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Product Manager Recruiting and Development in Early Stage Technology Companies

Dave Litwiller

May, 2011

The Product Manager (PM) role in an early stage technology company is one of the toughest to

fill. There is little formal academic training. More than almost any other, the role requires

willingness to be CEO of his/her job. This is someone who can think across the entire

business, and not just in narrower functional, operating or process terms. A successful PM is

someone capable of thinking expansively at the start at a time of creative uncertainty, but then

equally able to switch over to a focused execution drive to the finish line. Product management

combines leadership and management, requiring someone who can rally the troops despite

sometimes ambiguous formal authority over those people who will get much of the work done.

Product Manager Skills to Recruit and Develop

y Knowing how the end user customer uses, or will use, the product. Speaking the languageand implementation context of the customer. Listening and understanding what that person

is really saying, and delving into that. And not just exploring at a feature level, but at a

success factors and strategic impact level in the hands of users that gives PM credibility

when dealing with sales, engineering and the executive at the home office.

y Havinga solution level view (including costs, training, support, and other collaterals) and notjust a feature level view.

y Possessing the ability to move between a 60,000 foot orbit over the product, at the same timeas drilling down to a specific user, use case and performance optimization to build agreement

and following for what he is advocating.

y Liking the sales side of the business, wanting to make a product which customers will buy alot of, and instilling confidence in the sales organization so that they dont start second

guessing what is coming from product management. Often such credibility with sales

requires having walked a mile in the shoes of someone who has to convince a customer to

buy either through mentorship or practice. At the same time, a product manager has to not

get so drawn into sales that this one department has overbearing influence.

y Knowing enough about the technology to be credible with R&D, and not be written off as alightweight or where the organizational antibodies are triggered.

y Systematizing how to digest and store all of the information that comes from customers, themarket, the sales organization, and R&D. Being able to identify the small things within all of

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that information that is really creative, relevant, differentiating and impactful. Capability to

put single requests into a larger context. Synthesis of all the data and interpretations to reach

a good decision.

y Organization and prioritization when sitting at the centre of so many parts of the company,and everyone is seeking something different. Knowing how to get to yes for 80% of what people are asking for, rather than being binary yes/no on 100%. Being aggressive enough

with others to keep from being pushed around too much by them, especially a customer that

demands that the PM commit to more than she should in a one-to-one meeting (making a

commitment to a customer without the organization behind you). Preserving status as a

decisive but honest broker among constituents.

y Knowing how good decisions get made by always thinking about the precedent-setting andknock-on effects of a particular decision.

y Project management skill, since the PM operates at the interface of so many departments andfunctions. Poor project management leads to dropped to-dos and diminished impact.y Facility speaking with market and technology analysts.y Evangelism and enthusiasm in conjunction with critical thinking and good judgment, not one

side without the other. Implicit within is the PMs capacity to kill her own creations that

shes put her heart and soul into in cases where it becomes clear that insufficient market

exists for the idea.The ability to acknowledge her own mistake, and not try to perpetuate it

and hope that a fix surfaces later. Good organizations come to admire intellectual honesty.

y As the business grows, a skill that often falls to product management is identifying and fixingorganizational breakages, the classic one being that support or quality assurance doesnt talk

sufficiently to engineering. When this occurs, the typical outcomeis that significant recurring

customer or product issues go unaddressed. Product managers in organizations of increasing

size know that other functional groups have staff with considerable knowledge of the product

and customers. There can be some really smart people in those other teams, but frequently

few go to talk to them. A PM networking internally with such people and groups can reveal

a lot of competitively significant insight. Helping people like support and QA better fit into

the process of value delivery, and having them feel they have a voice can be a big part of

product management as the business expands.

y Fostering the belief that getting to the right answer is more important than whose answer it is.Being able to pull people together to do the right thing. Keeping his own ego out of it and

leading people to the right answer rather than trying to show people he is the smartest.

y Seeking mentorship not just from the product management and marketing functions, but alsofrom sales and from other functional leadership.

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y Listening and learning from the questions that the most respected and capable above the PMask when reviewing his ideas, and not just those from marketing but from customers,

analysts, finance, engineering and support, to then bring that perspective on how to cajole

and challenge herself and her product management team.

About the Author

DaveLitwilleris a senior executive in high technology, based in Waterloo, Ontario. His

background is in wireless devices, precision electro-mechanics, semiconductors, electro-optics,

MEMS, biotech instrumentation, and enterprise software. He serves as an advisor for various

private corporations in matters of strategy, technology, governance, finance, operations, and

business development. Mr.Litwiller is the author of Rapid Advance - Mergers & Acquisitions,

Partnerships, Restructurings, Turnarounds and Divestitures in High Technology. He is

currently an Executive-in-Residence with Communitech.