Jeff Lash is Research Director, Product Management at SiriusDecisions. His expertise not only as a seasoned practitioner, but also as a researcher, gives him a unique perspective about the current state and direction of the Product Management profession.
This interview series provides one-on-one mentorship sessions with top executives in the Product world. You’ll learn how they got to be where they are today, important lessons from their career, what they look for in a Product Manager, and more.
#1 Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time. Please tell me about yourself.
I’ve been in some aspect of product management, product development, user experience or marketing for basically my whole career. I spent a number of years working in user experience before transitioning over to product management, both as an individual contributor and managing teams and portfolios. I like to say that I’m passionate about product management — the role and the practice of product management, and ultimately the value that good product management can bring to an organization.
#2 Tell me about SiriusDecisions and about your role in the company.
SiriusDecisions is the leading global B2B research and advisory firm. We provide actionable intelligence, transformative frameworks and expert guidance that help marketing, product and sales leaders to make better decisions, execute with precision and accelerate growth. We offer a number of different role-based services.
One of those is our Product Management advisory service, which I lead. We work with product management leaders — and many product marketing leaders as well — and we provide research and advice on the definition, structure and responsibilities of the product management function in b-to-b enterprises. We also help provide decision support frameworks for portfolio-level questions — how much to invest in certain product areas, or how to manage investments across a portfolio — as well as do a lot of work upskilling teams of product managers.
#3 How did you get started in Product Management, and what was the process you went through to get where you are today?
At the time, I was a user experience designer working on products — not just web sites or marketing/advertising projects, but actual revenue-generating products where the user experience was an integral part of whether a customer bought or renewed. There was a product I had worked on from a UX perspective, and an opportunity opened up to move into a product management role there. I had worked with the hiring manager, and she thought I would be good for the role, and, as they say, I never looked back.
Over time I worked on other products, in particular taking on some products that were really good challenges because they needed a lot of work. Beyond just managing products, though, I helped implement the role of product management, define some common practices and processes for product managers to follow, and coordinate a large portfolio of products.
Plus, all this time, I had been writing my blog — How to Be A Good Product Manager — and speaking and presenting on product management, and I’ve been active in the product management community (blogs, Twitter, Quora, etc.). So it was the combination of that practitioner experience as well as writing and speaking about product management that led me to where I am today.
#4 What are the top skills you look for in Product Managers?
In my position today, I’m not hiring product managers directly. There are certainly some standard skills to look for — analytical, technical, financial — but probably more important than skills are traits. Skills can be taught, but traits can’t to the same extent.
Empathy, for example — product managers need to have empathy for buyers and users. They need to be able to feel their pain and challenges. You can teach techniques for conducting customer research — an interview technique is a skill, in this case. But if someone isn’t able to empathize with a customer, or is more interested in the technology and product capabilities than understanding a customer’s issues and needs, then it doesn’t matter what skills they have, because they’re not going to succeed in product management.
I can teach someone how size a market or write a user story; I can’t teach them how to wake up in the morning with passion for what they do.
The saying is “hire for traits, train for skills,” so traits like passion, empathy, humility, tenacity, decisiveness and persuasiveness I think are more important.
#5 What are the key trends that Product Managers need to be aware of? And where do you see the Product Management profession in 10 years?
One important trend has to do with process and the fact that processes are changing. The old model was that you would conduct a lot of up-front research, then go through a long planning process, then spend a lot of time writing requirements, then spend a lot of time developing something and getting it perfect, and then plan a big launch.
Things are obviously changing. Part of this is the popularity of agile development methodologies, but part of this is just that due to technological innovations, it’s quicker and easier to test concepts and iterate than it was before. There will still be those big waterfall projects in some rare instances, but in most cases product managers need to understand these trends and how they impact the way they approach market discovery and high-level / conceptual design in particular.
Another trend is with products themselves, and it’s not specific to product management. Not too long ago there were software products and non-software products. Now, software — and SaaS in particular — is becoming a more important part of the overall business strategy for companies in all sorts of industries.
As more companies look to develop products with embedded services or internet-connected devices, and they look to generate recurring revenue through SaaS offerings, lots of product managers who never had to worry about software development now have that as part of their job responsibilities. For those comfortable with technology, this won’t be a big deal. But the concept of software and the process of developing it is new to many people.
