One of the most common questions I get from product managers, usually working at large companies, is how to manage their managers? They are frustrated with their manager. Not that they don’t like their manager, but that they feel like the sands keep shifting, their manager gives them different and conflicting direction each week, and it’s always two steps forward and one step back. Especially in big companies, there are so many influencers and stakeholders that getting a company to move in a single direction long enough to get a product out can be a true challenge.

Even in small companies and startups these challenges exist, but I think it’s true that in large companies it is especially difficult. I have worked in product organizations large and small, at every level, and I’ve collected a list of techniques that I have found can help with this problem. But I will say up front that the challenges are real and you shouldn’t expect them to go away; these are merely techniques to mitigate the issues.

There are many reasons for the constant change in directions. It’s not just you and your manager that need to be on the same page. Your manager’s manager, and on up the chain, all bring their own initiatives to the table. And there are outside influences as well, such as competitive pressures, changing technologies, mergers and acquisitions, business development deals, budget and staffing constraints, and more, and each of these can have a direct or indirect impact on your product plans. That’s part of the cost of working at a large firm. The benefit, however, is that if you can find a way to leverage the resources of your large company you can have a dramatic impact on the marketplace on a scale that’s hard to match at a small firm.

So here’s my list of ten techniques for managing up:

1. Measure and Plan for Churn – “Churn” is the term I use to represent the cost of the various drills, rework, and changes in plans that cause the frustration in the first place. While you shouldn’t expect churn to go down to zero, you can constantly strive to reduce churn, and this starts by increasing awareness of churn, and that begins with measuring it. There are lots of ways to do this, but in one form or another, try to track how much of your week/month/quarter is spent on forward progress. Now that you’re more aware of the level of churn, it helps a great deal to plan for some level of churn. When you’re scheduling your projects, know that there will be a percentage of your time that will need to respond to these changes and adjust accordingly, and that some amount of your efforts will end up sitting on the shelf. It will help manage your stress level, and make your schedules more accurate.

2. Communication Style and Frequency – Just like product managers are not the same, managers are not the same. Some managers prefer to be kept apprised of every little detail on a continual basis. Others don’t want you to bother them unless there’s an escalation or serious issue that needs your manager’s help. Some prefer updates in writing with detailed supporting material, and others prefer a quick chat in the hall. You need to determine the style that your manager prefers and do your best to meet that need, even if it’s not your preferred style.

3. Pre-Meeting Work – Most product companies have lots of meetings. Too many in my view, but the more influencers and stakeholders there are, the more you’ll be asked to have checkpoint and review meetings to keep everyone on track and informed. There are many techniques for running good meetings, but the main point here is to actually have the real meetings before your official meeting. This means going individually to the key influencers and stakeholders prior to the actual meeting and giving them a preview of your points, listening to their issues, and ensuring that they are already on board by the time the group meeting happens. If you do this well, the meeting should be quick with no surprises. The formal meeting still has an important purpose however, which is for everyone at the table to see that everyone else is on board.

4. Recommendations Not Issues – Most managers prefer to see your recommendations on how to solve problems you encounter rather than just a statement of the problem. Ideally, depending on the size of the problem, an analysis of several alternatives along with your recommendation and rationale.

5. Use Your Manager – Your manager can often be a very useful tool that most employees underutilize. As an example, suppose there’s a problem you’re working to solve, and you have an analysis and recommendation, but some of the key influencers are not anxious to make the time available you need to pre-brief them as described in the pre-meeting work above. Your manager can often get that access you can’t. So provide your manager with the tools and request that she hold this private session for you. Your manager will want to be prepared but is often happy to help in this way.

6. Do Your Homework – One of the biggest mistakes that product managers often make is in not doing their homework. Managers are often smart and can quickly identify holes in thinking and in plans. That’s their job. The best way for you to prepare for this is by doing your homework. You need to understand the issues thoroughly and be prepared.

