Transcription
a leader, but they should have the potential to grow into that role.
So, to summarize, the key to changing the C-suite's attitude towards their responsibilities in effecting change lies in focusing on the management of product managers. They need to be held accountable for the performance of their teams, and they should be actively involved in recruiting and coaching strong talent. This approach will help create a culture of excellence and innovation within the organization, ultimately leading to better products and a more engaged workforce.
Thank you for your question, and I hope that provides some clarity on how to approach this challenge.
Promoted to senior vice president, but it does mean that, like, that person has potential. So it's a high bar. You heard me say, I think it was the number one thing for internally: raise the bar on your product managers. It's really not that hard either. If your manager is coaching you on how to be a good product manager, it's not that hard.
It takes normally two to three months to take somebody that has the raw materials and get them to be competent as a product manager. What does that mean? They have to... Alright, do we have time? Are we okay? Because I get carried away on this topic for sure.
So my story is pretty much as rough as you're going to find, so it's a good example. I was an engineer, and then I went through HP's engineering leadership training program, which was an amazing program. That's really why I joined the company: to go through this and become... I wanted to be trained as an engineer, to write, build, and be a CTO.
But anyway, after I reached sort of the engineering manager level, I realized that, you know what? Product is really the bigger problem, and I wanted to learn product. My manager was the VP of engineering. He said, "I can't teach you product," but the way it worked there was you would get somebody else to coach the person.
He reached out to a different person who had actually started four different product divisions at HP. He was in another state, so we did this all virtually, but he agreed to coach me. The first thing he asked me was, "Look, I said I'm willing to spend the time, but you have to be willing to invest to learn these things." He wouldn't do anything until I said, "I absolutely want to learn this. Just tell me what I need to do."
I should mention that all of the products I had been an engineer on, in engineering management, were products for developers. They had agreed to let me be the product manager as well as the engineering manager for this next product, which was another product for developers.
So, he started asking me. He basically did an assessment of me in our first couple of calls. The first thing he said was, "I want to understand if you understand the customers." I actually said, "Hey, I've been the customer. I'm a developer. I've been a developer for several years. I feel like I got that." He said, "Well, all I know for sure is that's never true."
So he literally said, "Just so you know, you're not going to be allowed to make a single decision for your product team until after you visit 30 customers. 30. 15 in the U.S., 15 in Europe." It was my first trip to Europe, actually. I will tell you that that changed my world.
First of all, I learned right away that he was right: the developers at HP were not the same as the developers at Walmart, the developers at FedEx, the developers at Deutsche Telekom. These were all in my first batch, anyway. So that was big. He knew I didn't know my customers, and that had to be fixed.
The second thing he asked was, "Do you understand HP's go-to-market?" Go-to-market is basically how do your products get from the lab, from the developers, into the hands of your real customers. Honestly, I had no idea. Obviously, we had ways you could buy them, but I didn't know how it was really done.
He arranged, by the way, the same trip—two, I think it was two week-long business trips, one in the U.S., one in Europe. He arranged salespeople that were going to go with me on these and, at the same time, teach me about the sales channel. It was a direct sales organization. I learned about sales, I learned about marketing, I learned about tech sales, I learned about all these different roles. I didn't even know what they did; I didn't even know what the titles meant before I did this.
But I had to learn the whole go-to-market chain. Another thing he asked me—this was one I knew I didn't know—was, "How much do you know about the financial analytics?" I do remember specifically he asked me if I knew what LTV stood for, and I didn't know that. I got one question right: lifetime value.
He said, "Good. Well, how is lifetime value defined for your product?" Oh my, I was like, "Don't even pretend you know." I had no idea. He said, "Look," and he asked me a few more questions about the analytics. I was an engineer; I didn't know anything about the analytics. I didn't know anything about what this product cost. I didn't know what it cost to sell. I didn't know how much we made. I didn't know about its contribution—none of that.
So he said, "I'm going to do two things on that because that's going to take some work. The first is I'm going to send you a book that you need to read," which was basically a basic book on financial accounting. I had never even had a finance course in college, which I'm embarrassed to admit, but it was true. I never had a course. It's not that hard to learn, but I had never tried.
The other thing he did was he called a friend in the finance group for the division I was in. I was in the research lab, and that person agreed to tutor me in the analytics. He wanted me to understand all of the different KPIs and really two things: what they meant and then also, were they any good? Literally for our products, like, is this a good number? Is that a bad number? I had no way to judge, you know, is seven dollars a reasonable cost for something?
Anyway, that happened. I didn't know anything about the customers, I didn't know anything about the finances, I didn't know anything about the go-to-market. I really didn't know anything about product. But in about three months, he took... You know, the way it worked at HP and in a lot of big companies is every quarter the executives sort of do what's called an exec review. Basically, they want to see the status of the product team, and that was sort of my first debut wearing this product hat.
He told me that, just so you know, they're going to judge you. They don't really care about your product; they care about you. They said they know that if you don't know what you're doing, what's the chance the engineers are going to build anything useful? It's literally what he told me.
So he said, "You're going to be judged, so you better prepare." I was nervous enough to begin with, but I prepared. I did what he said. There are some other techniques, especially—that's the first time I did a written narrative, which is a great technique to make sure you really have thought through harder questions.
But anyway, I did that exec review, and afterwards he told me they were fine. They said they're not worried about your team, and that's just because I had prepared. That took a quarter. It's not that hard, and most people are starting from a much better place than I was starting from.
I mean, I had a little bit—I had interest in the area, I knew about tools, but that was really as much as I had going for me. So a good manager was coaching me; that's his job. Luckily, I had several people through my career that did that to help me learn and get ready for the next level.
I really do feel for so many people who have never had anybody that did that for them. That's just wrong. I love that good companies understand this because that's how they learned.
So that was long-winded, but hopefully that was useful to sort of wrap this whole thing up. It's good to end on a positive note—not all the reasons transformations will fail.
Alright, anyway, I really appreciate everybody coming. I hope this was useful, and feel free to email me if you have questions that you didn't get a chance to ask.
Are we good, guys? I think you deserve both a gift, Marty, but first of all, a big applause! [Music]