In some respects, a product is a product is a product; though certainly there have historically been some differences between product management for large manufactured capital equipment and product management for a SaaS startup, software will be more important to all sorts of products — and product managers— going forward.
#6 How can a Product Manager, new to the Research and Consulting industry, gain domain knowledge?
I’ve worked in a number of different industries and while the learning curve might be a bit different, the process is generally the same. Leverage internal resources to get a foundation — talk with colleagues who are experts in the industry, read research reports and documents and presentations, find third-party reports your company has purchased, talk with sales and customer support and other customer-facing peers.
Then go out and learn first hand — visit customers and observe and interview them, attend conferences and trade shows, hang out where they hang out (physically and virtually), read what they read, follow who they follow. Immerse yourself in the domain. Leverage others to help you get up to speed but realize that even colleagues who’ve worked in the industry “forever” don’t know everything.
#7 What do you think are some must-reads (books, blogs, etc) for every Product Manager?
When I started writing my blog in 2008, there were only a handful of blogs for product management. Now, there’s too many to count, plus tons of other great online resources. There’s been an explosion of books in the past few years too, which is great since when I was starting out in product management there were only a handful.
I’ve got a huge shelf full of product management books, and it’s hard to pick just a few, but Robert Cooper’s Winning at New Products was a book that I read before I became a product manager that really opened my eyes more than any other. There’s tons of great statistics and examples, which I love, but the overall process that he walks through made so much sense to me — I remember reading it and thinking, “Well, of course, why doesn’t everyone do it this way?” and at the same time realizing that so many people weren’t.
On the other end of the spectrum, to an extent, is Marty Cagan’s Inspired. I actually got the chance to help review and comment on the book when he was putting it together, which was a great experience. If you’re developing web-based products or anything where the user experience is a key component of the product, there’s lots of great practical advice here. Winning at New Products is a lot broader in what it covers — a lot more on the overall business management of products, and the product lifecycle — while Inspired focuses on a narrower area but goes very deep.
Two other books that are not specific to product management but have really stuck with me — Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim, and Leading Change by John Kotter. Blue Ocean Strategy provides a fantastic way of thinking about the market and competition, and I’ve used the concepts in there a number of times when working on really challenging product problems. John Kotter is THE guy when it comes to change management, and so much of product management is about change management, especially when you get to the more senior levels. It’s not just enough to know that the product needs to be fixed or the development process is broken — how do you get the organization on board with those changes? I’d argue that someone who has the best ideas but can’t lead change is ultimately going to be much less successful than someone who has mediocre ideas but can lead change.
#8 What are must-reads in your specific industry?
I’m a bit different — and lucky — in that my job is to keep on top of what’s going on in the practice of product management, so besides the plethora of blogs, I use Twitter (and the #prodmgmt hashtag in particular) and read a lot of LinkedIn groups related to product management. Since our clients are in so many different industries, we can’t keep track of the specifics of each of them, though general business and technology sources are usually good at keeping me informed about major trends across different industries.
#9 If a Product Manager walked up to you asking for your advice and you only had a few minutes to give ‘em your best tip, what would it be?
Never stop learning. No matter how many years you’ve been in product management, or worked in a specific company or in a specific industry, there’s always something new or changing. Customers and markets change; needs and technology change; activities and processes and deliverables change. As soon as you think you know everything about your customers or the market, you risk getting left behind. As soon as you think you know everything about product management, you’ll realize there’s a lot more out there.
For example, we put on an annual SiriusDecisions Summit every year — this year, it’s May 21-23 in Orlando, and we’re expecting 2,000 senior-level sales, marketing and product leaders. These are all very skilled B2B professionals, and they have a lot of experience and expertise. Still, they realize that there is a lot that they can learn from us and from their peers, so they make a point to attend. It’s a great event to hear the latest research insights, share best practices and see what best-in-class organizations are doing, and we attract a huge crowd of people who realize that they need to keep learning.
Obviously, that’s just one event, and there are lots of ways to keep learning about how to improve in product management. Read blogs, follow the action on Twitter, and participate in other online groups. But also connect with people in person — join a local product management association or go to a ProductCamp. There’s always something new to learn and a way for you to improve and grow.
#10 Anything else you’d like to add?
It’s always great to hear from people working in product management — find me on Twitter as @jefflash, follow me on my How To Be a Good Product Manager blog or read my posts on the SiriusDecisions blog.
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