Art Petty on Management

The Best Product Managers are in Seat 12C

A post by Steve Johnson at Pragmatic Marketing raises the issue of Product Managers/Marketers spending quality time in front of customers rather than hiding behind other less personal forms of information gathering. 

Surveys and phone interviews can be helpful, but nothing replaces the experience of entering your customer's environment and spending a few moments gaining critical context for the impact that your product has on a business and its people. A sales colleague of mine was always quick to quip to me as his marketing counterpart, "the truth is in the field."  Both Steve and my sales colleague are right. 

Technical Leaders: It's Time to Throw Out the Single-Track System for Developing Talent

I had the good fortune awhile ago to interview a remarkably successful and happily retired CEO about his career in growing and running a number of teams and businesses.  This gentleman, a dedicated engineer, reflected modestly on his successes and candidly about his failures in a 45-year career in manufacturing and technology organizations. 

One of the many priceless discussion threads during the interview, focused on the challenges of developing leadership and individual contributor talent in technical organizations.  Specifically, he railed at the "single career-track" approach that in his opinion results in many otherwise great individual contributors pursuing leadership roles for the wrong reasons regardless of their interest or capabilities for leading.  There is wisdom in his perspective.

Leader, How Do You Recharge?

This is my "back to work, I'm not ready for anything too serious, but I have a message for you," post.

I just returned from a trip to a warm locale (at least it was warmer than Chicago!), and had a great opportunity to mix a few great days of business with a long weekend with family and friends.  A long weekend can barely be called a vacation, as my European friends are apt to remind me.  Nonetheless, it was a great few days to shift mental gears, play with my new nephew, sample some great local restaurants and even spend some time with a quality Ken Follett spy mystery.  The six inches of new snow and malfunctioning snow blower were a cold slap of reality this morning, but I suspect that I still benefited from the mental downtime of this trip. 

Would You Work for This Character?

"The only way that you will succeed on my team is if you are married to the job!"

"The reason that I am not in any family vacation pictures is because I'm on the phone.  If I'm in the picture, I have a blackberry stuck to my ear."

Yeesh.  What a jerk!

The quotes speak volumes about this individual's leadership style, priorities and character.  A "my way or the highway" approach, coupled with an "I will succeed on the backs of your labor and you will help me succeed or else," philosophy.  It also speaks volumes about the culture in the organization that tolerates this leader's style. 

The Product Manager's Questions for Success

Thanks to a good friend and the person I credit with the creation of the "Why is a Product Manager Like the Office Photocopier?" joke, I recently unearthed a listing of questions that we had established with the PM team to help teach and remind everyone of the True Role of a Product Manager. 

Rather than develop these on high, I recall a fair number of iterations across functions and through the PM ranks to refine the questions down to a list that we believed captured the essence of the role and its priorities.  Of course, we dutifully passed these out as laminated, wallet or desk-drawer size cards.  I think the questions still hold value and provide much needed context for the Product Manager in pursuit of his or her very challenging role.  They are reprinted here for your use, adaptation or disagreement, in their original, unaltered format:

Excitement for the Next Generation of Leaders and Management at the Movies

I had the great pleasure of serving as a guest lecturer on Leadership yesterday to a class of college seniors (business majors), and I was struck by the remarkably mature perspective and intuitive feel that they have for the subject.  After my opening comments on how you can't possibly learn to be a leader from a book or a class, we launched into a series of discussions and exercises that Wowed me with the clear thinking and great ideas about effective leadership and great leaders, as well as the opposite.  I'm definitely growing more excited about the potential of this generation of early career professionals!

Why Sales Managers Shouldn't Hate Performance Reviews

I don't know too many Sales Managers that relish the opportunity to conduct performance reviews with their Reps. In fact, come to think about it, I don't know too many Sales Managers that actually conduct performance reviews with their Reps. Unless you count the token compliance that a few accommodate through a "half-hearted, fill out the form to get HR off my back" approach that some Managers confess to employing. That's too bad, because all parties involved are missing out on valuable conversations that can contribute to the growth of the business, the strengthening of the sales bench and the development of sales superstars.

Leader-What's Your Charter?

Somewhere during my second decade out of college (Hey, I'm slow but I figure it out eventually!), I recall having the epiphany that most people in leadership roles acted like they had no conception of what their job as a leader was.  In fact, it dawned me after a few moments in thought that it probably wasn't an act—they truly did not understand their job.  The evidence to support this conclusion was all around me.

Leadership Development Conversations-Still Free and Always Will Be

I recently gave a talk at a gathering of managers and executives from different organizations, entitled: "Creating a Leadership Development Culture In Your Organization."  The gist of the talk was that leadership development does not have to cost a lot of money and in fact can be jump-started with some basic activities. Also, I came down hard on the age-old excuse of "I don't have time" that so many leaders use to explain their lack of attention to leadership and talent development.

Just today, I received a note back from one of the participants that renewed my faith in the fact that when presented with practical approaches, many leaders want to do the right things to support the development of their people.

Will Software Improve Our Talent Management Performance?

Regular readers will notice that I draw upon the Wall Street Journal to prompt ideas for many of my posts.  You'll also notice that I have a hard time keeping up with this great publication, and it took being housebound with almost a foot of new snow today for me to wade through my stack of back issues.  While wading, an article from the January 15, 2008 issue entitled, "Demand Rises for Talent-Management Software" caught my eye and prompted a few thoughts and questions. 

It's fairly well established in my mind through our firm's research and from working for large and small firms as an employee and as a consultant, that most organizations and most leaders stink at talent development.  I've cited a number of studies and surveys in my various posts that report findings that are in violent agreement with this conclusion.  However, now that there is software to help us manage talent, are our problems over?