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Uncle Paul is a Product Manager

 

My Uncle Paul kept asking me what I do. I call him "PM" for short, as he likes to copy the behavior of other people when at family gatherings. He's known as Paul "Mimic" in family circles, which gets a good laugh around holiday time.

 

After being asked for the 10th time, I finally had to confess that I was a called a "Product Manager". I said the term s-l-o-w-l-y, as I know older people don't like to talk fast about technology stuff. To my surprise he said, "That's what they call me too!". I couldn't accept that he meant the same thing as me, so I quickly opened the door wide with a brilliant "No way, you sell fruit at a wholesale market, why would you be called a Product Manager?"

 

He looked at me with brightening eyes and went into a long dialogue describing what he did. I was predisposed to think of him as a middle level manager, who sits on crates waiting for store owners to come in and buy boxes of fruit to sell on a hot day to people like me. I often credit him for making sure I have enough juicy grapes and ripe bananas to eat in the summer time. Much to my surprise, he described his job using the same terms I use to describe mine! I had to challenge him as I of course assumed technology roles were unique to people less than 40 years of age!

 

"Now listen PM, are you telling me that you spend time trying to figure out what your customers want?" It was probably the stupidest thing I had said to him since my 13th birthday. He quickly sat me down realizing we were going to dual this out for quite a while.

 

"It's a challenging job", he said as his chin went up an inch. "I am most proud when I fill the shelves with boxes of ripe fruit perfect for the current buying season. I am rewarded most when the shelves are completely empty at the end of the day". I could see that he was reflecting on the perfect days he must have had in the past few years. You could see both the gleam of personal satisfaction as well as the internal review of buying sprees where he no doubt made use of bonus money.

Idea

"When I first started as Product Manager, I used to follow an ordering schedule provided to me by headquarters. But I quickly realized it was based on statistical averages for the whole business and was not adjusted to meet the local market demands. After spending several weeks watching 20% of my stock rot on the shelves each week, I spent my next 3 months questioning my regular customers to see how they ran their businesses to get a better feeling for how to match up my buying activities with their selling needs". This started to sound familiar.

 

"Believe it or not, there is actually some really useful data available that describes how variations in weather affect people's buying patterns for food items like fruit". I was interested in where this was heading, but admittedly I was anxious to see where the holes would appear in the description of his role versus mine. He continued, “Customer data became my most valued source of input. It took me many months to influence headquarters to send me what I needed, but eventually I got my requirements properly defined and communicated to the people in production and corporate buying."

 

I mentally checked off one of the key challenges I face on a daily basis. How to work with the Product Development group to get them to build what my customers need. I started to sense I might actually learn something about product management from my ripe old uncle!

 

“Tell me PM, how frequently do you have to adjust your requirements?” I was clearly starting to treat him more as a peer than an older relative. “Listen Nephew of mine. I can see you are having trouble accepting that my job might be similar in importance to yours, so let's get to the main points. As Product Manager, I actually have two main jobs:

 
  1. I am responsible for filling the shelves with things that people want to buy.

    This requires knowing what people want to buy and when they want to buy it. My main tasks include identifying my product requirements on a regular basis and making sure all of my suppliers understand what I need and when. I view this as an internally focused role as I'm mostly interacting with others in my own organization to make sure they understand my needs. After all, my paycheck is based on how successful I meet the market needs.

  2. My second responsibility, and this used to belong to someone else, is to make sure the shelves are empty at the end of each day.

    This means I have to proactively work with my customers and prospective customers to make sure they come into my store and buy what I have. I view this as an externally focused role as I spend most of my time working with other people in the fruit selling business, as well as my customers."
Umbrella

In simple terms, my smarter looking Uncle distilled the basic functions of product management into two well-defined buckets. Like PM, I find some software companies integrate the internal and external aspects of product management into a single role, while some split the role between different people. I personally like the integrated role as I have found you can develop a tighter line of communication from the external world (i.e. market requirements -- to the internal world); i.e. product requirements. It was my turn to add something to the discussion.

 

"Uncle, in my business, people have developed a role called Product Marketing Manager to deal with the external or outward bound issues. You mentioned that this aspect of your job used to belong to someone else, why did you wind up with the market management activities as part of your role?"

 

He liked that I was now treating him as a source of knowledge. He moved closer to me and responded in an educational tone, "Nephew, I'm one of those fortunate people who was born with a sense for business that is equally as strong as my sense for production. It took me many months to convince my management that I could handle both roles, but the results speak for themselves. My customers are at their highest level of satisfaction, our production costs and wastage are at their lowest level in five years, and I have twice been invited to party with the team of product buyers – a vote of confidence in my abilities that my predecessors never had."

 

"So what you are saying is that because you don't have to spend time obtaining market requirements from someone else in your organization to develop product requirements for production, your operation is more efficient and produces a more precise result?" My voice was at its highest pitch in months. "Exactly!" he said. "Keep in mind that my responsibility set is not common. Most of my competitors have split the external aspects of product management into its own role different from the internal aspects. I suppose they could call it Product Marketing. Some of these companies are just as successful as we are but have a higher cost of labor to bear.