7. Short E-Mails – Another common mistake is that product managers like to write long detailed e-mails to their managers, but then get frustrated when they’re not read or responded to. You need to realize that your manager is probably getting hundreds of e-mails a day, and is looking for short, to the point communications. The more senior the person you’re sending to, the shorter you’ll want the e-mail. Offer additional material but don’t make the manager read more than a few lines.

8. Use Data and Facts and Not Opinions – When dealing with managers, especially senior managers, it’s essential to remember that your job is to provide the data and facts. Jim Barksdale used to have a great line he explained to us when he was confronted with difficult decisions. He said “if we’re going to make this decision based on opinions, we’re going to use my opinion.” If you do your homework, and have collected and laid out the data, your recommendation should be clear and based on the facts and not opinion.

9. Evangelize – A big part of a product manager’s job is to evangelize the product across the organization. But few product managers seem to take this as seriously as I think they should. If you evangelize effectively, everything will become easier – especially working with other groups in the company. If they know what you’re doing and are excited about what your product will do for the company, they’ll be much more likely to find ways to help.

10. Low-maintenance Employees – One of the secrets that nearly every manager thinks but few will admit is that what they’re really looking for in an employee is someone that is low-maintenance. High-maintenance employees consume a disproportionate amount of the manager’s time and attention, and while it’s your manager’s job to ensure that her team is productive, there is only so much time in the day, and this type of hand-holding is not usually what your manager is anxious to spend her day doing. Don’t try to use your manager as a mentor – find another mentor from outside of your management chain. And be thoughtful of your use of your manager’s time. I can promise you that your manager will appreciate it.

Many product managers get frustrated, especially in large companies. If this is your situation, give these techniques a try. You won’t eliminate the issues, but hopefully you’ll see a real improvement.

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Company culture is one of those vague concepts that can mean different things to different people. I use the term here to capture the company philosophy in terms of how it treats its employees, customers and partners, and the impact this has on product teams.

These are often related. In fact, it is said that if you want to know how a company treats its customers, look at how it treats its employees. I believe there is considerable truth in that. After all, it is your employees that interact with your customers, and people will generally treat others as they are treated.

Employees

Treating your employees well doesn’t necessarily mean paying them a great deal, although if employees, in general, don’t feel they are compensated fairly, then this can become a significant factor. That said, few employees name compensation as their top priority in terms of whether they like where they work.

More often, people consider how they are treated as people. If they don’t view their manager as their supporter, coach, and someone who truly cares about their career and who is committed to helping them reach their potential, many employees try to find a different manager, which often means leaving the company.

But company culture is created by more than just the immediate manager. The people at the very top of the company have a tremendous impact on how the culture is perceived. Even with the best policies and published guidelines that say all the right things, if the people at the top don’t behave consistently with those policies, then that’s the real culture that will be set. Most companies have a personnel department that knows the sorts of things required in a good culture, and they do what they can to foster that culture. But more often than not, the people at the top are the ones that truly establish the culture, by their actions.

It is difficult being a senior executive because people throughout the company are watching you so closely. They want to see how you handle conflict, and how you deal with difficult situations. If you lash out publicly at someone, or if you jump in and start to micro-manage a situation at the first sign of trouble, this will define the actual culture much more than any PowerPoint slide or Company All-Hands presentation ever will. On the other hand, if the employees see you going above and beyond in order to take care of a customer, or an employee in need, or empowering the staff to learn and grow, this is what they will remember.

When I was a software developer fresh out of college at HP Labs, the research wing of HP, working long hours in my little cube, I experienced the “Management By Wandering Around” aspect of the culture that I had heard about.

Dave Packard, the late co-founder of HP – who by then had retired but was still the company’s chairman – popped into my cubicle early one morning and introduced himself and asked what I was up to. Although I was nervous at first, I showed him what our team was working on and shared our thoughts on how the technology would be applied. The whole encounter only lasted a few minutes, but I could see that he was interested, and it was his way of both keeping his finger on the pulse of the company, and in demonstrating his interest to those of us much further down in the company hierarchy.

