriers. Ensure support from leadership teams and reward and recognise process and achievements by careful selection of product development and user experience key performance indicators.
- Create short-term wins – large projects of change and large product design initiatives take time to achieve, ensure simple user stories are achieved quickly. The Agile development method is an ideal product development approach to support the achievement of short term wins that will give confidence to the product team and evidence to the wider company that change is coming and that it is good.
- Don’t let up – keep going, the road is tough and winding but re-enforce the benefits to the market and the company of new product enhancements and utilise marketing techniques to share success. Sometimes simple communication tools such as framed achievements of new features on the wall can make a huge difference to the mood of the change programme.
- Make change stick – move to a model where change is a way of life not a single moment in time. Those new operational processes introduced in the finance process to manager international invoicing will certainly need to be revised as governments change their taxation policies. A process for managing on-going change with a focus on a change manager to coordinate future change and change requests is important to avoid cyclical decision-making. We want to avoid reversals of fortune and move the product portfolio forward.
Kotter’s eight step model is explained more fully on his website www.kotterinternational.com.
