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Finding Help for Uncle Paul

 

Uncle Paul wants to expand his business over the next few months and is increasingly worried that he will be unable to maintain a high degree of customer satisfaction if his time is split over too many jobs. After getting to know Uncle Paul in his work environment, it is also clear he is uncomfortable about letting some one else take responsibility for key product management activities. This is a classic growth inhibitor I have seen in many companies – a conflict between wanting to grow and a lack of conviction by management to give up or delegate certain responsibilities.

 

I took leave from my own worries to spend several lunch times with Uncle Paul to talk about the kind of person or people he needs to help grow his business – in fact, I even gave some serious thought to trading my high tech product managers hat for one will a big banana on it! But alas, Uncle Paul does not offer a stock option plan and taking four weeks vacation is only going to happen if I drop a box of watermelons on my foot.

 

We focused in on a few key points:

 
  • It is less important to expand your product management staff by hiring people with experience then it is to hire people who have the raw talent

    I pushed hard to make Uncle Paul realize that the key to good management is to delegate the things that you do best!  This was a surprise point of view for Uncle Paul as his first thought was to hand off the things he never has enough time for.  I explained, “ The biggest obstacle a manager has to overcome is how to find a way to manage effectively.  If you step back and consider what is easiest to manage, it is often the things you yourself are most familiar with.” 

    In a typical job environment, these would be the activities you yourself do frequently today.  They become the easiest to manage as you can step in and help someone with minimal transition time. You are familiar with the objectives; the on-line systems and tools, the tricks of the trade, the troubleshooting, and the shortcuts and therefore can easily help a worker in trouble.  He was impressed with this perspective – I smiled a lot.

    What I discovered is that if I handed off the things I didn’t have time for, I was not easily able to solve problems quickly – an important skill for a manager – after all, I had no way to obtain the relevant hands-on time and experience for myself.  I often was limited to making a few verbal suggestions and then wishing my staff member lots of success with “their” problem.  After a while, I started to drift away from some of the people I worked with, and became less and less familiar with what they were doing.  When one of them left or moved on to another position, I was left with a bunch of activities that could not be easily picked up by someone else on my team.  In the worst case, I had to pick up the activities, which meant lots of pizza dinners!

    Hiring talent over experience means that there is a good manager on staff to act as the team leader.  Mentoring talented people until they gain sufficient on-the-job experience is a satisfying aspect of being a manager.  Uncle Paul was definitely this kind of manager.

 
  • Recruit people who can focus on specific product management issues – don’t always hire generalists

    “Uncle Paul, you need someone who understands how to deal with your suppliers.  This way, you can spend more of your time developing new customer relationships.”  Although he agreed with me, his mind was on hiring someone who could do everything he did.

    “Uncle Paul, seeing as you can now afford to have some product management help, why not raise the overall level of product management excellence by digging deeper into some of the product management cornerstones.  If someone spends all of their time working with your suppliers, won’t that benefit your business overall?”  He looked around for while, not really sure where the analysis was going to lead.  He said, “I understand what you are saying, but I need someone who can run the shop while I am away on vacation, or if I get sick.”

    I thought those were silly drivers as those events only affect a small portion of the overall operational year.  I started suddenly “Uncle, listen to what I am saying.  How much better would your business be if you could spend all of your time working with your suppliers.  Right now you spend about – 1/3 of your time?”  He nodded.  “If you could increase that to ½, would that help?  Could you have avoided the tomato problem you had last year?” He nodded again.  “Then start with finding someone who can take full control of supplier management.  Train them on the minimal things they need to know when you are not around – and let them see how much improvement they can get in your ability to bring product to the shelves!”

    In the high technology business, we are always under-spending on competitive intelligence.  This would also be a good hire, especially when you are trying to crack into new markets.  Perhaps a next hire comes from a market you are trying to crack, or perhaps the real win comes from hiring someone from a competitor.  It’s that old “focus” word – if you can afford to have someone focus on one problem, they should be able to solve it well.

    The team, working as a whole, makes a product line successful, managing it from its points of inception to its point of retirement.  Maximum job satisfaction will come from being able to offer people new challenges, which is hard to do if they come in to the job being able to focus on all the cornerstone objectives from day one.

 
  • Start new resources on things they are familiar with

    A new hire wants to feel good quickly.  They want to feel like they can contribute early on.  Assigning a new person something unfamiliar to do immediately puts them on the defensive.  Allow them to focus on getting used to the working environment first – which is much easier to do if the task at hand is something one is familiar with.

    As soon as they show signs of feeling comfortable -- which should take no more than 30 days, add something challenging to the mix of responsibilities.  You need to know if they will be a good contributor, so challenge their zone of comfort quickly.  If they meet the challenge, you can move on to other growth challenges knowing that a new resource has been added to the team that can raise the level of excellence of the team as whole.

 
  • Design a compensation plan that heavily pushes on goals the product manager can themselves influence

    I described to Uncle Paul how I’ve seen too many compensation plans that tie objectives to measures the individual product manager has little ability to influence.  The goal of management is to create an environment where success is possible.  Is it up to the individual worker to decide if they want to be successful – if they do, they can be, if they don’t, they won’t and they find themselves being managed out of the organization or team. 

Umbrella

A proper balance still needs to be in place between individual objectives and overall group objectives.  Tying compensation to revenue or profit achievement is also okay, but if everyone does their job properly but the boss hired a few incapable sales people, why should everyone’s bonus payouts suffer!  This is a hard issue to manage fairly, at the end of the day, the business has to succeed to be able to afford to pay everyone tomorrow.