Over the course of my ten years at HP, many people dropped by this way and introduced themselves, and through this and countless other actions, I never doubted that the company valued its employees, and worked hard to treat them well and try to do right by them and the community we lived in. I was always proud to work at HP, and especially as I learned about other company cultures, I came to appreciate just how lucky I was to have learned my craft there. I worked long and hard hours for many years, and could have made more money elsewhere, but I stayed because I loved the company.

Much as children learn by actually watching what their parents do more than what they say, we as employees learn the culture by watching what the leaders do more than what they say.

Customers

There is no question that taking care of customers is hard. Sometimes they can be demanding, short-sighted, and impatient. But they are also nervous about going out on a limb and committing to your product and possibly putting their career on the line.

I have never seen company culture material that doesn’t talk about how much the company values customers. But I would also have to say that this is one of the hardest things to live up to, and few companies consistently demonstrate their commitment to their customers.

There are some notable exceptions. FedEx is one of my favorite companies because of their ability to consistently deliver outstanding products. However, they are at least as famous for their company culture, and the way they treat their employees and their customers – especially how they empower their employees to use their initiative to take care of their customers.

The legendary example of this is how, when FedEx was just starting out, they did not deliver a bride’s dress the day before the wedding. The panicked bride called FedEx and explained the problem. Without getting permission, the person who handled the call assured the bride that she would take care of her, and she immediately tracked down the lost package, and arranged to have the dress flown in by private chartered plane so that it would arrive in time for the wedding, which happily it did. This not only earned a customer for life, but as many guests at the wedding heard the story too, it led to commercial business from local industry, as well as helping to establish by example the desired culture of the young FedEx.

Some might consider the business decision to charter a plane a poor one, since a refund would have cost FedEx much less than the chartered flight, but of course that would have been short-sighted, and it is impossible to estimate the value of FedEx employees understanding how serious the company is in getting packages delivered on time, and in taking care of their customers.
Customers know when you truly care about them. Even if you can’t always do exactly as they like, they know and appreciate when you listen and they see you try.

One of the reasons that company culture is so important to customer satisfaction is that the typical customer touches many people at your company – and you touch many people at your customer’s company. In addition to your customer support organization, your sales team, professional services organization, product management, and senior management all may be interacting with the customer. All it takes is one person to taint the experience for the customer. Even if an escalation helps to get the problem resolved, the bad feelings linger.

When I was at Netscape, Jim Barksdale, the company CEO, was famous for his commitment to customer satisfaction and he demonstrated this frequently. One example in particular quickly became legend. He visited a customer that was having ongoing problems with a new product, and he wanted them to know that we were taking the problems very seriously and would correct them, so he told the customer that if the problems weren’t addressed to their satisfaction he would write their company a substantial personal check out of his own pocket. This of course very much impressed the customer, but it also had a profound impact on the product team – they saw that Jim believed they could do what was needed, and they also saw how much he was committed to the customer’s satisfaction. Jim never needed to write that check, but nobody ever doubted he would have.

Partners

In addition to employees and customers, virtually every company also has partners of one type or another. These partners might be technology providers, or outsourcing firms, or agencies, or simply other companies that you have teamed up with because you have common interests.

These people may not work for you, but they likely depend on you in other ways. How we treat our partners also contributes to the company culture. It is easy for a company, especially when they are successful, to be arrogant with their partners, and treat them poorly.

At AOL, during the heyday of the Internet, the company gained a reputation for being extremely harsh with partners. The people managing the relationships with these partners prided themselves on their negotiating skills and tactics, and in truth, they did everything they could to extract the most value for AOL. As a result, many, if not most, partners came away with very bitter feelings about the company.

When the fortunes of AOL changed, these partners certainly didn’t feel an obligation or desire to go out of their way to support the company. But even more damaging, I would argue, is that many people at AOL saw how the company was treating these partners, and it was very hard for senior executives to make the case about a caring, customer-focused company culture in the face of such public behavior.

There are of course other aspects to the company culture, but if you are trying to build product teams that will work long and hard to produce products that your customers will love, it’s important to instill this sense of caring for and treating people well – your employees, customers and partners.

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